P819 ..... 4

10106969!l1nFCH

\

POPULAR MUSIC

• I I \( "\ \ -" '/� I ,

Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies

Other titles in this series

Television Edited by Toby Miller

Pelformance Edited by Philip Auslander

Film Theory Edited by Philip Simpson

HollYlVood Edited by Tom Schatz

•

POPULAR MUSIC

Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies

Edited by Simon Frith

Volume IV

Music and Identity

I � ��o�;!;n���up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published in 2004 by Routledge

II New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by ROlltledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

ROllI/edge is (III imprint of rhe Taylor & FWllcis Group

. �d.itorial matter an� selection 0 2003 Simon Frith;

mdlvldual owners retam copyright in their own material

Typeset in 1O/12pt Times NR by S'raphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Prmted and bound 111 Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow. Cornwall

All rights reserved. �o p�rt of this book may be reprinted or reprodtlc�d or Ulihscd III any form or by ally electronic,

. mcchal�lcal, �r other means, now k nown or hereafter

. mventc? mcludlllg photocopying and recording, or in any mformatlon storage

, �r retrieval system, without permission in

wrltmg from the publishers.

Bri/ish Library ClI/lI/ogliing ill Pllb/icmioll Da/ll A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of COllgress Cataloging ill Publication Dala A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-415-29905-5 (Sel) ISBN 0-415-33270-2 (Volume IV)

-

C ONTENTS

VOLUME 4 MUSIC AND IDENTITY

A cknolVledgemen/s

Introduction

PART A Music and sociability

61 'Let all the world hear all the world's music':

popular music-making and music education

JOHN BLACKING

62 Towards an aesthetic of popular music

SIMON FRITH

63 Pathways in urban living

RUTH FINNEGAN

64 Systems of articulation, logics of change: communities and

scenes in popular music

WILL STRAW

65 Place, exchange and meaning: Black' Sea musicians in the

West of Ireland

MARTIN STOKES

v

IX

5

7

32

48

79

10\

C O N T E N T S

PART B

Music, nationality and imagined community

66 Honky Tonk: the music of the Southern working class

BILL C. MALONE

67 Paul Simon's Gracelw/d, South Africa and the mediation

of musical meaning

LOUISE MElNTJES

68 'My love is in America': migration and Irish music

GRAEME SMITH

69 Sounds authentic: Black Music, ethnicity and the challenge

of a challging same

PAUL GILROY

PART C Ethnomusicology

70 COlllando la Cama Vacia: love, sexuality and gender

relationships in Dominican Hac/tala

DEBORAH PACINI HERNANDEZ

71 Somos e/ Pel'l': 'Cumbia Andina' and the children of

Andean migrants in Lima

THOMAS TURINQ

72 Nationalism on stage: music and change in Soviet Ukrainc

CATHERINE WANNER

73 Fantasies of home: The antinomies of modernity and the music

117

119

126

164

182

207

209

231

249

of Ladysmith Black Mambazo 266 VEIT ERLMAN

PART 0 Music, modernity and postmodernity

74 The search for Petula Clark

GLENN GOULD

75 Modern music culture: on shock, pop and synthesis

GEORGINA BORN

vi

283

285

293

-

C O N T E N T S

76 Cruising around the historical bloc. Postmodernism and

popular music in East Los Angeles

GEORGE LIPSITZ

77 A style nobody can deal with. Politics, style and

the postindustrial city in Hip Hop

TRICIA ROSE

Index

VII

324

341

361

A C KNOW L E D G E M ENTS

The publishers would like to thank the following for permission to reprint their material:

Cambridge University Press for permission to reprint John Blacking, ' ''Let All the World Hear All the World's Music": Popular Music-Making and Music Education', in A Common Sense V iew of All Music, 1987, pp. 121-149. Copyright © 1987 Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission of the author and publisher.

Cambridge University Press for permission to reprint Simon Frith, Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music', in R. Leppert and S. McClary (eds) Music and Socie ty, 1987, pp. 133-149. Copyright © 1987 Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission of the author and publisher.

Cambridge University Press for permission to reprint Ruth Finnegan, 'Pathways in Urban Living', in The Hidden Musicians, 1987, pp. 297-326. Copyright © 1987 Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission of the author and publisher.

Taylor & Francis Ltd. for permission to reprint Will Straw, 'Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music', Cultural Studies, 5(3) (1991): 368-388.

Berg for permission to reprint Martin Stokes, 'Place, Exchange and Mean­ing: Black Sea Musicians in the West of Ireland', in M. Stokes (ed) Ethnicily, Identity and Music, 1994, pp. 97-115.

University of Mississippi Press for permission to reprint Bill C. Malone, 'Honky Tonk: The Music of the Southern Working Class', in W. R. Ferris and M. L. Hurt (eds) Folk Music and Modern Sound, 1982, pp. 119-128.

Ethnomusicology for permission to reprint Louise Meintjes, 'Paul Simon's Grace/and, South Africa and the Mediation of Musical Meaning', Eti/Ilo­musicology, 34 (1990): 37- 73.

Leicester University Press for permission to reprint Graeme Smith, 'My Love is in America': Migration and Irish Music', in P. O'Sullivan (ed) The Creative Migrant, 1994, pp. 221-236.

IX

A C K N OW L E D G E M E N T S

Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, Chicago for permis­sion to reprint Paul Gilroy, 'Sounds Authentic: Black Music, Ethnicity and the Challenge of a Changing Same', Black Music Research Joul'llal, 1 1 (2) ( 199 1 ) : 1 1 1- 1 36.

Cambridge University Press for permission to reprint Deborah Hernandez Pacini, 'Col/tando la C�ma Vacia: Love, Sexuality and Gender Relationships III DommlCan Baclwla , Popular Music, 9(3) ( 1 990): 35 1-367. Copyright © 1990 Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission of the author and publisher.

Studies in Latin American Popular Culture for permission to reprint Thomas Turino, 'Sumos el PerIl: "Cumbia Andina" and the Children of Andean Migrants in Lima', Studies iI/ Latin American Popular Culture, 9 ( 1 990): 97-1 08.

Duke University Press for permission to reprint Catherine Wanner 'Nationalism on Stage: Music and Change in Soviet Ukraine', in M. Slobi� (ed) Retuning Cullure. Musical Challge ill Cenlral and EaSlern Europe, 1 996, pp. 1 36-1 55.

Oxford University Press for permission to reprint Veit Erlman, 'Fantasies of Home. The Antinomies of Modernity and the Music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo' in Music, Modernity and the Global Imagination: Soulh Africa and the West, 1999, pp. 1 99-2 13 .

Faber and Faber for permission to reprint Glenn Gould, 'The Search for Petula Clark', High Fidelity, November 1967. Reprinted in The Glenn Gould Reader, 1987, pp. 300-307.

New Formations for permission to reprint Georgina Born, 'Modern Music Culture: On Shock, Pop and Synthesis', New Formatiolls, 2 ( 1 987): 5 1 -78.'

University of Minnesota for permission to reprint George Lipsitz, 'Cruising Around the Hlstoncal Bloc. Postmodernism and Popular Music in East Los Angeles', in Cultural Critique, 5 ( 1 986): 1 5 7-1 77. Routledge for permission to reprint Tricia Rose, 'A Style Nobody Can Deal WIth. PolItICS, Style and the Postindustrial City in Hip Hop', in A. Ross and T. Rose (eds) Microphone Fiends. Youth Music alld Youth Culture 1994 pp. 7 1-88. ' ,

Disclaimer

The publishers have made every effort to contact copyright holders of the material reprinted in Popular Music: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies. However, this has not been possible in all cases and we would welcome correspondence from any rights holders that we have not been able to trace.

x

I NT RO D U CT I ON

Volume IV

This final volume brings together essays about music and identity. The underlying theme here is the role of music in giving people a way of situating themselves in society, in the modern world, and for all these writers this has to be understood as an essentially social process. The analytic question is not why do particular individuals have particular musical tastes or preferences or memories but, rather, how music works in the experience of sociability itself. One of the basic tenets of popular music studies is that music is much more important in the emotional ordering of everyday life than is usually acknowledged in sociology or cultural studies. And one reason why music is not taken sufficiently seriously is because of the difficulty of explaining how it works culturally. This is the challenge taken up in these essays.

The first section explores the sociability of music and the musicality of society. John Blacking, the scholar who pioneered this approach, asks a general question - what is happening when we listen to and enjoy music? -in order to make a Durkheimian point that even such an individual, intensely personal experience can only be explained socially, as a result of social processes. Blacking reflects on the implications for music education. Why should children learn music at school? How should they learn it? Black­ing refuses to consider music in hierarchical terms, as high or low, and he is more interested in how music, in all its cultural varieties, establishes a common sense of humanity than in how it is used to suggest difference. His educational utopia is inspired equally by Kodaly and by African musical practices. Simon Frith's essay is an attempt to develop a sociological account of the aesthetics of popular music. He suggests that to judge a popular record or performer as good or bad is not just to assert an individual taste but also to articulate a socially formed judgement of what kinds of thing music should be for. In the extract here from her fine anthropological study of music-making in an English town, Hidden Musicians, Ruth Finnegan argues that music is one of the most important activities through which people find 'pathways' in urban living, create structures of social connec­tion and practice. Musical lives are rooted more often in leisure than work, in family and friendship than social class ties, but they are, nonetheless, constitutive of people's sense of who they are and who they could be.

I N TRO D U C T I O N

Will Straw's influential essay on music scenes examines the discursive and commercial networks of 'alternative rock' culture and suggests that musical pathways can be global (and virtual) as well as local (and communal). The 'scene' is a looser, more transient, more mediated kind of network than those Finnegan describes. But it is just as important ideologically and materially in determining how people live their lives. Finally in this section, Martin Stokes looks at what happens to musicians' sense of themselves when they are 'out of place'. One aspect of globalisation for musicians, that is to say, is that they too are likely these days to be 'on tour', to be making music for audiences with unexpected understandings of who they are.

One issue discussed by Stokes, the relationship between musical identity and national and ethnic identity, is explored in the second section here. Bill Malone writes about honky tonk as 'the organic reflection of Southern working-class culture'. Louise Meintjes uses the case of Paul Simon's Grace/and to investigate cross-national musical collaboration. Are such first world/third word projects best understood in terms of revitalisation or appropriation? Graeme Smith looks at the role of migrant musicians and communities in creating 'traditional' Irish music, which reflects not so much the social patterns of rural Ireland as those social patterns as remembered and reordered by the people who no longer live there. Paul Gilroy looks at the long history of the popular appeal of black music in order to argue against essentialist accounts of black musical identity. He suggests that the call and response of black music can no longer be reduced to 'a fixed dialogue between a thinking racial self and a stable racial community', can no longer be interpreted as 'a secret, ethnically encoded dialogue'.

The next section contains four essays by ethnomusicologists, chosen to exemplify what is presently the richest field of popular music studies both theoretically and methodologically, the work with the clearest integration of textual and contextual analysis. One reason for the current importance of such scholarship lies in the tradition of the anthropological case study, with its simultaneous attention to detail and abstraction, but more import­antly (and the reason why these essays are in this volume) the questions that preoccupy ethnomusicology now are central to popular music studies generally. The issue is no longer how pre-modern musical communities work, but how music is implicated in the process of modernisation itself. Deborah Pacini Hernandez thus looks at bachata as a musical form dealing with changing gender relations in the Dominican Republic. These are love songs articulating and resisting changing sexual and romantic norms. Thomas Turino's study of Andean migrants in Peru is concerned with the use of music to make sense of new kinds of exchange between the urban and the rural. Catherine Wanner's essay on public performance in the Ukraine focuses on the musical construction and reconstruction of national and historical identity as the Soviet Union broke up. Viet Erlmann returns us to Ladysmith Black Mambazo and their post-Grace/and international fame, to

2

-

I NTRO D U C T I O N

the ways in which their music deals with modernity by offering fantasies of tradition.

The questions about music and the modern raised here are dealt with in the essays in the last section, but with a more free-floating sense of the post modern too. Glenn Gould's disconcerting tribute to Petula Clark - at once serious and self-mocking - is also a meditation on what music means in suburbia, in a postmodern setting in which sociability has been replaced by alienation and the home become a retreat from social contact. Georgina Born's essay on high and low music theory is an exhilarating refusal to accept the usual modernist /popular divide not in the name of postmodern­ism but, rather to clarify what, if anything, the conccpt of post modern music really means. George Lipsitz's essay addresses this question by focusing on a particular issue, Chicano music in Los Angeles, and on the specificities of cultural politics and cultural power and the continuing resonance of historical experience. Tricia Rose uses a study of rap to bring together the concepts of postmodernity and post-industrialisation, again making the point that popular music, as the cultural form most accessible to the people, most immediate in its articulation of their views, must be the starting point for any understanding of how the world is changing and how those changes feel.

3

Part A

MUSIC AND SOCIABILITY

5

61

' L ET A L L T H E WO R L D

H E A R A L L T H E W O R LD'S M U S I C' :

P O P U LA R M U S I C- M A K I N G A N D

M U S I C E D U C AT I O N

John Blacking

Source: John Blacking, A Commoll Sellse View of All Music (1987), Cambridge: Cambridge UniversilY Press, 121-49.

Understanding music through performance

The gramophone and the tape-recorder arrived on the music scene just in time to save art music from becoming fossilized. I refer not so much to the new worlds of sound that have been made available to composers through recordings of exotic music from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, as to the growing emphasis on performance and varieties of interpretation. This has been the inevitable result of having many recordings of the same written work.

The tape-recorder has abolished what had been seen as the essential differences between written and unwritten music. Recordings of unwritten music have revealed that it is much less improvised and more stable and systematic than had previously been thought; and recorded interpretations of written music have shown that even for the most scholarly and careful performers, the score is only an approximate guide to performance. Just as multiple performances of a Beethoven symphony show that there are as many readings as there are orchestras and conductors, so recordings of apparently improvised African music reveal a consistency of performance which suggests that the musicians hold in their heads both the grammar of a musical system and the equivalent of a musical score.

Thus the making of the music, the element that was so important in the time of Bach when people worked from a figured bass, or in Mozart's and Beethoven's time when soloists improvised cadenzas on the spur of the moment, the acl oj pe,jormance, has come into its own once more.

7

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

The invention which allows us to avoid going to symphony concerts, and which in a sense reduced the need for live performances, brings music more alive by encouraging careful listening. Recordings can make us more con­scious of the music that is being played, because we can listen in intimate surroundings without the interference of external elements. The availability of mUltiple recordings of works allows us to dissent from local fashion and develop our personal tastes in composers and performances.

It is perhaps no coincidence that greater opportunities for listening to the music and making intelligent judgements about sonorities have coincided with a period in music-making in which exceptional emphasis is laid on timbre and sound quality. This applies as much to composition and arrangements of pop and rock music as it does to contemporary 'art' music and the discovery of folk and traditional music from all parts of the world. The invention of the gramophone and tape-recorder, as well as the radio, have helped to detach music from social class, time, place, and the limits of specific musical instruments. People can now turn on almost any music they like at any time of day or night, and composers can conjure up with tape and synthesizers whatever sounds they imagine.

Timbre has always been an important ingredient of style, if only because it is the most obvious parameter that immediately distinguishes even dif­ferent uses of the same instrumental ensemble (cf. the quartet sounds of Beethoven and Brahms and the contrasting sounds of different rock groups). But it has also been given a rather static quality as a symbol of social boundaries and social function. For instance, it is hard to hear the sounds of a brass band, an organ, a hymn, a gamelan, a saxophone or a sitar, without associating them with particular kinds of people, places, and events. Similarly, many African Christians have rarely incorporated drums into their religious music, even if they are shaped and played in European style, because they cannot dissociate the musical sound from the appropriate pagan practices and social groups.

Because it can be detached from specific social functions, times and places, recorded music permits freer exploration of sonorities, without the restric­tions of social convention. [ know of the son of a professional academic musician who turned against the 'are music of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries and became deeply involved in the world of pop, rock, and jazz as part of the social process of developing teenage identity. He became fascinated by the varieties of timbre, and this interest in sonorities led him to the world of contemporary 'art' music, and sub­sequently on to the kinds of 'art' music which he had earlier rejected.

This anecdote recalls a general principle of musical experience which [ mentioned i n earlier chapters and which has been brought into prominence by the inventions of the gramophone and the tape-recorder, and the con­sequential increase of available musical variety and of audiences to hear it: it does not matter so much what music you hear as how you listen to il, and

8

' L E T A L L T H E WOR L D H E A R A L L T H E WORL D ' S M U S I C'

holY it is pc,formed. The aesthetic value of music does not lie in any object­ive product but in the subjective processes of composing, performing, and listening to the music. Music, like all art-objects, is available-for-use; and the essence of the artistic process is that it must be exercised as much by performers and listeners as by the original creators.

Thus a work of art may be performed and heard inartistically; or a mundane object may be transformed into a work of art by an enthusiastic buyer or viewer. The art is in the making, and we cannot dismiss as non-art a Tretchikoff print if it ennobles the vision and sharpens the sensitivities of a Belfast dock worker.

The evidence for this view of art and the artistic process is overwhelming, but people still hold to the old argument that absolute judgements can be made about music, claiming that some music is art, while other music is not, and that certain kinds or items of music are better than others. People who make such judgements often confuse music sound with its social origins and environment, and try to invest purely personal preference with a measure of objectivity and authority. [ f this were not so, how could Spohr have been honoured as one of the twelve great composers by the builders of the Chicago Symphony Hall in the late nineteenth century? And how could the music of Mahler have been unappreciated by the educated and sensitive ears of his contemporaries? The point is that musical performances are multi-media events, and their sound patterns are but one of several channels of communication. Listening is therefore influenced by fashion, changing social values, personal whim, and experiences of enculturation. The circum­stances surrounding the presentation of Spohr's music in the late nineteenth century were presumably better for its enthusiastic reception than those surrounding performances of Mahler's music in the early twentieth century.

In most human interaction, several channels of communication are working simultaneously. Consider, for example, verbal language: its syntax is accompanied by patterns of posture, gesture, intonation, costume, social environment, and other modes of communication which can alter the message even when there is no change of code. Not all channels are noted or labelled by the actors, but this does not mean that the labelled are valued more highly or perceived more keenly than the unlabelled. Thus, people may talk about musical experience in political or religious terms, but this does not necessarily mean that they do not hear or enjoy the music as 'form in tonal motion', or that they regard it as subordinate to political and religious issues. On the contrary, the music may express more precisely than any political or religious dogma the really important values that underlie a person's political or religious commitment, such as a sense of human brotherhood or a desire to worship.

Similarly, it is too easy to explain a pop festival in purely sociological terms and to ignore its significance as a musical event. It may indeed be a case of commercial exploitation, a social gathering, an assertion of youthful

9

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

identity and revolt, a n opportunity for sexual and narcotic exchange, or whatever; but it can also be an occasion on which people respond to musical ideas and achieve some degree of transcendence. The opposite can also occur: people can talk in learned and ecstatic terms about musical forms, and yet be much more concerned with their status vis-it-vis other concert-goers, colleagues and friends, and their self-importance as 'cultured' beings.

Whether people can recognize a tune by the Beatles or by Beethoven is simply a matter of degree and a consequence of social experience. What is more important is that most people can distinguish the parameters of musical modes of communication from linguistic, gestural, and other modes, although they may not be able to explain what they do in words. When I speak of 'understanding music through performance', I mean by the word 'performance' both the physical involvement of performance and the experi­ence of remaking music by listening. Recorded music provides unparalleled opportunities for reflection, which can only lead to better understanding of music and richer cultivation of people's musicality.

Let me take another analogy from verbal language. Understanding a verbal language precedes the ability to perform, as we know very well from infants' frustrated attempts to reciprocate the messages that they receive from others. Performance practice certainly improves language use and comprehension, but it is not a precondition for either the understanding of meaning or the formulation of content. Understanding a verbal language consists primarily of understanding its syntax, though not necessarily replicating it; it is a discovery of the process by which content is formulated, of the speaker's intention to mean. In music, satisfaction may be derived without absolute agreement about the meaning of the code; that is, the creator's intention to mean can be offset by a performer's or listener's intention to make sense, without any of the absence of communication that would occur if a listener misunderstood a speaker's intention to mean.

In music, it is not essential for listeners or performers to understand the creator's intended syntax or even the intended meaning, as long as they can find a syntax and their own meanings in the music. Although modern research has challenged much 'traditional' performance practice, it is very unlikely that even the most 'authentic', carefully researched performances of Baroque music will be able to convey to twentieth-century audiences the intentions of the composers or the musical experience of seventeenth- or eighteenth-century listeners, because our ears are differently tuned, and we cannot recreate the same sonic environment. The sounds of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony can never again be startling and new in the same way that they were to Goethe and his contemporaries. When people hear them even for the first time in the 1980s, they listen with ears that have almost certainly heard Brahms, Wagner, Stravinsky, jazz, or pop, and the sonic impact of the music is bound to be different.

1 0

' L ET A L L T H E W O R L D H E A R A L L T H E W O R L D ' S M U S I C '

Information about the social and cultural background of new sounds can often be a hindrance to enjoying and assimilating them, and I rarely read programme notes until after a performance. The music of Schubert and Mozart has always appealed to me not as specimens of Austrian culture, but as beautiful music. Of course music is embedded in the particular conventions of composers' environments and historical periods, but the whole point of understanding music as music is that we carry the cognitive equipment to transcend cultural boundaries and resonate at the common level of humanity. As Constant Lambert said at the end of Music Ho!

The artist who is one of a group writes for that group alone, whereas the artist who expresses personal experience may in the end reach universal experience.

(Lambert 1966:280)

Information about the circumstances of musical composition and the cultural environment of a composer can explain details of technique and style that had currency at the time of conception of a work, and especially the significance of the nonverbal signs that were used. But these are the external products of processes of musical thought that were constructed in particular social situations. For people who were not involved in those particular situations, their meanings coincide as far as they can make sense of the music in terms of their own experience. Inevitably, this can be done only by invoking different cultural conventions that are familiar to listeners or performers, or by resonance with universal structures of the human mind that were used in the act of musical creation.

Thus all the cultural information about Venda and other African musics, on which my work as an ethnomusicologist has been based, was in a sense extraneous to my understanding of the music as music. Even if I knew exactly how the Venda conceived and perceived their music, I could not possibly experience it in the same way as them, because of different habits of processing experience. Moreover, as I pointed out in the second chapter, there were several different patterns of interpretation amongst the Venda themselves. It is, in fact, as ridiculous to say that knowledge of a culture is necessary for appreciation of music that has been created by people reared in it, as it is to say that music helps us to understand the culture of the people who created it. What music, tells us about the culture of the music-makers can only be known when we have studied their culture. Schubert's and Mahler's music tells me nothing about Austrian and Viennese culture until I find out about those cultures and try to make connections between this knowledge and my experience of the music. Similarly, if I want to understand and appreciate music, my best course is to get on with listening to it and performing it - provided, of course, that the sociological conditions I outlined in the last chapter have been fulfilled. This is a matter

1 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

of using as far as possible the nonverbal cognitive apparatus that I have as a human being, rather than the particular forms of it that have been emphasized in my own society.

It is interesting that many people sight-read a piece of music far better than they play it for the second and third time. I have also found that I can learn to play a piece to the satisfaction of a critical audience by trusting my musical intuition rather than examining its technique. I find formal analysis less helpful than listening to alternative performances of the same or similar works and hearing my own repeated performances, in which I explore different ways of feeling the music physically and technically - whether it be discovering alternative fingerings and arm movements at the keyboard or alternative ways of conducting a passage.

I found that the same principles of understanding have applied to my learning of African musics, though it took a lot of listening and watching to get used to the different idioms. I learnt to perform first and asked questions afterwards - not so much because I thought it would help me to understand the music better, but because 1 was interested to know why I liked it, or why people said it was the same as something that didn't sound the same to me. I learnt most from the experience of performance practice, especially when my performance was considered wrong.

This raises the problem of how much physical performance is actually necessary for understanding music. I have argued that performance is a way of knowing, and that listening is as much performance as actually singing and playing. In fact, performance can sometimes interfere with attentive listening, as any pianist knows very well. It is quite possible to play efficiently without hearing what you play. I have also insisted that one goal of musical progress must be to abolish the division between mental and manual labour in the arts. There cannot be any hard and fast rule about the relative merits of performing privately with gramophone records, going to a concert hall and participating in someone else's live performance, or actually performing with a group or on one's own. My experiences in Africa in learning to understand alien musical traditions have convinced me that at least some experience of physical performance is necessary in order to understand certain principles of music-making, and especially the relation­ships between body movement and musical ideas, which I discussed in chapters 3, 4 and 5.

On the other hand, there are occasions when participation in performance can be counter-productive. For example, while I was staying in Perth, Western Australia, I attended the openings of two exhibitions of aboriginal art at which groups of musicians performed. At the Perth Art Gallery, a speaker introduced the music and asked us to join him in saying some aboriginal words. Then the musicians began to perform, but they were constantly interrupted by explanations, translations, and requests to the audience to say aboriginal words, clap, sit down in aboriginal fashion, and

12

..

' L E T A L L T H E WORLD H E AR A L L T H E WORL D ' S M U S I C '

so on. The resuit was that we never heard more than a few seconds o f music at a time and most of it was drowned by our own clapping.

At the opening of an exhibition of the Nexus gallery in Fremantle, on the other hand, the musicians and dancers were allowed to perform without any interruptions. We all became involved in the movement and the music, without necessarily knowing anything about their cultural significance. Above all, we could observe the transformations in the faces and bodies of the performers as the music progressed and the performance became more in­tense. The man who led the group corroboree became radiant, though slightly puffed with the effort, and he did not have to do more than announce that they were enjoying themselves so much that they could dance another corroboree. I think we all understood and appreciated the music and dance because of the power of the performance, the display of technique and the transformation of the performers. Had we been asked to participate with our own untutored movements, we might have missed the subtleties of dif­ference between men's and women's movements, and the skilful flow of the music and dance. And had the performance been interrupted with explana­tion, we could not have tuned in with our nonverbal receptors to what was timeless, placeless, and truly artistic about the aboriginal music and dance.

I have enthused about recorded performances of music because they are the ultimate in musical detachment for the listener. They allow intimate, personal experiences of music, private performances if you like, in which people are free to move around, laugh, weep and express every range of emotion that the music inspires in them. Recorded performances have also had profound effects on the shape of world musics and have been used as models for new and exciting compositions.

Musical structures both evoke and spring from 'feelings', and especially the feelings associated with internal body movements. Human feelings are also structured; and in the transformation of feelings into patterns of sound and vice versa, the structures of the body play a part in creation and interpretation, no less than the musical conventions of different societies and the different musical experiences of individuals.

It is sometimes said that an Englishman cannot possibly understand African, Indian, and other non-English musics. This seems to me as wrong­headed as the view of many white settlers in Africa, who claimed that blacks could not possibly appreciate and perform properly Handel's Messiah, English part-songs, or Lutheran hymns. Of course music is not a universal language, and musical traditions are probably the most esoteric of all cultural products. But the experience of ethnomusicologists, and the growing popularity of non-European musics in Europe and America and of 'Western' music in the Third World, suggest that the cultural barriers are somewhat illusory, externally imposed, and concerned more with verbal rationalizations and explanations of music and its association with specific social events, than with the music itself. The flexibility and adaptability

1 3

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

of music as a symbol system are such that there are as many variations of interpretation and understanding amollgsl Englishmen, Africans and Indians, as there are between them. Different musical systems often coincide with cultural boundaries, and subdivisions of musical style, musical activit­ies and experiences are labelled and discussed with the general language of a culture. But a shared mode of discourse does not provide members of different classes, families and occupational groups with common feelings and mutual understanding any more than French culture gives all French people the same personality.

Because music is concerned with feelings which are primarily individual and rooted in the body, its structural and sensuous elements resonate more with individuals' cognitive and emotional sets than with their cultural senti­ments, although its external manner and expression are rooted in historical circumstances. This is why the English could still enjoy Beethoven when at war with the Germans, and why it often makes more sense to relate the output of a composer to music from another society or to someone from the past, than to his/her immediate musical neighbour.

When the words and labels of a cultural tradition are put aside and 'form in tonal motion' is allowed to speak for itself, there is a good chance that English, Africans, and Indians will experience similar feelings, especially if they perform the music. Because their bodies have a common repertory of somatic states and cognitive functions, musical symbols can be inherently effective and enable their users to share transcendence of time, place and culture. They are effective as symbols because their production involves bodies in similar patterns of movements in space and time, with correspond­ing physiological responses, so that their inherent meaning is, as it were, forced upon performers by the very process of doing them.

Performance is the essence of the musical event, but although it makes aesthetic experience possible it does not guarantee it. First, the production of musical symbols is only one of several interrelated channels of commun­ication that must be involved; secondly, listening to music is as important in appreciation as playing it, and a non-playing listener can sometimes hear and feel more clearly than a player. 'Artistic' activities can be performed as a routine, like driving a car to work, and in such cases I doubt if they should be called 'artistic' or 'aesthetic', even if they do involve music-making, painting, or sculpture. At the same time, there are some corporate activities, like music-making, which by their formal structure and stated intent are more likely than not to generate aesthetic experience.

To define aesthetic experience in terms of particular kinds of products called 'the arts', rather than special humanizing processes in which organisms communicate with self, other and environment, is to pay lip-service to bour­geois definitions and uses of art and to restrict the creativity and emotional expression of mankind. But to recognize that some kinds of communication are generally more effective than others at stimulating love, co-operation

1 4

»

' L ET ALL T H E W O R L D H E A R A L L T H E W O R L D ' S M U S I C '

and gentleness, developing and refining the senses and educating the emo­tions, is to acknowledge that social and cultural organization is far from perfect, and that most people are not yet sufficiently advanced to be able to do everything in a state of transcendental awareness.

Musical performance and cultural hegemony

Percy Grainger was deeply concerned about performances of music which many people could enjoy, and about the extension of music education to cover the whole world's music. These aims cannot be achieved without changes in the contexts and uses of music, and in people's attitudes to it. In the last chapter I argued that the power of music depends on how it is defined and used in social and intellectual life, as much as on its musical structure. The first step on the road of musical progress is therefore political and communal: musical life must be re-organized so that the power of music can be used and not abused. The ultimate goal is personal and social trans­formation: music-making must be used to enhance personal consciousness and experience in community. The proper study of music is music-making, just as the proper study of religion is worship, and not dogma. As Percy Grainger claimed on many occasions, the most politically effective use of music in society is the harnessing of aesthetic energy so that all individuals can obtain full ownership of their senses.

Cultural politics, the use of culture and the arts to promote political interests, invariably exploits and contains the power of music, as Maurice Bloch implied in his analysis of the use of song and dance to restrict political argument. It diverts attention from the real political issues or simply asserts the hegemony of its promoters. But at our present stage in the world history of music and music-making, we cannot get down to the true business of studying and experiencing music as music without confronting the politics of culture as a major issue. Music-making, like relgious worship, has become so bogged down in abuses, irrelevancies, false trails, elitisms, and misconceptions, that we shall have to do a lot of political work to restore it to its rightful place in modern societies. We have to gain acceptance even for the simple facts that all normal human beings have the capacities for making music; that music is discovered as well as invented; that music is essentially a primary modelling system, and not only an epiphenomenon of something else; that unwritten music can be as complex as written music, because of the universal complexity of the human mind, and so on.

In 1 9 1 5, Percy Grainger made the most original and revolutionary pro­position that 'a world-wide International Musical Society' should be formed 'for the purpose of making all the world's music known to all the world by means of imported performances, phonograph and gramophone records and adequate notations' (Balough 1 982:78).

1 5

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

The International Music Council, the International Folk Music Council (now the International Council for Traditional Music), and the Society for Ethnomusicology were formed in the 1940s and 1 950s; in the 1950s and 1960s, Mantle Hood and David McAllester in the USA pioneered the performance of Asian and African musics as an integral part of the train­ing of university students in music and ethnomusicology; Indonesian music has been taught in Australian universities and in the Netherlands, and Indian music in Dartington College of Arts, Devon; European music has been taught side by side with traditional music in, for example, China, India, Korea, Japan, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zambia; and in the 1 970s some British universities began to develop ethnomusicology programmes and encourage performance. But we are still a very long way from realizing Grainger's far-sighted vision, especially in the well-established colleges and academies of music. I can think of several places where an imaginative student would be greeted with much the same retort as the boy Percy Grainger when he asked the Frankfurt teacher who wanted him to enter for the Mendelssohn Prize for piano playing,

'If I should win, would they let me study Chinese music in China with the money?' The teacher replied: 'No, they don't give prizes to idiots.'

(Balough 1982:78)

Percy Grainger returned to this theme again and again, and in the 1934 lectures he stressed two very important points: He insisted that music is not a universal language, and that its message is essentially personal.

Grainger called his first 1 934 lecture The Universalist Attitude toward Music':

We are continually hearing that 'music is a universal language', yet the facts prove that music, as practised and enjoyed to-day, is the most parochial and least universal of the arts . . . We are quite needlessly ignorant of folk-music, primitive music, and the great art-musics of Asia.

What would we think of a Professor of Literature who knew noth­ing of Homer, the Icelandic sagas, the Japanese Heiki Monogatori, Chaucer, Dante and Edgar Lee Masters? We would think him a joke. Yet we see nothing strange in a Professor of Music who knows nothing of primitive music and folk-music, the music of mediaeval Europe, and the great art-musics of Asia, and who knows next to nothing of contemporary music.

1 6

' L ET A L L T H E WORLD H E AR A L L T H E WORL D ' S M U S I C '

It seems to me that the commonsense view of music is to approach all the world's available music with an open mind, just as we approach the world's literature or painting or philosophy. I t seems to me that we should be willing, even eager, to hear everything we can of all kinds of music, from whatever quarter and whatever era, in order that lVe may find out Fo", experience whether or not it carries any �piritual message for us as individuals.

(Appendix A : 1 5 1-2; italics mine)

Grainger's general philosophy and specific proposals were concerned with the politics of music, rather than the political uses of music. He wanted 'subscription concerts . . . in the artcentres of all lands' (Balough 1 982:78) and performance and listening as part of the serious business of music education. He wanted people to listen critically to all kinds of music and to respect their variety and originality as products of the complexity of the human mind and of cultural traditions. He did not ask everyone to appreciate and enjoy all that they heard, as musical taste is a very personal matter. Even ethnomusicologists are not required to enjoy as well as understand the many different musical styles that they study, and there need be no embarrassment about liking some cultural products of a society more than others. I tend to prefer English painting, music, and gardens to English food. If [ prefer Ugandan to Tanzanian musics, I am not expressing prefer­ences for the cultures and societies in which their musics are embedded, and certainly not a preference for their political systems, either before or after the depositions of the Kabaka and Idi Amin.

And yet a great deal of our appreciation of world music confuses cultural chauvinism with musical laste. Performances of traditional music are too often associated with cultural bunfights, folklore festivals, and political jamborees in which various exotic musics, dances and associated arts are dished up for the promotion of national or ethnic causes. Many people's experiences of other worlds of music are derived entirely from such contexts, and there are two serious disadvantages. First, the music that is presented is often not truly representative of the tradition that is advertised; and secondly, because of the context, the aims of musical exchange and mutual understanding are defeated.

The terms 'folk' dance and 'folk' music are products of bourgeois ideology, which arose from a particular European form of the capitalist mode of production: the cultures and ethnic identity of communities of peasant producers had been besieged by the exploitation of labour and the mass exodus from the rural areas to new industrial centres. As the power of the urban proletariat grew, so did the nostalgia of the bourgeoisie for the disappearing countryside and ways of country people. It was in this context that the science of folklore was born, and it is necessary to be aware of the

1 7

M U S I C A N D S O C I A D I L I T Y

dangers and contradictions inherent in its bourgeois conceptual frame­work. For many decades, and even today in some countries, the science of folklore concerned itself with rural customs and largely ignored the new folklore of the urban proletariat, which in England has been studied by scholars like A. L. Lloyd ( 1 967), and more recently by members of the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham.

The presentation and propagation of folklore can be politically oppressive or politically uplifting. But it can never be non-political, and the performances of so-called 'national' teams do not necessarily represent national culture or the interests of more than small sections of their populations. For instance, the performance of the group that officially represented England in 1978 at the International Folklore Festival in BOUl'gas, Bulgaria, did not depict or reHect the 'folk' life of the people of London, let alone the English nation. There was no trace of the lives of black British populations or of the new counter-culture that Meredith Tax ( 1 972) described in her article: 'Culture Is Not Neutral, Whom Does It Serve?'

Folk festivals and multinational cultural events tend nol to breed in different groups respect for each other's music and dances, and people often equate the most attractive displays with some kind of general cultural superiority. Poles, Hungarians, English, Irish, Chinese and Indians go away more convinced than ever that their own products are superior to others' and that they have little or nothing to learn. The atmosphere is rather like that of the Olympic Games, where nations take credit for the performance of individuals. The political claptrap diverts people's attention from the only possible musical experiences that are to be gained From such perform­ances, the experiences of nonverbal communication which help to Iranscend cultural boundaries.

The popular presentation of music as part of social life

Meredith Tax described a different type of collective effort which is closer to the kinds of situation that Percy Grainger envisaged and that I encountered in Africa. The integration of different media and the emphasis on the experi­ence of performance, rather than its political uses, tend to arouse people's aesthetic sensibilities more than the folklore festival performances. Three important changes were discerned in the new British counter-culture:

The first is that this culture is in many cases the product of collect­ive efforts rather than of bourgeois individualism. Rock groups, street theatre groups, poster workshops, art crews for demonstrations -all of these are forms of creativity that are social and shared.

The second thing is that many of these cultural forms are conceived of as participatory; these would include a lot of theatre which demands audience participation and response; poetry which

1 8

' L E T A L L T H E W O R L D H E A R A L L T H E W O R L D ' S M U S I C '

demands being read out loud; and music that needs dance to fulfil it, and which is participated in by people who dance.

The third thing is that many of these new art expressions mix media and genres to a new extent. The rock groups that combine posters, slides, light shows, music, poetry, dance and special effects are one example. Such art breaks down very old divisions of labour; and any breakdown of the division of labour in the arts seems a hopeful sign of our growing ability to integrate different kinds of experience.

(Tax 1 972:26-7)

Thus art and life are reconciled, and the mixing of media and their associated symbols provides a large number of people with the opportunity of 1V0rking together. Situations such as these can produce a deep sense of personal satisfaction and group solidarity, and provide opportunities both for the creation of new artistic forms and for the popular presentation and performance of different musical traditions as part of social life.

Inevitably, traditional forms will be performed out of their original contexts, as the Hawai'ian hula has become re-interpreted to suit modern needs. They can be presented effectively as non-verbal communication, without verbiage about their sociocultural context and extra-musical signi­ficance. Moreover, concert halls and formal stages may not be the best environments for the presentation of 'folk' and 'traditional' musics, and the more varied community contexts may be as appropriate for this as they are for the invention of new music. Use of open spaces and natural environ­ments provide opportunities fol' composers to explore new sonorities, new ensembles, and new combinations of art Forms.

I t is surprising that Australian artistic life seems still to be a little con­stricted by the European traditions of enclosed concert halls, theatres and galleries, which were a result of Europe's climate, the structure of its social and political life and its patterns of urban development, and its use of the arts as entertainments for leisure time rather than as integral parts of the business of living. The York Festival in Western Australia is a fine example of a break with this tradition, and its ultimate success will depend on the extent to which it becomes part of the communal life of the people of York, rather than an annual invasion of York. This has, of course, been one of the problems faced by the organizers of Festivals and community arts enterprises in the United Kingdom and United States of America. I f it is successfully solved, much will have been done to restore music to its former place as a truly popular activity.

'Festivals' were an integral part of popular life in many parts of AFrica, and r think this is why many Africans have been unhappy about the formal presentation of folklore, as in FESTAC, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. First, the concepts of 'Folk' music,

1 9

M U S I C A N D SO C I A B I L I T Y

'folk' dance, and 'folklore' are irrelevant and even politically objectionable to many people in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is music, dance, and all the associated arts that are part of a living tradition shared by the whole community.

Secondly, African music and dance have traditionally depended very much on the creative interaction of performers and audience, and on a high degree of intimacy and mutual understanding. At the distance required for many formal presentations, you cannot see or hear the variations that make every performance a unique experience. However, the meanings of 'folk' dance and music must inevitably change as soon as they are presented. It is a new context and it brings with it a new set of meanings.

Such contrasts of presentation and of meaning were not absent in rural contexts. In a study of bepha ( Blacking 1 962), the Venda name for a musical expedition, I described an institution that is similar to the exchange of folklore teams undertaken by members of the International Council of Organizers of Folk Festivals (CIOFF). For over two months, a girls' dance team had daily rehearsals, which led up to a four-day visit to another district. There were differences between the social relations and perform­ance in rehearsals and in the public display. One interesting feature was that although members of the visiting and hosting dance teams spoke the same language, the dance exchange did not lead to closer relationships between them. Rather, it consolidated relationships among members of the same team, who belonged to one political unit, and between the officials and managers of the teams, who were interested as much in the political rela­tionships between the two areas as in the dance and music themselves. Much the same pattern of relations existed between members of teams and team organizers at the BOUl·gas festival.

In the African exchange, the authenticity and intimacy of the tradition was maintained. The four-day spectacle was itself part of tradition, just as folklore festivals and exchanges are becoming a part of the traditions of industrial societies. The exchange was an important focus of activity, but what happened during the previous two months' rehearsals and afterwards was really more important. The way things were done during the four­day spectacle emphasized the political nature of the dance and music -'political', that is, in the sense of promoting harmonious and productive human interaction. Audiences participated, and some even shared the labour of drumming and dancing. They were close enough to interact with the performers, rather than merely react to them. The intimate nuances of the dance, music, and costumes could be meaningful in ways that might have been lost in purely staged presentations.

I found that in African dance and music in general, events were skilfully transformed from occasions for strident display to occasions for subtlety and intimacy, from experiences of society and community to experiences of individuality, and vice versa. The gentleness and intimacy of much 'folk'

20

p

' L ET A L L T H E W O R L D H E A R A L L T H E W O R L D ' S M U S I C '

music are too often forgotten i n the hearty atmosphere that pervades some 'folk' -festivals and public presentations of folklore.

Intimacy is, of course, generally absent from symphony concerts and mammoth presentations of works like Bach's St John Passion, which were designed for entirely different environments; though it can be obtained by subtle treatment of parts of the orchestra, as in Mahler's symphonies. [t can also be obtained by personal involvement in performance and recognition of the fact that the power of music comes to us through the sense that we make of it.

World musics in schools

Percy Grainger'S arguments for the performance of world music were not addressed specifically to problems of music education. But he expressed views which were like those of Zolliin Kodaly. He felt that 'the basis of all art is racial', 'and that the way of great creative art is from the local to the national to the universal' ( Balough I 982A:92).

It is the infusion of deep personality and broad erudition into the task of voicing national and racial traits that entitles men such as Grieg, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Delius, and Albeniz to the title of first-class geniuses [ 1 920].

. . . this kind of patriotism is free of all chauvinism, defeats nobody and enriches the rest of the world while it enriches us.

. . . the patriotism that finds its vent in racial self-expression through the medium of art does not wilt and die as empires and supremacies wilt and die, but lives on through the ages, a 'carte de visite' to future humanity, engendering cosmic love [ 19 1 9] .

( Balough 1 982A:92)

Helen Reeves commented on these views in relation to Grainger's 'universalist outlook':

Music as a universal language is not an end in itself, but is seen as a vehicle for world peace and the unification of mankind. This should not be interpreted as music \ieing a cosmopolitan expression of mankind-as-a-whole. Grainger says that, as a musician, he always tried to play all the world's music because he saw 'in Negro music the spirit of the Negro race, in Jewish music the spirit of the Jewish race, in Anglo-Saxon music the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon race, and so on'. So whilst he sees all music as moving gradually towards the same goal, he nevertheless recognizes music as separate strands of artistic expression by people of many different cultures

2 1

M U S I C A N D SO C I A B I L I T Y

or, as Grainger calls these separate musical strands, 'the threads of unity'.

(Reeves 1 982:47)

Kodaly's arguments about the local and national roots of musical expres­sion were similar, though they were motivated by different experiences and tied to a theory for the reform of music education in Hungary. [n a lecture on Hungarian music education, given in 1 945, he argued that:

it is the works expressing most strongly the artist's own national characteristics which have the greatest world-wide apeal . . . indi­vidual originality can be rooted only in a national originality.

( Kodaly 1 974: 1 52)

The road from Hungarian music to the understanding of interna­tional music is easy, but in the opposite direction the road is difficult, or non-existent.

Thus we need a Hungarian musical education, both from a Hun­garian and from an international point of view. The more Hungarian we are the more can we expect an international interest. And this is the only way in which we can achieve a Hungarian musical culture.

( Kodaly 1 974: 1 54)

Kodaly specified what he meant by 'a Hungarian musical culture'. He lamented that his country was musically divided into those who were musically educated in a foreign tradition, without any feeling for Hungarian character, and those who felt Hungarian music to be their very own but were 'musically absolutely uneducated' and 'therefore, unable to compre­hend a more demanding composition' ( Kodaly 1 974: 1 53). He advocated a programme of training in Hungarian folk music from the earliest kindergarten stage, and concluded; 'At this point democracy means two things: one is to make the means of musical education available to everybody, and the other a full assertion of national characteristics' ( Kodaly 1 974: 1 55).

Grainger's and Kodaly's emphasis on national character in music creates problems, particularly when it is used to justify the kinds of excess that I discussed earlier in this chapter. KodaIy's remarks, in particular, can be misinterpreted as narrow chauvinism if it is forgotten that at the time of writing he was passionately concerned with the freedom and intellectual independence of the Hungarian people from foreign hegemony:

Shall we continue to be a colony or shall we become an independ­ent country, not only politically but culturally, in asserting our own personality, too?

( Kodaly 1 974: 1 54)

22

F

' LE T A L L T H E W O R L D H E A R A L L T H E W O R L D ' S M U S I C '

Until very recently the training of professional musicians was in the hands of foreigners who did not know Hungarian and lived here as aristocratic foreigners.

(ibid.)

Kodaly supported his political views with theories of music education which cannot be sustained: there is no convincing evidence that 'a multi­lingual child will not know any language well' (think of George Steiner, for instance!); that 'a child nurtured on mixed music will not feel musically at home anywhere' (there are thousands of African and Asian children who are quite happy in their bimusicality); or that 'if we do not want to rear children as aliens, we can do nothing else but teach these tunes' (i.e. a collection of Hungarian songs) ( Kodaly 1 974: 1 53). These kinds of argument deny that the crucial factor in all musical experience is how people make sense of what they define as music, and that young people have the innate capacity to discriminate and make their own choices. As I have already pointed out in earlier chapters, culture does not determine people's behaviour in some mysterious way, and musical systems are only cultural conventions which individuals can use as frameworks for musical communication.

Kodaly's enthusiasm for the social and moral consequences of choral singing also led him to a curious conclusion: 'We must lead great masses to music. An instrumental culture can never become a culture of masses. Instruments have become expensive and the number of pupils learning to play instruments has fallen' ( Kodaly 1974: 1 23). During the past fifty years, ethnomusicological research has shown that an instrumental culture can become a culture of the masses even when instruments ,are expensive and take much time and care to manufacture: the polyphony of African ensembles and the heterophony of Balinese game/an are examples of popular styles of music-making which fulfil th� criteria that Kodaly found in choral singing.

Some of Kodaly's statements about the precise effects of music also need revision in the light of ethnomusicological research, although the basic principles of his argument are sound. For example, he wrote in 1941 :

Taken separately, too, the elements'of music are precious instruments in education. Rhythm develops attention, concentration, deter­mination and the ability to condition oneself. Melody opens up the world of emotions. Dynamic variation and tone colour sharpen our hearing. Singing, finally, is such a many-sided physical activity that its effect in physical education is immeasurable - if there is perhaps anyone to whom the education of the spirit does not matter. Its beneficial effect in health is well known; special books have been written on this.

( Kodaly 1 974:1 30)

23

M U S I C A N D S O C I A Il I L I T Y

The point is that the elements of music have different significance in different cultural contexts: 'rhythm', 'melody', 'tonality', 'harmony' etc. can­not be treated cognitively and emotionally as absolute categories. In any case, they cannot in themselves have effects on people; and so the important point is how people make sense of the different elements of music that they identify. ihe case of African drumming illustrates this well: most people trained in a European musical tradition tend to emphasize its rhythmic characteristics or the 'messages' that the drums can transmit (thus confusing the uses of drums as music, as poetry, and as a sort of Morse Code). Anyone who spends time in Africa and learns from African musicians will soon find that drums are invariably perceived as melodic instruments, and 'polyrhythms' as polyphony. These are important musical conventions that must be understood if performances of African music are to have value in music education. It is possible for United Kingdom citizens of Caribbean and African origin to hear and interpret African music in an til/African way, as indeed many Western-educated Africans have misunderstood the traditional music of their own countries. I have attended classes and per­formances of African music in the United Kingdom where the subtleties and gentle beauty of the music are suppressed by an emphasis on noise and rhythm and a Boy-Scout-camp attitude to performance. African music is often popular, in the sense that everyone in the community appreciates it and most people like to participate in performance; but the ethos of much African traditional music is 'classical', and it should be treated with the same 'seriousness' as the music of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven.

Kodaly was well aware of similar problems in the use of Hungarian music. In examining the role of music in 'educating the nation', he insisted that he did 'not mean some stupid irredentist songs, complete with banner­waving, dressed up in sham-Hungarian mummery' ( Kodaly 1974: 1 30). In his critique of particular songs and methods in the building of Hungarian character, he emphasised how much children can learn in kindergarten (54 songs in 1 8 months! - Kodaly 1 974: 1 39), and in discussing song texts, he emphasized that 'the child delights in the play of musical forms at a stage when he does not care about the meaning of the text' (Kodaly 1974: 142). I found this to be true of the music-making of Venda children (Blacking 1967:30), and it reminds us that we can enjoy music f(om different parts of the world without having long lectures about the cultural background. That can come later, when childen have been allowed to use their 'direct intuition'. 'Often a single experience will open the young soul to music for a whole lifetime. This experience cannot be left to chance, it is the duty of the school to provide it' (Kodidy 1974: 1 20). And because of the familiarity of musical sounds that are not treated as music, children's musical enlightenment may well come from encounters with the unfamiliar: from Balinese gamelan rather than British popular song, from the Ko .. a playing of Amadu lobarteh"

24

-

' L ET A L L T H E W O R L D H E A R A L L T H E W O R L D ' S M U S I C '

rather than the singing of Shirley Bassey, and from music for the sitar rather than the electric guitar.

Koditly emphasized that young people are capable of the greatest achieve­ments in musical skill if given the chance, and that adult music will take care of itself if children have good singing teachers ( Kod<lly 1974: 1 24). He also complained about the futility of producing a host of professional musicians from the musical academies without any consumers at home ( Kodidy 1974: 1 27): they had to find work abroad, and the nation gained nothing from their export. 'Audiences for whom high-level music is a necessity must be reared' ( Koditly 1 974: 1 25). Thus, as for so many social and economic problems in industrial countries, the solution is to be found not primarily in commercial enterprises, or in money and technology per se, but in education and the expansion of educational opportunities -not for the strictly vocational purposes of getting a living, but for living a full and creative life. Arts Council subsidies would hardly be necessary if music education were 'successful', and a case could be made for diverting all Arts Council funds for secondary, tertiary and continuing arts education.

As I contemplate the divided society in which 1 live, I find it curious to read of Kodaly comparing the social solidarity of British society favourably with the lack of it in Hungary. He suggested that this could be due to the discipline of singing in choirs. He later argued (in 1 94 1 !) that 'Germany's great musical culture would never have reached its present level without the teaching of singing having been systematically carried out in schools for centuries' ( Koditly 1 974: 1 28). He rejected the idea that the economic crisis was the cause of everything in 1 929:

Everything will be set right as soon as the economy is in order? I do not think so. Penury may hamper development, but wealth does not promote it either. Money does not produce ideas . . . The recent development of music in Hungary is a straight refutation of the economic view of history.

( Kodaly 1 974: 1 26)

Kodaly shared most of Grainger's views on music education, and he expressed them more systematically, so that they have influenced music education in Hungary and many other parts of the world. Koditly saw music education as central to the general education of the young - provided that it really was a progressive, expansive, demanding system of musical education and not a sub-species of community action. The communal aspects of music-making were important not so much because they con­firmed and consolidated the identity of groups, but because they enhanced the consciousness of individuals and cultivated 'their talent to the highest degree' ( Kodaly 1 974: 199).

25

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

By 'community education', and 'adjustment to the human community', which 'not even the most careful education in the family can supply' (Koditly 1 974: 1 29), Kodaly meant much more than a mere togetherness and com­mon sense of purpose. The role of music 'in educating the nation' was to be achieved by dedicated, self-conscious performance practice, which cultivated the potential of individual and social bodies.

If we take the general principles of Kodaly's system and detach them from the specific historical contexts in which he thought and wrote about Hungarian nationalism; if we treat Grainger's 'racial' a,nd 'cultural' theories of musical expression as ways of talking about the influences of environ­ment and enculturation on the musical conventions which people choose; if we treat cultures as floating resources, available for use, rather than as determinants of human thought and behaviour; i� we recall what both composers wrote about the importance of individuality in music and of " individual musical experience (cf. Appendix A: 1 5 1-2, quoted on p. 1 33 above), it becomes clear that they were not advocating the kind of policies that are sometimes promoted as 'multicultural' education, which reached their ultimate absurdity in the South African system of different education systems

.. � and syllabuses lor separated racIal and cultural groups.

They were concerned with education in and through music that is closely related to the local community and natural environment. Because of their different notions of community and environment, Kodaly Iwanted this music to be basically Hungarian, while Grainger wanted it to be world music. Grainger's upbringing in Australia, without experience of the con­flicts and narrow rivalries of Europe, probably inspired his more expansive solution, which is particularly suitable for music education in countries with substantial numbers of citizens who are the descendants of first or second generation immigrants. The United Kingdom is a case in point where Percy Grainger's solution can be applied.

A British music education, rooted in English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish folk song is no longer appropriate for a nation whose citizens have com­paratively recent ties to India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Cyprus, Poland, and the Caribbean. Tt would not be musically beneficial, even in the light of Kodaly's theories, to bring up the children of immigrants specifically with the music of their ancestors, since that music does not really belong to the local community and natural environment. Oppressed and minority groups may find it necessary to emphasize their cultural heritage as part of political and educational campaigns to improve their condition; but responses to such movements by state patronage of 'multicultural' education only serve to deny the essentially monocultural nature of the state and its education system and to reinforce cultural stereotypes. The music of immigrant com­munities thereby becomes 'ethnic' music, a spurious category which insults the creators of the music and ignores the fact that Indian music, African music, Balinese music etc. are, like European music, created not by some

26

' LE T A L L T H E W O R L D H E A R A L L T H E W O R L D ' S M U S I C '

amorphous collective, but by individual composers and performers, who are known and recognized in their communities as were Bach in Leipzig, Beethoven in Bonn, and Schubert in Vienna. People and artistic traditions have been reclassified in curious ways: learning ' African' music has come to mean learning one or two genres of Ghanaian music; and although the term 'Afro-Caribbean' underlines the common experience of colonialism and may be useful for political activism in the United Kingdom, it effectively denies the uniqueness and inventiveness of Caribbean societies and the diversity and ancient history of African societies.

Similarly, the concept of a 'multicultural' society tends to focus, implicitly and often explicitly, on the life-styles of Asian, Caribbean, Cypriot, and other 'exotic' peoples in the United Kingdom. Thus it tends to ignore the deeply rooted differences in the cultures of natives of the United Kingdom whose families have lived in the country for generations.

There are, for instance, significant differences between the life-styles and values of people who live in the north, south-west and south-east of England; between social classes; between art worlds, business worlds, agricultural worlds and bureaucratic worlds; and between fundamentally different types of Christian denomination. I f cultural differences exist at all, they can be used to separate very similar social groups, no matter how trivial they may be. And conversely, the existence of considerable cultural differences in two social groups need not prevent them from becoming closely related. The effects of cultural differences on social action depend on how people perceive and use them. The cultural differences between English-speaking Christians whose families have lived in England for at least eight genera­tions can be as great as the differences between English-speaking families and immigrant families of Gujerati-speaking Hindus .or Urdu-speaking Moslems. If the differences between different English people are minimized and those between English and others are emphasized, it is partly because it is politically expedient to do so, and partly because differences in racial type, language, and religion are more easily marked. But race and language are not necessarily coterminous with culture, and religion is only one aspect of a cultural system. Moreover, the divisions within another faith such as Islam, which may appear monolithic to many English Christians, are as great as the divisions within Christianity.

If there is such a phenomenon as a British national character, there is a sense in which it has been 'multicultural' for at least 200 years. It has been deeply affected by the colonial experience. The 'British' national drink is tea - from India or China. Many British men and women wear pyjamas at night, an idea from China. They consume vast quantities of sugar originally from Jamaica and the Caribbean, and cocoa, primarily from West Africa. They also drink a great deal of coffee, from Kenya. I need hardly say how diet has been enriched by Chinese and Indian food, and how many char­acteristically British dishes are colonial in origin, such as the kedgeree that

27

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

we had at my school, and the rice pUdding. The English language is full of words of Asian and African origin. British domestic furniture has been profoundly influenced by Asian styles and practice. Even an interest in East­ern religions is the result not of immigration, but often of British citizens coming home after a period of foreign service in the army, the civil service, or some firm.

Music is essentially about aesthetic experiences and the creative expres­sion of individual human beings in community, about the sharing of feelings and ideas. Many musicians have composed for their loved ones, their own friends, and their own musical groups or religious congregations. They were not greatly concerned with nations or ethnic groups, except when they were exiled or when national themes and interests were fashionable; artificial boundaries are inimical to the spirit of art and human brotherhood. The purpose of music education, as Kodaly frequently emphasized, should be to help individuals to develop their aesthetic experience and understanding by exercising their powers of discrimination.

Schools provide the opportunity for music-making to take place in new contexts, and for pupils to make sense of both familiar and unfamiliar music in new ways. This in itself can enhance the aesthetic appreciation by diminishing obvious social applications, and so allow young people to delight 'in the play of musical forms', as Kodaly suggested (Kodaly 1 974: 142).

How those musical forms are presented is no less important than what music is offered. In expanding the range of British music education, it is not just a question of What can we bring in from India or the Caribbean? but How can we combat narrow-mindedness, racism, prejudice in school books, and ethnocentricism in education? How can we teach people through music­making that there is a larger social world outside and a richer world of experience inside each individual? If British music education is to reflect a multicultural society, its task is not so much to make blacks feel at home in school, as to make sure that white children are really aware of the historical and cultural traditions of their black neighbours. In order to counteract ethnocentric and derogatory classifications of music (e.g. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Debussy, Duke Ellington etc. versus 'ethnic' music), emphasis must be laid on the contributions of individual composers and performers. Education authorities must ensure that schools have visits and workshops by highly skilled performers of compositions and genres that have been developed in Asia and Africa, as well as by pianists and violinists. It is necessary for children to hear a piano recital by a Jamaican or an Indian and a sitar recital by an English person, if only to demonstrate the individu­ality and transcendental universality of the arts.

The aim of music in schools must not be to reinforce tribal boundaries or to encourage tokenism by concentrating on pop music in predominantly 'working-class' schools, reggae in schools with children of Caribbean origin,

28

' L ET A L L T H E W O R L D H E A R A L L T H E W O R L D ' S M U S I C '

or Urdu folk-songs where there are majorities of Pakistanis. I t is not the business of music educators to subvent community activities, which already exist, or to encourage cultural brokers to mobilize new social groups for social, political or religious purposes. Music education should not be used to emphasize culture, because as soon as that happens there arise arguments about cultural hegemony, as well as false notions of what culture is: it should emphasize human variety and ingenuity. Music education should not be cosy or comfortable; for music as passive entertainment, or as s�nsuous gratification of totemic identities, is invariably corrupting. It is the business of music educators to induce in all their pupils new artistic experiences.. which may or may not generate new social experiences.

Educators in the United Kingdom have a responsibility to transmit the fruits of one of the Great Traditions, a civilization that foliowed_Gn from those of Africa and Asia and Latin America and happens to be influential in the world at the moment. This tradition cannot be associated only with social groups of European origin, because it is an amalgam of the inventions and ideas of individuals from Egypt, Iraq, China, India, Indonesia, Persia, the Danube Valley, Greece, Rome, and many other parts of the world. Hitherto, what Europe has learnt from Asia has been part of the Indian, Chinese, Japanese or Indonesian Great Traditions. It is not the task of formal education to transmit Little Traditions, as distinct from knowledge about them and awareness of their presence.

Since the nature of contemporary British society is 'multicultural' and has been so for at least two centuries, the introduction of the serious study of world musics in schools could be a distinctively British characteristic of music education in the United Kingdom: it would recognize the varied cultural origins of the country's citizens and the many lif�-styles that coexist, while at the same time stimulating a sense of national unity by means of the common interest in musi�al exploration and experience. The presence of African and Asian musics has value in the context of the European Great Tradition because they are novel and technically different systems. If, however, they are promoted for social reasons, simply because there are persons of African and Asian origin living in the country. their value is immediately debased. In effect, they would be reclassified as a Little Tradition of Europe, and the opportunity of fruitful dialogue with the Great Traditions of Africa and Asia would thereby be lost.

The development of music education in schools has created new contexts for all kinds of music-making. Neither British folk music nor Pakistani, Indian and Caribbean musics can be taught or presented in 'the appropriate cultural context'. It is neither desirable nor practical to develop in the United Kingdom systems of education appropriate for life in other parts of the world - and a strict interpretation of the concept of 'multicultural educa­tion' means that there should be parallel systems of enculturation. In any case, it is not the business of British schools to prepare its children for life in

29

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Pakistan or the Punjab any more than i t was their business to prepare my grandmother to return to the Warsaw Ghetto. But it is their business to prepare them for full participation in the social, economic, political and artistic life of the United Kingdom and of the world a t large.

Thus in the context of the United Kingdom in 1985, World Music Educa­tion is the appropriate equivalent of Kod<ily's Hungarian Music Education for the Hungary of 1 945. There is no contradiction in the idea of teaching world musics to promote national unity. An emphasis on individual composers and performers, and a global view of the musical conventions that they have used and use, are the surest means of developing the musical consciousness of the nation in ways that will help to adapt and strengthen 'the British character' for life in the twenty-first century. Of course, it requires an act of faith in the power of musical symbols. Such an enterprise will never succeed if it is multicultural: it must be multil17usical. It can only be successful when people are touched by the aesthetic force of music and can transcend its social and cultural analogues.

A policy of teaching the best of the world's music, as well as that of the European tradition, both includes the heritage of members of the new British nation and looks forward and outward to parts of the world that have not been specifically involved in the British experience.

It is a policy that was articulated most clearly by Percy Grainger, and he developed it largely as a result of his confrontation with the beautiful unwritten music and highly original 'folk' musicians of the British Isles.

Grainger's 'universalist outlook' on music and his idea of music as a universal language of the future are possible because human beings have the mental equipment to feel beyond the cultural trappings of the different worlds of music to the common humanity which inspired the music. Thus music can become a universal language when individuals are acquainted with all forms of artistic musical expression, and through the transformation of individuals it becomes a 'vehicle for world peace and the unification of mankind' C Balough 1982:49).

Bibliography

Balough, Teresa ( 1982). A Musical Genius/rom Australia. Selected Writings by and about Percy Grainger. Music Monographs. no. 4. Nedlands: University or Western Australia Press. ( 1 982A). 'Grainger as Author - a Philosophical Expression', Studies in Music,

no. 16. Percy Grainger Centennial Volume. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.

Blacking, John ( 1 962). 'Musical Expeditions of the Venda', African MIISic, 3(1), pp. 54-78.

Kodilly, Zoltan ( 1 974). The Selecled Wrilings of 2011(/11 Kodaty. London: Boosey and Hawkes.

Lambert, Constant ( 1 966). Music HoI 3rd edn. London: Faber.

30

1F

-

' L ET A L L T H E W O R L D H E A R A L L T H E W O R L D ' S M U S I C '

Lloyd, A. L . ( 1 967). Folksong in England. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Reeves, Helen ( 1 982). 'A Universalist Outlook: Percy Grainger and the Cultures

of NOll-Western Societies', Stlldies ill Music, no. 16. Percy Grainger Centennial Volume. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, pp. 32-52.

Tax, Meredith ( 1972). 'Culture Is Not Neutral, Whom Does It Serve?' In Lee Baxandall (cd.), Radical Perspeclives in the Arrs. Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 15-29.

3 1

62

TOWA R D S AN A E S T H E T I C O F

P O P U L A R M U S I C

Simon Frith

Source: R. Leppert and S. McClary (eds) (1987), Music and Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 133-49.

Introduction: the 'value' of popular music

Underlying all the other distinctions critics draw between 'serious' and 'popular' music is an assumption about the source of musical value. Serious music matters because it transcends social forces; popular music is aesthet­ically worthless because it is determined by them (because it is 'useful' or 'utilitarian'). This argument, common enough among academic musicolog­ists, puts sociologists in an odd position. If we venture to suggest that the value of, say, Beethoven's music can be explained by the social conditions determining its production and subsequent consumption we are dismissed as philistines - aesthetic theories of classical music remain determinedly non-sociological. Popular music, by contrast, is taken to be good only for sociological theory. Our very success in explaining the rise of rock 'n' roll or the appearance of disco proves their lack of aesthetic interest. To relate music and society becomes, then, a different task according to the music we are treating. [n analyzing serious music, we have to uncover the social forces concealed in the talk of 'transcendent' values; in analyzing pop, we have to take seriously the values scoffed at in the talk of social functions.

In this paper I will concentrate on the second issue; my particular concern is to suggest that the sociological approach to popular music does not rule out an aesthetic theory but, on the contrary, makes one possible. At first sight this proposition is unlikely. There is no doubt that sociologists have tended to explain away pop music. In my own academic work I have examined how rock is produced and consumed, and have tried to place it ideologically, but there is no way that a reading of my books (or those of other sociologists) could be used to explain why some pop songs are good and others bad, why Elvis Presley is a better singer than John Denver,

32

T O W ARDS A N A E S T H E T I C OF P O P U L AR M U S I C

or why disco is a much richer musical genre than progressive rock. And yet for ten years or more l have also been a working rock critic, making such judgments as a matter of course, assuming, like all pop fans, that our musical choices maller.

Are such judgments spurious - a way of concealing from myself and other consumers the ways in which our tastes are manipulated? Can it really be the case that my pleasure in a song by the group Abba carries the same aesthetic weight as someone else's pleasure in Mozart? Even to pose such a question is to invite ridicule - either I seek to reduce the 'transcendent' Mozart to Abba's commercially determined level, or else I elevate Abba's music beyond any significance it can carry. But even if the pleasures of serious and popular musics are different, it is not immediately obvious that the difference is that between artistic autonomy and social utility. Abba's value is no more (and no less) bound up with an experience of transcendence than Mozart's; the meaning of Mozart is no less (and no more) explicable in terms of social forces. The question facing sociologists and aestheticians in both cases is the same: how do we make musical value judgments? How do such value judgments articulate the listening experiences involved?

The sociologist of contemporary popular music is faced with a body of songs, records, stars and styles which exists because of a series of decisions, made by both producers and consumers, about what is a successful sound. Musicians write tunes and play solos; producers choose from different sound mixes; record companies and radio programmers decide what should be released and played; consumers buy one record rather than another and concentrate their attention on particular genres. The result of all these apparently individual decisions is a pattern of success, taste and style which can be explained sociologically.

.

I f the starting question is why does this hit sound this way, then sociolo­gical answers can be arranged under two headings. First, there are answers in terms of technique and technology: people produce and consume the music they are capable of producing and consuming (an obvious point, but one which opens up issues of skill, background and education which in pop music are applied not to individual composers but to social groups). Different groups possess different sorts of cultural capital, share different cultural expectations and so make music differently - pop tastes are shown to correlate with class cultures and subcultures; musical styles are linked to specific age groups; we take for granted the connections of ethnicity and sound. This is the sociological common sense of rock criticism, which equally acknowledges the determining role of technology. The history of twentieth­century popular music is impossible to write without reference to the chang­ing forces of production, electronics, the use of recording, amplification and synthesizers, just as consumer choices cannot be separated from the possession of transistor radios, stereo hi-fis, ghetto blasters and Walkmen.

33

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

While we can thus point to general patterns of pop use, the precise link (or homology) between sounds and social groups remains unclear. Why is rock 'n' roll youth music, whereas Dire Straits is the sound of Yuppie USA? To answer these questions there is a second sociological approach to popular music, expressed in terms of its functions. This approach is obvious· in ethnomusicology, that is in anthropological studies of tradi­tional and folk musics which are explained by reference to their use in dance, in rituals, for political mobilization, to solemnize ceremonies or to excite desires. Similar points are made about contemporary pop, but its most important function is assumed to be commercial - the starting ana­lytical assumption is that the music is made to sell; thus research has focused on who makes marketing decisions and why, and on the construc­tion of 'taste publics'. The bulk of the academic sociology of popular music (including my own) implicitly equates aesthetic and commercial judgments. The phenomenal 1 985 successes of Madonna and Bruce Springsteen are explained, for example, in terms of sales strategies, the use of video, and the development of particular new audiences. The appeal of the music itself, the reason Madonna's and Springsteen's fans like them, somehow remains unexamined.

From the fans' perspective it is obvious that people play the music they do because it 'sounds good', and the interesting question is why they have formed that opinion. Even if pop tastes are the effects of social conditioning and commercial manipulation, people still explain them to themselves in terms of value judgment. Where, in pop and rock, do these values come from? When people explain their tastes, what terms do they use? They certainly know what they like (and dislike), what pleases them and what does not. Read the music press, listen to band rehearsals and recording sessions, overhear the chatter in record shops and discos, note the ways in which disc jockeys play records, and you will hear value judgments being made. The discriminations that matter in these settings occur within the general sociological framework. While this allows us at a certain level to 'explain' rock or disco, it is not adequate for an understanding of why one rock record or one disco track is better than another. Turn to the explana­tions of the fans or musicians (or even of the record companies) and a familiar argument appears. Everyone in the pop world is aware of the social forces that determine 'normal' pop music - a good record, song, or sound is precisely one that transcends those forces!

The music press is the place where pop value judgments are most clearly articulated. A reading of British music magazines reveals that 'good' popu­lar music has always been heard to go beyond or break through commercial routine. This was as true for critics struggling to distinguish jazz from Tin Pan Alley pop in the 1 920s and black jazz from white jazz in the 1930s as for critics asserting rock's superiority to teen pop in the late 1 960s. [n Sound ef/ecls' [ argued that rock's claim to a form of aesthetic autonomy rests on

34

F

TOWARDS A N A E S T H E T I C O F P O P U L A R M U S I C

a combination of folk and art arguments: as folk music rock is heard to represent the community of youth, as art music rock is heard as the sound of individual, creative sensibility. The rock aesthetic depends, crucially, on an argument about authenticity. Good music is the authentic expression of something - a person, an idea, a feeling, a shared experience, a Zeitgeist, Bad music is inauthentic - it expresses nothing. The most common term of abuse in rock criticism is 'bland' - bland music has nothing in it and is made only to be commercially pleasing.

'Authenticity' is, then, what guarantees that rock performances resist or subvert commercial logic, just as rock-star quality (whether we are discuss­ing Elvis Presley or David Bowie, the Rolling Stones or the Sex Pistols), describes the power that enables certain musicians to drive something individually obdurate through the system. At this point, rock criticism meets up with 'serious' musicology. Wilfrid Mellers' scholarly books on the Beatles and Bob Dylan,' for example, describe in technical terms their subjects' transcendent qualities; but they read like fan mail and, in their lack of self-conscious hipness, point to the contradiction at the heart of this aesthetic approach. The suggestion is that pop music becomes more valuable the more independent it is of the social forces that organize the pop process in the first place; pop value is dependent on something outside pop, is rooted in the person, the auteur, the community or the subculture that lies behind it. If good music is authentic music, then critical judgment means measuring the performers' 'truth' to the experiences or feelings they are describing.

Rock criticism depends on myth - the myth of the youth community, the myth of the creative artist. The reality is that rock, like all twentieth­century pop musics, is a commercial form, music produced as a com­modity, for a profit, distributed through mass media as· mass culture. It is in practice very difficult to say exactly who or what it is that rock expresses or who, from the listener's point of view, are the authentically creative performers. The myth of authenticity is, indeed, one of rock's own ideolo­gical effects, an aspect of its sales process: rock stars can be marketed as artists, and their particular sounds marketed as a means of identity. Rock criticism is a means of legitimating tastes, justifying value judgments, but it does not really explain how those judgments came to be made in the first place. If the music is not, in fact, made according to the 'authentic' story, then the question becomes how we are able to judge some sounds as more authentic than others: what arlo we actually listening for in making our judgments? How do we know Bruce Springsteen is more authentic than Duran Duran, when both make records according to the rules of the same complex industry? And how do we recognize good sounds in non-rock genres, in pop forms like disco that are not described in authentic terms in the first place? The question of the value of pop music remains to be answered.

35

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

An alternative approach to music and society

In an atlempt to answer these questions I want to suggest an aiternative approach to musical value, to suggest different ways of defining 'popular music' and 'popular culture'. The question we should be asking is not what does popular music reveal about 'the people' but how does it construct them. If we start with the assumption that pop is expressive, then we get bogged down in the search for the 'real' artist or emotion or belief lying behind it. But popular music is popular not because it reflects something, or authentically articulates some sort of popular taste or experience, but because It creates our understanding of what popularity is. The most mis­leading term in cultural theory is, indeed, 'authenticity'. What we should be examining is not how true a piece of music is to something else, but how It sets up the idea of 'truth' in the first place - successful pop music is music which defines its own aesthetic standard.

A simple way to illustrate the problems of defining musical popularity is to look at its crudest measure, the weekly record sales charts in the British music press and the American Billboard. These are presented to us as market research: the charts measure something real - sales and radio plays ­and represent them with all the trimmings of an objective, scientific apparatus. But, 11\ fact, what the charts reveal is a specific definition of what can be counted as popular music in the first place - record sales (in the right shops), radIO plays (on the right stations). The charts work not as the detached measure of some agreed notion of popularity, but as the most important determination of what the popularity of popular music means - that is a particular patlern of market choice. The charts bring selected record� together into the community of the market place; they define certain sorts of consumption as being collective in certain sorts of ways.

The sales charts are only one measure of popularity; and when we look at others, it becomes clear that their use is always for the creation (rather than reflection) of taste communities. Readers' polls in the music press, for example, work to gIve communal shape to disparate readers; the Pazz 'n' Jop poll in The Village Voice creates a sense of collective commitment among the fragmented community of American rock critics. The Grammy awards '� the Ul1Ited States and the BPI awards in Britain, present the industry's vIew of what pop music is about - nationalism and money. These annual awards, which for most pop fans seem to miss the point, reflect sales figures and 'contributions to the recording industry': measures of popularity no less valid than readers' or critics' polls (which often deliberately honor 'unpopular' acts). In comparing poll resuits, arguments are really not about who is more popular than whom empirically (see rock critics' outrage that Phil Collins rather than Bruce Springsteen dominated the 1986 Grammys) but about what popularity means. Each different measure measures something different or, to put It more accurately, each different measure constructs its

36

F

T O W A R D S A N A E S T H E T I C O F P O P U L A R M U S I C

own objecI of measurement. This is apparent in Billboard's 'specialist' charts, in Ihe way in which 'minority' musics are defined. 'Women's music', for example, is interesting not as music which somehow expresses 'women', but as music which seeks to define them, just as 'black music' works to set up a very particular notion of what 'blackness' is.

This approach to popular culture, as the creation rather than the expression of the people, need not be particular to music. There are numerous ways in our everyday life in which accounts of 'the people' are provided. Turn on the television news and notice the ways in which a particular mode of address works, how the word 'we' is used, how the word 'you'. Advertisers in all media are clearly in the business of explaining to us who we are, how we fit in with other people in society, why we necessarily consume the way we do. Each mass medium has its own techniques for addressing its audience, for creating moments of recognition and exclusion, for giving us our sense of ourselves. Pop music does, though, seem to play a particularly important role in the way in which popular culture works. On the one hand, it works with particularly intense emotional experiences - pop songs and pop stars mean more to us emotionally than other media events or performers, and this is not just because the pop business sells music to us through individual market choices. On the other hand, these musical experi­ences always contain social meaning, are placed within a social context -we are not free to read anything we want into a song.

The experience of pop music is an experience of placing: in responding to a song, we are drawn, haphazardly, into affective and emotional alliances with the performers and with the performers' other fans. Again this also happens in other areas of popular culture. Sport, for example, is clearly a setting in which people directly experience community,. feel an immediate bond with other people, articulate a particular kind of collective pride (for a non-American, the most extraordinary aspect of the 1 984 Olympics was the display/construction of the Reagan ideology of both the United States and patriotism). And fashion and style - both social constructions - remain the keys to the ways in which we, as individuals, present ourselves to the world: we use the public meanings of clothes to say 'this is how I want to be perceived'.

But music is especially important to this process of placement because of something specific to musical experience, namely, its direct emotional intensity. Because of its qualities of abstractness (which 'serious' aestheticians have always stressed) music is an individualizing form. We absorb songs into our own lives and rhythms into our own bodies; they have a looseness of reference that makes them immediately accessible. Pop songs are open to appropriation for personal use in a way that other popular cultural forms (television soap operas, for example) are not - the latter are tied into mean­ings we may reject. At the same time, and equally significant, music is obviously rule-bound. We hear things as music because their sounds obey

37

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

a particular, familiar logic, and for most pop fans (who are, technically, non-musical) this logic is out of our control. There is a mystery to our musical tastes. Some records and performers work for us, others do not -we know this without being able to explain it. Somebody else has set up the conventions; they are clearly social and clearly apart from us.

This interplay between personal absorption into music and the sense that it is, nevertheless, something out there, something public, is what makes music so important in the cultural placing of the individual in the social. To give a mundane example, it is obviously true that in the last thirty years the idea of being a 'fan', with its oddly public account of private obsessions, has been much more significant to pop music than to other forms of popular culture. This role of music is usually related to youth and youth culture, but it seems equally important to the ways in which ethnic groups in both Britain and the United States have forged particular cultural identities and is also reflected in the ways in which 'classical' music originally became significant for the nineteenth-century European bourgeoisie. In all these cases music can stand for, symbolize and offer the immediate experience of collective identity. Other cultural forms - painting, literature, design - can articulate and show off shared values and pride, but only music can make you feel them.

The social functions of music

It is now possible to move back to the starting point of this essay - the social functions of music and their implications for aesthetics. I will begin by outlining the four most significant ways in which pop is used and then suggest how these uses help us to understand how pop value judgments are made.

The first reason, then, we enjoy popular music is because of its use in answering questions of identity: we use pop songs to create for ourselves a particular sort of self-definition, a particular place in society. The pleasure that pop music produces is a pleasure of identification - with the music we like, with the performers of that music, with the other people who like it. And it is important to note that the production of identity is also a produc­tion of non-identity - it is a process of inclusion and exclusion. This is one of the most striking aspects of musical taste. People not only know what they like, they also have very clear ideas about what they don't like and often have very aggressive ways of stating their dislikes. As all sociological studies of pop consumers have shown, pop fans define themselves quite precisely according to their musical preferences. Whether they identify with genres or stars, it seems of greater importance to people what they like musically than whether or not they enjoyed a film or a television program.

The pleasure of pop music, unlike the pleasures to be had from other mass cultural forms, does not derive in any clear way from fantasy: it is not

38

..

T O W A R D S A N A E S T H E T I C O F P O P U L A R M U S I C

mediated through day-dreams o r romancing, but is experienced directly. For example, at a heavy metal concert you can certainly see the audience absorbed in the music; yet for all the air-guitar playing they are not fantasizing being up on stage. To experience heavy metal is to experience the power of the concert as a whole - the musicians are one aspect of this, the amplifica­tion system another, the audience a third. The individual fans get their kicks from being a necessary part of the overall process - which is why heavy metal videos always have to contain moments of live performance (whatever the surrounding story line) in order to capture and acknowledge the kind of empowerment that is involved in the concert itself.

Once we start looking at different pop genres we can begin to document the different ways in which music works to give people an identity, to place them in different social groups. And this is not just a feature of commercial pop music. It is the way in which all popular music works. For example, in putting together an audience, contemporary black-influenced pop clearly (and often cynically) employs musical devices originally used in religious music to define men's and women's identity before God. Folk musics, sim­ilarly, continue to be used to mark the boundaries of ethnic identity, even amidst the complications of migration and cultural change. In London's Irish pubs, for example, 'traditional' Irish folk songs are still the most power­ful way to make people feel Irish and consider what their ' Irishness' means. (This music, this identity, is now being further explored by post-punk London Irish bands, like the Pogues.) It is not surprising, then, that popular music has always had important nationalist functions. In Abel Gance's 'silent' film, Napoleon, there is a scene in which we see the Marseillaise being composed, and then watch the song make its way through the Assembly and among the crowds until everyone is singing it. When the film was first shown in France, the cinema audience rose from their seats arid joined in singing their national anthem. Only music seems capable of creating this sort of spontaneous collective identity, this kind of personally felt patriotism.

Music's second social function is to give us a way of managing the rela­tionship between our public and private emotional lives. It is often noted but rarely discussed that the bulk of popular songs are love 'songs. This is certainly true of twentieth-century popular music in the West; but most non-Western popular musics also feature romantic, usually heterosexual, love lyrics. This is more than an interesting statistic; it is a centrally important aspect of how pop music is used. Why are love songs so important? Because people need them to give shape and voice to emotions that otherwise cannot be expressed without embarrassment or incoherence. Love songs are a way of giving emotional intensity to the sorts of intimate things we say to each other (and to ourselves) in words that are, in themselves, quite flat. It is a peculiarity of everyday language that our most fraught and revealing declarations of feeling have to use phrases - '[ love/hate you', 'Help me!', 'I'm angry/scared' - which are boring and banal; and so our culture has a

39

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

supply o f a million pop songs, which say these things for us in numerous interesting and involving ways. These songs do not replace our conversa­tions - pop singers do not do our courting for us - but they make our feelings seem richer and more convincing than we can make them appear in our own words, even to ourselves.

The only interesting sociological account of lyrics in the long tradition of American content analysis was Donald Horton's late 1 950s study' of how teenagers used the words of popular songs in their dating rituals. His high school sample learned from pop songs (public forms of private expression) how to make sense of and shape their own inchoate feelings. This use of pop illuminates one quality of the star/fan relationship: people do not idolize singers because they wish to be them but because these singers seem able, somehow, to make available their own feelings - it is as if we get to know ourselves via the music.

The third function of popular music is to shape popular memory, to organize our sense of time. Clearly one of the effects of all music, not just pop, is to intensify our experience of the present. One measure of good music, to put it another way, is, precisely, its 'presence', its ability to 'stop' time, to make us feel we are living within a moment, with no memory or anxiety about what has come before, what will come after. This is where the physical impact of music comes in - the use of beat, pulse and rhythm to compel our immediate bodily involvement in an organization of time that the music itself controls. Hence the pleasures of dance and disco; clubs and parties provide a setting, a society, which seems to be defined only by the time-scale of the music (the beats per minute), which escapes the real time passing outside.

One of the most obviolls consequences of music's organization of our sense of time is that songs and tunes are often the key to our remembrance of things past. I do not mean simply that sounds - like sights and smells -trigger associated memories, but, rather, that music in itself provides our most vivid experience of time passing. Music focuses our attention on the feeling of time; songs are organized (it is part of their pleasure) around anticipation and echo, around endings to which we look forward, choruses that build regret into their fading. Twentieth-century popular music has, on the whole, been a nostalgic form. The Beatles, for example, made nostalgic music from the start, which is why they were so popular. Even on hearing a Beatles song for the first time there was a sense of the memories to come, a feeling that this could not last but that it was surely going to be pleasant to remember.

It is this use of time that makes popular music so important in the social organization of youth. It is a sociological truism that people's heaviest personal investment in popular music is when they are teenagers and young adults - music then ties into a particular kind of emotional turbulence, when issues of individual identity and social place, the control of public

40

T O W A R D S A N A E S T H E T I C O F P O P U L A R M U S I C

and private feelings, are at a premium. People do use music less, and less intently, as they grow up; the most significant pop songs for all generations (not just for rock generations) are those they heard as adolescents. What this suggests, though, is not just that young people need music, but that 'youth' itself is defined by music. Youth is experienced, that is, as an intense presence, through an impatience for time to pass and a regret that it is doing so, in a series of speeding, physically insistent moments that have nostalgia coded into them. This is to reiterate my general point about popular music: youth music is socially important not because it reflects youth experience (authentically or not), but because it defines for us what 'youthfulness' is. I remember concluding, in my original sociological research in the early I 970s, that those young people who, for whatever reasons, took no interest in pop music were not really 'young'.

The final function of popular music [ want to mention here is something more abstract than the issues discussed so far, but a consequence of all of them: popular music is something possessed. One of the first things [ learned as a rock critic - from abusive mail - was that rock fans 'owned' their favorite music in ways that were intense and important to them. To be sure, the notion of musical ownership is not peculiar to rock - Hollywood cinema has long used the cliched line, 'they're playing our song' - and this reflects something that is recognizable to all music lovers and is an important aspect of the way in which everyone thinks and talks about 'their' music. (British radio has programs of all sorts built around people's explanations of why certain records 'belong' to them.) Obviously it is the commodity form of music which makes this sense of musical possession possible, but it is not just the record that people think they own: we feel that we also possess the song itself, the particular performance, and its perform�r.

In 'possessing' music, we make it part of our own identity and build it into our sense of ourselves. To write pop criticism is, as I have mentioned, to attract hate mail; mail not so much defending the performer or perform­ance criticized as defending the letter writer: criticize a star and the fans respond as if you have criticized them. The biggest mail bag (ever received was after I had been critical of Phil Collins. Hundreds of letters arrived (not from teenyboppers or gauche adolescents, but from young professionals) typed neatly on headed notepaper, all based on the assumption that in describing Collins as ugly, Genesis as dull, I was deriding their way of life, undermining their identity. The intensity of this relationship between taste and self-definition seems peculiar to popular music - it is 'possessable' in ways that other cultural forms (except, perhaps, sports teams) are not.

To summarize the argument so far: the social functions of popular music are in the creation of identity, in the management of feelings, in the organ­ization of time. Each of these functions depends, in turn, on our experience of music as something which can be possessed. From this sociological base it is now possible to get at aesthetic questions, to understand listeners'

4 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

judgments, to say something about the value of pop music. M y starting question was how is it that people (myself included) can say, quite confidently, that some popular music is beller than others? The answer can now be related to how well (or badly), for specific listeners, songs and performances fulfill the suggested functions. But there is a final point to make about this. H should be apparent by now that people do hear the music they like as something special: not, as orthodox rock criticism would have it, because this music is more 'authentic' (though that may be how it is described), but because, morc directly, it seems to provide an experience that transcends the mundane, that takes us 'out of ourselves'. It is special, that is, not neces­sarily with reference to other music, but to the rest of life. This sense of special ness, the way in which music seems to make possible a new kind of self-recognition, frees us from the everyday routines and expectations that encumber our social identities, is a key part of the way in which people experience and thus value music: if we believe we possess our music, we also often feel that we are possessed by it. Transcendence is, then, as much a part of the popular music aesthetic as it is of the serious music aesthetic; but, as I hope I have indicated, in pop, transcendence marks not music's freedom from social forces but its patterning by them. (Of course, in the end the same is true of serious music, too.)

The aesthetics of popular music

1 want to conclude with another sort of question: what are the factors in popular music that enable it to fulfill these social functions, which deter­mine whether it does so well or badly? Again, I will divide my answer into four points; my purpose is less to develop them in depth than to suggest important issues for future critical work.

My first point is brief, because it raises musicological issues which I am not competent to develop. The most important (and remarkable) feature of Western popular music in the twentieth century has been its absorption of and into Afro-American forms and conventions. In analytical terms, to follow the distinction developed by Andrew Chester at the end of the 1 960s, this means that pop is complex 'intentionally' rather than, like European art music, 'extensionally'. In the extensional form of musical construction, argues Chester, 'theme and variations, counterpoint, tonality (as used in classical composition) are all devices that build diachronically and synchronically outwards from basic musical atoms. The complex is created by combination of the simple, which remains discrete and unchanged in the complex unity.' In the intentional mode, 'the basic musical units (played/sung notes) are not combined through space and time as simple elements into complex structures. The simple entity is that constituted by the parameters of melody, harmony and beat, while the complex is built up by modulation of the basic notes, and by inflexion of the basic beat." Whatever the problems of Chester's

42

T O W A R D S A N A E S T H E T t C O F P O P U L A R M U S I C

simple dichotomy between a tradition o f linear musical development and a tradition of piled-up rhythmic interplay, he does pose the most important musicological question for popular music: how can we explain the intensity of musical experience that Afro-American forms have made possible? We still do not know nearly enough about the musical language of pop and rock: rock critics still avoid technical analysis, while sympathetic musicologists, like Wilfrid Mellers, use tools that can only cope with pop's non-intentional (and thus least significant) qualities.

My second point is that the development of popular music in this century has increasingly focused on the use of the voice. It is through the singing voice that people are most able to make a connection with their records, to feel that performances are theirs in certain ways. It is through the voice that star personalities are constructed (and since World War II, at least, the biggest pop stars have been singers). The tone of voice is more important in this context than the actual articulation of particular lyrics - which means, for example, that groups, like the Beatles, can take on a group voice. We can thus identify with a song whether we understand the words or not, whether we already know the singer or not, because it is the voice - not the lyrics - to which we immediately respond. This raises questions about pop­ular non-vocal music, which can be answered by defining a voice as a sign of individual personality rather than as something necessarily mouthing words. The voice, for example, was and is central to the appeal of jazz, not through vocalists as such, but through the way jazz people played and heard musical instruments - Louis Armstrong's or Charlie Parker'S instrumental voices were every bit as individual and personal as a pop star's singing voice:

Today's commercial pop musics are, though, song forms, constructing vocal personalities, using voices to speak directly to us. From this perspect­ive it becomes possible to look at pop songs as narratives, to use literary critical and film critical terms to analyze them. It would be fairly straight­forward, for example, to make some immediate genre distinctions, to look at the different ways in which rock, country, reggae, etc. work as narratives, the different ways they set up star personalities, situate the listener, and put in play patterns of identity and opposition. Of course, popular music is not simply analogous to film or literature. In discussing the narrative devices of contemporary pop in particular, we are not just talking about music but also about the whole process of packaging. The image of pop performers is constructed by press and television advertisements, by the routines of photo­calls and journalists' interviews, and through gesture and performance. These things all feed into the way we hear a voice; pop singers are rarely heard 'plain' (without mediation). Their vocals already contain physical connota­tions, associated images, echoes of other sounds. All this needs to be analyzed if we are going to treat songs as narrative structures; the general point, to return to a traditional musicological concern, is that while music may not represent anything, it nevertheless clearly communicates.

43

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

The third point is an elaboration o f the suggestion I have just made: popular music is wide open for the development of a proper genre analysis, for the classification of how different popular musical forms use different narrative structures, set up different patterns of identity, and articulate different emotions. Take, for example, the much discussed issue of music and sexuality. In the original article on rock and sexuality I wrote with Angela McRobbie at the end of the 1 970s,' we set up a distinction between 'cock' rock and teenybop narratives, each working to d�fine masculinity and femininity but for different audiences and along different contours of feeling. Our distinctions are still valid but we were looking only at a sub­division of one pop genre. Other musical forms articulate sexuality in far more complicated ways; thus it would be impossible to analyze the sexuality of either Frank Sinatra or Billie Holiday, and their place in the history of crooning and torch singing, in the terms of the 'cock' rock/teenybop contrast. Even Elvis Presley does not fit easily into these 1970s accounts of male and female sexuality.

The question these examples raise is how popular musical genres should be defined. The obvious approach is to follow the distinctions made by the music industry which, in turn, reflect both musical history and marketing categories. We can thus divide pop into country music, soul music, rock 'n' roll, punk, MOR, show songs, etc. But an equally interesting way of approaching genres is to classify them according to their ideological effects, the way they sell themselves as art, community or emotion. There is at present, for example, clearly a form of rock we can call 'authentic'. I t is represented by Bruce Springsteen and defines itself according to the rock aesthetic of authenticity which I have already discussed. The whole point of this genre is to develop musical conventions which are, in themselves, measures of 'truth'. As listeners we are drawn into a certain sort of reality: this is what it is like to live in America, this is what it is like to love or hurt. The resulting music is the pop equivalent of film theorists' 'classic realist text'. It has the same effect of persuading us that this is how things really are

_ realism inevitably means a non-romantic account of social life, and a highly romantic account of human nature.

What is interesting, though, is how this sort of truth is constructed, what it rests on musically; and for an instant semiotic guide 1 recommend the video of We are the lVorld. Watch how the singers compete to register the most sincerity; watch Bruce Springsteen win as he gets his brief line, veins pop up on his head and the sweat flows down. Here authenticity is guaranteed by visible physical effort.

To approach pop genres this way is to look at the pop world in terms rather different from those of the music industry. Against the authentic genre, for instance, we can pitch a tradition of artifice: some pop stars, following up on David Bowie's and Roxy Music's early 1970s work, have sought to create a sense of themselves (and their listeners) as artists in cool

44

T O W A R D S A N A E S T H E T I C O F P O P U L A R M U S I C

control. There is clearly also an avant-garde within popular music, offering musicians and listeners the pleasures of rule breaking, and a sentimental genre, celebrating codes of emotion which everyone knows are not real but carry nostalgic weight - if only they were! What I am arguing here is that it is possible to look at pop genres according to the effects they pursue. Clearly we can then judge performers within genres (is John Cougar Mellencamp's music as truthful as Springsteen's?), as well as use different genres for differ­ent purposes (the sentimental genre is a better source of adult love songs than the avant-garde or the artificers). To really make sense of pop genres, though, I think we need to place this grid of ideologies over the industry's grid of taste publics. To understand punk, for example, we need to trace within it the interplay of authenticity and artifice; to understand country we need to follow the interplay of authenticity and sentiment.

In everyday life we actually have a rather good knowledge of such conventional confusions. To know how to listen to pop music is to know how to classify it. One thing all pop listeners do, whether as casual fans or professional critics, is to compare sounds - to say that A is like B. Indeed, most pop criticism works via the implicit recognition of genre rules, and this brings me to my final point. Our experience of music in everyday life is not just through the organized pop forms I have been discussing. We live in a much more noisy soundscape; music of all sorts is in a constant play of asso­ciation with images, places, people, products, moods, and so on. These asso­ciations, in commercial and film sOllndlracks, for example, arc so familiar that for much of the time we forget that they arc 'accidental'. We unthinkingly associate particular sounds with particular feelings and landscapes and times. To give a crude example, in Britain it is impossible now for a ballet company to perform the Nutcracker Suite for an aUdienc.e of children with­out them all, at the key moment, breaking into song: 'Everyone's a fruit and nut case', has been instilled into them as a Cad bury's jingle long before the children hear of Tchaikovsky. Classical or 'serious' music, in short, is not exempt from social use. It is impossible for me, brought up in p,?st-war pop­ular culture, to hear Chopin without immediately feeling a vaguely romantic yearning, the fruit of many years of Chopinesque film sound tracks.

There is no way to escape these associations. Accordions played a certain way mean France, bamboo fiutes China, just as steel guitars mean country, drum machines the urban dance. No sort of popular musician can make music from scratch - what we have these days instead are scratch mixers, fragmenting, unpicking, reassembling music from the signs that already exist, pilfering public forms for new sorts of private vision. We need to understand the lumber-room of musical references we carry about with us, if only to account for the moment that lies at the heart of the pop experience, when, from amidst all those sounds out there, resonating whether we like them or not, one particular combination suddenly, for no apparent reason, takes up residence in our own lives.

45

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Conclusion

In this paper I have tried to suggest a way in which we can use a sociology of popular music as the basis of an aesthetic theory, to move, that is, from a description of music's social functions to an understanding of how we can and do value it (and I should perhaps stress that my definition of popular music includes popular uses of 'serious' music). One of my working assump­tions has been that people's individual tastes - the ways they experience and describe music for themselves - are a necessary part of academic ana­lysis. Does this mean that the value of popular music is simply a matter of personal preference?

The usual sociological answer to this question is that 'personal' preferences are themselves socially determined. Individual tastes are, in fact, examples of collective taste and reflect consumers' gender, class and ethnic backgrounds; the 'popularity' of popular music can then be taken as one measure of a balance of social power. I do not want to argue against this approach. Our cultural needs and expectations are, indeed, materially based; all the terms I have been using (identity, emotion, memory) are socially formed, whether we are examining 'private' or public lives. But I do believe that this deriva­tion of pop meaning from collective experience is not sufficient. Even if we focus all our attention on the collective reception of pop, we still need to explain why some music is better able than others to have such collective effects, why these effects are different, anyway, for different genres, different audiences and different circumstances. Pop tastes do not just derive from our socially constructed identities; they also help to shape them.

For the last fifty years at least, pop music has been an important way in which we have learned to understand ourselves as historical, ethnic, c1ass­bound, gendered subjects. This has had conservative effects (primarily through pop nostalgia) and liberating ones. Rock criticism has usually taken the latter as a necessary mark of good music but this has meant, in practice, a specious notion of 'liberation'. We need to approach this political ques­tion differently, by taking seriously pop's individualizing effects. What pop can do is put into play a sense of identity that may or may not fit the way we are placed by other social forces. Music certainly puts us in our place, but it can also suggest that our social circumstances are not immutable (and that other people - performers, fans - share our dissatisfaction). Pop music is not in itself revolutionary or reactionary. It is a source of strong feelings that because they are also socially coded can come up against 'common sense.' For the last thirty years, for example, at least for young people, pop has been a form in which everyday accounts of race and sex have been both confirmed and confused. It may be that, in the end, we want to value most highly that music, popular and serious, which has some sort of collective, disruptive cultural effect. My point is that music only does so through its impact on individuals. That impact is what we first need to understand.

46

po

T O W A R D S A N A E S T H E T I C O F P O P U L A R M U S I C

Notes

1 Simon Frith, SOUlld effects: youth, leisure and the politics of rock 'n' roll (New York, 1 98 1 ).

2 Wilfrid Mellers, Tlililigh, of the gods: the Beatles in retrospect (London, 1973), and A darker shade of pale: a backdrop 10 Bob Dylan (London, 1 984).

3 Donald Horton, 'The dialogue of courtship in popular songs' American Journal of Sociology, 62 ( 1 957), pp. 569-78. '

4 Andrew Chester, fSecond thoughts on a rock aesthetic: The Band', Nelli Left RevielV, 62 ( 1 970), pp. 78-9.

5 Simon Frith and Angela Me Robbie, 'Rock and sexuality', Screen Education, 29 ( 1 978/9), pp. 3-19.

47

63

PAT H WAYS I N U R BAN L I V I N G

Ruth Finnegan

Source: R. Finnegan (1987) Tlte Hidden Mllsicians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 297-326.

This study has tried to uncover the system that lies behind the practices of music-making in a modern English town. Given the existence of this under­lying structure, and the way that local music involves its practitioners in the locality they live in - the extensive interactions discussed in the last chapter, the many-sided work necessary for the enactment of music, and the local memberships and settings described earlier - one would therefore expect this far-reaching system to have implications for the way people live together locally, all the more so because local music is a matter of active collective practice rather than just passive mass-controlled consumption or the solitary contemplation of musical works. This expectation was indeed fulfilled, though not always in quite the ways I had anticipated. Contrary to many assump­tions, the practice of local music turns out to be relevant for central questions about life in urban industrial society. It makes a difference, for example, to one's assessment of the significance or otherwise of 'community', or 'class'. of how people's lives are ordered in space and time within a modern urban setting, and of the processes of continuity and change by which our culture is both maintained and developed.

Many commentators have given the impression that local amateur music is nowadays of little significance: if not 'dying out', then the concern of only a small minority. or, at best, merely marginal to serious concerns. So one preliminary question to touch on before turning to the more general queries is the scale of local music. What conclusions can we draw from the Milton Keynes evidence? Were the musical practitioners such as to draw serious attention in terms of their numbers, or only a small or specialised minority with little impact on the local life around them?

It was difficult to reach any exact quantitative measure - even more so than I had first supposed. Some rough preliminary indications can perhaps be attempted. Multiplying out from the known or estimated numbers of

48

P A T H W A Y S I N U R D A N L I V I N G

locally based music groups and clubs and taking some account of overlapping membership suggests that those adults and children actively practising as players or singers ran to several thousand individuals (possibly between 6,000 and 7,000). This number looked not unreasonable from the (partial) listings I drew up of named individuals engaged in music - i.e. maybe 5-6 per cent of the population. ' That these figures were not wildly exaggerated (and might even be an under-estimate) was suggested by other quantitative measures: for example the 1 ,000 or so instrumental classical examinations held every year in local centres, the 3,000 plus entrants to the Milton Keynes Festival of Arts in the mid 1980s (80 per cent of them 'local'), the many school musical events involving 100 or more performers (chapter 1 5), or the 1985 grand 2 1 st anniversary concert by the orchestras, wind bands and choirs based at the North Bucks Music Centre in Bletchley, at which there were about 400 performers,' mainly from the under-20s, and a capacity audience which (including performers) totalled over 1 ,500. I might add too ­an observation rather than evidence - that 1 have practically never mentioned in informal conversation that I was studying local music to anyone either in Milton Keynes or elsewhere without getting the (usually unsolicited) response that either they themselves or some close relative or friend were actively engaged in music in such and such a way.

But the survey counting of heads or any conclusion claiming such and such a percentage participating in music would be misleading. For one thing it gives an atomistic and over-individualised picture of the essentially col­lective practices and institutions of local music-making. Equally important, it by-passes the key question of definitions. Who should be counted as a 'musician' or 'musical practitioner' turned out to be an elusive and relative matter. It was often part-time engagement in music, bl1t how 'part time' could this be? What about the complex amateurlprofessional continuum? And which of several possible roles in relation to music should be included? Trying to make an exact count of an ill-defined and variegated field is not altogether productive. It also leaves out many other people who, as described in this volume, themselves played a necessary part in local music. There were the parents of children taking classical music lessons and exams; the part-time music teachers and home electronic organ players; the 400 or so members of the Milton Keynes Divided Country and Western Club and the committee who ran it; the whole series of supporters' networks and institutions which, as indicated in part 4, worked together to maintain local music; the 8,000-10,000 who participated in the music of local church services on any one Sunday; or the audiences without whose active parti­cipation the numerous performances could not have reached a successful enactment, from the runs of a week or more for operatic performances to the regular pub or social club musical evenings on which 1 00- or even 200-strong audiences were not unusual, or the tens of thousands attending school concerts over the year. These people too were participants in the various

49

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

musical 'worlds' described in part 2 . Many o f them can be regarded as, to a greater or lesser degree, themselves musical practitioners, not least the regu­lar audience members who played a skilled and essential part in fonning musical performances. This in itself vastly enlarged the numbers participating, in one way or another, in the practice of local music. So too did the pres­ence of the morc 'professional' musicians and organisations like WAP or the MKDC/BMK-arranged concerts (which, given the focus of this book, have been little mentioned but were part of the whole scene), as did the wider implications, to be discussed in the next chapter, by which music was one significant element in both 'public' and 'individual' rituals, a role with repercussions far beyond just 'music-making' in the narrow sense.

Thus there were indeed only a minority of people who were active musi­cians in the accepted sense of consistently deploying the recognised arts of singing or playing an instrument, but the widening circles of involvement in music meant that the practice of music was of much wider local signi­ficance. Far from being the kind of marginal and unstructured activity often suggested by the label 'leisure', with its implication of residual items somehow len over from 'real' life, these musical practices were upheld not by isolated individuals in an asocial vacuum or by people merely trying to fill in the time to 'solve' the 'problem of leisure', but through a series of socially recognised pathways which systematically linked into a wide variety of settings and institutions within the city.

In view of this wide spread, did the practice of music have any relevance for the overall life of the city, or at least for the way people structured and experienced urban life? The answer is, broadly, yes, but in a complex form which needs some further discussion.

Two familiar paradigms for understanding the place of music (or any regular set of practices) in urban life will immediately occur not just to the academic analysts but also to most people involved in urban life. First, the idea of the city as a large and hetcrogeneous arena inimical to personal control or warmth; and, second, that of 'community', in which people are bound by numerous tics, know each other, and have some consciousness of personal involvement in the locality of which they feet part ' Neither of these exactly fitted the practice of music as I found it in this study, but elements from both did enter in. Some examination of each can thus throw further light on local music and its wider implications.

Several people with whom I spoke quickly translated my mention of 'local music-making' into 'community music', often with the implication that I was thus rediscovering our 'lost community' in some nostalgic quasi­spiritual sense. But the city as a whole was not a 'community' in that sense if only for the obvious fact that its population was too large and in many cases too recent for people all to know each other, or even to have forged extensive indirect links, and there were many different occupations, interests and social contacts. Some city-wide institutions, certainly, did provide some

50

P A T H W A Y S I N U R B A N L I V I N G

central facilities, controls and perhaps definitions for the area, but for the most part neither these nor the concept of Milton Keynes as a whole were of direct concern to most people in the everyday conduct of their musical (or other) activities, nor were their musical pathways necessarily confined within the boundaries of the city.

What, then, about the various localities Ivilhin the city? Looking at smaller groupings has been one way in which researchers have revealed the often close internal ties in, for instance, ethnic or single-occupation communities embedded within a wider urban framework. Though from the outset I felt it unlikely that Milton Keynes would turn out to contain 'urban villages' in this sense, I had still vaguely expected that I would end up focussing in the traditional anthropological mode on some local neighbourhood within which musical ties were closely intertwined with other social links. But this never happened. This was mainly because of the extra-neighbourhood pattern of much musical activity (elaborated below), but also because Milton Keynes simply was not made up of local 'communities' of that kind. There were areas in the city, it is true, where a longer-established population gave a greater sense of local attachment: Wolverton, with its long connection with the British Rail works, parts of Bletchley, and certain of the villages. Even there, however, one could scarcely speak of a close-knit, far less homogene­ous, population by the 1980s, and close social ties were not necessarily neighbourhood-based if only because of the influx of new population, jobs and demands. Even the new planned neighbourhoods, each with its own type of housing, environment and likely social profile, could not easily be designated as 'communities' as far as music went - or perhaps for other purposes either (see Abrams 1980). Local music-making was not typically practised within a neighbourhood-based 'community' in thy traditional sense (admittedly vague, but still with some meaning) of a collectivity of people living together in a specific territorial area bound together by interpersonal ties or a sense of belonging together.

Some musical groups did take their names from particular localities. There were the Stony Stratford Singers, the Wolverton Light Orchestra', the New­port Pagnell Choral Society, the Woburn Sands Band (indeed all the older brass bands), and the many church and school choirs. Such groups usually had a local practice place and gave at least some of their performances nearby; even when, as with the Woburn Sands Band, they were in demand elsewhere they had some feeling of responsibility to 'the local community' and made an effort to play there at Christmas or other special occasions. Insofar as such fluidly defined localities did at times present themselves as having some unity separate from others, this was partly defined precisely through local events like a carnival or a festival centred on a local church where the ritual element could be marked by a musical contribution from 'local' singers. brass band or instrumentalists. In this sense 'community' could be regarded as a situational and emergent aspect of localities (rather

5 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

than some absolute property), a process in which music, and above all music by local performers, played its part.

But even in this relative sense, the significance of these groups for their 'own' neighbourhood was limited. Many of their members did not in fact live in the locality and even brass bands, with their strong local traditions, often coniained a geographically diverse membership. The Woburn Sands Band, for example, did indeed draw nearly one-third of their players from Woburn Sands (ten in all) but the rest lived elsewhere - in Bletchley (five), Newport Pagnell (five), Simpson (three), Wolverton (two) and other places in and near Milton Keynes (one each); the conductor lived in Bletchley. So too in the 80-year-old Bradwell Silver Band: despite their practising in a local school and assuming some responsibility for playing 'for our own community, our own parish', by 1 982 only one of the players actually lived in New Bradwell. Many people were members of more than one musical group - particularly in classical, operatic, brass and jazz contexts - so that it was difficult for any one musical association, whatever its base, to be made up predominantly of people from the same neighbourhood.

This absence of a 'local community' setting for music also resulted from the way most musical activities were organised. In any given locality only a minority were active musicians, and with the exception of home-based music and some school and church music-making they practised not on a neighbourhood basis but in groups, clubs or performance venues which were unlikely to be where they lived. People travelled to join with others in the practice of music, a pattern intensified by but also predating the establishment of the 'new city'.

As far as local music making goes, then, looking to small neighbourhood 'communities' for its generation or setting would be misleading. Local music is not produced by some traditional 'communal' culture, nor does it fit the romantic Gemeinschaft model of the amateur arts. It is fine for anthropologists and others to want to explore small-scale communities within larger urban settings but, as Hannerz rightly argued in his powerful call for an urban anthropology ( 1 980), the 'urban' aspects of modern city life may be as important and interesting as smaller cohesive 'communities'. This is cer­tainly so for the practice of local music, for Milton Keynes (probably like many British towns) is not an agglomeration of village communities but a tolVn with the characteristics of a town: large, heterogeneous and complex.

But is it necessary then to go to the opposite picture of the city as a cold, market-dominated and anonymous setting for human activity? This view was indeed held by some Milton Keynes dwellers, as the trickle of letters to local newspapers from disillusioned settlers illustrated.

What makes the bureaucrats think any sane person wants to live here anyway? They're much better off in London, or anywhere else for that matter. There isn't, nor is there likely to be, any form of

52

P A T H W A Y S I N U R B A N L I V I N G

community spirit. Milton Keynes is just a scar on the countryside of Britain - I can't see it changing, can anyone else?

(Milton Keynes Mirror, 3 November 1983)

This kind of formulation would be taken as typical by commentators concerned to dispute the facile community-orientated view of harmonious urban life or perhaps depict local dwellers as the passive creatures of mass forces. Was it characteristic, though, of those participating in the musical activities described in this book?

There is certainly something in the picture of impersonality. Though Milton Keynes was not large by urban standards, relatively few of the 1 00,000 plus population could be known to each other in a sustained personal sense; few if any live musical occasions were genuinely accessible to everyone; and even in smaller neighbourhoods local performances were not necessarily widely recognised. Any given musical event was the direct personal concern of a relatively small number of people (different in each case), while others either failed to notice them consciously or regarded them as just part of the imposed environment within which they had to live. Even those keenly involved in music usually had little to do with other musical worlds and were often surprised that I was studying various forms of local music: they knew about their own, but was there really much else? Even lVilhin musical worlds people did not necessarily interact personally; I was con­stantly taken aback to find that, for example, members of different choirs did not know each other (sometimes were not even aware of the existence of other choirs), and that local musicians highly regarded by some local enthusiasts might be unknown even to those of the same musical 'world' living or working nearby.

There was also an element of anonymity even within m·usical groups. My

original expectation had been that choirs, music clubs, instrumental groups, rock bands and so on would be made up of people who knew each other well and that their shared musical interest would be complemented by some rounded knowledge of other aspects of each others' lives.' I canie to realise that this could not be assumed either for all groups or for all individuals within them. Some groups lVere close knit, especially the older brass bands, and members had other ties besides their joint music-making; some were friends or colleagues or members of the same church or school, while others were relatives. Even there, though, links between individuals differed - there was no single social life shared by the group - and some had little or no additional contact. Other groups had fewer personal links, and people knew little about their co-members' lives. In larger groups people did not always even know each other's names beyond their immediate partners and, even when they did, often had little knowledge of, for example, their jobs or domestic situations: such matters were unimportant for the purpose for which they had come together.

53

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

There was also an impersonal element in public performance. Audiences were often linked by personal ties to one or more of the performers - but they were not necessarily so linked among themselves. Indeed the whole concept of 'public' performance allied to the acceptance of anonymity as one element in urban living meant that musical events sometimes took place with relatively little direct social acknowledgment or personal acquaintance between most members of the audience apart from their joint participation in the event.

In some respects, then, local musical activity fitted with the impersonal model of city life: a point that needs emphasising to challenge the common but unjustified assumption that all special-interest groups are necessarily marked by strong personal solidarity. But this was not the whole truth either. One essential point here has already been mentioned - the variety of groupings, some with closer internal ties than others. The extent of close-knit interaction on the one hand, compared to more superficial single-faceted relationships on the other, would be hard to measure conclusively (and the balance was perhaps different in the developing context of Milton Keynes from that in some older towns). But it was clear at least that both processes could be found in local music and that close multi-faceted relationships were by no means exceptional; many groups had elements of both. To concentrate just on the impersonal and segmented processes would be misleading, however typically 'urban' they might appear in theoretical terms.

Furthermore, this was not how many participants themselves perceived their musical activity. People commonly did not know much about all their co-members in musical groups - but in the sense that mattered to them they knew enough. Individuals often joined because they knew one or more members already and their joint musical activity then reinforced and amplified that existing contact, if not through practicalities like sharing lifts or delivering messages then at least through supporting the same group and making music together. There was no felt need to know everyone in the round. New personal links could be created too. A break for refreshments and a chat was a normal part of the proceedings in the larger musical groups: a meagre gap, perhaps, but one defined as a social, not a musical one. These links were regularly repeated too and associated with an intense and deeply valued mode of activity: links in this context, even if not expressed through knowledge of names, ages or social backgrounds, brought people together in a way scarcely covered by the model of urban relationships as anonymous and superficial. For regular members of musical groups this could represent a constant theme, carried over week after week in the same order and with the same companions. The same feature was also evident in the smaller groups like the bands discussed in chapter 19; here again some players knew little about their colleagues or seldom met outside band occa­sions, but their intensive joint activity was, surely, of a different order from the utilitarian and fleeting relationships sometimes supposed characteristic of urban activity outside the home.

54

P A T H W A Y S I N U R B A N L I V I N G

Thus the extreme anonymous model o f urban life does not fit all aspects of local music-making either, at least as that is experienced by the particip­ants. The fact that they conduct their lives within a town does not mean that they necessarily find their olVn engagement in town life cold and anonym­ous (even though for some individuals and in some situations this was undoubtedly the experience), nor are they merely the passive recipients of arts manufactured by others. The active practice of collective music-making is pre-eminently a sphere within which people can, and regularly do, experi­ence a justified awareness of personal meaning and control.

It is of course nothing new to find that the theoretical models do not precisely fit specific cases while at the same time illuminating certain recurrent elements and revealing the complexity of differing processes. But if these opposed paradigms of all-embracing 'community' as against impersonal anonymity are of limited use, do any alternative social science perspectives help us to understand further the implications of local music within the town?

Many of the approaches in urban studies can indeed be brought to bear, and a number of their key terms have surfaced already - 'network', 'groups', 'associations' or (the central metaphor in parts 2-3) the less widely used but far-reaching concept of 'worlds'. Such terms illumine many aspects of this study and I certainly do not wish to challenge them as such. But I ultimately found that they were not as useful as I had expected for analysing local musical practice and its implications.

One has to start from the characteristics of the musical practices actually found on the ground. These are, first, the part-time nature of much musical involvement, second, the combination of a varied degree of individual participation with some clear habitual patterns, and, third, the relative and non-bounded nature of musical practice, in one sens

'e locally based, in

another extending more widely across the country. These features make the more closed, integrated and concrete associ­

ations of terms like 'world' or 'community' (see above) for all their flexibility somewhat misleading for local musical activity. 'Group' is also'a revealing concept to try. In one way it is clearly appropriate to the more specific units like the small bands discussed in chapter 1 9 or (in its extended sense) to the voluntary association form of many choirs, operatic societies or brass bands. But the term does not alert us to the wider pathways into which both these associations and the small bands ultimately fit: the established symbolic and habitual practices which made sense of the separate 'groups'. Nor do the extensions of the term into 'interest groups' or 'action groups' really capture the continuing artistic conventions and the institutional frameworks beyond and behind the specific local units. The vaguer 'grouping' perhaps brings us back once again to the 'community' concept, this time in the non-localised sense of being 'based on a subjective feeling of the parties . . . that they belong together' (Weber 1947, p. 1 36, cf. Neuwirth 1969, Wild 1 98 1 , pp. 35ff.),

55

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

like the 'moral communities' associated with, say, churches, friendship groups and certain occupational groups (as in Abrams 1980), or Cohen's ( 1 985a) 'symbolically constructed' communities marked out by their per­ceived boundaries from others. This conveys one aspect of local musical practitioners, reminding us of the sense of familiarity and shared symbols which often form part of their experience; but once again this approach can mislead both in its connotation of bounded ness and the emphasis on sub­jective feeling. Local musicians are linked not just by shared views or emo­tions but by social practices. People may or may not feel a sense of closure or separation from others in specific situations, but what docs define their habitual musical pathways are their shared and purposive collective actions.

Approaches in terms of 'networks' or 'quasi-groups" are helpful in the opposite way: drawing attention to the individual element in musical practice, its relative openness, and the part-time and essentially non-neighbourhood nature of most local music. Personal networks and their significance for 'working at' music has been one main theme of the earlier discussion. But once again these terms do not quite comprehend local music, mainly because of their often atomistic and sociometric, even mechanistic, over­tones. Local musical practices depend indeed on individuals' connections but also have a certain abiding structure over and above the links of particular individuals; so when one set of links - or bands or clubs - dissolve others can be forged in their place following the same tradition. This is something more rich and continuing than the two-dimensional picture suggested by the 'network' image.

No term is perfect, but the idea of 'pathways' seemed to me a better one to capture and summarise aspects of musical practice missed in other approaches. Let me explain how this can be used as one possible metaphor for illuminating certain features of local music and its implications for urban life.

The participants in local music described in this book followed a series of known and regular routes which people chose - or were led into - and which they both kept open and extended through their actions. These 'pathways' more or less coincided with the varying musical 'worlds' presented in part 2 but avoid the misleading overtones of concreteness, stability, boundedness and comprehensiveness associated with the term 'world'. 'Pathways' also reminds us of the part-time nature of much local music­making (people follow many pathways concurrently, and leave or return as they choose throughout their lives), of the overlapping and intersecting nature of different musical traditions, and of the purposive and dynamic nature of established musical practices. The many different forms of musical activity described in this study were not random or created from nothing each time by individual practitioners, but a series of familiar and - by their followers - taken-for-granted routes through what might otherwise have been the impersonal wildernesses of urban life, paths which people shared

56

p

b.

P A T H W A Y S I N U R B A N L I V I N G

with others in a predictable yet personal fashion. They were not all­encompassing or always clearly known to outsiders, but settings in which relationships could be forged, interests shared, and a continuity of meaning achieved in the context of urban living.

These pathways did more than provide the established routines of musical practice which people could choose to follow: they also had symbolic depth. One common impression given by very many participants was that their musical pathways were of high value among the various paths within their lives. Of course, this varied among individuals and was scarcely susceptible to precise measurement. The several different pathways any individual followed were often not in direct competition so did not need to be explicitly ranked, and in any case assigning 'importance' is a notoriously tricky under­taking. But given the findings of this study on the time, commitment and personal investment so many people gave to music, and the kind of personal engagement manifest even in many of the photographs reproduced in this book, let alone to the first-hand observer of musical events and practice -given all this it would be uninformed to go on assuming without question, as is often done, that people's other pathways like job or household­maintaining were automatically of paramount importance in their scale of values. Indeed the impression given, not indeed by everyone involved in music, but by person after person in spontaneous comment, answers to questions, and, above all, action was that their music-making was one of the habitual routes by which they identified themselves as worthwhile members of society and which they regarded as of somehow deep-seated importance to them as human beings.

This leads on to a second point. These local musical pathways were estab­lished, already-trodden and, for the most part, abiding �outes which many people had taken and were taking in company with others. To be sure, none were permanent in the sense of being changeless, nor could they survive without people treading and constantly re-forming them; new paths lVere hewn out, some to become established, others to fade or be only faintly followed, others again to be extended and developed through new routings by the individuals and groups who patronised them. But for any given individuals the established pathways were in a sense already there, as a route at least to begin on: they were part of the existing cultural forms rather than something that had to be calculated afresh each time. Such pathways furthermore needed more than just an odd few hours every week or so in some haphazard leisure activity; for those who followed them seriously, they were also a recognised channel for self-expression in many senses, for drawing on personal networks, for growing up through the various stages of life, for achieving a whole series of non-musical aims in the locality, for sharing with others, and, not least, for providing meaning for personal action and identity. These pathways included both personal networks and established groups, and were another way in which local musical 'worlds'

57

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

were realised in practice. From the point or view or both individual parti­cipants and the localities through which they ran, they constituted one set or purposive actions - an invisible structure - actions through which people chose to conduct their lives.

Given the significance or these musical pathways ror many people's lives and experience, it would be interesting ror our understanding or modern urban lire to know how people entered on to them. What made them choose - or avoid - certain pathways rather than, or as well as, others? This is all a bit or a mystery, as, perhaps, basic lire choices usually are, whether they relate to job, love, religion or personality. But the orten unnoticed but pervasive pathways which structure local music turn out to be morc worth exploring than has usually been assumed by analysts or modern urban lire, and, however elusive, to have something to tell us about the maintenance and continuity - or perhaps change - or our traditional cultural rorms.

In commenting on this themselves, some musicians stressed the self­chosen nature or their music: they had put in the necessary work, had the requisite talent, and had continued to pursue this path alongside the other aspects or their lives like employment or education. The achieved rather than ascribed nature or musical competence was one major theme in local musical activity, when what you achieved musically was morc important than who you were. This applied in a measure to all music perrormers, but the younger rock musicians in particular saw music as a channel ror individual selr-expression, ror publicly acclaimed achievement, even ror social mobiJity and economic advancement. An individual could make a mark rree rrom the otherwise limiting constraints of occupation, bureaucracy or education.

Another view was or music as an 'inborn girt'. This is a well-developed model in the classical music world, with its emphasis on individual 'talent' and 'the great artist' (a model that could also, cynically, be interpreted as a charter to rationalise the current ranking). But though this view was sometimes expressed by local practitioners as a rull or partial explanation or their own interests it was less common than I expected and was mainly concentrated among those conscious of coming from 'non-musical back­grounds' and composers (where confidence in innate talent was perhaps especially important).

Neither 'achievement' nor 'inborn genius' was the whole story. An even morc common reaction was to remark how parents or other relations had provided the initial stimulus, and how this had then grown into an established interest. In ract one or the most striking characteristics or local musicians was the high proportion who had grown up in rami lies who were in some way or another musical. Exact figures are impossible without a rar more extensive survey than I was able to conduct, but among the Milton Keynes musicians practising in the early 1980s whose names J was able to record a surprisingly high proportion had some ramily musical connection. This was borne out by looking at names over time. It was rascinating to

58

po

P A T H W A Y S I N U R B A N L I V I N G

scan the lists or entrants in the annual Festival or Arts over the years and see the same ramily names coming up again and again as first the older children, then their younger brothers and sisters moved through the graded musical classes. Similarly with the published lists or classical musical examinations, where successive members or the same ramily worked their way through the grades. Programmes or local concerts showed a similar pattern. The Bletchley Amateur Operatic Society, the Gilbert and Sullivan societies, and the local brass bands all contained multiple members or the same ramily, with new generations joining the older in their involvement in musical practice.

This hereditary reature could perhaps be explained by saying that there was a lot of music around, so some family connections were only to be expected. But I suspect there was more to it than that, not least because or the mechanisms by which this hereditary pattern was implemented. Given the way many kinds or music are currently practised it is dimcult to see how music-making could emerge generation after generation without family influence.

To be sure, many children learnt a minimum or musical perrormance and appreciation at school, and were orten much influenced by school peers in their attitudes to music. But even in the relatively undemanding activities or choir singing, ensemble playing, or recorder lessons in primary schools, it will be recalled that one crucial ractor influencing which children parti­cipated was parental interest. Ir a schoolchild was to learn an instrument seriously either at school or privately then parental support was or the essence. Quite apart rrom the cost or lessons, parents had to provide racilities ror practising (no light imposition on ramily living), and finance ror sheet music, ror equipment like music stands and, eventually, the instrument itselr. Private music lessons in particular could be c�stly and, as was discussed earlier, made demands on parental support ror racilitating pro­gress through the years as part or the lengthy process or the child's gradual consolidating or interests and achievements. It was often initiated because or the parents' own musical experience. One or both had orten themselves learnt instruments in childhood or perhaps wished their children to have opportunities in classical learning that they relt they had lost out on them­selves. Either way, it was a common assumption that acquiring musical skills was part or a child's socialisation ror which parents took responsib­ility. It was thus small wonder that so many ramilies included several musicians: two or three children at dirrerent stages, orten with parental participation too.

The hereditary emphasis in music was rurther consolidated by ramily leisure patterns. Parents were sometimes themselves active musicians in instrumental ensembles or choral groups, which orten contained more than one generation, with parents gradually being joined by their children. Most audiences ror local musical perrormances included a proportion of the perrormers' children, along with their other rriends and relatives. Growing

59

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

up in a musical family thus helped to set an individual's interests and skills in certain channels for the future - not ones followed through in every single instance, but accepted pathways which those from musical backgrounds were more likely to find themselves treading, and, whether on and off or consistently throughout their lives, recognising as a natural and self­evidently justifiable pattern of habitual action.

These hereditary patterns were most prominent in classical music, where the established learning system depended on parental support. Singing was a bit of an exception, for many choral singers had had little if any vocal tuition and had learnt from school or church choirs. It was not totally different, however, for singers in the classical choirs had to read music, something many choral singers had learnt through instrumental lessons, with the hereditary factor once again inclining them towards classical pathways. Learning through church choirs usually meant there was already some family involvement, and many local singers spoke of a family musical - sometimes specifically choral - interest which had awakened and reinforced their own. Here too, if in a less direct way, family background encouraged people on to certain musical paths.

Though this family basis was most evident in classical pathways, parallel processes also applied in other learning modes. Brass bands contained multiple members from the same families within and across the generations, and learning still sometimes took place lVithin the family, supported by the quasi-apprentice system of brass bands; it also sometimes went along clas­sical learning lines. It was thus common for these brass pathways to extend over several generations of the same family, a still-continuing tradition. Operatic societies too were partly hereditary as younger members of active families grew up with a set of interests, habits, and relationships which led them into similar pursuits. So too with country and western musical performances, at least in respect of the learned skill of expert audience participation: the flourishing local club was very much a family affair (some­times a three-generation one), and many club evenings swarmed with younger children coming with their families to a familiar cultural occasion.

With jazz and folk music the hereditary pattern was not so marked, but there too musically inclined parents encouraged their children's interest, sometimes themselves teaching or providing opportunities for learning in one of their own bands. But the pathways were sometimes more musically diverse; many local jazz and folk performers did indeed come from musical families - but classical ones. Several had learnt an instrument (not necessarily their current one) in the classical mode, or had organised such lessons for their own children. There was family musical continuity, therefore, even if not in exactly the same pathways.

The rock world seemed different. There was particular stress on self­achievement through music, and the accepted mode of self-teaching made this feasible. In addition the relatively innovative nature of rock meant less

60

>

P A T H W A Y S I N U R B A N L I V I N G

opportunity for musical transmission through generations. For some rock players there was also conscious breaking away from patterns they saw as imposed on them by authority (parents as well as teachers or employers), so peer-influence and to some extent models set lip in the mass media and jointly admired with those of their own generation outside the family or formal school context were often as important asfamily background. These differences should not be exaggerated, however. Many parents gave quiet support to local teenage bands through help with instruments or transport. A considerable proportion of rock players did come from musical families, some had learnt instruments in the classical tradition and, as in the folk or jazz worlds, several older rock musicians were encouraging their own children's interests across a range of musical modes. There were also earlier forms of popular music from which rock seemed a natural progression. Several local rock players came from families in which one or both parents had performed in pubs or working men's clubs; in such cases playing in a rock band was a kind of continuity.

With the only partial exception of rock, then, one of the most striking characteristics of musical transmission - of how people tended to enter on particular musical pathways - was its hereditary basis. Of course there were exceptions, and people were not programmed into pre-selected paths: but essentially the tendency was for people from musical families to themselves enter on musical pathways of some kind, often ones similar to those followed by one or both parents or grandparents, by siblings or by other relatives. This was evident through all the local musical pathways. There were the parents in a local brass band (one a bass player and librarian, the other secretary) with their two sons playing percussion and cornet/trumpet in local brass bands and orchestral groups and a third who had begun the tuba; the three rock band sons of a local jazz player; the many small popular bands centring on two or more brothers, themselves from a musical back­ground; the stream of choir-singing mothers with all their children learning instruments; the music centre director and brass player tracing his Salvation Army band interest back to his grandfather, whose family had all sung tenor, and who had grown up in a background of 'old-fashioned Victorian family music-making'; and the typical comments, even from rock players, on the lines of 'Dad's a drummer, brother a guitarist', 'Father sings and used to be in a dance band in the thirties, mother a pianist and church organist', 'Dad sings, plays guitar, piano and drums; grandpa and aunt also musical', 'Father a clarinettist; both sisters play instruments'. or 'Father very musical - bass, piano, trombone; last year was in jazz band with him; mother used to play piano' (quotations from band survey).

It has often been observed that in some non-industrial cultures there are hereditary arts in which specific families provide experts for the society as a whole: specialists in, say, poetry, divination, drumming, smith-craft, or particular forms of dancing, singing or other musical performance. Such

6 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

experts are usually not full-time professionals or totally deIermined by birIh, but it is accepted that they are most likely to come from particular family lines. The English situation has often been contrasted with such cultures because of its greaIer division of labour, professionalisation of many tasks, and (it has often been assumed) overriding significance of paid employment and lor class as determinants of people's lives. But in the practice of amateur music, which bulks so large at the local level, the English form may not after all be so different. Certainly there tends to be little explicit ideology of a hereditary basis in England (unlike some other cultmes); but the family­based transmission of music and its skills from generation to generation appears to be a much more wide-spread and important mechanism in our society than is usually realised.

One reason why the family basis of musical pathways has been little noticed may be the preoccupation of so many social scientists and others with 'class' as the paramount factor in western industrial society for trans­mitting life-styles from one generation to the next. Following this through in detail would need a whole further study, but, given common assumptions about the importance of socio-economic class in music as in everything else, something must be said here on its possible role in leading people into the various musical pathways in local music. It will turn out that certain widely assumed generalisations are in practice highly questionable.

In a general sense, people's entry on to particular musical pathways, dependent as this largely was on family membership, was partly related to that family's social and economic resources. Certain activities needed money, transport, or access to specific venues or networks, or were perhaps related to particular kinds of educational achievements, material possessions, cultmal interests, or social aspirations. All these were thus likely to play some pan in the selection of particular pathways - though differently in different contexts and for different individuals. One term under which this complex of factors is sometimes grouped together is of course 'class'. But just in what sense or in what precise directions this really did influence people's pathways, and to what extent these different factors did tend to coincide within one complex is obscure indeed, perhaps particularly so when it was not jobs, education or house-ownership but musical practice that was involved: something hard to measure and seldom investigated by researchers and government surveys.

Interpretation and evidence are thus elusive, but one point was clear. Contrary to some expectations, the findings on local musicians and their backgrounds in Milton Keynes in the early 1980s did 110t reveal any clear class-dominated patterns for involvement in music generally. Active music-making of any kind was a minority interest, mainly undertaken by part-timers, but within that minority were numbered people of many back­grounds in terms of education, wealth and - for many class analysts the crucial variable - occupation (or lack of it).

62

p

-

P A T H W A Y S t N U R B A N L I V I N G

One of the striking features of local music was thus the overall mixture of people practising it. They included senior local government administrators, university academics, middle and junior and trainee managers, school­teachers, nurses and midwives, technicians, housewives and mothers, factory workers, bus, train and forklift drivers, railway workers, school-children, unemployed people, retired people, apprentices, shop assistants, self-employed decorators, plumbers and carpenters, mechanics, bankers, civil servants, engineers, clerks, insurance workers, farmers, hairdressers, graphic artists, youth and social workers, electricians and salesmen - to name only some. Local music was not self-evidently the monopoly of any one social category, nor was there any indication from the rather general findings available to me that the musical practices described in this study were heavily con­centrated in one or another of the class strata into which sociologists and survey-takers often like to divide the English population '

It could be argued that the financial costs mentioned several times in this volume made musical activity unaffordable for certain people. This was undoubtedly sometimes a factor, but did not translate unambiguously into class terms. Access to cash for musical instruments or entertainment was not necessarily the preserve just of those with 'middle-class' jobs or higher education. Type of housing 0)' car ownership were perhaps equally important, affecting both mobility and places to meet and play. But here again it would be facile to link these directly with 'class' alone. Further­more, musical access did not depend just on ownership of house or car, for another feature of some musical pathways was the sharing of resources to facilitate joint musical activities. All in all, whether or not individuals entered and stayed on musical pathways was not related in any simple way to the class to which they could be allocated by govel;nment statistics or sociological labels.

If local music was not in general class-dominated, were specific musical paths perhaps associated with specific classes? Many analysts would expect the answer 'yes' and go on to predict certain associations, linking classical music with middle- and upper-class culture, brass bands with the traditional working class, folk and country and westel'l1 with 'the people' in some sense (rural, maybe), and perhaps jazz and certainly rock with the working class (or perhaps 'working-class youth culture').

It will be clear from the evidence in the earlier chapters that these predic­tions were not borne out by the local practice. Many of those engaged in classical music lVere from reasona61y affluent, educated and privileged families, but certainly not all. Particularly in the choirs and the partially overlapping operatic societies, and among the children currently embarking on musical interests in Milton Keynes (the vast majority at local state schools), musicians came from a wide variety of backgrounds, The once-acceptable de­scription of the piano as a 'middle-class instrument' (Weber 1958, pp. 120ff.) was no longer applicable, and though in the higher-status orchestral

63

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

groups such as the Sherwood Sinfonia older players were said to come from a traditional 'middle-class pool', this did not cover all its younger entrants and other orchestral and choral groups in the town drew on mixed backgrounds, not least the many church choirs and their organists. It was true that a family on a low income found it harder to undertake regular Illstrumental lessons for their children, but families committed to music still tried to pursue it even from meagre resources (in some cases paying cash lesson by lesson rather than in advance for a series), while well-off families could be doubtful about the costs if music was not one of their priorities. For the question of who entered upon classical music path­ways and how they did this, the 'middle-class' image did indeed have some counterpart in people's behaviour and perceptions - particularly with pri­vate Illstrumental lessons and classical examinations - but even then did not apply either to all families that could be termed 'middle class' or to all classical players practising or learning in the area. Overall, 'class' turned out to be both too general and too ambiguous a concept to provide much explanation for people's classical music pathways, especially given the mlllority of both individuals and families at all levels who were actively pursuing such interests.

The same complexity was evident in the other music worlds, with musical family seemingly of more immediate importance than class. The main evidence is summed up in the earlier chapters, so it will just be repeated bnefly here that, contrary to prevailing expectations, neither rock music nor brass bands could be said to be exclusively or even primarily 'working class'; nor was folk music (indeed, if anything it was mainly favoured by highly educated practitioners); while jazz and operatic activities were particularly heterogeneous in terms of social and economic background. Country and western music was the one form apparently closely connected to the occupa­tIOns and background traditionally labelled 'working class'; but even here there were exceptions (not least among the Wild Bunch, who frequented many country and western music occasions), and it might be rash to generalise beyond Milton Keynes. Class-based explanations about differing musical pathways are all the more difficult to uphold in view of the fact that a single family (one presumably belonging to a single 'class') could contain members involved i n different musical worlds or entering on different musical paths at different stages of their lives: brass, classical and operatic, for example, or jazz, rock, folk and classical.

This is not to say that within particular groups (say, a given choir or Jazz band) people were not in practice pulled together by shared social, economic or educational backgrounds; 'class' - if that is the term to sum up such similarities - was certainly not irrelevant. But as an overriding categorisation of individuals and families on particular musical pathways or an explanation of how and why they entered them, it proved unhelpful. It was seldom spontaneously mentioned by the musical participants themselves

64

p

..

P A T H W A Y S I N U R B A N L I V I N G

either (the main exception being musicians at the Open University, who were also academics). The nearest most people came was in the frequent comment that for them one of the benefits of music was that jobs or edu­cation became irrelevant in the context of music-making: 'you meet all kinds of people'. As one conductor summed it up, 'brass band players can come from any kind of background, and any kind of child - with physical infirmities, cowardly, brave, big, little; there are some incredible friendships between different ends of the social scale . . . music is a great leveller'; or -from a brass band secretary - 'we're a common-interest group - that's what's important, not "class" '. This kind of thing is easy to say, of course, and actors' assumptions about lack of class constraint can always be inter­preted as complacent naivety rather than accurate insight. But in Milton Keynes musical practice there really did seem a basis of fact for such asser­tions. Both at the level of people's own awareness and from an objective examination, 'class' seemed to have little significance for people's choice of musical pathways.

There lVere constraints, of course, on how and why people chose and practised their music, but most related to less grandiose-sounding factors. The specific circumstances of individuals and families often seemed more significant than general patterns, so that there were usually a set of idiosyncratic factors, none in themselves of paramount significance, which influenced particular choices and problems, not least the values and interests held by an individual and his/her family and peers. The many and varied influences on people's musical pathways thus depended so much on indi­vidual circumstances that it would be impossible to give them all their due weight. But some recurrent patterns already touched on in earlier chapters are worth recalling again briefly. .

First among these was gender. Assumptions about 'natural' male and female activities go deep in our culture, as elsewhere, and often directly influenced musical activities. Growing up in the eighties, boys found it harder than girls to enter on classical music paths as active players �nd learners, while girls were less accepted than boys III teenage rock bands. On both sides individuals broke through such barriers - perhaps all the more deter­mined having done so - but the barriers were there nevertheless. As one head teacher put it, sport for secondary-school boys was felt as semi-obligatory and music secondary: a boy 'can only have a violin in one hand if he has a rugby ball in the other'.

Gender could affect not just whether an individual got involved in music at all, but also the particular musical interest. Choirs of all kinds were chronically short of men, as if choral singing were somehow not so typically a male as a female activity; but then those men who did choose this pathway were often extremely committed - and in demand: some had been attending several different choirs every week for years. In brass bands, by contrast, there were fewer women than men in the older generation, reflecting the

65

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

traditional view about the unsuitability o f brass blowing for girls, a view currently under challenge, as the high proportion of girls in the younger bands demonstrated. Within groups too, gender often affected the actual roles taken up by participants. This applied partly to the way in which the difference between men's and women's voices was highlighted in the division into separate parts in four-part choirs, often symbolised by a joking relationship between the sexes at choir practices. But it also came out in less obvious ways. Girls were often (though not always) the singers in rock bands while boys were drummers, PA experts and drivers, and in all contexts men tended to take on public roles like those of chairman, dancecaller or conductor, with women called on for back-up typing, 'social secretary' tasks and, inevitably, the provision of refreshments at practices and concerts. None of this was at all surprising - or confined to just musical contexts - and there were also plenty of exceptions, demonstrating that these gender-influenced roles were general expectations rather than abso­lute requirements. It was interesting too that, apart from the important exception of most rock groups and some country and western bands, there were relatively few single-sex musical groups. Despite the imbalance of male and female in many groups and the gender constraints on certain activities, most musical pathways depended on the co-operation of both men and women.

Age was sometimes a second influential factor. A few groups were age­stratified. Notable among these were the teenage popular bands, often formed at a time when age group affiliation was of central influence, as made clear in many advertisements in the local press on the lines of: 'Static Blue require rhythm guitarist age 1 6-18 years' or 'Drummer wishes to join or form a band with other enthusiastic players. 1 7 to 1 9 years only'. Later, age became less important, and older rock bands had players of varied ages (sometimes a 1 5- or 20-year age range). In general, one characteristic of local musical activities was the wide age range of the participants: it was musical compe­tence and commitment, not age that counted. Many choirs and orchestras contained members across several generations, brass bands fielded players from 10 to 70 years old, and most orchestral groups ranged from teenage learners right through to old age pensioners.

This pattern was, again, scarcely surprising given the near lifelong nature of many people's commitment to their chosen musical pathways. Even those who for a time withdrew at certain stages of their domestic or working life-cycle (especially women with young children) could return later. This mixed-age co-operation was something both taken for granted by most musical enthusiasts and also explicitly commented on by reflective particip­ants. Given the common association in our culture between age and author­ity, it is interesting that in local music this tended not to apply. Cooperation and competence bridged age divisions within a general ethic of musical equality irrespective of age.

66

p

P A T H W A Y S I N URBAN L I V I N G

Feeding into these patterns were many other associations through which individuals were drawn into their musical paths and into particular roles within these. Links with specific churches or schools or localities were influential for some, in turn facilitated or hindered by other experiences or ties, or by the particular opportunities or constraints to do with jobs, family links, local groupings or mobility patterns, access or otherwise to a car, or other competing demands on time. Often enough, it seemed partly to depend on accident, and, very important, on particular individuals who, as teachers or friends or models, exercised a far-reaching influence on future musical directions.

There seems, then, to be no single answer to why particular people find themselves on one or another of the established musical pathways, leading them in directions shared with many others but still favoured by only a minority of the population at large. A whole series of factors can come in - some seemingly just matters of individual accident - and those people perceiving their choices as unfettered and personal ones certainly have one part of the truth. Musical paths are voluntary, something essentially self­chosen not primarily for monetary reasons but in some sense for their own sake, something too which demands continual work and commitment to balance the undoubted satisfactions. But to this awareness of free choice must also be added the patterns of constraints and opportunities that -sometimes partly outside the actors' own awareness - help to draw individuals towards or away from particular paths, or shape the way they tread them, chief among these the influences of gender, of age, of stage in the life-cycle, the link to various other social groupings and - the point that recurs again and again - family musical background.

People's following of their particular musical pa\hways - however selected in the first place - involved more than just music. Some of these other aspects will be explored further in the next chapter, but two will be followed up here, since they are of particular relevance for the questions about urban living raised in this chapter. These concern the structuring of

, people's spatial and temporal experience.

As described earlier, participants in musical activities mostly moved outside their own homes and neighbourhoods to engage in music, travelling through what according to one model of the city might seem an alien and anonymous urban environment. But looking at this in terms of the familiar pathways established in musical practice throws a different light on people's experience. This is the more so when-it is considered in conjunction with current approaches to 'space' in terms not of objective distance or direction but of people's 'cognitive maps' or the symbolic classifications of their spatial relationships '

The musical pathways (like others) can be envisaged as stretching out and criss-crossing through the town. Physical distance was not in itself a barrier to local music-making (though social access could be), and people regularly

67

M U S I C A N D SOC I A I3 I L I T Y

moved out o f their immediate localities by foot, cycle, car, bus or taxi to one or more regular meeting-places. This did not usually mean pioneering strange localities, though there were always first times and relative unfamiliarities on the way, but of following known and in the subjective sense 'near' path­ways. To outsiders the 'back streets' in Fenny Stratford seemed out of the way, as did the complicated and 'remote' venue of the Gladiator Club (off the bus route and over the cramped canal bridge at the playing fields on the edge of Bletchley) - yet to the regular attenders of the Amateur Operatic Society's Wednesday evening practices on the one hand, or the frequenters of the fortnightly country and western music club on the other, they were near and familiar. Similarly, the journeys in turn to Aspley Guise in one direction and Stony Stratford in another were close paths for those in the jazz world, while the singers who went out every Wednesday evening to the Sherwood Choir in the sports pavilion beside the playing field, so hard to find for outsiders, followed a regular and familiar route. Subjectively they never travelled far, certainly not to 'alien' localities.

Travelling in and beyond the city did involve an element of moving through an unknown environment to reach the familiar destinations; but from the viewpoint of those with experience their pathways were punctuated by known landmarks. There were the houses of friends, colleagues and teachers, churches, schools or pubs where people had heard or given performances, halls where they had rehearsed, streets or squares where they had witnessed a brass band or a Morris group performance, shops where they had bought music or displayed their posters. A gang of young people meeting to travel to London for a concert might seem to be undertaking a lengthy journey; but if the participants were bound together by, for example, their shared passion for their local band the Crew, and rendezvoused at the White Hart, where the Crew had so often performed to their plaudits, then travelled together in their jointly hired coach to cheer on their band collectively in the national competition and return late at night in triumph, it was only a small extension of their already known paths. Even going to as yet unvisited localities for some familiar purpose meant some predictability in otherwise strange contexts. Think of a band going to play at an unknown pub, for example, an experienced choral singer joining a new choir, a folk enthusiast attending different clubs throughout the country: because of the known and established pathways, people could move through apparently wide spaces and not see them as presenting serious obstacles of either distance or of the cold impersonality sometimes assumed typical of urban life outside the home.

One feature of local musical activities is worth recalling again; their regularity. Most choirs, instrumental groups, operatic societies, music clubs, music teaching and popular bands met repeatedly in the same place. The routes were thus regular ones, pathways that telescoped what might be distant in other respects and that could be perceived as under the particip­ants' control. There was no single musical 'community', but neither were

68

>

P A T H W A Y S I N U R D A N L I V I N G

there merely alien bricks and mortar; rather, musical participants marked out their own social and spatial settings by the pathways they drew through the town and in the venues and actions which in a sense constituted and sanctified these paths. It is not only non-literate peoples who, as described in the standard anthropological work, develop a specific 'world view' through which their spatial classifications are structured in parallel to their dominant interests and values. The same could be seen in the activities and movements of late-twentieth-century musical practitioners in Milton Keynes.

In modern urban society, as elsewhere, people also order their lives in terms of 'time' - another well-known topic in social science, where the stress is now often on the social use and perception of time rather than its 'objective measurement',8 Going on rrom there, a contrast has also often been made between the 'rational' or 'clock' -dominated time resulting from industrialisation and the 'socially' or 'cyclically' orientated time held to be typical of non-industrial cultures .' This is a widely believed distinction about which the experience of local musical pathways raises some questions.

One pertinent example is the folk musician mentioned in chapter 6 who was also an electrical engineer in a local firm and whose time was ordered not just by his work - though this was one element - but by his evening commitments. For him the reality of his existence throughout time was, week after week after week, structured by his musical interests, for each day of the week was marked by the particular folk club he participated in that night: Monday, the Hogsty Folk Club, Tuesday, The Black Horse Folk Club . . . and so on through the week. Other folk musicians had similar cycles. These were extreme cases - people who 'lived for folk' - but they were not unparalleled. There were many individuals whose weekly cycle focussed on four, five or even more evenings or weekends at regular musical engagements on top of full-time employment during the day. There was the middleschool teacher who accompanied the local Gilbert and Sullivan group on Mondays and Thursdays and a choir on Wednesdays, played the cello in the Wolverton Light Orchestra on Tuesdays, and sometimes percussion in a youth wind band on Fridays; or the instrumental teacher who, not content with all-day musical work, spent Wednesday evenings conducting a choir, Thursdays in the Sherwood Sinfonia, Fridays and Saturday mornings conducting a wind band, and playing concerts with his own group most weekends; or the small band members, like those in Offbeat or the Memories, who met to practise three times or more in the week. It was not uncommon either for brass band players to befong to more than one band, each demanding two practices a week and frequent public performances, and many keen singers belonged to two, even three choirs, like the tenor who spent Tuesdays at the Fellowship Choir, Wednesdays at the Sherwood Choir, and Thursdays at the Canzonetta Singers.

The timing of musical events followed similar weekly patterning. Pubs normally arranged their live music on a named day (or days) of the week,

69

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

trying to build u p a habit among their clientele o f classifying, say, every Friday night as the one to be spent at that pub. The local folk and jazz clubs were also organised on weekly cycles so that the real enthusiasts (like the folk musician above) could go to a different one all or most evenings in the week; thus a new club or venue trying to establish itself had to take account of other pulls on given nights of the week. When the popular Muzaks club was founded at a New Bradwell pub the organisers chose Mondays as 'a night when little was on', and the Blue Yodel fortnightly country music club started by the White Hart in 198 1 quickly shifted from Thursdays to Fridays when they discovered that Thursdays already had other competing clubs. A group of local rock enthusiasts founded the Gap both to fill the hole in their kind of music and 'to bridge the gap' between Muzaks on Mondays and the Wednesday Woughton Rock Nites. Predictable weekly patterns of this kind were part of the agreed - if often unspoken - conven­tions of local musical practitioners, even of those who only spent one evening a week on music. They formed one social mechanism by which people marked out the division of their time - and hence of their activities and their lives.

Cycles based on the week were the most prominent, and, indeed, seem to be important in structuring time in our culture generally. But there were also longer cycles. Some were multiples of the weekly unit and worked on the same principles, fitting in with the expected planning mechanisms of, for example, booking halls on named days of the week. Fortnightly timing was often interlocked to form weekly cycles and 'monthly' meetings arranged to fall on the same day each month (in effect a 4- or 5-weekly interval), like the local organ society on the last Thursday of every month, a predictable and regular date for its members.

Other time sequences were performance-related. Many larger musical groups like choirs, operatic societies, or orchestras gave two or three main concerts during the year, and each of these implied its own internal cycle in addition to the weekly timing of the regular rehearsals. Each planned performance had its known pattern of preparation, tension and climax which in itself provided a measure of the passing of time. So that familiar performance-oriented cycle was not an undifferentiated or unproductive continuum but a meaningful and, in the strict sense, significant ordering of activity. Parallels were to be found in just about all forms of musical performance, sometimes less regularly spaced or lengthy than in the larger concert-giving groups but still with recognisable preparation-to-performance cycles. Once again, the predictable sequence of events had implications for the control and, as it were, the creation of time divisions for both players and other participants.

Yearly occasions were also important, following the annual cycle once again apparently so basic in our culture. Several local events were expected to occur just once a year, and for those involved the preliminary planning,

70

pi

P A T H W A Y S I N U R B A N L I V I N G

immediate run-up, execution and aftermath were often significant processes which imposed a meaningful structure on the passing months. For those participating, they were not one-off incidents but important occasions which depended on many months' anticipation and recollection. Every March, for example, the local middle school in Bletchley joined in the Bletchley and District Middle School Music Festival. Over 200 children from nine or more local middle schools had been practising separately for months ready to play and sing together for two evenings to hundreds of parents and friends, the highlight being a specially composed orchestral and choral work. Parallel primary-school festivals took place in other parts of Milton Keynes, as well as dance displays to music, like the Annual Folk Dance Festival held in Bletchley since 1 953. Another yearly event that perhaps demanded even more planning and caused more of a general stir in the locality was the Milton Keynes (earlier Bletchley) Festival of Arts, which by the early eighties had grown to a festival lasting a week or more every February and attracting several thousand entrants and scores of helpers. Or again, there was the 'Folk on the Green' day every June - 'one of the family high spots of the local musical year', according to a local teacher and musician - which had come to be known by both the 3,000 or so participants and the local residents as once more the familiar time for the Stony Stratford celebra­tions. There was also the large-scale February Festival started by the BMK recreation department (creating much heart-burning for those committed to the often-conflicting Festival of Arts), the annual brass band festival, and a whole host of neighbourhood- and church-based festivals like the 'St Andrews Prom', the Spurgeon choir 'Carols for Everyone', the Cock and Bull Festival, the Black Horse Folk Day, the Milton Keynes Village Festival, the annual switching on of the Christmas lights (usu�lIy complete with bands) and the carnival in Newport Pagnell. Even their annual barn dances to a ceilidh band held by many local PTAs and sports clubs, though less visible to outsiders, formed a meaningful sign for those in the group that, once again, the due time of year had come round. ,

Some points in the year were marked by a special proliferation of musical - and other - celebrations, giving the lie to the common assumption that there is no longer an annual calendar in urban Britain. There were regularly special social and musical events in the pubs to mark such dates as St Valentine's Day, Burns Night, St Patrick's Night, Easter, Midsummer, Bank Holiday weekends in May and August, Hallowe'en and New Year's Eve. Doubtless it suited the pubs and others to fix on such dates to draw in customers, but it was still significant that those were the ones used to mark out the passing of the year. Edmund Leach's comment is as applicable to English as to non-industrial culture: 'We talk of measuring time, as if time were a concrete thing waiting to be measured; but in fact we create time by creating intervals in social life. Until we have done this there is no time to be measured' (Leach 1966, p. 1 35).

7 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

For almost all kinds of music, Christmas was the high point of the musical year. That was the season when, all through December and with increasing intensity as Christmas Day itself approached, musical groups of all kinds were putting on concerts, appearing at parties, singing carols in the streets, the schools and the old people's homes, playing brass instruments out of doors, holding special carol services, and performing musical nativity plays. This was the time of year too when musicians were in demand, often bound into different performances for days or nights on end or torn between conflicting commitments. There was a festival quality at this season distinguished from the rest of the year by a series of ceremonial markers, but pre-eminently by music. To quote Leach again:

All over the world men mark out their calendars by means of festivals . . . among the various functions which the holding of festivals may fulfil, one very important function is the ordering of time. The interval between two successive festivals of the same type is a 'period', usually a named period, e.g. 'week', 'year'. Without the festivals, such periods would not exist, and all order would go out of social life.

(Leach 1 966, pp. 1 32, 1 34-5)

It was through the recurrent rituals of the year - Christmas above all, but also all the other musical celebrations observed in the locality, large or small - that people's consciousness of time was in part created and the intervals in social life marked out.

This leads back once more to the earlier discussion, for if we follow an emergent definition of 'community', then it could be argued that periodic musical festivals can indeed play a part in how - in a situational and relative way - people can experience a sense of 'community', musically defined and marked, at certain points in the unfolding of the year. As Roger Abrahams put it in his disclission of rituals in culture,

How may we even go about defining community for ourselves when there are so many conflicting claims on our loyalties? . . . Given the direction of society today, I suppose we must say simply that com­munities will define themselves as they organize into communities, and that the deepest part of this organization will be the establish­ment of rituals.

( 1 977, pp. 46-7)

Among the foundations for this emergent sense of community, however ephemeral and situational, must be included the work put by local musicians into forming the public rituals which themselves in turn help to create the festival realisation and cyclical shaping of the localities in which they practise.

72

pa

P A T H W A Y S t N U R B A N L I V I N G

The ordering of time, therefore - and hence of other shared symbols and practices - in and through local music is not after all so very different from the social and symbolic cycles so commonly described for non-industrial cultures. It seems that the theorists who see a radical divide in the social organisation of time after industrialisation have missed some of the charac­teristics of our continuing cultural reality ." In their regular music-making local musicians and their associates are dominated not by mathematically rational principles but by socially recognised and recurrent practices: the weekly, seasonal or yearly cycles set by and in the habitual musical pathways they jointly share with others.

One way of looking at people's musical activities is therefore to see them as taking place along a series of pathways which provide familiar directions for both personal choices and collective actions. Such pathways form one important - if often unstated - framework for people's participation in urban life, something overlapping with, but more permanent and structured than, the personal networks in which individuals also participate. They form broad routes set out, as it were, across and through the city. They tend to be invisible to others, but for those who follow them they constitute a clearly laid thoroughfare both for their activities and relationships and for the meaningful structuring of their actions in space and time. Some pathways are made up of the regular activities related to membership of particular local brass bands, for example, or - extending more broadly - to brass band activity on a regional or national basis; others to involvement in classical orchestral or choral groups and performances; others again to country and western music, to folk groups and clubs, to operatic or pantomime perform­ances, or, more narrowly, to some specific musical or partly musical group like the local Irish society. Not all involve organised . groups, for there are also the practices followed by individuals like the private instrumental teachers or the organists in local churches, where, once again, the pathway is a recognised one with accepted conventions about their roles and their musical, educational or religious functions. These many pathwaJs, then, are culturally established ways through which people structure their activities on habitual patterns that - however unnoticed by outsiders - are known to and shared with others.

Such pathways are relative only and, despite their continuity over time, Changing rather than absolute - unlike the picture conveyed by the more concrete-sounding and bounded concepts of 'world' or 'community'. People follow out their lives not from nothing but along a series of familiar paths from which they variously construct their own individual routes. Where people's own paths touch on and share with others - as so often in musical contexts - they find themselves on well-trodden pathways where, with all the openings to individual deviance and innovation, certain predictable conventions are already established. Some pathways are wider and belter known (shared with large numbers of people and extending far beyond the

73

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

immediate locality), others are narrower; some are well trodden and clearly marked out with few alternative routes, others larger with more room -indeed need - for variation and new starts; some are highly particularistic (the pathway followed perhaps by just one small idiosyncratic local group or by a band with a distinctive voice of its own); others, like the choirs with their own individual 'personalities', include some unique features, yet join in the broad stream of the widespread choral tradition in this country.

Individual participation in these pathways varies too, of course. For some people a particular pathway (brass bands, for example) is a lifelong commit­ment - a pilgrimage from cradle to grave; while for others that, or another, pathway is something they follow less continuously, perhaps leaving at certain points in their lives to return again later, perhaps only coming in at one stage. Even for the intermittent participants, though, the pathway of shared expectations still in a sense remains irrespective of their own absences and presences, a structured and predictable channel for their participation.

Note again, though, that the musical pathways form only one part of their participants' lives. Even the 'cradle-to-grave' follower may only spend a certain proportion of life in musical practice and is bound to have other interests and tics too: family obligations, other leisure activities, perhaps a series of jobs or other full- or part-time work commitments, and so on - in other words, many other pathways as well as the musical ones.

In this sense the multiplicity of pathways matches the heterogeneity often seen as characteristic of urban life, the overlap of many relatively distinct paths reflecting the many-sided, situational, often changing lives that people lead in towns today. But they bring, too, a sense of belonging and reality: travelling not in an alien environment but along familiar paths in time and space, in family continuity and habitual action. The pathways have their continuities too. They depend on regular sets of largely predictable and purposeful activities that it is easy to overlook if attention is focussed pri­marily on networks of individuals or the interaction of multiple special­interest groups. Not everyone follows these particular pathways, of course. But those who do are scarcely likely to agree either with the anonymous letter-writer complaining of the lack of 'community spirit' in Milton Keynes or with social theorists positing impersonality, alienation or calculation as the basis of urban life. For they are themselves forging and keeping open the routes which to them bring not just value and meaning but one frame­work for living in space and time. The specific conditions within Milton Keynes (or any locality) are likely to be unique, but I have no doubt that other towns too have their pathways which represent neither tight-knit 'com­munity' nor alien anonymity but one established and habitual way in which people find their meaning in urban living.

These pathways, then, are one of the ways in which people within an urban environment organise their lives so as to manage, on the one hand, the heterogeneity and multiplicity of relationships characteristic of many

74

P A T H W A Y S I N U R B A N L I V I N G

aspects o f modern society, and, o n the other, that sense o f both predictable familiarity and personally controlled meaning that is also part of human life. In our culture there are many pathways that people do, and must, follow - within employment, schooling, households, sport, church, child-rearing. Within these many paths, who is to say that the pathways to do with music are the least important, either for their participants or in the infinite mix of crossways that make up an urban locality and, ultimately, our culture?

There is one final point to re-emphasise. This is that the continuance of these pathways - so often either ignored or taken for granted as 'just there' - depends not on the existence in some abstract sphere of particular musical 'works', but on people's collective and active practice on the ground. The structure and extent of this work by the local grass-roots musicians and their supporters often goes unrecognised. Many examples have been given in earlier chapters, but the general point must be stressed again: these path­ways of music-making are not 'natural' ones that cut their own way through the bush, but were opened up and kept trodden by those who worked them. This is very clear with innovative forms of music-making, where people are creating new pathways; but exactly the same point applies to keeping up the older established paths where even 'tradition' means active fosterage if it is to be maintained. Some people can drop out from time to time, but enough must continue to keep the paths clear so that when one group dissolves or one individual passes on their work is replaced or complemented by that of others. The old picture of blind tradition passing mechanically down the generations, as if irrespective of human act, is easily rejected once made explicit, but it still often influences us into assuming that our accepted cultural forms - classical music performances, church choirs, brass bands, rock groups in pubs, carol singing at Christmas - somehow carry on automatically. On the contrary. These paths may be trodden deep, but they only continue because thousands of people up and down the country put thousands of hours and an unmeasurable quantity of personal GOmmitment into keeping them open. As Peter Burke put it of the classical culture of earlier centuries:

The classical tradition . . . has often been described in terms of metaphors like 'survival' or 'inheritance' or 'legacy'; one needs to make an effort to remember that this inheritance was not auto­matic, that it depended on beating some knowledge of certain classical authors into generation after generation of schoolboys.

( 1 980, p. 4)

Exactly the same point could be made of the traditions of local music­making in modern towns and the manner in which they - among other pathways - constitute the structure and rituals through which people live

75

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

out their lives. Some paths go out o f use, others are kept trodden only with a struggle, some seem for a time effortlessly open. But all depend on the constant hidden cultivation by active participants of the musical practices that, with all their real (not imaginary) wealths and meanings, keep in being the old and new cultural traditions within OUf society.

Notes

The population during the period of the study was of the order of 1 00,000-1 40,000 (varying at different periods). Five to 6 per cent of the population sounds not so very different from the findings of the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, in which 1 35 (4.1 per cent) of a sample of 3,3 1 3 36-year-olds said they played musical instruments with others and had done so in the last 2 weeks (singing was not included) (thanks to Dr Mike Wadsworth for supplying me with this information); but direct comparison is difficult, partly because of age differences (the Milton Keynes population figures of course covered the full age range, i.e. included the under-fives and the very elderly); there is also the problem of deciding just who counts as 'local': some members of Milton Keynes-based groups worked or travelled into Milton Keynes rather than residing there, while some residents travelled elsewhere for their musical activities. There are few comparative figures available on participation in amateur, part-time or local music: the ESRC Data Archive did not have any data sets on this in mid 1985, and Nissel's authoritative survey of statistics on the arts concludes that 'the full extent of participation in amateur music-making remains uncharted ground' (Nissel 1 983, p. 90). So even if the figures here are an accurate guide to local practice it is not possible to conclude how typical this is.

2 Practically all drawn from Milton Keynes players and singers apart from a small contingent from the Buckingham 'Swan' and 'Cygnet' junior orchestras. The North Bucks Music Centre in Bletchley was one of two music centres serving Milton Keynes; the other - with its own clutch of music groups - was based at Stantonbury.

3 These are well-worn themes in social science, with a long history of discussion and controversy. I have found the following particularly illuminating (not that their authors would necessarily approve my approach): Pahl 1966, 1975, Stacey 1969, Neuwirth 1969, Spradley 1 970, Bell and Newby 1 97 1 , Fischer 1977, Hannerz 1980, Abrams 1980, Wild 1 98 1 , 1984, Wright 1 984, Lloyd 1984, Cohen 1985, Bulmer 1986. A full theoretical analysis would no doubt rehearse the different senses of, for example, 'community', but neither space nor the general balance of this study permits more than a general discussion in relation to the specific implications of local musical practice in Milton Keynes.

4 An expectation reinforced by such common conclusions as that in Tomlinson's authoritative survey of leisure clubs and associations that such 'essentially primary groups . . . usually exhibit high degrees of sociability; interpersonal con­tact and purely social activity are often as important as the activity itself' ( 1 979, p. 39).

5 See, e.g., Mitchell 1 969, 1 974, Boissevain and Mitchell 1973, Hannerz 1 980, chap. 5, Abrams 1980 and (on quasi-groups) Mayer 1966.

6 A detailed quantitative survey of the Milton Keynes population as a whole, which I did not have the opportunity to undertake, might lead to a modification of this conclusion, but I doubt it.

76

P A T H W A Y S I N U R B A N L I V I N G

7 E.g. the overlapping (if slightly differing) approaches in Hall 1959, chap. 10, Spradley 1970, Downs and Stea 1977, Thornton 1980, Ardener 1 98 1 ( I would modify some of these approaches to focus more on habitual practice than on the cognitive elements, but in other respects their insights arc extremely pertinent for local musical practice).

8 Influential treatments include, among others, Evans-Pritchard 1939, Gurvitch 1958, Hall 1959, Fraisse 1963, Bourdieu 1963, Leach 1966; see also Finnegan 1982 (and further references there) and following note.

9 See e.g. Eliade 1965, Thompson 1967, Hearn 1975, lahoda 1982, pp. 22ff. 10 A parallel critique to that presented here is found in May McCann's account

of 'the past in the present' in some Northern Irish music (McCann 1985, esp. chap. I I); cf. also Finnegan 1 982.

References

References include only those heavily relied on or directly cited, and do not therefore constitute a comprehensive bibliography of any of the topics touched on in this volume.

Abrahams, Roger D. 1977. Rituals in culture, Folklore Preprint Series, 5, I , Bloomington, Folklore I nstitute

Abrams, Philip. 1980. Social change, social networks and neighbourhood care. Social Work Service, 22, 12-23

ArdeneI', Shirley (ed.). 1 98 1 . Women and space: ground rules and social maps. London, Croom Helm

Bell, Colin and Howard Newby. 1 97 1 . Community studies: an introduction to the SOciology of tile local community. London, Allen and Unwin

Boissevain, Jeremy and J. Clyde Mitchell (eds.). 1973. Network analysis. The Hague, Mouton

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1963. The attitude of the Algerian peasant towards time. I n J . Pitt-Rivers (ed.), Mediterranean countrymen. Paris, Mouton

Bulmer, Martin. 1986. Neighbours: tile work of Philip Abrams.' Cambridge, Cam­bridge University Press

Burke, Peter. 1978. Popular clilture in early modern Europe. London, Temple Smith

Cohen, Anthony P. 1985a. The symbolic constmclion of comnumity. London, Tavistock Downs, Roger M. and David Stea. 1977. Maps in minds: reflections on cognitive

mapping. London and New York, Harper and Row Eliade, Mircea. 1965. The myth of the eternal return. Princeton, Princeton University

Press Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1939. Nuer time-reckoning. Africa, 12, 189-2 1 6 Finnegan, R. 1982. 'Short time to stay': comments on time, literature and oral per­

formance. Hans Wolff Memorial Lecture, African Studies Program, Bloomington, Indiana University

Fischer, Claude S. 1977. Networks and places: social relations in the urban selling. New York, Free Press

Fraisse, Paul. 1963. The pjyclwlogy of time. Eng. trans., New York, Harper and Row

Gurvitch, Georges. 1 958. Structures sociales et multiplicite des temps. Bulletin de la societe fram;:aise de philosoph ie, 50, 99-142

77

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Hall, Edward T. 1 959. The silent language. New York, Doubleday 1980. Exploring the city: inquiries toward WI urban anthropology. New York,

Columbia University Press Hannerz, Uir. 1980. Exploring the city: inquiries toward an urban anthropology.

New York, Columbia University Press Hearn, Frank. 1975. Remembrance and critique: the uses of the past for discrediting

the present and anticipating the future. Politics and Society, S, 201-27 Jahoda, Marie. 1 982. Employment and unemployment: a social-psycllO/ogica/ (lnalysis.

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press Leach, Edmund. 1966. Time and false noses. In Two essays concerning the symbolic

representation of time, Rethinking anthropology. London, Athlone Press Lloyd, Peter. 1 984. Community action: panacea or placebo. Royal Anthropological

Institute Nellis, 63, 1 3-1 5 Mayer, Adrian C. 1 966. The significance of quasi-groups in the study of complex

societies. In Banton, Michael (ed.). 1966. The social anthropology of complex societies. London, Tavistock

McCann, May. 1985. The past in the present: a study of some aspects of the politics of music in Belfast. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University, Belfast

Mitchell, J. Clyde. 1974. Social networks. Annual review oj anlhropology, 3, 279-99 Mitchell, J. Clyde (ed.). 1 969. Social nellvorks in urban situations. Manchester,

Manchester University Press Neuwirth, Gertrud. 1969. A Weberian outline of a theory of community: its applica­

tion to the 'Dark Ghetto'. British Jou/'I1al of Sociology, 20, 148-63 Nissel, Muriel (ed.). 1983. Facts aboUl the arts: a summary of available statistics.

London, Policy Studies Institute Pahl, R. E. 1 966. The rural-urban continuum. Sociologia Ruralis, 6, 299-329

1 975. Whose city? and other essays on sociology and planning. Hannondsworth, Penguin

Spradley, James P. 1 970. You olve yourself a drunk: an ethnography 0/ urban nomads. Boston, Little, Brown

Stacey, Margaret. 1 969. The myth of community studies. British Joumal of Sociology, 20, 1 34-47

Thompson, E. P. 1967. Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism. Past and Presen" 38, 56-97

Thornton, Robert J. 1980. Space, time and cliiture among the Il'aqw of Tanzania. New York, Academic Press

Tomlinson, Alan. 1979. Leisure and the role of clubs and voluntary groups. London, Sports Council and Social Science Research Council

Weber. Max. 1947. The theory of social and economic organization. Eng. trans., New York, Oxford University Press 1 958. The rational and social foundations of music, trans. and cd. by D. Martindale

et ai., Carbondale, Southern lliinois U niversity Press Wild, R . A. 1 98 1 . Australian community studies and beyond. Sydney. Allen and Unwin

1984. Community studies: an overview. Paper at SSRC Community Studies Workshop, Aston University

Wright, Susan. 1 984. Rural communities and decision makers. Royal Anthropological Institute News, 63, 9-1 3

78

..

64

S YS T E M S O F A RT I C U LAT I O N,

L O G I C S OF C H A N G E :

C O M M UN I T I E S A N D S C E N E S

I N P O P U L A R M U S I C

Will Straw

Source: Cullum! Studies 5(3) (1991): 368-88.

'The Music Industry in a Changing World': concluding remarks I

The most welcome feature of the conference on which this Cultural Studies is based was the sense that issues perpetually on the agenda at meetings of popular-music scholars were being held up for re-examination. I n large measure, this was dictated by the 'Changing World' of the conference's title, and in the autumn of 1 990 that phrase was more res·onant than usual. Global ownership trends within the cultural industries and the emergence of a unified and enlarged European market had cast doubts on the continued usefulness of such long-entrenched unities as 'Anglo-Ameriq�n rock', as Simon Frith's presentation suggested. A panel dealing with the relationship between popular music and the state revealed a divergence of interests between European and United States scholars, most notably around censor­ship and record labelling controversies and the degree to which these should be seen as central to the contemporary politics of popular music .'

Almost as striking, given the long-standing preoccupation of popular­music scholars with the concept of conlIl1Unity, was the growing influence of certain tendencies within cultural theory, in particular those marked by an engagement with concepts of space and nation. The caution which has accompanied discussions of musical authenticity within popular-music studies has only recently come to be directed at notions of a regional or national musical space .' This is reflected, in part, in a new interest in the diversity of musical practices unfolding within particular urban centres, one of whose

79

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

effects has been to undermine claims as to the uniformity o f local musical cultures. Within Canadian and Quebecois discussions of popular music, this same caution has been evident in critical responses to (or crises in) the politics of cultural nationalism, echoes of which were heard in conference debates over the link between music and cultural identity.

The long-standing concern of popular-music scholars with the disruption and fragmentation of cultural communities has often masked - in part through its nobility of purpose - the investment in imaginary unities which underlies it. Those encountering ethnomusicological studies for the first time after an apprenticeship in the hermeneutics of suspicion may, like myself, be struck by the prominence within them of notions of cultural totality or claims asserting the expressive unity of musical practices. Many of these premises have been maintained, albeit in a much less coherent form, in the sociology and criticism of rock music. Here, the articulatory force of specific musical practices has often displaced the integrity of cultural communities as the guarantee of music's meaningfulness, but one may still find a privileg­ing of the geographically local as guarantee of the historical continuity of musical styles.

If the status of the local has been transformed within contemporary societies, this is in part through the workings of what Edward Said has called an 'increasingly universal system of articulation' (Said, 1990: 8). This 'system' is, obviously, shaped by economic and institutional globalization, and it is the task of a critical political economy to account for its effects. (Paul Rutten's paper, pages 292-303 in this issue, offers useful tools for doing so.) The risk remains that an emphasis on the disruptive effects of economic reordering will result in the valorization of musical practices perceived to be rooted in geographical, historical and cultural unities which are stable and conflated. Popular-music scholars and analysts of the cultural industries have generally been less attentive to ways in which this same system of articulation is produced by migrations of populations and the formation of cultural diaspora which have transformed the global circulation of cultural forms, creating lines of influence and solidarity different from, but no less meaningful than those observable within geographically circum­scribed communilies.4

These transformations require, of those studying popular music, more than well-intended gestures in the direction of multicultural diversity. They invite an attention to the distinctive logics of change and forms of valoriza­tion characteristic of different musical practices, as these are disseminated through their respective cultural communities and institutional sites. Two specific examples of this system of articulation - those characteristic of the cultures of alternative rock and dance music - will be discussed in detail later in this essay. In each case, and perhaps unsurprisingly, one may find distinctive relationships between localism as a musical value and the arti­culatory system of which Said speaks.

80

S Y S T E M S O F A R T I C U L A T I O N , L O G I C S OF C H A N G E

Canadian academics who are engaged in speaking and writing about popular music, like myself, sometimes express our growing scepticism at the way in which intermittent returns to older musical traditions by popular musicians within Canada and Quebec have been enshrined as moments of disengagement from the functioning of the international music industries. The Quebecois folk-rock of the early 1970s and country-rock of English­Canadian post-punk cultures offer rich and valued examples of successful national traditions, and their place within historical accounts is well deserved. At the same time, however, each emerged within international industrial and cultural contexts which shaped the conditions of existence and certain of the 'meanings' of musical localism throughout Western countries. This interlocking of local tendencies and cyclical transformations within the inter­national music industries is particularly striking in the case of contemporary Quebec, whose recording industry has been revitalized by an ongoing series of dance-pop stars passing from music-video networks to Top 40 radio and television talk shows.

At the same time, the criteria of public support for popular recordings within Canada frequently presume patterns of career development, forms of collaboration and a relationship between domestic and international popularity which implicitly privilege the rock group over the dance-music production team, the album over the single, and the gradual building of an audience base over the rapid circulation of recordings through a dispersed group of metropolitan centres. While at least five British music-oriented magazines have run recent cover stories on a Toronto rap group - The Dream Warriors - and the local contexts of its emergence, there is a strik­ing absence of media coverage of this activity within Canada. One finds, at the same time, little sense that such activity corresponds to, the objectives of domestic music-oriented policy or the concerns of those engaged in defining a national musical culture. Basing a politics of local or Canadian music on the search for musical forms whose relationship to musical communities is that of a long-term and evolving expressivity will lead us to overlook ways in which the making and remaking of alliances between communities are the crucial political processes within popular music.

The Carleton conference appeared to signal a relative decline in the importance of the United States as a privileged point of reference in discus­sions of popular music. There were obvious reasons for this: a reduction in the number of US-owned major recording· firms, the much-diagnosed 'crisis' of rock music and its mythico-ideologiciil bases, and the recent interest of popular-music scholars in public policies intended to achieve economic growth (a concern relatively rare within US research). lody Berland's paper was, nevertheless, a useful reminder that the new globalization of the cultural industries is unlikely to alter regional or hemispheric patterns of economic subordination. Less certain, in the Canadian context, is the extent to which arguments for national economic self-determination in the music industries

8 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

must necessarily be backed by claims o f diminishing diversity or the isola­tion of national musical forms for protection. Amidst the observable busyness of metropolitan music scenes - and given the noticeable fragmentation of musical tastes among academics, their students, and music policy-makers - arguments in defence of domestic record manufacturing and distribution facilit·ies posed in the language of economic viability have increasingly displaced debates over the sorts of music to be protected.

The heartland as collapsing centre

In November 1 990, Billboard magazine published a front-page 'Special Report' entitled 'Rock losing grip as other genres gain' (DiMartino and Duffy, 1990). The story which unfolded therein followed the familiar contours of accounts of centres which can no longer hold. What is declining, the report suggested, was mainstream rock of the so-called US 'heartland', of the sort associated with such artists as Tom Petty or John Cougar Mellencamp. More generally, it was claimed, the contemporary youth audience for popular music is being polarized between the 'extremes' of dance-based pop and heavy metal. As Billboard's reporters made the rounds of record-company personnel seeking out reasons for this decline, a number of explanations were offered. This slump in mainstream rock was either cyclical, the result of popular music's political edge having moved, tem­porarily, into rap music; or it was a sign of the absence of new performers working this particular musical terrain. Some of those interviewed suggested simply sitting out what they called the era of 'fads' and disposable pop 'sound bites' until the durable values of Midwestern rock made their return.

The most revealing of these interviews was with Hugo Burnham, described as 'A & R director at Island Records and a punk survivor who once played drums with Gang of Four'. Burnham suggested that:

[R]ock music is losing ground because there's not an awful lot new that's happened to rock music since punk . . . . Since then, what is generally seen as rock music has been so regenerative stylistically and musically to the point where it's generic [sic]. The whole pop metal scene is all form over content.

(DiMartino and Duffy, 1990: 100)

One need not share Burnham's judgement of these events to see within his diagnosis a recognition of important transformations within the culture of Western popular music. The decline of heartland rock as a specific form is less significant than is the more general waning of a distinctive sense (how­ever fantasmatic) of rock music's centre - as involving the articulation of regional, authorial visions with a presumed affective appeal across the broad international culture of Western popular music. A view of rock music's

82

S Y S T E M S OF A R T I C U L A T I O N , L O G I C S O F C H A N G E

history as an ongoing succession o f such visions - questionable, in any case -is less and less appropriate when the 'regions' from which performers emerge arc most often relatively insular (but geographically dispersed) generic traditions, or particular positions within the social relations of the Western city.

If, at onc level, these changes are rooted in processes of internationaliza­tion and the diminished importance of the US market, then a comparison with the film industry suggests itself. Press coverage of that industry through­out 1990 and the early months of 1 99 1 pointed repeatedly to a growing gulf between the domestic and international markets for US-made feature films. Most often, this gulf was described in terms of a difference between the small budgets deemed necessary to long-term industry health and the need, in order to achieve international success, for high production values and expensive stars. More elaborate readings of this situation offered versions of a no-more-Driving-Miss-Daisies scenario: the disappearance of unspectacular, dramatically complex and culturally specific low-budget films as a result of producers catering to the perceived needs of the international market (e.g., Turner, 199 1 ; Landro, 1990).

This comparison is convincing if one accepts that the quasi-monopoly of the big-budget action film grows out of similar conditions to those which have brought about Hugo Burnham's triumph of form over content, and that the effects of these changes are identical. This is a correspondence, nevertheless, which r would wish to dispute. In the case of the film indus­try one does have, perhaps, evidence of the domination of what Michael Dorland has labelled films from 'the modern nowhere', texts partaking of a set of international generic shorthands (Dorland, 1987: 4) ' If the condition of contemporary popular music is quite distinct, howev�r, this is because processes of internationalization within it have served to reproduce a complex diversity - rather than a coherent uniformity - from one urban centre to another. While the consumption practices of film audiences are far from homogeneous, popular music is, nevertheless, marke<\. to a much greater extent by its importance within processes of social differentiation and interaction. The drawing and enforcing of boundaries between musical forms, the marking of racial, class-based and gender differences, and the maintenance of lines of communication between dispersed cultural com­munities are all central to the elaboration of musical meaning and value. What the analyst may reconstruct in the case of the cinema - the correlation of tastes and consumption patterns with categories of social identity - is a much more explicit and resonant component of the sense music fans make of their own involvement in the culture of popular music.

In this respect, there is a certain clumsy aptness in Burnham's argument that rock has become 'generic', or that pop metal embodies the triumph of 'form over content'. In a very real sense, the social and cultural spaces within which dance-pop music or heavy metal flourish are likely to remain

83

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

stable for the foreseeable future. Like virtually all those forms which have emerged in the last fifteen years, they are less likely to recede with cyclical change than continue to develop within the cultural spaces appropriate to them. The coherence of these spaces is rooted in such characteristics as their rates of change and turnover, the sorts of values attached, within them, to performer personae, and the forms and degrees of involvement in musical cul­ture which they presume. While these characteristics may crystallize around particular musical forms, such as heavy metal, they are more usefully seen as defining musical terrains within which a variety of forms may be integrated.

Within this complex of cultural spaces, heartland rock will be seen as no more central and no less ethnically or racially specific than any other form. Its decline is due less to an internal ideological crisis of the rock project than to the ethnicization of white popular musical forms more generally. This ethnicization may be seen as the long-delayed recognition, in the casc of forms often regarded as historically privileged or central, that their position­ing (and that of their audiences) within a set of social and cultural relations is more determinant of their meanings than their genealogical heritage or capacity to evoke myths of community. Even within audiences which are predominantly white, the cultural terrain normally associated with main­stream, heartland rock has been fractured along the lines of age and taste: firstly, by the seemingly permanent institution of the alternative rock scene as the locus of musical activity for audiences involved in a connoisseurist fashion in rock music; secondly, by the continued importance of the young adolescent market to the turnover of successful records, and the alliance of this market with dance music and heavy metal; and, finally, by the hazy buying patterns of older adolescents and young adults, who are distributing their purchasing power across a wide array of catalogue or speciality materials newly available on ·compact disc.

Tel'll!s of allalysis

In a suggestive paper, Barry Shanks has pointed to the usefulness of a notion of 'scene' in accounting for the relationship between different musical practices unfolding within a given geographical space (Shanks, 1988). As a point of departure, one may posit a musical scene as distinct, in significant ways, from older notions of a musical community. The latter presumcs a population group whose composition is relatively stable - according to a wide range of sociological variables - and whose involvement in music takes the form of an ongoing exploration of one or more musical idioms said to be rooted within a geographically specific historical heritage. A musical scene, in contrast, is that cultural space in which a range of musical practices coexist, interacting with each other within a variety of processes of differentiation, and according to widely varying trajectories of change and cross-fertilization. The sense of purpose articulated within a musical

84

S Y S T E M S O F A R T I C U L A T I O N , L O G I C S O F C H A N G E

community normally depends on an affective link between two terms: contemporary musical practices, on the one hand, and the musical heritage which is seen to render this contemporary activity appropriate to a given context, on the other. Within a musical scene, that same sense of purpose is articulated within those forms of communication through which the building of musical alliances and the drawing of musical boundaries take place. The manner in which musical practices within a scene tie themselves to processes of historical change occurring within a larger international musical culture will also be a significant basis of the way in which such forms are positioned within that scene at the local level.

At one level, this distinction simply concretizes two countervailing pres­sures within spaces of musical activity: one towards the stabilization of local historical continuities, and another which works to disrupt such continuities, to cosmopolitanize and relativize them. Clearly, the point is not that of designating particular cultural spaces as one or the other, but of examining the ways in which particular musical practices 'work' to produce a sense of community within the conditions of metropolitan music scenes. This move ­recasting powerful unities as ideological effects - is obviously a familiar and rather conventional one within cultural theory, and my intention is not that of exposing the relativc status of notions of musical community (in what my friend Don Wallace calls the now-it-can-be-told! rhetoric of anticlimatic revelation). Nevertheless, as subsequent sections of this essay will argue, the cosmopolitan character of certain kinds of musical activity - their attentive­ness to change occurring elsewhere - may endow them with a unity of purpose and sense of participating in 'affective alliances' (Grossberg, 1 984) just as powerful as those normally observed within practices which appear to be more organically grounded in local circumstances.

The ongoing debate within popular-music studies ·over the relative

primacy of production and consumption has often precluded the analysis of what might be called the 'logics' of particular musical terrains ' I hope, in the sections which follow, to leave entangled three relevant prior uses of the term 'logic'. The first, drawn from Pierre Bourdieu's (e.g., 1979) notion of the 'field' of cultural practices, is meant to suggest those procedures through which principles of validation and means of accommodating change operate within particular cultural spaces so as to perpetuate their boundaries. I t may be argued that the complex and contradictory quality of cultural texts - to which cultural studies research has been so attentive - has prevented neither their circulation within societies nor thei·r alignment with particular popula­tion groups and cultural spaces from following regularized and relatively stable patterns. If this predictability is the result of semantic or ideological contradictions within these texts usually being resolved in favour of one set of meanings over others, then an analysis of these more general patterns, rather than of the conflicts which unfailingly produce them, may have a provisional usefulness at least.

85

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

The specificity of these 'fields', nevertheless, is shaped in part by the 'regions' they occupy, as markets and contexts of productIOn, relatIve to a given set of cultural institutions. Bernard Miege's ( 1 986: 94) elaboratIOn of a 'social logic' of cultural commodities, while concerned pnnclpally with processes of production, may be extended to an examination of the ways in which cultural commodities circulate within their appropnate markets and cultural terrains. If there is a specificity to cultural com­modities it has much to do with the ways in which their circulation through the soci;1 world is organized as a Iifecycle, in the course of which both the degree and basis of their appeal is likely to change .' Different cultural spaces are marked by the sorts of temporalities to be found wIthIn them - by the prominence of activities of canonization, or by the values accrUIng to novelty and currency, longevity and 'timelessness'. In this respect, the 'logic' of particular musical culture is a function of the way in which value IS constructed within them relative to the passing of time. Similarly, cultural commodities may themselves pass through a number of distinct markets and populations in the course of their lifecycles. Throughout this passage, the markers of their distinctiveness and the bases of their value may undergo significant shifts '

. . Finally, and in what is admittedly an act of trivialization and InfidelIty, I would take from the writings of M ichel de Certeau ( 1990) the sense of a logic of circumstantial moves. The preoccupation of music sociologists with the expressive substance of musical forms has often obscured the extent to which particular instances of change might best be explaIned In terms of an as-yet elusive microsociology of backlashes or of failed and successful attempts at redirection within a given cultural terraIn. ThIs IS partIcularly true in the case of contemporary dance-music culture, where, one might argue, there is little rationality to certain 'moves' (such as the 'Gregorian House' moment of early 1 99 1 ) beyond the retrospectIve sense of appro­priateness produced by their success. The risk of an analysis pursued along these lines is that it will result in little more than a formalIsm of cyclIcal change. One may nevertheless see the logic of these moves as grounded in the variable interaction between two social processes: (a) the struggles for prestige and status engaged in by professionals and others (such as disc jockeys) serving as 'intellectuals' within a given mUSICal terralll; and (b) the ongoing transformation of social and cultural relatIOns -. and of allIances between particular musical communities - occurrmg wlthlll the context of the contemporary Western city. An attentiveness to the interaction between these two processes is necessary if one is to avoid either of two traps: on the one hand, privileging the processes within popular musical culture whIch most resemble those of an 'art world' and overstating the dIrectIve or transformative force of particular agents within them; on the other, reading each instance of musical change or synthesis as unproblematic evidence of a reordering of social relations.

86

S Y S T E M S O F A R T I C U L A T I O N , L O G I C S OF C H A N G E

Localizing the cosmopolitan: the culture of alternative rock

By the early or mid-1 980s, a terrain of musical activity commonly described as 'alternative' was a feature of virtually all US and CanadIan urban cen­tres. In one version of its history, the space of alternative rock is seen to have resulted from the perpetuation of punk music within US and Canadian youth culture, a phenomena most evident in the relatively durable hardcore and skinhead cultures of Los Angeles and elsewhere. As local punk scenes stabilized, they developed the infrastructures (record labels, performance venues lines of communication, etc.) within which a variety of other mUSIcal activiti�s unfolded. These practices, most often involving the eclectic revival and transformation of older musical forms, collectively fell under the sign of the term 'alternative'. As the centrality of punk within local musical cultures declined, the unity of alternative rock no longer resided in the stylistic qualities of the music embraced within it. Rather, as I shall argue, that Ulllty has come to be grounded more fundamentally in the way in which such spaces of musical activity have come to establish a distinctive relationship to historical time and geographical location.

Arguably, the most notable feature of alternative-rock culture over the last decade or so has been the absence within it of mechanisms through whIch particular musical practices come to be designated as obsolete. By the middle of the 1 980s, the pluralism of alternative-rock culture was such that the emergence of new stylistic forms within it would rarely be accompanIed by the claim that such forms represented a trajectory of movement for that culture as a whole. On the contrary, those processes by which musical forms become central poles of attraction and are subsequently rendered obsolete had largely disappeared. One may contrast this condition with that of the period immediately following the emergence of punk in Great Britain. There, one finds a preoccupation with finding pre-existent forms whIch mIght sustain the cultural space of punk, and a sense that these forms - whether revived like the Mod sound of the 1 960s, or borrowed laterally, from funk or reg�ae - might serve as poles of collective attraction fo" post-punk culture as a whole. This retrieval of earlier forms or appropriation of adjacent forms participated in a more general enterprise of finding the form appropriate to the next collective move in an ongoing transformation of rock-music culture and its values.

Within the US and Canada, the relationship between the different musical practices undertaken within the terrain of alternative rock would become one of lateral expansion. Within this terrain, different musical prac­tices came to map out a range of increasingly specific stylistic combinations within an ongoing process of differentiation and complexification. Change within the culture of alternative rock, to the extent that it was observable at all more and more took the form of new relationships between generic styles cO;lstitutive of the canon which had sedimented within alternative-rock

87

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

culture since the late 1970s. I t was no longer the case, as it had been in the period immediately following punk, that change would involve the regular displacement of styles as the historical resonance of each emerged and faded. The stabilization of this distinct temporality has had its most pro­found effects on the relationship between alternative culture and African­American musical Forms, with the latter standing implicity for a relationship to technological innovation and stylistic change against which the former has come to define itselF.

To understand this condition, we may examine the role still played within the terrain of alternative rock by musical cross-fertilization and hybridiza­tion. Here, the exercise of combining styles or genres will rarely produce the sense of a synthesis whose constituent elements are displaced, or through which musical communities are brought into new alliances, as has been the case at particular transitional points within rock history. Rather, one sees the emergence of a wide variety of stylistic or generic exercises, in which no style begins as privileged or as more organically expressive of a cultural point of departure. One effect of this has been to install the individual carecr, rather than the culture of alternative rock as a whole, as the principal context within which change is meaningful. Moves within this culture -from punk to country, psychedelia to boogie blues, and so on - represent idiosyncratic passages across the space of alternative rock rather than attempts at collective redirection.

This characteristic of the terrain of alternative rock has both shaped and responded to the commodity forms which circulate within it. In its reliance on the institutional infrastructures of campus radio stations, independent record stores, and live performance tOUfS, alternative rock has been allied with institutions engaged in the valorization of their exhaustivity and diversity, and in maintaining the accessibility of a wide range of musical practices. The slowness of turnover which this produces is linked to the growth in importance of performer careers, inasmuch as the value of a particular recording is not dependent upon its capacity to register collective change within the larger cultural space in which it circulates. In this respect, the much-discussed 'co-optation' of punk and post-punk musics by major recording finns represents, in part, a paradoxical convergence of operational logics. Of the various forms of appropriation of these musics attempted by major firms, the most successful has been the ongoing monitoring of alternative-rock culture (often through the setting-up or affiliation of specialty labels) so as to discover careers susceptible to further development.

One effect of these processes has been an intermittently observed sense of crisis within the culture of alternative rock music. As suggestcd, the capacity of this culture to cater to the most specific of taste formations is accompanied by the sense that no particular stylistic exercise may be held up as emblem­atic of a collective, forward movement on the part of this terrain as a whole. Simon Reynolds has described the ways in which the self-valorization of

88

S Y S T E M S OF A R T I C U L A T I O N , L O G I C S OF C H A N G E

alternative rock had come, by the early 1980s, to take the form o f gestures towards the busyness and pluralistic health of small-scale musical activity rather than of claims to a collective and transgressive assault (however imaginary) on the dominant forms or institutions of popular musical culture ' The organization of alternative rock culture in these terms has had two significant - and generally overlooked - consequences which any political diagnosis of that culture must confront. These extend beyond the more general (and not necessarily negative) waning of collective purpose and criteria of judgement common within cultural spaces marked by high levels of pluralism and eclecticism.

The first of these is the enshrining of specific forms of connoisseurship as central to an involvement in alternative musical culture. Here, an altern­ative reading of the stabilization of post-punk culture within the US and Canada suggests itselF. Despite the difficulty of reconstructing this historical context, I would point to the important interaction, in the mid and late 1970s, between the terrain of punk and 'New Wave' and pre-existing con­noisseurist tendencies within the culture of rock music. To a considerable extent, the institutions of New Wave within the United States and Canada came to overlap with those constitutive of a network of enterprises cater­ing to an interest in the history of rock-based forms of recorded music ­an infrastructure which had existed at least since the early 1 970s. These institutions were active in the historical documentation and revival of a variety of older rock-based musical movements (such as 'surf' music or the 'garage-band' movement of the mid-1960s.)10 From the mid-1970s through to the present, a variety of small enterprises have involved themselves simultaneously in projects of historical revival (reissuing recordings from the 1 960s and publishing fan magazines devoted to olqer musical forms) and in the production. distribution and sale of recordings associated with punk and those tendencies which succeeded it."

This overlapping of alternative-rock culture and the cultural space of records collectors and historical archivism should scarcely be surprising, given the predictable settling of both within the sociological" limits of a largely white bohemia. Part of the implicit work of alternative-rock culture over the past decade has been the construction of a relatively stable canon of earlier musical forms - 1960s trash psychedelia, early 1 970s metal, the dissident rock tradition of the Velvet Underground and others - which serves as a collective reference point. The substance of this canon is less significant, at this point in my account:than is the fact that the cultivation of connoisseurship in rock culture - tracking down old albums, learning genealogical links between bands, and so on - has traditionally been one rite of passage through which the masculinism of rock-music culture has been perpetuated. Many of the temporary and transversal moves common in the early days of New Wave - moving from theatre or performance art into bands, or playing around with the forms of earlier, pre-rock musics - came

89

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

to seem less and less appropriate or frequent as the 1980s wore on, and as the association of entry into alternative-rock culture with an activity of apprenticeship became entrenched. With these developments, the profile of women as performers within post-punk culture has diminished, and, just as the culture of alternative rock within the United States and Canada has become almost exclusively white, it has become overwhelmingly male as well.

A second consequence of the logic of development of alternative-music culture within Canada and the US is the paradoxical status of localism within it. In their reliance on small-scale infrastructures of production and dissemination, these spaces are rooted deeply within local circumstances, a feature commonly invoked in claims as to their political significance. Nevertheless, the degree to which localism remains an important compon­ent of musical meaning within the culture of alternative rock requires close examination. The aesthetic values which dominate local alternative terrains are for the most part those of a musical cosmopolitanism wherein the points of musical reference are likely to remain stable from one community to another. The development of alternative-rock culture may be said to follow a logic in which a particular pluralism of musical languages repeats itself from one community to another. Each local space has evolved, to varying degrees, the range of musical vernaculars emergent within others, and the global culture of alternative rock music is one in which localism has been reproduced, in relatively uniform ways, on a continental and international level.

One consequence of this condition is that the relationship of different local or regional scenes to each other is no longer one in which specific com­munities emerge to enact a forward movement to which others are drawn. What has declined is the sense, important at different moments within rock music's history, that a regional or local style offers the direction for change deemed appropriate to a given historical moment and provides a particular trajectory of progress which others will follow. Rather, the relationship of different local spaces of activity to each other takes the form of circuits, overlaid upon each other, through which particular styles of alternative music circulate in the form of recordings or live performances. The ability of groups and records to circulate from one local scene to another, in a manner that requires little in the way of adaptation to local circumstances, is an index of the way in which a particularly stable set of musical languages and relationships between them has been reproduced within a variety of local circumstances.

Drawing lines, making centres: the culture of dance music

Out on the dancefloor there are plenty more tell-tale signs to let you know if you're in the wrong sort of club. The music is always a

90

p

S Y S T E M S O F A R TI C U L A T I O N , L O G I C S D F C H A N G E

giveaway, especially if the OJ still thinks it's a good idea t o play 'French Kiss' or other similar rubbish. OJ's who prefer to show off their mixing skills rather than play good music are always worth avoiding, as are most of those who decide to adopt silly names.

(Crysell, 1990)

Several years ago, at the end of a conference held at Carleton University, [ went with a number of academic colleagues to Hull, Quebec to dance. We ended up at the most explicitly 'underground' of the many clubs along Hull's main street (one whose recent history has been marred by door­admittance policies and changes in musical style widely regarded as racist). As members of our group began to dance - with, in some cases, unexpected abandon - it was clear that the space of this club, like the act of dancing itself, evoked within many of them a sense of the eternal. The club, its clientele and the music being played all signified the transhistoricity of a youth culture which one might visit intermittently and find unchanged, and the act of dancing itself was intimately bound up with a generalized sense of diminished inhibition. It occurred to me that the principal differences between our group and the rest of those in attendance were not the expected ones of age and temperament. Rather, they seemed rooted in the unity academics were quick to ascribe to a cultural space which was character­ized, more than most others, by the marking of distinction and drawing of bOllndaries.12

As list of the levels on which this marking is carried out would be virtually without end. Dance clubs are positioned relative to others, not only along the predictable lines of musical style, age, sexual orientation and ethnicity, but in terms of a variety of less frequently ack\1owledged criteria: the explicitness of sexual interaction within them, the manner in which their OJ handles the tension between playing requests and retaining pres­tige within his peer community, the level of tolerance of deviations from expected behavioural norms and so on. Among a club's c1ielJ.tele, further distinctions take shape around the degree to which people dance within disciplined parameters (as opposed to cutting loose), or such minor clues as whether or not one remains on or leaves the dance floor when a new and as-yet unpopular song is played. Most importantly, the composition of audiences at dance clubs is likely to reflect and actualize a particular state of relations between various populations and social groups, as these coalesce around specific coalitions of musical style.

The significance invested in these differences obviously works against one familiar reading of the experience of dance: as a transcendent experience of the body in motion. The difficulty of writing about dance music is very much rooted in what Jane K. Cowan, speaking of a very different context, has called 'the paradoxically double sense of engrossment and reflexivity that characterize the experience of the dancer' (Cowan, 1990: xi). Discussions

9 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

o f dance are often able to privilege its engrossing qualities through an implicit sliding from the subjective and corporal sense of release to a notion of collective transcendence, such that the personal and the social are united under the sign of the term 'youth'. Clearly, however, few cultural practices are marked so strongly by the intervention of differences which fracture that unity and render unavoidable the reflexivity of which Cowan writes. Bringing together the activities of dance and musical consumption, the dance club articulates the sense of social identity as embodied to the conspicuous and differential display of taste. As such, it serves to render explicit the distribution of knowledges and forms of cultural capital across the vectors of gender, race and class.

It is at this point that we may begin to outline certain divergences between the cultures of alternative rock and dance music. The most significant of these, arguably, has to do with the manner in which each has responded to the hierarchies and tensions produced by the aforementioned differences. The ongoing development of dance-music culture is shaped by the rela­tionship between certain relatively stable social spaces (whether these be geographical regions or racial and ethnic communities) and the temporal processes produced and observable within that culture's infrastructures (record labels, dance-music magazines, disc-jockey playlists, and so on). As suggested earlier, this relationship is not one of direct mirroring. The lines of fracture which run through the audiences of dance music are normally turned into the bases of that music's own ongoing development, but in this process they are often transformed. Typically, they are restated in the language of aesthetic choice and invoked as the pretexts for moves of redirection. In the culture of alternative rock, in contrast, the most consistent development has been the drawing of lines around that culture as a whole, such that certain forms (classically soulful voices, for example) are per­manently banished, or, like some uses of electronics, tolerated as part of a circumscribed pluralism. (In neither instance do they serve as the basis of a tension inviting a collective response.)

These differences may be expressed in more schematic terms. The terrain of alternative rock is one in which a variety of different temporalities have come to coexist within a bounded cultural space. There is often a distinctive density of historical time within the performance styles of alternative groups: most noticeably, an inflection of older, residual styles with a contemporary irony which itself evokes a bohemian heritage in which that combination has its antecedents. Similarly, as moves within alternative rock produce more and more detailed syntheses of style and form, they fill in the range of options between canonical styles, the latter serving (to disinter a once­prominent theoretical concept) as 'points de capiton' (Lacan, 1966: 503), markers of privileged antecedents from which eclectic stylistic exercises develop outwards. This process as a whole might be described as one in which temporal movement is transformed into cartographic density.

92

S Y S T E M S O F A R T I C U L A T I O N , L O G I C S O F C H A N G E

The culture of dance music, in contrast, is one i n which spatial diversity is perpetually reworked as temporal sequence. At one level, dance-music culture is highly polycentric, in that it is characterized by the simultaneous existence of large numbers of local or regional styles - Detroit 'techno' music, Miami 'bass' styles, Los Angeles 'swingbeat', etc. Other regional centres - like New York or London - will be significant, less as places of emergence of styles one could call indigenous, than because they occupy posi­tions of centrality as sites for the reworking and transformation of styles originating elsewhere. Dance-music culture is characterized by two sorts of directionality: one which draws local musical activity into the production styles of one or more dominant, indigenous producers or sounds; and another which articulates these styles elsewhere, into centres and processes of change monitored closely by the international dance-music community as a whole. One effect of these sorts of movement is that coexisting regional and local styles within dance music are almost always at different stages within their cycles of rising and declining influence. A comfortable, stable international diversity may rarely be observed ."

Further evidence of these differences may be found in the sorts of publications which circulate within each terrain. Maximum Rock and Roll or Rock Around The Worlc/.· The Alternative Live Music Guide manifest the preoccupation of alternative culture with cataloguing diversity, offering dozens of 'scene' reports or touring schedules in each issue. Those publica­tions which serve the dance-music community, in contrast, are striking for their concern with registering movement, ranking records and judging styles in terms of their place within ascendant or downward trajectories of popularity." This distinction is hardly surprising - given, on the one hand, the self-definition of alternative rock as the locus of. a rock classicism, and, on the other, the observable overlap of dance-music culture with both the turbulent space of Top 40 radio and a more subcultural terrain resembling (and interacting with) the world of vestimentary fashion. More interesting, for my purposes, are the ways in which both cpltures have responded to the musical diversity found in each, endowing that diversity with distinctive values and relationships to change.

The intermittent sense of crisis within the culture of North American alternative rock, to which r referred earlier, is arguably rooted in the loss of a teleology of historical purpose of the sort which has often organized accounts of rock music's history. In its place, we find enshrined a pluralism evoked as a sign of health and vitality. Within the culture of dance music, in contrast, a condition of pluralism is commonly cited as the sign of imminent troubles or divisions, rather than of that culture's richness or stability." One finds, within the dance community, an investment in historical movement based almost exclusively on the ability of that movement to suggest collect­ive purpose. Processes of historical change within dance music, as suggested, respond to shifting relationships between different (primarily urban)

93

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

communities, but there is little sense that the convergences or alliances pro­duced are permanent or constitutive steps in a movement towards a final dissolution of boundaries. Well-known moments held to be emblematic of a new unity of black and white youth cultures, like the punk-reggae moment of the late 1 970s, either produce their own backlashes or appear in retrospect as temporary acts of rejuvenation undertaken by one of the communities involved.

The discursive labour of dance music's infrastructures operates implicitly to prevent the fractures and lines of difference which run through the culture of metropolitan dance music from either fragmenting that culture into autonomous, parallel traditions, or producing a final unity which will per­manently paper over those lines. Like the worlds of fashion and painting, the dance music community accomplishes this by restating ongoing disagree­ments over cultural purpose and value as calculations about the imminent decay or emergent appropriateness of specific generic styles. One revealing example, within the recent history of dance music, is the ongoing controversy over the comparative appeal of synthesized sounds and 'real' human voices. The highly electronic acid house of 1987 and 1988 gave way, in influential corners of dance-music culture, to the 'garage' house of 1 988-9, a form which valorized classic, soulful and identifiable voices. In 1 990, and in the context of an increased rapidity of cyclical change, synthesized and sample­dominated Italian house emerged as central, accompanied by defences which underscored its knowing cleverness. Italian house was then displaced by the slowed-down, more obviously 'classical' Soul II Soul sound, which briefly, but spectacularly, attained international success. Predictably, a backlash followed, and Italian house was newly valorized at the beginning of 1991 _

the 'tackiness' with which it had been marked during its brief banishment now regarded as a creative eclecticism. J6 These shifts, while obviously trivial and localized, nevertheless revolve at a fundamental level around the appro­priate centrality to be accorded the traditions of African-American vocal music relative to those of a primarily white, European studio wizardry. Most often, however, they are given the form of oppositions of taste sus­ceptible to regular revision: high- versus low-end sonic ranges, 'live' versus creatively manufactured sounds, the purist versus the novel, and so all.

At the same time, these oppositions represent implicit tensions over the appropriate status of creativity within dance-music culture: should that cul­ture produce durable performer careers, most often those of (predominantly female) vocalists, or should its continuing development be driven by a turn­over of rapidly obsolete (and almost exclusively male) record producers and small labels? Within the context of the multinational recording industry, of course, these tensions are resolved in ways that have little to do with the temporary prominence of certain values within the more insular culture of the dance community. Albums by the studio-based Italian house group Black Box and the white English soul singer Lisa Stanfield have each circulated in

94

S Y S T E M S O F A R T I C U L A T I O N , L O G I C S OF C H A N G E

similar fashion within the international recording industry, producing a succession of singles and building their success through the sequence of dance clubs, Top 40 radio and music-video networks. If the implicit objects of investment in each case are different - a package of successive hits in the first case, a hopefully durable performer persona in the second - it is important to note that both presume different temporal logics than those currently typical of the dance community.

The circulation of records out of that community and cultural space relocates them in new contexts wherein the bases of their individual value and historical intelligibility are transformed." The effort to realign these temporalities is evident in the recent move towards installing the com­pilation album (bringing together several extended dance cuts) as the principal medium through which major record companies will market dance music. With their coherence based on little more than the capacity to encap­sulate a brief period in the ongoing history of dance music, compilation albums absolve major firms of the task of redefining the value of dance records in terms (most often those of performer careers or coherent works) which are familiar to them but incompatible with the forms of valorization common within the dance�music community. IS

The condition of dance music described here - in particular, its rates and logics of change - has been intensified in recent years by the rise to pro­minence of house music. House music emerged (from Chicago) as a set of distinct styles in the mid-1980s, but its larger importance comes from its recentring of the historical movement of dance-music culture as a whole. As was the case prior to the rise of house, dance-music within the Western world has continued to be marked by opposed tendencies towards unity/ coherence and diversity/differentiation, but the logics through which these processes unfold have become much more integrated. On the one hand, house music has drawn most dance-based musical forms into various sorts of accommodation to it. Currents within rap were compelled to adapt, most notably through an increased tempo, giving rise to forms known as hip-house and swingbeat. The Hi-NRG music associated durfng the previ­ous decade with gay discos was revitalized as high-house, 'high' signalling a greater number of beats-per-minute than was the average within house music (Ferguson, 1991) . Older or more eclectic forms, like industrial dance music and versions of jazz, have often been drawn into a sequence of trans­formations within house music, as influences defining those transforma­tions. Those dance forms which did not lend themselves to this integration, for a variety of reasons - Go-Go music from Washington, or the Minneapolis sound associated with Prince and his collaborators - have been marked with relative obsolescence, at least as far as international success is concerned.

At the same time, however, the durability and expansiveness of appeal of house music are such that these variations have come to be positioned laterally within a division of tastes running across dance-music culture.

95

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

The techno-pop and Hi-NRG associated with producers like Stock­Aitken-Waterman would, by the late I 980s, come to be positioned at one point within a continuum funning through all forms of house music and over­lapping with the terrain or international Top 40 pop. Much or Latin-based, English-language pop within the United States is now part or a complex or rorms known as 'rreestyle', in which one finds articulated elements or rap, house, and mainstream pop. More telling examples are those involving rorms or dance music perpetuated within the space or a rock-based avant-garde. So-called New Beat music, associated principally with record labels based in Belgium, pulled elements or industrial dance rock into the overall culture or dance music, but simultaneously compelled industrial dance music to define itselr in part through the vigilant maintenance or narrow boundaries between its own perceived transgressiveness and the lure or accessible, popular rorms or house. One can see here the dilemma conrronting tendencies within a post-punk avant-garde whose terrain has long bordered that or dance music. On the one hand, their project has derived much or its credib­ility rrom the consistent and avowedly purist exploration or a limited set or stylistic and rormal figures overlapping those round within currents or alternative rock (stark instrumentation, the use of 'found' voices from television, etc.). On the other hand, the culture or British dance music has so successrully redefined the terms or credibility as accruing rrom participa­tion in an unrolding sequence or musical styles that their resistance to this history risks casting them as irrelevant. 19

My emphasis, here, on the logics or change typical or dirrerent musical terrains is not intended to suggest that the value or such terrains is a runc­tion or their collective historical purpose. What these logics invite, however, is a reading or the politics or popular music that locates the crucial site or these politics neither in the transgressive or oppositional quality or musical practices and their consumption, nor unirormly within the modes or opera­tion of the international music industries. The important processes, I would argue, are those through which particular social differences (most notably those or gender and race) are articulated within the building or audiences around particular coalitions or musical rorm. These processes are not inevit­ably positive or disruptive or existing social divisions, nor are they shaped to any significant extent by solitary, wilrul acts or realignment. (Attempts to transrorm them into the bases or artistic strategy have generally railed, one notable recent exception being that or the group Living Colour). Typically, the character or particular audiences is determined by the interlocking operation or the various institutions and sites within which musics are disseminated: the schoolyard, the urban dance club, the radio rormat. These sites, themselves shaped by their place within the contemporary metropolis and aligned with populations along the lines or class and taste, provide the conditions or possibility or alliances between musical styles and arrective links between dispersed geographical places.

96

S Y S T E M S O F A R T I C U L A T I O N , L O G I C S O F C H A N G E

There are any number or examples or this i n the recent history or Canadian, US and Western European popular music: the coalescing or the original audience ror disco around Hispanic, black and gay communities in the mid-1970s, or the unexpected alignment or country music and its tradi­tional audiences with urban-based, adult-oriented radio stations in the early 1980s. The particular condition or alternative rock music culture, which I have described at length, has been shaped in part by the way in which coalitions or black teenagers, young girls listening to Top 40 radio, and urban club-goers have coalesced around a dance-music mainstream and its mar­gins and thus heightened the insularity or white, bohemian musical culture. What interests me, as someone who studies musical institutions, is the way in which these alliances are produced, in part, through the overlapping logics or development or dirrerent rorms. One reason why coalitions or musical taste which run rrom British dance culture through black communities in Toronto and significant portions or the young rem ale market are possible is that these constituencies are all ones which value the redirective and the novel over the stable and canonical, or international circuits or influence over the mining or a locally stable heritage. The substance or these values is less important than are the alliances produced by their circulation within musical culture. One need neither embrace the creation or such alliances as a rorce ror social harmony or condemn them as politically distracting to recognize their primacy in the ongoing politics or popular musical culture.

Notes

This section of my article includes remarks written especially for this issue of Cultural Studies and intended to supplement John Shepherd's introduction. Subsequent sections are made up of a substantially revised version of my own presentation at the conference.

. . . 2 This panel, which opened the conference and was repeated at Concordia. UllIverslt.y

in Montreal the following week, was not based on written presentations and IS not reproduced in this issue. �

3 The work of Jody Berland represents, perhaps, the most sustained attempt to date to investigate the status of locality in popular music. See, for example, Berland ( 1990). . .

4 See, for a lengthy discllssion of the conditions of an Atlantic Afncan cullural diaspora, Gilroy (1987). . . . . . , ,

5 It should be noted that Dorland uses thiS phrase to descnbe a QuebeCOIS art film and that the sense of placelessness. described is one typical of the elliptical, wilf�lIy transgressive and auteurist neo-film noir produced in any nUIT�ber of countries in the late 1980s. I have adapted Dorland's phrase to descnbe the popular, blockbuster films said by press accounts to result from Hollywood's new reliance on the international market.

6 Having sacrificed the terms 'community' and 'scene' to other conceptual unities, 'terrain' is one of the few remaining options for designating the spaces I want to discuss. 'Field', with which it is virtually synonymous, suggests more of an exclusive reliance on the work of Pierre BOllfdieu than I wish to convey.

97

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

7 This is, of course, partially a function of the extent to which cultural commodities participate in the processes of 'fashion', processes described with great insight in Wark ( 1 99 1).

8 Disco records of the late 1 9705, for example, circulated within: (a) connoisseurist sub-cultures attentive to minor moves within the ongoing history of disco music as generic form; (b) 'urban' radio station playlists wherein differences between records w�r� ef�aced within the creation of a consistent sound signifying currency and sopi1JstlcatJOn; and (c) Top 40 radio programming which, by the end of the decade, had produced a sense of disco as a musical form deployed by a suc­cession of distinct celebrity personalities.

9 'Fanzines: the lost moment', Monilor (no date or page numbers). 10 So-called 'garage' psychedelia was a transitional form between the music of small

rock quartets of the early 1 960s and the more elaborate psychedelic or 'acid' rock of th.e late 1 960s. In 1972, Elektra Records released Nuggets, an influential retrospective anthology of this music.

I I The most important of these, arguably, were Bomp Records and Rhino Records both based in California. Bomp Records was associated with a record store'

a fan magazine ( Who Put The Bomp?) devoted to rock music of the 1 960s a mail�

order record sales service, and a record label which specialized in recordings by contemporary groups performing older musical styles. Rhino Records, similarly, began as a retail store and expanded to include a record company specializing in both contemporary, �ew ,:"ave-oriented recordings and reissues of repertory frol11 the 1 9.60s. My diSCUSSIon of these enterprises, and of this tendency within New Wave III a more general sense, is based on my sporadic reading, throughout the 1 970s, of magazines published within this subculture, most notably Who Put

. The ,Bomb? See, as well, for detailed reports on this phenomena, the follow­

Ing: Punk rock store pulls big in L.A.', Billboard, 30 April 1977: 6; 'New Wave label: Bomp Records adds LP line', Billboard, I I August 1979: 74; 'Despite hard t�mes: lIldle rock labels survive', Billboard, 1 5 January 1 983: I ; 'Capitol distribu­tIOn pact opens new fields for Rhino', Billboard, 2 November 1985: 82.

1 2 1 should add that my own posture here - as detached cataloguer of minute differences - is obviously no more appealing or less stereorypically academic than the one I am ascribing to others.

1 3 The example, already cited, of electronic 'techno' music from Detroit is a useful one here. Techno has developed over several years now, but its articulation within the international culture of dance music has been intermittent and often dependent on an alliance with other, more obviously novel and emergent forms (such as the electronic 'bleep' or ambient music of the last year) (see Cheeseman 1 99 1) . '

1 4 Examples of these magazines include the Canadian Sfreelsollnds the British Jocks and the American Dance Music Report. The analysis presented in this section is b�sed on my regular reading of these and several other magazines, conversations WIth dance-record store staff and the buying of several hundred dance records over the last decade.

1 5 Throughout the latter part of 1 990 and early months of 1 99 1 , the observable pluraiJsm and fragment.alion of dance-music culture was cited as proof that a collapse of the economiC bases of dance music was coming. See, for example, Cheeseman ( 1 99 1 ), Jones ( 1 99Ia), Russell ( 1 99 1 ).

1 6 See, for one account of this re-emergence, Jones ( 1 99 I b). The rapidity of these cycles of change ha� �

nuch to do with the international dance community having turned towards Bnttsh dance culture as the primary site in which moves of redirection are enacted. This turn itself represents the convergence of a number

98

S Y S T E M S O F A R T I C U L A T I O N , L O G I C S O F C H A N G E

o f events: the decline in vinyl production in the U S and Canada, and consequent reliance of the dance community on imported 1 2-inch singles; the related integra­tion of much African-American music (most notably rap) within the market for albums and resulting decline of the single within certain genres; the smallness and relative insularity of British musical culture, which has obviously quickened the pace of change; and the growing tendency for British club disc jockeys (many of them now stars in their own right) to tour the Western world, in the process picking up local records - from Italy, New York, Germany, etc. - which are drawn into the turnover of dance music within Britain itself.

1 7 This has produced much-commented-upon difficulties in the trans-Atlantic pas­sage of certain recent dance records: Candy Flip's 'Strawberry Fields Forever' was a success as an import within US and Canadian dance clubs months before being released domestically in those countries. DJs here, for whom that record's Soul 1 I Soul-ish rhythms (and the more general enterprise of covering older songs within those rhythms) had ceased to hold much interest, were unwilling to give it the level of renewed club play needed to cross it over to Top 40 radio. See, for one account, the 'Dance Trax' column in Billboard, 27 October 1990: 33.

1 8 See, for discussions of the rise of compilation albums, Jones ( 1 99 I a) and Flick ( 1 9 9 1 ) .

1 9 A t the moment, industrial dance music functions a s both the continuing refuge for 'masculinist' tendencies within dance culture resisting those forms designated as frivolous and co-opted, and as a style newly embraced by politicized segments of the gay community for whom it serves as a sign of the new militancy produced by the AIDS crisis. See, for one account of the turn away from Hi-NRG within gay dance culture, the article 'Queer bashes' (no author) in The Face, February 1991 : 79 .

Acknowledgements

Different versions of portions of this paper were presented at the Canadian Communications Association conference in Quebec City in 1 989, the International Communications Association conference in Dublin in 1990 and at the Trent Institute for Studies in Popular Cultur�, Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario) in 199 1 . I would like to thank Morgan Holmes, Trevor Holmes and Alan O'Connor, among others, for their helpful com­ments and questions concerning certain of the ideas presented <there.

References

Berland, Jody ( 1 990) 'Radio space and industrial time: music formats, local narratives and technological mediation', Popular Music, 9: 1 79-92.

Bourdieu, Pierre ( 1979) La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugemenl. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.

de Certeau, Michel ( 1 990) L'inventioll du quotidien. I. arts defaire. Paris: Gallimard (Folio). (Originally published 1980.)

Cheeseman, Phil ( 1 99 1 ) 'Year review', Jocks, 52, February 1 99 1 : 16 . Cowan, Jane K. ( 1 990) Dance and fhe Body Politic ill Northern Greece. Princeton,

New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Crysell, Andy ( 1 990) 'The wrong sort of club', Rave!, 16, June 1 7-July I 1990: 38.

99

M U S I C A N D S O C I A D I L I T Y

DiMartino, Dave and Duffy, Thorn ( 1 990) 'Rock losing grip as other genres gain', Billboard, 10 November 1990: I , 100.

Dorland, Michael ( 1 987) Review of Un Zoo, la mtit, Cinema Canada, September 1987: 37.

Ferguson, Dean ( 1 991) 'HiNRG/Eurobeat', Dance Music Report, 24: 38.

Flic�. Larry ( 1 99 1 ) 'Dance acts get new exposure via compilations', Billboard, 1 6 March 199 1 : 1 , 83.

Gilroy, Paul ( 1 987) There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack. London: Hutchinson. Grossberg, Larry ( 1 984) 'Another boring day in paradise: rock and roll and the

empowerment of everyday life', Popular Music, 4: 225-58. Jones, Alan ( l 99 I a) 'Dance file', Jocks, 5 1 : 40. -- ( 1 99 I b) 'Dance file', Jocks, 53: 36. Lacan, Jacques ( 1 966) Ecrils. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Landro, Laura ( 1 990) 'Warner Bros. success at box office feeds its global ambitions',

The Wall Street Journal, I June 1 990: I . Miege. Bernard ( 1 986) 'Les logiques a I'oeuvre dans les nouvelles industries culturelles'

CaMel's de recherche sOciologiqlle, 4 (2) 93-1 10. .

Russell, Deborah ( 1991) 'Grass route', Billboard, 5 January 1 9 9 1 : 56. Said. Edward ( 1 990) 'Figures, configurations. transfigurations', Race & Class, 32 ( 1 ),

1-1 6. Shanks, Bar

.ry ( 1 988) 'Transgressing the boundaries of a rock en' roll community'.

Paper delivered at the 'First Joint Conference of lASPM-Canada and IASPM­USA', Yale University, I October 1 988. [lAS PM is the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.]

Turner, Richard ( 1 99 1 ) 'Disney seeks to end big, big pictures as executive calls for small, small world', The Wall Street Joumal, 30 January 1 99 1 : B 1 .

Wark, McKenzie ( 1 99 1 ) 'Fashioning the future: fashion, clothing, and the manufac­turing of post-Fordist culture', Cu/tural Studies, 5 ( 1 ) 61-76.

100

UNICAMP a.l ...... - [POI

6'16Cj83

65

P LA C E , E X C H AN G E

AND M E ANING :

B LACK S E A M U S I C I ANS

IN T H E W E S T O F I R E L AND

Martin Stokes

Source: M. Stokes (ed.) (1994) EIIlIIicity, Idel/tity alld Mllsic. Berg, pp. 97-115.

Performance does not simply convey cultural Iflessages already 'known'. On the contrary, it reorganises and manipulates everyday experiences of social reality, blurs, elides, ironises and sometimes subverts commonsense categories and markers. Above all, performance is a vital tool in the hands of performers themselves in socially acknowledged games of prestige and power. The full force of these crucial insights has only relatively recently become a matter of mainstream social anthropological concern. ' In the context of ethnomusicological study, nothing has hindered these insights more than the idea, propagated both within and outside the discipline, that ethnomusicology studies music 'in its social and cultural context'. In this formulation, music is simply a 'thing' slotted into a static socia�

tand cllI�ural

matrix existing outside and beyond the performance. If thiS seemtllgly innocuous formulation has been an obstacle to developing an understand­ing of music as a form of social performance,2 it is perhaps also worth questioning some of the other assumptions hidden in it. This chapter there­fore looks at what happens to music, musicians and musical meaning in a situation which we might hastily deem to be 'out of place'.

This suggestion raises issues which lie at the heart of the ways in which ethnomusicologists and social anthropologists construct locality, place and fields of meaning. It also reminds liS that much of the Western experience of 'other musics' is, in a sense, of music out of context, a fact with which ethnomusicologists have been reluctant to engage. The two points are of course closely connected. As James Clifford points out, in a recent addition to what has now become an established critique of anthropological practice,

1 0 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

the concern of anthropologists with 'local' meanings and practice tends to ignore the literary strategies through which 'locality' is evoked, and the political practices of which these strategies are an integral part (Clifford 1 992). The problem is that social experience which is not tied to locality becomes difficult to grasp with the techniques of writing, and consequently analysis, at our disposal. The category of 'travel' is a case in point. Musicians often live in conspicuously translocal cultural worlds. They travel; their social skills are those of people capable of addressing varied and heterogene­ous groups, and their value in a locality is often perceived to be precisely their ability to transcend the cultural boundaries of that locality.

However, it is not difficult for anybody involved in the music of 'other cultures' to think of uneasy moments in which the music we hear (on CD or on stage) appears to be nothing more than a model, a replica of some 'real' situation, with a real context and real meanings elsewhere. The World Music phenomenon presents the world as an exhibition of local styles in precisely this way, constructing truth and authenticity on one hand and models of those truths and authenticities on the other. It might be argued that the World Music phenomenon plays a vital role in mediating post-colonial structures of global domination today just as the nineteenth­century world exhibitions mediated a colonial order a century ago (Mitchell 1 99 1 ). The problem is that this makes it difficult for us to think of trans­cultural music experiences as anything other than models of authenticities going on 'elsewhere'. Music out of place, we are too readily inclined to believe, is music without meaning.

Ethnomusicologists have only slowly begun to get to grips with this proliferation of new multicultural contexts. World of Music devoted an issue in 1 978 to 'Musicultura' - a series of cross-cultural musical events organised by the Eduard van Beinum Foundation in Queekhoven, Holland. In 1986, the International Council for Traditional Music organised an international colloquium in Jamaica on the subject of 'The Impact of Tourism on Traditional Music and Dance'. Discussions of musical tourism have tended to look at situations where tourists come in as passive observers, and consequently much of the discussion has been concerned with illustrating or refuting Greenwood's thesis that tourism involves a commodification of traditional culture, which eventually destroys it (Greenwood 1 978). Commodification is not the only problem. For John Blacking, the political context of international musical tourism totally overshadows the potential for a 'genuine' process of non-verbal communication. For him, what might subvert the ideological context in which such changes take place, is itself undermined by the ways in which events are staged:

a great deal of our appreciation of world music confuses cultural chauvinism with musical taste. Performances of traditional music are too often associated with cultural bunfights, folklore festivals,

1 02

p

B L A C K S E A M U S I C I A N S I N T H E W E S T O F I R E L A N D

and political jamborees in which various exotic musics, dances and associated arts are dished up for the promotion of national or ethnic causes. Many people's experiences of other worlds of music are derived entirely from such contexts, and there are two serious disadvantages. First, the music that is presented is not truly representative of the tradition that is advertised; and secondly, because of the context, the aims of musical exchange and mutual understanding are defeated.

(Blacking 1 987: 1 33-4)

The aspect of this criticism that most interests me is the assumption that musical exchange and mutual understanding are compromised by the context, and that there is, quite simply, 'a context' in which exchange and understanding take place for any specific kind of music. Blacking's com­ments reinforce scholarly binarisms of musical authenticity and alienation (Adorno 1941 ), folklore and 'folklorismus' (Baumann 1 976), folklore and 'fakelore' (Harker 1 985), real and 'invented traditions' (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1 983). As Stratton suggests ( 1 983), binarisms contrasting authentic and debased experiences invariably have an ideological function, and it is always worth questioning them if only for this reason. This kind of global ising theory also makes it difficult to see certain events and processes for what they are, if one is able to 'see' them (i.e. determine them as relevant and legitimate subjects for research) at all. The remainder of this chapter looks at ways in which an ethnographic approach might provide some answers to the problem of cross-cultural musical experience. Turkey and Ireland provide the case studies.

Firstly, Blacking's comment lumps together a number of aspects of inter­national music exchange and tourism. However, there are plenty of grounds for distinguishing carefully between these events on the basis of the groups and identities involved. The context of international World Music events are quite different from those in which particular supranational identities are celebrated, such as pan-Celtic or pan-Gaelic competitions and events, the Eurovision Song Contest, the Mediterranean Song Contest, the Balkan Dance Festival and so on. Organised musical tourism to Indonesia, on gamelan tours, or the influx of tourists from Scandinavia, Germany and France to the West Coast of Ireland constitutes a quite different category. Local level exchanges organised by, for example, town twinning organisations and tours of an educational nature sponsored by local Arts Councils are quite different again.

Secondly, there is an assumption in Blacking's comment that the repres­entatives of national and regional identities for tourists at home or abroad become a formal professional elite, often with the aid and sponsorship of their governments. If and when this is so, it may be the case that they do not, or are not felt to represent the people that they claim to, and that their

1 03

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

state sponsorship turns them into official agents o f particular ideologies, mere flunkies with no claim to the authenticity we demand of musical 'others'. This assumption is born out to a limited extent in Turkey, where the state runs the Milli Turizm Halk Miizik Orkesirasl (The National Tourism Folk Music Orchestra). Its members are largely graduates from the State Folk Music conservatories who have not qualified for, or not chosen a career in the Turkish Radio and Television. These are urban musicians who give staged performances of both music and dances from rural regions of which in many cases they have no direct experience and receive a salary from the state for doing so.

To see these as representative of the huge number of Turks involved in international competitions throughout Western and Eastern Europe and the Middle East would be to miss an opportunity to observe and understand a significant phenomenon in Turkish cities, namely the small private music and folk dance clubs known as dernek or cemiyel, and the state-run Halk Egilim Merkez/eri (People's Education Centres). These provide the most important focus of amateur urban music making, offering organised courses, usually in the evenings or on Sundays, and places in which both young men and women can meet. The two dernek in which 1 conducted surveys in Istanbul in 1 990 were typical in their size and constitution. Both contained about 200 members attending classes and using the facilities, and both sustained a small number of regular teachers (who also taught and played elsewhere) and an administrator as well as providing a small income for their owners.

The facilities they offered differed, reflecting their position in the city. That in the old city centre, close to the public transport routes leading to the gecekondu (squatter town) districts, gave classes exclusively in the long­necked lute (baglama), with sporadic classes in folklor (regional folk danc­ing). The ages of the members ranged from sixteen to thirty-six, largely male (69 per cent), and single (80 per cent). Their occupations ranged fairly evenly from professional (accountants, teachers, lawyers) to skilled and semi-skilled labourers (cooks, secretaries, workers and attendants in shops and small businesses). There was also a high proportion of students living in gecekondu districts or in the old city area close to the universities. The parents of the majority were semi-skilled or unskilled labourers and first generation migrants from the South East of Turkey, living in the gecekondu to the west of the city walls.

Courses were structured in such a way that a year could be spent in each of three classes, but no formal qualifications were to be gained, and in practice most people promoted themselves from one class to another when they, or their friends, fel t the urge, and usually did not stay for more than two years. Since the cost of membership was low, a certain informality prevailed and the emphasis in the clubs was on respectable socialising. This meant that young unmarried women could participate without worrymg

1 04

B L A C K S E A M U S I C I A N S I N T H E W E S T O F I R E L A N D

their parents. If people wanted to socialise in mixed company, they would stay in the club and not leave the premises to go and drink tea or soft drinks elsewhere, since to do so would compromise the female dernek members. As a result, these clubs become an important social focus, in which members might spend an entire afternoon and evening if they had nothing else to do. This is not to say that the quality of tuition available was not extremely high. Many Turkish Radio and Television star singers and performers run dernek as a sideline, and as well as providing a social meeting place for people whose involvement with music was casual, dernek provide a first-rate network of teachers and contacts for more seriously committed musicians. Regular attendance at dernek run by such baglama players as Arif Sag or Yavuz Top in Istanbul ensured at least some contact with them, and very few professional musicians I met had no involvement with this kind of organisation.

The focus of activity for most clubs is participation in national competi­tions, in which the winners compete at an international level. For others, less successful in domestic competition, efforts are made by any members who are capable of doing so to contact organisers of folk festivals and competitions who would pay expenses enabling the group to travel. So the particular attraction of this is that it provides people who would not normally have the opportunity or means to travel outside Turkey - particu­larly young women - with a chance to do so. For young men it is quite unambiguously an opportunity for zamparalrk, for sexual adventure. For this, and other reasons, the ideal is travel to a folk festival in Western Europe, with the former states of Eastern Europe a close second, although in my experience many of the opportunities that offered themselves were to places then considered more mundane destinatiqns closer to home: Yugoslavia, Egypt, Northern Cyprus.

The attraction of these occasions, apart from the opportunity for travel and adventure, is the frequent success of Turkish, and particularly Black Sea groups in competitive events. Turkey's failure in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1987 (scoring no points whatsoever) was widely p;rceived as a humiliating failure on the world stage. Without doubt, this perception of humiliation, echoed in international sporting events, increases the commit­ment that the dernek participants have to what they are doing, and partly explains the tremendous investment of time and effort that is channelled into performances of military discipline and precision. I often heard the sentiment that if only Turkey were to "enter one of its Halk ('Folk') music singers for the Eurovision Song Contest, such as Arif Sag, Turkey would either win outright, or would succeed in demonstrating that there was no need to compete on terms laid down by others in a musical language which was entirely alien to them. The support upon which these organisations rely therefore draws upon a perception of cultural powerlessness. Whatever its causes, participation in the dernek was frequently explained to me by

105

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

members of these clubs in terms o f this perception o f powerlessness. The clubs were a way of doing something with one's time, other than hanging around at home (for women) or in the cafe (for men). They enabled people to travel and to meet members of the opposite sex, which they could not do otherwise. The language of the competition provides young people leading uncertain lives on the peripheries of urban Turkish society with the means by which they could associate themselves unambiguously with official discourses of Turkishness. Finally the clubs provide what its members per­ceive as a world stage upon which these feelings of powerlessness could be expiated. Turkish performers at international competitions are not then members of a privileged elite, and their participation must be understood in terms of an urban experience which undoubtedly overlaps in some ways with an officially promoted 'cultural chauvinism', but cannot be entirely reduced to it.

This leads to the question of how these events are staged, and how new fields of meaning are constructed and organised in relation to them. A trip to Ireland by three Black Sea Turks in 1989 provided me with an oppor­tunity to observe these processes at first hand. In this case, meanings were constructed and transacted by Irish and Turkish musicians in relation to distinct ideas concerning regional identity. When Black Sea musicians or dance groups perform they have recourse to a large and sometimes contra­dictory fund of representations of Black Sea identity. Even though their own language of self-presentation evokes notions of the authentic (otanlik)'

in order to privilege certain groups at the expense of others, there is abso­lutely no level of 'prior' Black Sea cultural experience to which they can refer. It is worth looking at these representational forms in some detail, in order to see how they were mobilised in the case of one particular group on tour in I reland.

Black Sea musicians in Turkey see their genealogy stretching back to Piyoglu Osman at the beginning of the twentieth century, performing to a community which consisted of both Greeks and Turks, before the 'population exchanges' of 1923 removed the Pontic Greeks in their entirety to Greece. The establishment of the Turkish Republic forced musicians to orient themselves to cultural policy emanating from Istanbul and Ankara and obliged them to see themselves as a particular and 'remote' kind of Turk in the modern state. Intense rural-urban migration to Western Turkey and Germany following uneven industrialisation, intensive cash cropping of tobacco, tea, and hazelnuts, and the economic hardships of the late 1940s and early 1 950s compounded the process. This created a Black Sea diaspora, in which highly regionalised differences had to be recast by musicians as well as everybody else to suit the wider groupings typical of Black Sea life in Istanbul and Berlin. Small Black Sea recording companies in Istanbul such as Harika consolidated this process, at the same time, encouraging singers to think in terms of a number of discrete songs, rather than the long

1 06

+"

B L A C K S E A M U S I C I A N S I N T H E W E S T O F I R E L A N D

improvisations over kayc/e (riffs) typical of the area. This aspect of perform­ance has fed back into the practice of musicians at Black Sea weddings and evenings at Black Sea lokal (clubs), the bread-and-butter activity of these musicians today. I t is impossible to identify any distinct rural Black Sea musical practice to oppose to an urban practice: people, and musicians in particular, move around across the country, from village to city, with great regularity. Their natal village, or father's natal village, is a matter of great emotional significance, as in most societies dominated by a patrilineal ideo­logy. For most purposes though the identities that matter are one's place in an extended family that might be spread across a number of individual households in the Black Sea area, Istanbul and Germany, and to an abstract idea of 'the Black Sea'. So when Black Sea people refer to the 'real' Black Sea in the context of their own discourse of authenticity, they are of course referring to a situation which has changed, and is continuing to change rapidly, although change is never, and can never, be acknowledged.

There is one other important agent in the ever mutating relationship be­tween musicians, the audience and their perceptions of identity. The patronage of the official state-run radio stations at the Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) has been of paramount importance to Black Sea musicians. Black Sea performance in the east Black Sea area involves one player of the kemen,e, a small, bowed box fiddle, and one or more singers taking turns to improvise over a fixed kayc/e. At the TRT on the other hand, all solo singers perform to the accompaniment of the central Anatolian saz or baglama. These are now played in groups of various sizes of about ten players, all accompanying one singer. Various solo regional instruments are, as it were, framed against this, indicating regional identity. A mey (a small double reed aerophone) represents the South East, a kabak kemane (a gourd fidole) represents the Aegean, the accordion represents the North East, and so on. I n the same way, the kemen�e represents the Black Sea. Its use is in a sense iconic, in that its complex textures are often played down in the mix, but it figures heavily as an image in the televised broadcasts of these progral'lmes featur­ing 'regional' singers. The TRT therefore has its own distinct vision of the Black Sea as one regional musical style amongst a number of others. Like them, the Black Sea can be reduced in musical performance to an element in an orderly vision of a regionally diverse yet culturally unified state.

The Black Sea musicians I knew in Istanbul played at Black Sea lokal to Black Sea people whose spoken Turkish they might scarcely understand, provided the music for dancing classes at Black Sea clubs, played brief spots in city centre night-clubs, sandwiched between belly dancers and magicians for Western and Eastern European tourists, and went back to the Black Sea on public holidays and for the high pasture migrations in the Black Sea area for 'research'. Most were highly articulate about the differing contexts in which their Black Sea identity was being expressed. In one case it might be entertainment and an expression of solidarity with an urban Black Sea

1 07

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

diaspora; in another, a contribution to Turkey's national self-renewal through preservation of its traditional - as opposed to pan-Islamic culture; in another, pursuing a career within the TRT; and in yet another, the need to earn money from tourists by prescnting them something in a format that they could understand. It is not difficult therefore to dismiss the idea that traditional music making takes place in one context, in which musician and audience alike can take the transaction of meaning entirely for granted. [n the case of Black Sea musicians in Turkey, mUltiple contexts exist, defined by the migration from the Black Sea to Istanbul, by the dernek, by interna­tional and internal tourism, and by the TRT. The skill of the good regional musician involves an ability to manipulate these quite distinct representa­tions of region in a variety of distinct performance contexts.

Outside these relatively familiar situations, the problem of constructing and managing meaning merely becomes more accentuated. How can agreement between hosts, guests, audiences and performers be reached, or, at least, disagreements be managed? Who defines and then occupies the new performance space? How are questions of exchange managed? What happens when the musical expectations of the host society problematise for the visitors some hitherto 'invisible' aspect of the visitors' musical habitus? These kinds of question are routine for an emerging class of 'world music' musicians, and their resolution in some form is necessary if an event can take place at all. The three Black Sea Turkish musicians visited Ireland in a trip organised and financed by the Arts Council of Northern I reland, involving Workshops, concerts and pub sessions in Belfast, Westport, Galway and Dublin. What the organisers intended was an exchange of ideas, in which the Turkish musicians would leave knowing something about Ireland and Irish music, and that the local musicians would have some direct experience of Turkey and Turkish music. However, the organisers, the Turkish musicians and the audiences that listened to them and participated in the workshops had different expectations, resulting in a series of musical events which were the outcome of quite different interpretations of what was happening. As the week progressed, the interpretations and consequently the events changed. The internal dynamics and a particular hierarchy of musical and social relations of the Turkish group had been transformed as a result by the end of the week.

Finance permitted inviting only three musicians - a singer, a baglama player and a kemenfe player. This was a useful combination from the point of view of the dynamics of a Turkish Halk music ensemble, in that the basic structure of a singer backed by a band, or group, could be maintained. The distinction between the artist (sanalp) and players (miizisiyen) pervades all aspects of urban music making in Turkey. A sanatr' is hired for an occa­sion (such as a concert, a wedding, or a circumcision ceremony), or for the making of a commercial cassette, who then in turn hires milzisiyen to support him or her. A relatively well-known singer might command fees of

1 08

B L A C K SEA M U S I C I A N S I N T H E WEST O F I R E L A N D

about TL 2 million (about £2,000 in 1 990) for a night's work, of which up to TL I million might be distributed among the miizisiyen by the singer, depending upon the age and seniority of the musicians involved. This rela­tionship is expressed not just in the arrangement of pay, but in the spatial organisation of the performance: milzisiyen invariably sit, whilst singers stand and move about in front of the players, addressing the audience.

Amongst the musicians themselves a strict hierarchy prevails. I n larger ensembles for popular music (Arabesk), a lead violin player is responsible for organising the musicians, working out the arrangements (partisiyon) and distributing the pay amongst them. In performances of popular folk music (in which the violin is absent) this role is assumed by the leader of the group of baglama, who is also responsible for getting the band in tune, and for sorting out arrangements. The kemenre therefore becomes a kind of optional extra, whose impact is largely visual. What is important is that it is there, and not necessarily that it is clearly heard. In fact the complexities of the texture and playing style of the instrument are such that most baglama players, even if they are from the Black Sea, regard the kemenre as an unnecessary and problematic encumbrance.

Needless to say, this view is not shared by kemenfe players. In most bands organised to support a Black Sea sanatf" there is consequently a constant antagonism between the baglama and kemenre player. Numbers are very much on the side of the baglama. Halk music singers in clubs use about four baglama, with one or two different melody instruments, such as a kaval (flute) or a kabalc kemane (gourd-fiddle). Undoubtedly more important is an argument of an explicitly ideological nature, that all rural folk music is ultimately reducible to that which can be played on the baglama. This instrument is held to have a particular 'ethnic' associati9n with the Turks of Asia as well as Asia Minor. It is considered to be simple and logical, and, most importantly, capable of being developed in a scientific and rational way (Stokes 1 992: 70-8 1 ) . The Icemenfe on the other hand is widely considered to be a difficult instrument, with an uncompromising sound meaningful • only to Black Sea people, whose fingering and performance is not reducible to a simple, teachable form. For some, the instrument palpably lacks what the baglama is considered to possess in abundance: mantlk (logic).

The sanalp who came to Ireland was a close friend of mine and the whole trip had been organised through him. He had asked along a kemenre player with whom he had been working on several projects in Istanbul that summer. The kemenre player had not travelled, and had to be lent a moderately large sum of money to pay for his visa and contribution to the konut jonu (a housing fund), which all Turks are required to pay on leaving Turkey. The money was repaid by the Arts Council on their arrival, but repaid through the sanatp (who had made the initial payment), who thereby maintained a tight control of the command structure of the group. The kemenre player had even less say in the formal proceedings than the baglama player,

1 09

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

another musician who had worked frequently with the sanal�I, and who also had to be lent money by him. However, he was a graduate of the state conservatory, making a good living playing popular and folk music in Istanbul, and at the highest level of prestige in miizisiyen circles. Follow­ing performance practice in Istanbul, the baglama player worked out reduced partisiyon, providing the kind of framework that would normally be supplied by a group of three or four baglama, whilst the ken1en�e player played quietly in the background, using one string only in the manner of the kabak kemane, an instrument closer to commercial and TRT aes­thetics, and was only wheeled out for particular 'numbers' during the formal performances. The musical dynamics of the group then initially exhibited a clear hierarchy between the sanalp and miizisiyen, and between the two miizisiyen themselves.

Only one of the musicians, the sanalp, had travelled out of Turkey before on a trip to a festival in Italy. He had some familiarity with the idea of performing to foreigners interested in Turkish music, although in this case he was aware, through his contact with me over a period of four years, that something a little more serious was required. It became clear to me that the musicians understood through him that they would be expected to give concerts and workshops introducing Turkish folk music in its entirety to an audience of interested Irish musicians. In the first concerts, they arrived at a format which was a compromise between a typical stage performance (at, for example a wedding, of a performance in a club), and an international festival-type demonstration of representative genres and styles from all regions of Anatolia. In this compromise, a sequence of songs began with slow and serious songs from Central Anatolia, and ended with more rapid, light-hearted songs, interspersed with jokes, stories and quick solo dances from the Black Sea area. The kemen�e player played quietly, using one string only, for 'standard' Anatolian songs. As the Black Sea section began, in the second half of the programme, he began to play in the style characteristic of the kemen�e, alternating passages with the baglama in carefully worked out parlisiyon, and played two solo pieces, singing and accompanying himself on the instrument. Left to their own devices, on the concert stage, cut off from the audience not only by the stage and lights, but a laborious (and not always accurate) process of simultaneous translation provided by myself, the Turks performed according to what they felt was expected from them, preserving the command structure and hierarchy of instruments within the group typical of a Turkish Radio and Television ensemble.

The organisers of the tour however had something quite different in mind. Far from seeing the week as a series of concerts and formal presentations, they had intended a series of events which were collaborative and parti­cipative, in which local musicians would not only have a direct experience of Turkish musicians (rather than just music), but that the Turks would have an experience of Irish music and musicians. This imposed significant

1 10

B L A C K S E A M U S I C I A N S I N T H E W E S T O F I R E L A N D

conditions upon the kind o f interaction that eventually took place. The brief of the Traditional Music section of the Northern Ireland Arts Council is to sustain the practice of Traditional Irish music in Northern Ireland. This is principally through active involvement in music teaching in schools, the organisation of concerts and media events to raise the profile of traditional Irish music, and through the sponsorship of musicians for work in what is determined to be their own local community. One difficulty faced by the Traditional Music section is the widespread association, among both Protestant and Catholic communities, of 'Traditional Music' with the Republican cause. Although predominantly Catholic in its personnel, the Traditional Music section of the Northern Ireland Arts Council maintains that both Protestant and Catholic communities in the North used to share the same musical tradition, and should continue to see their cultural heritage as having the same roots. It is also engaged in a bitter struggle with the Dublin based Traditional Music organisation, Comhallas Ceolleori Eireann which is also active in the north. Comhallas was founded in 1 95 1 to continue the cultural aims of the Gaelic League ( 1 893) in a musical arena. Apart from the perceived political agenda of Comltaltas, the Traditional Music section of the Northern Ireland Arts Council takes exception to the bureaucratic apparatus of the organisation, and the heavy emphasis on competition (through local and all Ireland Fleadhs) rather than participa­tion. Opposition to Comhaltas has resulted in a tendency for the Northern Ireland Arts Council to stress the role of the musician in the community, rather than in organised competitions, concerts and staged ceilis.

The focus for this is 'the session' in pubs, bars and clubs, of the kind which takes place in cities and towns across Ireland, but with a particular intensity at many locations in Belfast. These require a certain kind of in­formal organisation, without which a session could not take place. Once they begin to take place in certain bars at certain times of the week or month, with the encouragement (or at the very least toleration) of the landlord, they acquire a certain dynamic of their own. The emphasis however � very much on an idealised spontaneity. Some kind of leadership is in fact involved, in that certain musicians are 'in the driving seat', beginning sets of reels, jigs and hornpipes, but an ethos of egalitarianism prevails. Rounds of drinks are shared out, everybody can join in, the musicians usually form an inward­facing circle, and once the session has got going, the musicians play for themselves rather than for the benefit of non-musicians in the bar. Musicians have a way of freezing out players who·are too obtrusive, or confusing the playing, but no clear hierarchy of instruments or instrumental functions exists; any number of melody instruments can participate in the melodic line. The only clear division of labour is that of accompaniment (bozo uk is, guitars) and percussion (bodhran, bones, spoons). A corollary of this egalitarian ethos is the view that non-Irish music can be incorporated into the session repertoire - not as Irish music as such - but as something that

I I I

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

can be performed as i f i I were. It is not uncommon t o hear Bulgarian, Romanian and Macedonian tunes (learned from holidays abroad, record­ings or other exchanges), and particularly French and Breton tunes, in bars in Belfast and elsewhere.

Sessions were arranged for the Turks by the lrish musicians in which the intention was clearly that interaction would take place in terms of the conventions of the pub session. For a number of reasons, this never quite hap­pened. Whilst bearing a family resemblance to Bulgarian and Macedonian music, Turkish music is slower. This made the complex irregular rhythms actually more difficult for the Irish musicians to perceive - even though there was a certain familiarity with irregular rhythms from a widespread awareness of Balkan music. The intervallic and modal structure of Turkish music revolves around small groups of tones and non-tempered intervals, whereas that of traditional Irish music is equally tempered, rapidly performed and covers a wide range. Even though they were reluctant to admit this - constantly asserting that Irish music was 'simple' - the Turkish musicians could not grasp the jigs and reels. While both Turks and Irish musicians were determined to trade tunes, the musical material proved too complex for the time available. This side of the intended interaction remained unfulfilled. There were a number of reasons for this beyond the tonal and rhythmic properties of the tunes.

For a start, the Turks were unfamiliar with the conventions of the pub session, demanding total silence when they played, and complaining when other musicians tried to join in. I found myself in the excruciatingly embarrass­ing position of having to ask people to be quiet and listen. Perhaps more problematic was their unfamiliarity with the egalitarian ethos of the session. With the high value accorded to fiddle playing in Ireland, the Icemenge player found his skills much in demand, whilst the sanalp and the bag/ama player found themselves in the unusual position of being at the fringes of the event. Questions in workshops, and in the sessions themselves focused heavily on the Icemenge. The sanalp and the bag/ama player were extremely uneasy about this, a fact which the Irish musicians were not slow to notice, and keen to explore. The kemenge moved slowly but surely to the centre of the events. In discussions and more particularly jokes the Black Sea emerged as a region possessing qualities of 'remoteness' analogous to those of the West coast of Ireland. The kemenge (as an object) and Temel the kemenge player (as a person) became unshakeably entrenched in a distinctly Irish discourse of place, 'remoteness' and identity.

In formal presentations and sessions, the Black Sea therefore came to predominate. As the week progressed the kemenre began to feature more heavily in solo spots in the programme, and to participate more actively in the ensemble, playing in its characteristic polyphonic style. If the initial impetus for this came from the hosts, the Turkish musicians responded to the situation in a variety of ways. As far as the kemenre player was

1 1 2

F

B L A C K S E A M U S I C I A N S I N T H E WEST O F I R E L A N D

concerned, the situation was undoubtedly a source of quiet but intense satisfaction. Unlike the other two musicians, he was not a high school or conservatory graduate. He was accustomed to spending his time as a pro­fessional musician within Black Sea communities in Istanbul, and was neither obliged, nor remotely concerned with impressing others. He spoke Black Sea Turkish with little regard for Istanbulian notions of conversa­tional refinement. His blunt comments about the ways of 'the infidel' (gal'''/') and the peculiarities of farming practices in Ireland observed through the windows of the minibus emerged as the object of somewhat unkind banter on the part of the other musicians.

Nonetheless, his emergence as the star of the show could not have hap­pened without the active collusion of the lead singer, since he controlled the purse strings on this particular trip, and on their return to Turkey, Temel was going to remain dependent upon the singer for prestigious (if occasional) work. The singer was also from the Black Sea, and had expressed to me on many occasions a frustration with the ambiguous role of the kemenge in TRT and other official performance contexts at home. The bag/amas dom­inated TR T practice in the performance of a music constructed around the peculiar characteristics of the kemenre. Its iconic use by TRT (rather than 'authentic' Black Sea players - who could not read music and therefore could not qualify for the TRT entrance examination) did not satisfy him. He felt it was artificial, and the difficulty of integrating the kemenre with the bag/ama was a constant irritation. A private campaign directed at television programme directors bore fruit last year with a number of Black Sea music programmes featuring only himself and one kemenge player - in 'traditional' style, with no bag/amas. Another set of 'official' media perform­ance conventions are thus emerging from a protracted and complex debate in Turkey, in which the kemenge is being redefined and reintegrated into TR T practice.

Irish interest in the kemenre pushed it to the front of the group's perform­ance. Despite the collusion of the singer, this necessitated a Qumber of adjustments on both his and the bag/ama player's part. The singer was obliged to play up the notion of the Black Sea, which he did by relating it, in comments between numbers, to his perceptions of the West Coast of Ireland. Jokes played a more important part in the proceedings. Kerry jokes could easily be transformed into 'Laz" jokes, and vice versa, since both played on notions of cunning masquerading as stupidity, and relations between remote areas and the city. The singer -;"as an accomplished joke teller, and was extremely quick to make the connection. Black Sea repertoire predominated in the last concerts: the kemenge player was offered more solo spots. The bag/ama player, for his part, played in a way which allowed more space for the rhythmic and textural peculiarities of the kemenge. Quicker and sparser bag/ama playing was required. The bag/ama player was able to oblige, since it enabled him to reinforce his own self image,

1 1 3

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

and present himself to the singer (upon whom he also was occasionally dependent for jobs in Istanbul) as a competent, workaday musician, able to adapt to the most peculiar of demands. The musicians quickly developed strategies for coping with this unforeseen situation in ways which would not sour their relations of dependence upon the singer once they returned to Istanbul.

However, a certain tension inevitably emerged in relation to performances and workshops. The baglal17G player suddenly snapped that he felt the trip had been a waste of time. He had only come, he said, because the singer had promised him that they would be able to find an amplifier to buy and take back to Turkey. The result was an irritable afternoon walking round music shops in Galway looking for and eventually buying a large valve amplifier. Performing to an audience which presented the Turkish musicians with unexpected demands did create a certain amount of stress on top of the strain of constantly travelling and meeting new people. The speed with which the singer and musicians adapted and developed strategies for coping with the situation was particularly striking.

The ability to deal with unfamiliar performance situations is a basic resource for professional musicians in many societies. The musician is not simply a cipher representing a culture to and for itself: musicians travel and are frequently skilled intermediaries. In spite of this, the problems of dealing with an event which all of the participants would regard as inter-cultural were substantial. They included the unexpected demands of the hosts, the reconciliation of ideologically loaded conflicts within host and guest musical groups, and the need to cooperate in such a way that the complex relations between singer and musicians could be picked up upon return. A plurality of meanings and strategies predominated, each one with implications for the others. The event as a whole was however provided with a common frame by two strikingly congrucnt representations of regional identity.

The language and rhetoric of regional identity has much in common in the West of I reland and in North East Turkey, even though the experience of participation on the margins of new nation-states is in both cases dif­ferent. For the Irish musicians, the West coast is the true home of Irish music, the home of the Irish language and the focus of moral values which constitute the essence of Irishness. The North East of Turkey focuses analog­ous values for Turks for quite different reasons. Its geographical location confers on it both a remoteness and a proximity. It is the closest part of the modern Turkish republic to Central Asia, which had been identified by early Turkist ideologues as the home of a Turkishness uncorrupted by Arabs and by Islam (see Stokes 1992: 25-33). On the other hand, its very distance from the urban centres, and its long history of hostility to the 'Kurds' and Alevis' the other side of the Pontic Alps, attest to a vigorous, uncorrupted and assertive Turkishness. In both the East Black Sea coast of Turkey and the West Coast of Ireland, topography is an important metaphor of moral

1 14

B L A C K S E A M U S I C I A N S I N T H E W E S T O F I R E L A N D

integrity, both as an explanation for the absence o f corrupting urbanism and as a trope in which a certain 'wild' machismo and vigour are constantly evoked. Both representations of a pristine periphery have a precise and definable place in Republican ideologies in both Ireland and Turkey. If the language and rhetoric of national culture is shaped by a common set of political and economic imperatives, this common fund of representations is perhaps not surprising.

The relationship of music to these remote regions can perhaps be accounted for in other ways. Both Ireland and Turkey are identified in and outside both countries as peripheral economies on the fringes of capitalist Europe. Labour migration plays a vital role in both economies, and the long history of migration both inwards into Europe and outwards to America (in the case of Ireland) and the Middle East (in the case of Turkey) has led to an intense cultural elaboration of the migrant situation. In both societies, music is credited with powers of bringing people together and engendering the moral cohesion of the community, evoking collective and private memory. Place, for many migrant communities, is something which is constructed through music with an intensity not found elsewhere in thcir social lives. It is no coincidence that the heroes of Irish traditional music should have made their names, and their records, in migrant communities in the United States, and that many of the stars of Turkish popular or regional musics should have made their names in Istanbul or in Germany ' Musicians in Turkey and Ireland today experience place and identity in ways which embrace many of the characteristic contradictions and ambiguities of modernity and its legacy. More often than not they are separated from 'their' cultural locus by a gulf of time and space: the discourses in which place is constructed and celebrated in relation to music have never before had to permit such flexibility and ingenuity. 'Traditional' ;nllsicians involved in the kinds of experiences detailed above need to be peculiarly good at managing these discourses. Without doubt, their expertise is a vital resource for the rest of us.

Notes

See for example Herzfeld 1987. This chapter is based on research in Turkey funded by the ESRC between 1984 and 1987. I am also grateful to Kieran Carson and Sean Corcoran of the Northern Ireland Arts Council which funded the events described in the latter part of this paper. .. .

2 For a more sustained critique of the notion of context and the scholarly reificatiol1 of musicological objects, see Waterman 1990: 8, 2 1 4.

3 Irony would seldom be far from the surface whenever I heard TRT musicians using the tenn. Holding the floor in a tea break at a recording session in Istanbul, I once heard Ibrahim Can pronounce on authenticity with a simple pun. Parody­ing an iSlallhuiian notion of the 'Laz' (see note 4) accent, he commented 'olanrik, o dandik' (the 'd's and 't's in this dialect being phonetically very close). Dandik was metropolitan slang (from a Kurdish word meaning 'sunnower seed'), which might

1 1 5

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

be translated as 'crap'. His comment, which meant 'authenticity - thal's crap', cleverly juxtaposed the notion of TRT authenticity with demeaning iSlanbulian notions of regional 'others'.

4 The term 'Laz' is used inaccurately. and in a somewhat derogatory fashion for all inhabitants of the area between the Pontic Alps and the Black Sea coast between Samsun and Artvin. Actual speakers of the Laz language now only inhabit a few valleys in Rize and Artvin.

5 Alevis (Alawitcs) arc heterodox Muslims who revere Ali rather than Muhammed as the bearer of God's final message.

6 The Sligo fiddle player Michael Coleman established a definitive performance style, which musicians in many parts of Ireland still seek to emulate, from New York in the 1 920s. Bulent Ersoy, the transexual transvestite Arabesk singer became Olle of the icons of this genre whilst in virtual exile in (former) West Germany (see Stokes 1992: 1 72-3). The most well-known Black Sea singers operate in Istanbul (Ibrahim Can, Mustafa Topalogiu, Erkan Ocakl!) and Ankara (Siireyya Davulcuoglu).

References

Adorno, T. W., 'On Popular Music', Zeitschrift fiir Sozia/forsc/Ilmg 9, 1 94 1 , pp. 1 7-49.

Baumann, M. P., Folklor lIud Folklorismlls, Winterhur, Amadeus Verlag, 1976. Blacking, J., 'A Common-sense View of All Music': Reflections Oil Percy Grainger's

Contribution to Etlmomusicology and Music Education, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Clifford, J. , 'Traveling Cultures' in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P. Treichler (cds), Cultural Swdies, London, Routledge, 1992.

Greenwood, D., 'Culture By The Pound: An Anthropological Perspective on Tourism as Cultural Commodification', in V. L. Smith (cd.), Host alld Guests: The Anthropology oj Tourism, Oxford, Blackwell, 1 978.

Harker, D., 'Fakcsong' in Popular Music Perspectives 2, G6teborg, IASPM, 1985, pp. 346 -59.

Helm, E., 'Musicultura: Three Orient-Occident Encounters', World of Music, vol. 20, no. 2, 1978, pp. 1-1 7.

Herzfeld, M., The Poetics of Manhood: COli test alld Identity in a Cretan Vii/age, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1 987.

Hobsbawm, E. and T. Ranger (eds), The Invellfiol1 of Tradifioll, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Mitchell, T., Colol1ising Egypt, Berkeley, U niversity of California Press, 1 99 1 . Stokes, M . H . • The Arabesk Debate: Music am/ Musicians ill Modern Turkey,

Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992. Stratton J., 'Capitalism and Romantic Ideology in the Record Business', Popular

Music, vol. 3, 1983, pp. 143-56. Waterman, C., Jlljti: A Social History and Ethnography of (11/ African Popular Music.

Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1990.

1 1 6

Part B

MUSIC, NATIONALITY AND I MAGINED COMMUNITY

..

66

H O N K Y T O N K : T H E M U S I C

O F T H E S O U T H E R N

W O R K I N G C L A S S

Bill C. Malone

Source: W. R. Ferris and M. L. Hurt (cds) ( 1982) Folk Music (md Model'll SOl/lid, Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, pp. 1 19-28.

1 left my home down on a rural route' And told my mom I'm going stepping out, To get the honky tonk blues.

The country church, the county schoolhouse, the village barn dance, and the family parlor all occupy honored places in the history of country music as shaping forces in the evolution of the genre. All of them mirror the pastoral origins of country music, just as their continued emphasis in written accounts reflects a rural bias on the part of scholars. The honky tonk, on the other hand, which Hank Williams described in the above song, has been anything but pastoral, but it may have been the most powerful influence yet. Since antiquity a powerful interrelationship between drinking and • musical entertainment has existed, and the tavern, or its equivalent, has always played an important role in the dissemination of music. But as a force for musical change in country music, its history properly begins in the thirties. I t was then that the combined forces of prohibition repeal and increased commercialization and professionalization in the still new hillbilly music field led to the movement of musicians into the taverns and beer joints where their music was welcomed: When country music entered the honky tonks, its performing styles and its thematic content changed signi­ficantly. Much of that story I have told elsewhere.2 My chief focus in this paper, however, will be on the years since World War II when the music of the honky tonk became, at least for a time, virtually the sound of country music, as well as the most valid expression in song of the world view of the Southern working class.

1 19

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

I f the thirties were important as years of nourishment, the war years were absolutely indispensable in both the maturation and popularization of honky tonk music. Like no other phenomenon before it, the war contributed to the weakening of the agricultural nexus and the subsequent migration of people into towns and industrial cities of the South, as well as into cities in the Midwest and on the West Coast. While rural civilians changed their locales and their occupations, their military sons and daughters moved to training camps both in and out of the South and to combat theatres around the world. For a people in transition, who were now urban in residence but yet rural in style and outlook, the adjustment was often fraught with frustration and pain: housing was both inadequate and scarce; work was plentiful but fraught with an unfamiliar regimentation; and family solidarity was weakened by a whole host of complex urban problems, not the least of which was the growing entry of women into the work force, and the increased availability of alternative role models for youth. In that time of stress people tended to seek security in that which was familiar. Women, for example, often sought the solace of religion ( probably to a greater extent than men), and radio evangelists and charismatic tent revivalists found a large and enthusiastic audience among Southerners in the late I 940s. For men the pressures and frustrations of city life could be especially traumatic, and the threats to masculine supremacy, already strongly present in rural life, were made even more glaring in the newly adopted urban milieu. Many men, and their sons (but, it is hoped, not their daughters), sought to reaffirm their identities in a sympathetic setting: over a bottle of beer in a honky tonk.

The honky tonk' was a man's world. Although women were sought there, it was not considered their domain, and those who entered were not respected. Men might accompany their wives or girlfriends to a dance, but the unattached "honky tonk angel" was both a lure and a threat. While she tempted, she also reminded one of that potential in all women, and was a premonition of the liberation that was soon to come. Men went to honky tonks for the widest variety of reasons, and as both casual and serious drinkers. Many who frequented honky tonks during the war years, whether industrial laborer or serviceman, were gripped by a sense of isolation-the loneliness that came from social displacement or from the physical separation from loved ones. The lonely drinker sought communion with the bottle, his companion on the nearby barstool, and the music of the jukebox. The music of the honky tonks, whether live or on jukeboxes, reflected increasingly the preoccupation of these displaced ruralites. Furthermore, a body of songs about the honky tonk world itself, and about the experience of entertainers who appeared there, began to comprise a significant portion of the country music repertory. Rustic sounds still thrived in country music during the forties; the decade, after all, marked the heyday of mountain singer Roy Acuff. But styles born in the honky tonks of Texas predominated, and names like Bob Wills, Ted Daffan, Floyd Tillman, Moon Mullican, Cliff Bruner, and

1 20

•

H O N K Y T O N K : M U S I C OF T H E S O U T H E R N W O R K I N G C L A S S

AI Dexter dominated the jukeboxes. AI Dexter's "Pistol Packin' Mama," a giant hit of 1 943, and an example of the rollicking side of honky tonk, was inspired by its singer-com poser's experiences in the oil town-honky tonk atmosphere of Texas in the thirties (the story grew out of an incident witnessed by Dexter in a Longview dancehall). Voicing the cry-in-your-beer side of honky tonk, almost to the point of suicidal impulse, were such songs as Rex Griffin's "The Last Letter," Ted Daffan's "Born to Lose," and Floyd Tillman's "It Makes No Difference Now," which poured forth from a thou­sand jukeboxes and were carried around the world by lonely and homesick Southern servicemen. When Ernest Tubb moved to the Grand Ole Opry in 1943, his Texas-born and beer-joint-nourished style gained a national forum. As he won disciples, the style he embodied insinuated itself into the music of country entertainers everywhere, from West Virginia to California.

The immediate years following World War II witnessed country music's first great commercial boom. Postwar prosperity created an audience that was eager for and receptive to commercial music diversion. The number of musicians, and the establishments receptive to their music, proliferated. Not all singers went willingly to the honky tonks. The honky tonk's reputation for violence comes more from this period than from any other. The threat to life and limb was as real for the entertainer as it was for the customer, as drunken oil field roughnecks or industrial workers playing cowboy worked out their fantasies or tested their macho impulses in the competitive arena of the barroom. For many young men a violent barroom encounter was a ritualized expression of manhood. For others it was a way of coping with the frustrations of boring, and generally low-paying, jobs. The stories may be apochryphal, but musicians still tell of playing on stages protected by chicken wire from flying beer bottles. Few entertainers have very pleasant memories about what Glen Campbell would later cali the "fightin' -and­dancin' " clubs. The honky tonk circuit was a hard apprenticeship for country entertainers, but the styles developed there moved into the recording studios and the concert halls where they altered the whole sound and tone of American country music.

�

Honky tonk performance worked hand in hand with technological progress to encourage sophisticated innovations in instrumentation. Electric guitars, both standard and steel, became common in most country bands, and by 1954 the pedal steel guitar, a basic ingredient of honky tonk instrumenta­tion, and probably the closest thing yet to an approximation of the vocal honky tonk whine, had been introduced (first on Webb Pierce's recording of "Slowly"). The honky tonk style never exercised a complete monopoly (Eddy Arnold's successful sound of the mid-forties embodied a composite of influences), but, for all practical purposes, it had become the all-pervasive sound of mainstream country music. The typical band was small and featured a fiddle, a steel guitar and "takeoff" guitar (both electrified), string bass, a rhythm guitar played in "sock", or percussive, style, occasionally a piano,

1 2 1

M U S I C A N D SO C I A B I L I T Y

but almost never a drum. The musicians were capable o f performing the hot instrumental licks pioneered by the Western swing bands of the thirties, but instrumentation was usually subordinated to the needs of a vocalist. A new genera tion of honky tonk singers had emerged, and some of them, like Hank Thompson, Webb Pierce, Lefty Frizzell, and Floyd Tillman', were among the most distinctive stylists that the country music field has seen.

Surpassing them all, however, was the immensely talented singer from Alabama, Hank Williams, whose style reflected the tensions that had produced the honky tonk genre, and whose career marked the greatest commercial flowering yet of the honky tonk style. Hank sang to an audi­ence who, for better or worse, were having to come to terms with life in an industrial-urban environment. Adults might dream of the abandoned rural life, but few had thoughts about returning to it. Their children had no illusions about rural life, and they made up the bulk of country music's burgeoning audience in the early fifties. Very soon, the youngest of them would be lured away by the rollicking, and sensual, sounds of rock and roll, a style that would render honky tonk a strong and almost devastating blow. Hank Williams's career and style certainly do not totally embody the whole of country music history, but they epitomize a large slice of it. Reared in a fundamentalist, but violently unstable, religious atmosphere,5 Williams was never able to rid himself of the influences learned there, both musical and doctrinal, and he took them into the honky tonks of south Alabama where he began singing by the time he was fourteen years old. Stylistically, his music represented a fusion of that of his two heroes, the Texas Ernest Tubb and the Tennesseean Roy Acuff (an example of similar amalgamations in the larger field of country music), and, thematically, his songs embodied the ambivalence that lay at the heart of Southern working class culture: hedonism and puritanism, machismo and sentimentality, sin and guilt. Williams and his audience interrelated with an intimacy that had hardly been equalled in country music's previous history, because culturally they were one.

When Hank Williams died in 1953, few could have anticipated that very soon the honky tonk style would be driven from recordings, and that the whole country music genre, which had thrived so mightily after the war, would be in shambles. The rock and roll phenomenon, which ironically derived much of its energy and stylistic traits from country music tradition (a fascination with boogie and "hot" rhythms often exhibited by earlier country musicians), was also a product of the urbanization process dis­cussed earlier. The rock and roll wave inundated American music, and all forms of traditional country music were driven underground as promoters and recording men began their frantic searches for young and vigorous stylists who could recreate what Elvis had done and who could permanently hold that youthful audience that now dominated American music. The Nash­ville music industry responded to these challenges in a variety of ways, one of which was the production of a pop style of country music, known by such

122

p

b

H O N K Y TO N K : M U S I C O F T H E S O U T H E R N W O R K I N G C L A S S

designations as "the Nashville Sound," "country pop," o r "countrypolitao," which would allegedly preserve the ambience of older country music while building a new audience who preferred their music to be served up in less raw forms. For a brief period in the mid-fifties, fiddles and steel guitars almost disappeared from country recordings and from jukeboxes.

Honky tonk music, however, like bluegrass, did not vanish. Both forms went "underground," and honky tonk continued to thrive, especially in the clubs of Texas and Southern California where veterans like Ernest Tubb, and newcomers like Willie Nelson, George Jones, Charlie Walker, and Wynn Stewart remained faithful to the beer-drinking style. One singer resisted both the rock and roll and country pop tides, and not only prospered with his version of the honky tonk genre, but introduced dynamic innovations which have influenced the field ever since. This was Ray Price, whose recording of "Crazy Arms" in 1956 successfully competed on the charts with country-pop tunes and ushered in a new and vital phase of honky tonk history. Price's band, the Cherokee Cowboys, were almost totally electrified (fiddles included); the electric bass had replaced the older standup instrument; and drums had become an integral aspect of this dancehall-oriented music. While the wailing pedal steel guitar and the heavily bowed single-string-style fiddle took their lead passages, the drums and rhythm guitar set down a hard rhythm as the electric bass surrounded it all with walking bass pat­terns. This was the "Texas Shuffle Beat," an infectious dance style, and some of the best country music ever made.

Like his mentor, Hank Williams, before him, Price inspired a host of disciples. The Cherokee Cowboys's roster reads like a who's who of country music. At one time or another, the band included Johnny Bush, Roger Miller, Johnny Paycheck, Willie Nelson, Buddy Emmon�, Tommy Jackson, and Buddy Spicher. By the beginning of the sixties these men had gone on to pursue their own careers, and many others, both within and outside the pale of Ray Price influence, had contributed to a honky tonk revival. George Jones, building on a long tenure in the southeast Texas darce halls of Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange, and Houston, produced hit after hit as he became one of the supreme stylists of country music. Buck Owens, Texas­born, but a product of California's country ballroom scene, topped the charts in the early sixties with a supercharged instrumental style ( part honky tonk, and part rockabilly) dominated by the sound of the pedal steel guitar. Later in the decade another California-based singer, Merle Haggard, who is a rare breed, indeed, because he was born in the state, took the honky tonk style to even greater commercial heights with songs like "The Bottle Let Me Down" and "Swinging Doors." He and Loretta Lynn demonstrated in the late sixties and early seventies that it was possible to be both "hard country" and successful at the same time. It was a lesson readily absorbed by many young performers, but one from which the country music industry as a whole has profited little.

1 23

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Honky tonk music, therefore, revived with new strength from its dol­drums of the mid-fifties. The style, though, has never since prcdominated as it did in the early fifties and will probably never do so again. The country music industry has prospered to an extent never thought possible back during the rock and roll period, and the Nashville facet of the industry, absorbed with self-image, has attempted to be "all things to all people." Country music has simultaneously identified with Middle America, the working man, and progressive youth, while also reaching out for that affluent middle class audience which is presumably different from the other three categories. In an industry obsessed with "crossovers," the hard honky tonk sound is unwelcomed; indeed, it is embarrassing. Furthermore, the temptation among performers to cross over to the more lucrative and respectable pop country field is almost irresistible. Singers experiment with the honky tonk field, as in the case of Johnny Rodriguez and his initial recording of "Pass Me By," but soon move into other stylistic categories. A few, like Ronnie Milsap, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Hank Williams, Jr., demonstrate a mastery of the honky tonk style, when they choose to do so; but that choice is made infrequently. For a singer to perform consistently in the honky tonk vein is rare; for one to prosper doing so is even more unusual. Ernest Tubb still makes between 200 and 300 personal appearances a year. His audience is large and loyal, but it has also been with him for probably thirty years. Other singers, like Norman Wade, Vernon Oxford, and Boxcar Willie, project sounds, and often songs that come directly out of the fifties. And there are probably a thousand others much like them in a thousand honky tonks throughout America, unnoticed and unknown anywhere outside their own locales, who still remain true to visions cast long ago by Ernest, Lefty, or Hank. The singers who have done most to preserve the honky tonk style, while at the same time creating identities apart from earlier models, are Gene Watson, John Anderson, and above all, Moe Bandy (born in Meridian, Mississippi, but reared, biologically and musically, in San Antonio, Texas). Bandy probably does not deserve to be called "the Jesus Christ of country music," as Nick Tosches has termed him, but his clean, crisp articulation of lyrics dealing with drinking, cheating, and heartbreak, performed with a backdrop of fiddle and pedal guitar, cuts like a breath of fresh air through the fetid morass of country pop.

This essay began with the argument that honky tonk was once the sound of mainstream country music. It concludes by arguing that, while it no longer predominates, it now represents the best in a music that is losing its soul. Honky tonk music, unlike other country styles, has been hampered less by artificiality. It has not consciously tried to preserve or recreate (as has bluegrass), nor has it reached out to build a new audience. Of all country music styles it has been the closest organic reflection of Southern working class culture, and the one that most closely marks the evolution of the Southern folk from rural to urban-industrial life. Although intimately

1 24

li' P

..

H O N K Y T O N K : M U S I C O F T H E S O U T H E R N W O R K I N G C L A S S

tied t o the urban adjustment o f Southern plain folk, i t has been ignored by folklorists because it is not pastoral, and because it does not protest. It is scorned by the country music industry because it is too country. And it is dismissed by many of us, I am convinced, because it is too real. Honky tonk instrumentation both attracts and repels: to many of us, the whine of the pedal steel guitar and bounce of the shuffle beat evoke elemental, and often cathartic, impulses and emotions. To others, they undoubtedly conjure up distasteful seamy and seedy images. The lyrics and instrumentation of honky tonk music combine to evoke a side of human nature that we do not always like to see, or at least do not like to recognize: a vision of emotional pain and isolation and human weakness that we have all shared. The lyrics may be too revealing emotionally to accept intellectually. At their worst, the songs can be so full of trite self-pity as to drown us in their bathos. But at their best, songs like "Borrowed Angel," "Who'll Turn Out the Lights," or George Jones's marvelously performed "The Grand Tour," speak to the loneliness, and the need for human empathy in each of us.

Notes

Hank Williams, "Honky Tonk Blues." The orally delivered paper was illustrated with relevant recordings. These included Floyd Tillman, "Slipping Around," Ernest Tubb, "Walking the Floor Over YOLl," Ray Price, "Crazy Arms," Stoney Edwards, "Old Hank and Lefty Raised My Country Soul," Moe Bandy, "It Was Always So Easy (to Find an Unhappy Woman)," and George Jones, "The Grand Tour."

2 The first history and analysis of honky tonk as a subgenre of country music appeared in my doctoral dissertation, "A History of Commercial Country Music in the United States, 1 920- 1 964" (University of Texas, Austin, 1 964), and in my subsequent book, Country Music. USA (Austin: University of Texas Press, for the American Folklore Society, 1968). Another analysis of the' phenomenon, along with recorded examples, is found in The Smithsonian Collection oj Classic Cot/wry Music (organized and edited by Bill C. Malone, 1 98 1 ).

3 The term "hanky tonk" probably has urban black origins, but by the 1930s it had come to be identified with roadhouses generally frequented by Southern whites. Hanky tonks were usually located 011 the outskirts of town, partly 5ecause of the quest for reduced legal surveil lance and for low tax rates, but also because of the county option policy favored by such states as Texas. Honky tanks often operated near the county lines in order to draw clientele from both wet and dry counties. With the passage of time, "honky tonk" became virtually a generic term for any establishment which sold beer, permitted dancing, and featured country music.

4 Floyd Tillman had been an active participant in the Texas honky tonk scene since about 1935, as both a singer and sideman; but he did not become known as a solo singing star until after t 949.

5 The best account of Williams's early life and influences is Chet Flippo, Your Cheatin' Hearl (New York: Simon and Schuster, 198 1 ).

1 25

67

PAUL S I M O N ' S GRA CEL A ND , S O U T H A F R I CA A N D

T H E M E D I A T I O N O F

M U S I C A L M E A N I N G

Louise Meintjes

Source: EtJmolllllsicology 34 (1990): 37-73.

The presence of style indicates strong community, an intense sociab­ility that has been given shape through time, an assertion of control over collective feelings so powerful that any expressive innovator will necessarily put his or her content into that shaping continuum and no other.

(Keil 1 985: 1 22)

In August 1 986 Warner Brothers released Grace/and, an album made by Paul Simon in collaboration with a number of American and South African musicians. It is a collage of some styles current in the United States and urban Black South African styles, themselves products of years of U.S.­South African links in the music industry. As a composite of styles, each richly embedded with social and historical meaning, Grace/and is a complex polysemic sign vehicle that comes to stand for social collaboration. The collaborative nature of the music and musicmaking process itself links Grace/and to this social meaning.

I argue that the album operates as a sign which is principally interpreted by means of the notion of collaboration. This notion of collaboration is established in the music itself. The musical collaboration then comes to stand for social collaboration through a series of "interpretive moves" (Feld 1 984) on the part of the listener. Collaboration operates in this context in two ways. First, it is established in the music, that is, in the way styles are intertwined, and in the composition, production, and promotional pro­cesses. ' It is a projection by the producers presented to the consumers and

126

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A CE L A ND

made apparent in the marketing publicity and the media commentary, Second, this idea of collaboration presented by the music is understood dif­ferently by various interpreters, each coming to Grace/and with a unique set of accumulated sociopolitical and cultural experiences. Each set of experi­ences includes the listener's own ideas about what constitutes collaboration. Understanding collaboration is an evaluative interpretive move engaged in by the consumers.

Thus collaboration itself becomes a new sign vehicle created in the minds of the interpreters as a way to understand the sign Grace/and' Specifically, Grace/and's musical collaboration is valued or criticized by different listeners in terms of how they value or criticize the social collaboration between a White American and Black South Africans that I claim Grace/and expresses and represents. It is embraced if the social collaboration it signifies is valued, while it is rejected if the social collaboration it signifies is opposed. However, listeners who adhere to a bourgeois aesthetic principle which privileges the inherent transcendency of art may evaluate the album in terms of the suc­cess of its musical collaboration only and regard the signification of social collaboration as irrelevant. Therefore, the political dynamics from which and through which the music derives meaning remain highly ambiguous.

Precisely because Grace/and's political ambiguity enhances the possibil­ity of mUltiple readings, the album presents an ideal case in which to examine the contribution of the political implications of a project to its musical meaning. This is because the radical differences between various readings highlight the process of interpretation in operation. My interest here lies in how politics become significant in musical meaning. What is the process? I will demonstrate that the political is not merely an adjunct to the sound but embedded in it through strings of connected signs. The embedded ness of the political in the sonic means that the political becomes entangled in and communicated through affective experience. This capacity of music to communicate through affect, to communicate feeling fully and intuitively, is a source of its potency (Giles and Shepherd 1988: 1 7) .

Grace/and is exceptionally powerful as a sign vehicle for tilree principal and related reasons. First, the idea of collaboration is embedded in many levels of the music and musicmaking process. Second, the ambiguity of its political orientation allows multiple interpretations of that collaboration. Third, interpretations of that collaboration are tied through icons and indices to listeners' sense of themselves (linked to their positioning in social space [Bourdieu 1984] ) so that their ihterpretations are felt to be true and natural.

Grace/and's success on the basis of sales and as a complex sign is depend­ent on its appeal to a wide range of listeners who are able to make sense of what they hear in relation to their own lives. The mUltiple readings of these listeners are facilitated by the lack of definition in Paul Simon's public pOlitical stance towards South Africa and by the ambiguity of the political

1 27

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

statement presented in the album itself. Simon's public stance towards South Africa is informed by his liberal attitude toward the relationship between politics and art. This is conveyed in the following statement made during an interview conducted in Zimbabwe:

· . . 1 am not a South African and cannot choose, as a public personality, a specific political party in South Africa. There are so many that I cannot really endorse any one in particular. The only sentiment 1 really feel I should express on the issue is that as far as all political parties are concerned . . . they should not tell me how I should play or write my music.

(Rathbone and Talbot, Bits 1987)

Even though Simon consulted prominent musical figures in the anti­apartheid movement (Harry Belafonte, for example) before embarking on the project, Grace/and was not conceived in political terms:

· . . I didn't say "I'd love to bridge cultures somewhere in the world, and mmm . . . where? Maybe South Africa." No, I just fell in love with the music and wanted to play . . . . My view is instinc­tually cultural. Looking at things culturally, as I did with Grace/alld · . . there's a political implication but essentially I come at the world from a cultural sociological point of view, and they [his radical critics] want to define the world politically.

(McNeil Lehrer Report, PBS 25 February 1987)

The absence of direct semantic references to apartheid in South Africa promotes the ambiguity of the political orientation of the album itself. Furthermore, the minimal general reference to South Africa in the lyrics is obscure, Simon's liner notes exclude sociopolitical discussion, and the album graphics represent nothing South African. The front cover depicts an Ethiopian effigy, Simon's name, and the album title.'

Grace/and's music and metacommentary are not presented as discourses about power discrepancies based specifically on race and located specific­ally in South Africa. It is left up to the individual listener to make sense of the musical collaboration in her or his own terms. This equivocation permits multiple and often conflicting paths of inference. It can thus serve the interests of various and even opposing sociopolitical groups. These may even include groups that Simon and the collaborating musicians would not choose to support.

Before describing the political signification process in Grace/and, I must emphasize that my focus on the political discourse is not meant to diminish the significance of the musical discourse. The album is musically interesting: the structural integration of diverse musical elements is skillfully crafted; the

128

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A C t-L A ND

production is superb; and the musicians are all experienced professionals. Additionally, Grace/and is not a musical anomaly in the contemporary international market. It is part of a history of links between North American and South African music through the recording industry and through tour­ing performers (see Coplan 1985, Erlmann 1987, and Hamm 1 988). It is also part of the 1980s' World Beat trend in popular music. Other examples are Talking Heads' Remain in Light ( 1980) and Naked ( 1988), Peter Gabriel's So ( 1 986), Stewart Copeland's The Rhythmatist ( 1 985), Rolling Stones' Sleel Wheels ( 1 989), Kate Bush's Sensual World ( 1 989), and Art of Noise's reba ( 1 989). (See Feld's discussion of the current Africanization of Western pop [Feld 1 988a].) Notable reasons for Grace/and's enormous success, then, are that the participants are skilled artists, their product is accomplished, and the genres Grace/and represents and presents are currently highly valued in the music market.

Collaboration as musical process

There is a deliberate effort to convey a sense of mutual cooperation and benefit in the composition and production of Grace/alld-in the interna­tional promotional tour organization, in the integration of musical styles and languages, and in the metacommentary about all of these aspects of the project. Each of these operates collaboratively on many levels from the smallest structural integration to the most general.

The compositioll process

Simon's approach to composing varies from song to s,,!ng. Although none has been conceived from start to finish by him alone, some involve more input from his fellow Grace/and participants than others.

"Homeless" is clearly the most collaboratively conceived of the album's songs. In the liner notes Simon described the collaborative process involved in its composition. The lyrics and melody were pieced together bit by bit, some by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, some by Simon, some together. They composed some new lyrics and melodies, and inserted these into existing material from various sources. They made musical and linguistic changes to each other's contributions. They integrated Zulu with English, and Simon's with Ladysmith Black Mambazo's vocals. Essentially neither Simon nor Ladysmith Black Mambazo's leader Shabalala had a preconception of the song. Rather it evolved over time, shaped from its center outwards as they negotiated, discussed, and experimented.

Joseph Shabalala and I wrote in English and in Zulu, starting the piece in the middle and working outwards to the beginning and the end. The process began when 1 sent him a demo of HOMELESS

1 29

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

with the melody and words: "We are homeless, homeless/moonlight sleeping on the midnight lake." In my note accompanying the cas­sette, I suggested that he make any changes in harmony or words that he wanted, and told him to feel free to continue the story in Zulu, adding whatever melodic changes he felt appropriate.

A month later, we met for the first time in London's Abbey Road studios. After hearing Joseph's additions to the song, we both felt we were on to something and decided to expand the piece. Thinking of a track from one of my favorite Ladysmith albums, I tried writing English lyrics that would slip into that pre-existing song. This is the "somebody say . . . " section, and we used it as a bridge from the end of the "homeless . . . " lyrics to the Zulu part that follows.

At this point, we attached a typical Ladysmith ending, one that Joseph had used on many of his songs. A rough translation of these final words comes out as, "We would like to announce to the entire nation that we are the best at singing in this style." That concluded day one.

On the second day, the group showed me an introduction they'd worked on late into the night. The melody came from a traditional Zulu wedding song, but the new lyrics now told of people living in caves on the side of a mountain, cold and hungry, their fists used as pillows. This new introduction fell into the body of the song and completed the collaboration.

(Grace/and liner notes)

The fact that the music was packaged with this detailed explanation on the cover indicates that collaboration is a significant feature of Grace/and's public image.

A�lother way that Simon presents a joint composition process is through credltll1g co-wnters and arrangers on a number of the songs, including "Homeless." Credits, however, are inconsistently assigned with regard to the cover versions on the album. I will return briefly to this problem.

\( is notable that Simon chooses to tell us about the evolution of "Home­less," the most cooperatively conceived song on the album, and not about other songs in which his control over the contribution of fellow musicians is indisputable. For example, on a number of tracks, musicians were paid to play backups as a studio band rather than to co-write the songs yet their contribution is distinctive and clearly part of the particular ki;d of compositional process that Simon employs, which is described in the quota­tion below. Los Lobos's Cesar Rosas describes the disjunctions between Simon's expectations and those of the band:

When [Simon] approached us he was already into this, he had been to South Africa. We expected him to have a song for us to interpret

1 30

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A C £ L A N D

when we met him in Los Angeles, but he said, "You guys just play," and we said "Play what?" we just worked up a bunch of stuff that he eventually got a song out of, and that was it. . . . I think there was a little lack of communication early on. You get involved in the situation, and all we're supposed to worry about is the creative part . . . we felt a little detached from the finished piece; we didn't have any real involvement in it.

(Davis 1987:CI0)

P" oductioll

The integration of a number of musicians representing a wide stylistic, geographical, ethnic, and sociopolitical range on the album also promotes a collaborative image. Various cuts of the album include Los Lobos, Good Rockin' Dopsie and the Twisters, Linda Ronstadt, the Everly Brothers, Senegalese musicians Youssou N'dour, Barbacar Faye, and Assane Thiam, South African acts Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Stimela, Tao Ea Matsekha, and General M. D. Shirinda and the Gaza Sisters, Simon, and American studio musicians.

The production of the album also required collaborative organization. Recording of various parts took place in Johannesburg, Los Angeles, Lafayette Louisiana, London, and New York. Even different tracks of a song were recorded in various studios in different cities, finally mixed down in Hit City Studios in New York City.

Wol'/il tow' OI'CllIlizatioll

The financial management of the international promotional tour and the publicity surrounding the tour highlighted Simon's commitment to his co-workers and his image as a humanistic and well-intentioned collaborator. Simon represented himself as a philanthropist. First, he brought Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Stimela to the U.S. for recording and promotion of Grace/and at his own expense. After the release of the album, he sponsored the world tour. This included concerts in Zimbabwe, Europe, the U.K., the U.S., and Japan. Harare, Zimbabwe was chosen as the closest possible venue to South Africa. Prior to the two concerts there, Grace/and's management and the Zimbabwean government reached an agreement that no money would leave Zimbabwe. In fact, Simon's promoters agreed to pay the shortfall, estimated at Zimbabwean $20,000, out of a special account opened in London for this purpose. Costs included donations of $ 1 5,000 each to a leprosy institution and to the National Arts Foundation of Zimbabwe. Simon paid all the musicians but received no remuneration for the concerts himself.'

The tour's financial management and concert scheduling also demonstrated the musicians' concern for worldwide social inequalities. Through charity

1 3 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

donations and choice o f some concert venues the Grace/and participants drew attention to racial inequalities in access to resources and expressed the musicians' sense of responsibility to communities with which they share a history of racial repression. For example, the local South African musicians gave free concerts in Black townships of South Africa prior to the tour. The second u.S. leg of the tour included venues and cities which draw a pre­dominantly Black and often economically poor audience. These are venues and cities that are frequently ignored by touring stars. In addition to playing in these venues, the Grace/and participants donated some proceeds from the tOllr to African and African-American charities.

The inclusion of two exiled South Africans on the world tour-Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela-also represented the attempt to bring together various musical parties under one cooperative umbrella. The political status of Makeba and Masekela as musical advocates for the libera­tion movement of South Africa further validates, or attempts to validate,' the political "correctness" of the project and dispels, or attempts to dispel, criticism of Simon as a musical colonizer.

Stylistic i"tegl'lltioll

In the above examples, collaboration implies direct and immediate co­operation and is concerned with combinations of sounds, of people, and of institutions that exist synchronically. My conception of collaboration also includes an historical dimension, which is principally incorporated through Grace/and's musical style. I use the term musical style here in the sense formulated by Keil ( 1 987), Feld ( 1 988b), and Turino ( 1 989). Musical style in this sense is an intuitive, felt, social feature expressing, forming, and representing a social coherence system. This concept of style is essential to understanding how the political becomes embedded in the musical.

Musical styles on Grace/and can be read as collaboratively intertwined. The way distinct styles are structurally integrated rather than merely juxtaposed is illustrated by the instrumental break of the album's hit song, "You Can Call Me AI." The featured instruments in this instrumental break­the pennywhistie and bass guitar-index or reference three Black South African genres. The pennywhistle references klVe/a, the bass guitar references mbube, and the way they are combined is typical of mbaqanga.

Klve/a was a Black urban genre in the 1 950s and early 1 960s. It originated among urban youths as improvisational street music played on pennywhistles and guitars. David Coplan suggests, in fact, that it was on the pennywhistle that the foundations of an indigenous South African jazz were built (Coplan 1985: 1 58-60). The pennywhistle therefore brings with it to Grace/and that complex of meanings configured around early South African jazz. That is, it brings with it meanings associated with one of the most prominent expres­sive forms in black townships during one of the most repressive decades of

132

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A C E L A ND

apartheid. (See Coplan [ 1 985: 143-202] and Lodge [ 1 983] for rich discussion of this period.)

In order to appeal more strongly to Grace/and's international audience, the klVe/a pennywhistle sound on "You Can Call Me AI" is "cleaned up." Its pitch is more exact and its tone production purer than that of the 1950s counterpart; there are fewer glissandos; there is more precision in beat alignment, and the timbre is not as "windy." (I will refer to this later.) Furthermore, the instrument, played originally by Black street youths, is played on Grace/alld by an exiled White South African.

The bass line of "You Can Call Me AI" and the way it combines with the pennywhistle are also packed with layers of signs. Several indentifiable features of the Zulu choral mbube style are apparent in this instrumental music. Among them are the prominence of the bass, the call and response pattern in the bass line, and the presence of traditional "vocal" effects, such as glides. The mbube a cappella male choral style indexed here is rooted in preindustrial Zulu society, according to Veit Erlmann ( 1 987). Erlmann argues, in fact, that the style has evolved with the transformation of that society through proletarianization and is largely tied to migrant worker identity (ibid.). Bass voices in mbube groups outweigh other parts signific­antly and contrast in range and sound with the high lead voice. In the song "You Can Call Me AI" the bass guitar is mixed up to be a central element. Taking full advantage of its fretless quality to play glissandos, the bass player produces a countermelody which contrasts with the pennywhistle in range and sound.

These mbube features come to Grace/and through township instru­mental jive, mbaqanga. Mbaqanga provides the basic backing on "You Can Call Me AI" and other tracks. Two important features of mbaqanga are that the instrumental lines are often translations of vocal

. lines and that the

instrumental tracks are foregrounded in the mix along with the vocals. These features facilitate the play between instrument and voice on equal terms. This interrelation between the vocal and instrumental parts in South African music has been noted by Coplan. Citing David Rycroft, he suggests that among other features, principles of instrumental music are conceived of as direct extensions of vocal principles (ibid.:23). In the "You Can Call Me AI" instrumental break, the bass and pennywhistle are also equally foregrounded in a manner characteristic of mbaqanga.

The construction of this instrumental break embeds meaning in the music in two semiotic steps. Step one involves a selection of signs from a variety of style types. Then in step two, these signs-each bringing an historical complex of meanings-are combined in ways significant to the new context (Grace/and) to create a new, unique instance or token ' A similar process has been defined for two speech styles of the Shokleng Indians by Urban ( 1 985). Using these two semiotic steps, the musicians accomplish stylistic integration on many different levels in Grace/and. On a microlevel, different features of

1 33

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

one sound can be linked to different meaning complexes. For example, the pennywhistle in "You Can Call Me AI" is linked to klVeia by the mere inclusion of the instrument, and simultaneously to a Western contemporary context by its polished timbre. On a higher level, one voice or instrumental part can be shaped by combining features of different styles each with dis­tinct associations. For example, mbube and mbaqanga meaning complexes are compacted into the bass line. On a more general level, the overall style is an innovative collage of other styles. For example, the instrumental break in "You Can Call Me AI" as a whole, is compacted with meanings associated with Simon's personal style and various South African styles.

Lallguage

In addition to integrating various musical styles, Grace/and links and integrates different linguistic styles. The careful integration of Zulu and English in the lyrics (in those songs that include Zulu) and the semiotics of the languages both contribute to Grace/and's sense of collaboration. The Zulu language, like the musical style, operates as a sign system indexing Black South African traditions.

The song "Homeless" provides an example of linguistic integration. This song comprises alternate Zulu and English sections. The first and third sections are modeled on a traditional Zulu wedding song, the second, fourth, and sixth are composed in English by Simon. The conclusion, a personal Zulu exultation, is commonly used by Ladysmith Black Mambazo. A vocable transition, "too 100 100" bridges the third and fourth sections.

The "too 100 100" vocables facilitate a linguistic transition from one lan­guage to the other, and operate semiotically to reference Zulu tradition. The linguistic transition, which functions to enhance the sense of stylistic integration, occurs as follows. First, a smooth linguistic transition requires the recognition on the part of the listener of "too 100 100" as English vocables. They arc vocables often used in some English language singing traditions for their singability.' The English/non-Zulu speaker will recognize these sounds as being similar to the familiar "ooh" vocables sung by Simon else­where on the album (such as in "Under African Skies" and "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes") and thus move from the unfamiliar Zulu language to familiar vocables (sung in a somewhat foreign style, but nevertheless they can be made sense of as vocables), to familiar language. On the second level, however, these "too 100 loo"s also index a style and a meaning linked to Zulu tradition. In Zulu, "thululu" is used in wedding songs and refers iconically to the beating of the heart (Ernest Mathabela, pers. com.). It is an index of love or longing for relief, and an icon of the sound of the heartbeat. "Thululu" is also a self-referential index. It refers to Ladysmith Black Mambazo's unique softer, smoother, and morc "refined" isicatliamiya style which is termed isilhu/u/u-"soft" music (Erlmann 1988). It is interesting

1 34

T P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A C E L A ND

that this section is represented by the English vocable spelling on the record jacket-a hint at whose voice may be dominant on the album as a whole, and of the audience to which it is directed.

The vocable "ih hih ih hih ib" in the final three sections serves as a linguistic bridge similar to the "too 100 100." In this case, however, English syntax plays a part in facilitating the transition from the familiar to the new. The vocable is not a familiar musical sound to the English/non-Zulu speaker but it is placed grammatically in the syntax of the English text:

Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih Somebody sing hello hello hello Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih Somebody cry why why why?

It is carried through into the Zulu section where it occurs as interjections in the text. This vocable, not usually heard in Zulu wedding songs, is found in work and drinking songs. It is an iconic groan, expressing suffering, misery, or the carrying of a burden (Ernest Mathabela, pers. com.). Some of this meaning may be communicated to listeners unfamiliar with the Zulu traditional context through the iconicity of the vocal production of the vocable with the vocal production of a heavy sigh and of utterances expressed by a person moving a heavy weight.

These examples are only tokens of what is compacted into every aspect of Grace/anc/'s composition and production whereby styles and their his­tories are mixed, layered, altered, and mediated by Simon. The complex history of world music trafficking-described by Feld ( 1 988a) and more specifically for the South African-North American case by, Coplan ( 1985) and Hamm ( 1 988)-makes it difficult to draw a clear-cut distinction between the indexing of "Western" traditions by Simon and his fellow Americans and the indexing of "South African" traditions by the African performers. South African bassist Baghiti Khumalo, for instance, constantly. shifts from mbaqanga to distinctly African-American funk-soul-reggae playing while Simon's irregular vocal phrasing is a distinctive "African" feature. Clearly this mixing of musicians and traditions complicates and intensifies the collaborative dynamic.

NOllcol/aboralioll

The foregrounding of the collaborative elements of the Grace/and project does not deny that some features of the project also suggest a process of appropriation, exploitation, and domination. There are certainly signs of this. First and foremost, Simon profits financially from the project over and above everyone else. Music and arrangements are co-credited on some songs, as are the words of "Homeless" and of the introduction to "Diamonds

135

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

on the Soles o f Her Shoes," but Simon holds the copyright on the album. Additionally, as producer, principal songwriter, and lead vocalist he dominates the musicmaking process. As producer, he has authority over the studio manipulation of the sound. As songwriter, he has control over the lyric content. In line with Simon's idiosyncratic, often obscure poetic style, Grace/alld's semantic content makes only oblique references to South Africa, thus offering little grounding in the South African musicians' social space. Simon's position as lead vocalist brings him further into the acoustic foreground, and in live performance into the spatial foreground. Frith has noted in this regard that the split between the star and the backing band is a fundamental dynamic in pop music (see Frith 198 1 :64-69). This is played out in the industry by assigning wage laborer status to band musicians and elite artist status to the star (Feld 1988a:34). In the Grace/alld case, however, the split also replicates and expresses the differentials in sociopolitical and economic power represented by Simon and the Black South Africans­crucial differentials for the maintenance of apartheid.

The inconsistency in the co-crediting on Grace/and also points to the difficulties of attempting to do a genuinely collaborative project within the restraints of the music industry. The music industry is organized in a way that promotes hierarchical, competitive, profit-oriented work and does not readily accommodate collaboration. Consider, for example, the way Billboard chart classification is organized around individuals, stars, and their hits, not around groups and coauthorship. In the transnational music industry these relations are exacerbated by differentials in the global power of nation states and of multinational versus national music industries (see Wallis and Maim 1984). Genuinely collaborative projects in which all participants contribute and benefit mutually cannot readily occur within the contemporary international music industry without challenging the institution's power structure.

Three songs on Grace/and stand out as cover versions: "Gumboots" covers a song by the Boyoyo Boys (music co-credited), "The Boy in the Bubble" a song by the band Tao Ea Matsekha (also co-credited), and "That Was Your Mother" covers "Josephine," a song recorded by Good Rockin' Dopsie (credited only to Simon on Grace/alld). First, is there a reason for this discrepancy, and second, since Dopsie does not share the rights on "That Was Your Mother," why does Simon share the rights on "Homeless" where his input was surely not more significant to the outcome than Dopsie's was on "That Was Your Mother"? Feld ( 1 988a:34-45) has suggested that an answer to this lies in the more overt otherness of the African musicians' contribution than of the American minorities. The Africans' otherness marks their input much more clearly as their own. In addition, in the case of "Homeless," the prioritizing of the text over the music is at issue. Simon contributes to the lyrics of "Homeless" and therefore shares credits with Shabalala, whereas Good Rockin' Dopsie does not contribute to the lyrics

1 36

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A CE L A ND

of "That Was Your Mother" and is therefore not credited as coauthor. Over and above these issues, the question remains whether all songs should simply be co-credited since the distinctive features of the album are not contributed solely by Simon (see Feld: ibid.).

Social collaboration

1 turn now to examine how Grace/and's musical collaboration operates as an indexical icon for sociopolitical collaboration in the South African context; that is, in this instance the musical collaboration both points to and is isomorphic with social collaboration. The nature of the relationship between these two types of collaboration is not of particular concern here for its own sake; rather, its significance lies in the way it allows one domain to collapse into the other so that the two domains can be experienced as one and the same-even if only for the duration of the music, or for moments during the listening experience. (See Becker and Becker [ 1 98 1] for a discus­sion of how each domain becomes identified with the other through iconicity.)

When Grace/and's musical collaboration is positioned within a social matrix, different "interpretive moves" (Feld 1 984:7) take place on the part of the listener in order to make sense of the sound. On hearing the album, the listener is faced with a number of tasks: to recognize the style types that have been drawn upon and sort out how they have been combined; to experience the sound as a new entity and connect it to other entities; to locate the sound in a field of sounds familiar to the listener; and so on. As Feld writes, it is through "interpretive moves" such as these that the listener links formal stylistic components of music to his or her unique set of accumulated musical and social experiences. These "interp'retive moves" give meaning to sound for particular listeners and social sets of listeners, at particular historical moments. Their interpretation takes place within dynamic "contextualizing music frames" (ibid.: 1 2); that is, the listener's changing ideas about value (preferred form and content), identity (sameness and • difference), and coherence (organizing principles of social life) (ibid.: 1 3) frame and inform his or her interpretation.

South African listeners make indentifiable "interpretive moves" in relating their ideas about value, identity, and coherence to Grace/and in order to imbue Grace/and with meaning. Their different sociopolitical positionings inform their evaluation or criticism of Grace/and's collage. Grace/and also re-forms some notions about their positionings and reinforce others. Indeed, South Africans respond to the project principally in three ways. It is embraced by those who value the social collaboration it signifies. Conversely, it is rejected by those who oppose the social collaboration it signifies. Some South Africans, however, regard the signification of social collaboration as irrelevant to the inherent value of the artwork and evaluate it in terms of the success of its musical collaboration only.'

1 37

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

These responses relate to the listeners' sociopolitical positioning in terms of race (Black or White), class (mostly middle class), language grouping (Afrikaner, English), and political orientation (conservative, liberal, radical). The discussion below includes the South African state apparatus and the liberation movement since all South African listeners are accountable to one of these broadly defined institutions. I t examines the commentary presented in the mainstream media and music press; it does not attempt to represent all South Africans. Furthermore, it articulates links between the meaning of Grace/and and those aspects of a particular listener's sociopolitical posi­tioning that are salient in the metacommentary; it does not attempt to link Grace/and's meaning systematically to each and every aspect of a listener's sociopolitical positioning. The social categories that I enumerate are Auid and crosscut one another in several places. Thus, for example, where Black and White responses express and represent a similar issue, they are described simultaneously even though the discussion is broadly divided into White and Black categories.

White SOlltlt AjHca

Nationalism

The first step almost all Southern African Grace/and commentators take is to position Simon as an invasive outsider to South Africa. This is achieved by applying colonial metaphors to Simon. He has been labeled variously as "the benevolent musical coloniser" by a liberal White South African resident (Wrench 1 987), "that Livingstone of the 80s" by another White re­viewer in a locally oriented nonracial music magazine (Rathbone 1987:3), a musician "like some explorer or missionary in nineteenth century Africa. . . . The European is the centre of attraction, the organiser, the teacher, the master" by a Black journalist who boycotted the Zimbabwean Grace/and concert (Ndlovu 1 987). The use of colonial metaphors to describe Simon is a nationalist strategy. First, it draws a boundary around a group of people as South Africans. Each case does not define which South Africans are included in the group of "insiders," but Simon is clearly excluded. Second, colonial metaphors imply that the members of the circumscribed group arc united by more than shared culture. They also share a history and a "common political will" (Sharp 1 988:83) directed against a powerful intruder. In this context Simon is powerful in that he has access to economic resources, to the international music industry, and to the world stage, all of which are coveted by South African musicians. Simon is in a position where he can potentially exploit the South Africans since he has access to these resources and they, lacking access, recognize that some compromises on their part are inevitable in order to gain it.

1 38

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A CE L A ND

While the above three quotations all express nationalist sentiment, a distinction between the White and Black responses is exhibited in the tone. The first two quotations are exerpted from texts that favor Simon. After all, hostility to Simon as a colonizer would imply a hostility on the part of the authors to their own settler heritage and this in turn would imply a critique of their own claims to be something that Simon is not vis-a-vis South African music. If they vehemently attack Simon for appropriating Black culture, then by extension they vehemently attack themselves on the same grounds. The author of the third quotation, on the other hand, is an angered Zimbabwean columnist who is juxtaposing Simon against the "politically­conscious masses of Southern Africa" (ibid.). In the context of the column, which includes a critique of the Zimbabwean state's collaboration in the Grace/and concert, the "politically-conscious masses of Southern Africa" are understood to be Black people who support neither apartheid nor any institutions or groups that cooperate with South Africa. The column opposes colonization to liberation, calls on Makeba and Masakela to account for their collaboration on the Grace/and promotional tour, and singles out Zimbabwe as a nation that should set an example as to how to deal with Simon and other contravenors of the cultural boycott.

All positive White South African commentary on Grace/and indicates that White South Africans share one reason for their favoring of Grace/and. Irrespective of their political persuasions, they have embraced Grace/alld because of the link it offers them to indigenous Black traditions. By express­ing a claim on these traditions, they are able to legitimate their own identity as local and to construct a history for this local identity. The cementing of a local identity is a politically important move for Whites. By incorporat­ing traditions and other signs of indigenous, subordinated groups into their own identity, they not only establish a place for themselves in South Africa, but they also diffuse the potency of those traditions and signs for the subordinated groups. As these signs become emblems representing the nation as a whole, their value in marking distinct identities withiQ the nation weakens. In this way the dominant faction reduces the potential of using these signs in the process of resistance.

Three examples illustrate how White South Africans validate their local identity through Grace/and. First, a White journalist writes the following in a leftist-liberal newspaper:

Hey, Paul, come back with that �ccordian [sic]! Watcha you're doing with our township guitar? Leave that bass-line alone! This is a record that constantly makes you feel you've just been robbed of your most precious things. In some cases they're possessions and inheritances that some of us didn't even know were there.

(Wrench 1986)

1 39

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

The "our" in this quotation most l ikely refers to a progressive nonracial South African social group, which is the group to whom the newspaper is pitched. Note the claim by Wrench to indigenous Black roots for South Africans of any ethnic grouping, and the emerging construction of a formerly unrecognized lineage (" . . . they're possessions and inheritances that some of us didn't even know were there").

A second example of the White search for roots and identity in Africa through music is offered by journalist Thomas writing about Grace/and in FairLady, a weekly magazine aimed primarily at middle-class English­speaking White women. He writes:

African music is by no means hidden from our view, but many of us are only now starting to discover, absurd as it may sound, that South African music exists. And it's ours too, thriving as never before . . . . How long have my uncle, myself, and thousands like us longed to feel that visceral connection with our land, so easily cclebrated by a simple thing like music?

(Thomas 1 987:72)

Thomas suggests that through local music, White South Africans (liberal and middle-class in the context of this particular magazine readership) can experience for the first time a direct intuitive tie to the land and, by implication, to the country as a sociopolitical entity. These South Africans at last recognize the value of local music and its prospects for the future. I t is significant that Thomas perceives and notes that the music is "thriving as never before"-that it is changing, in his terms perhaps "developing," rather than dying or being a static tradition stuck in the rural past. By claiming co-ownership of the music, these South Africans feel a sense of belonging to the land that has produced it. The feeling here is realized through an idexical signifiying process which ties music to the land. Music references the land. The connection between the two appears simple, direct, and natural.

Thomas then goes on to articulate ties to a national identity through memory and personal history. Memories, like history, create a sense of continuity for an individual. Usually this continuity unifies the indi­vidual self with her or his personal past. Here however, the sense of unity created embraces a larger social order. The process through which this happens is essentially an iconic one as I will show below. Significantly, ties through memory and history are most explicitly expressed in responses to Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Grace/and group with the most direct connections to old rural Black traditions. When Thomas reviewed a post-Grace/and performance by Ladysmith that was held in a nonracial university venue patronized predominantly by White middle-class people, he wrote:

140

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A C E L A N D

But more profound than [the newfound White appreciation for Black sounds], much more, were the testimonies of people touched very deeply by Mambazo's performance, by the recognition that they were rooted immovably to what those men on stage symbolised: South Africa. That rich singing was the sound of earliest memory, of a nanny's quiet crooning . . . they'd found confirmation of what it meant to be South African.

(ibid.)

In the final sentence of this excerpt, the singing of Ladysmith Black Mambazo is represented as iconic with that of a childhood "nanny." Ladysmith Black Mambazo's sound indexes a national history in this context (as explained above), while the "nanny" references the personal history of the White listener. By collapsing these domains a step further, that is by making two additional steps of inference, the national and personal histories are rendered iconic with each other. The personal history of the White listener is under­stood to be part of the national history referenced by Ladysmith Black Mambazo; Ladysmith Black Mambazo's history and the White listener's history become one and the same history. Through this constructed herit­age, the White South Africans referenced in Thomas's article can validate their South African identity. Note how they do this through affect, through feeling intuitive connections between social and expressive domains as though the similarities between the domains were natural and not constructed. The potency of the music lies in the way and in the extent to which the listener can feel meaningful connections to other experiences.

The link between the perceived naturalness and the potency of cultural expression to which Thomas is responding has been explicated by Judith and Alton Becker. They write that potency increases with increasing isomorphism between two domains, that is, as the two domains gain iconi­city or "naturalness." "This naturalness, which is an essential part of the aesthetic experience, grows, at least in part, from the system of coherence which binds together units in that form" (Becker and Becker 1 98 1 :2 1 2) . In a case study of the Kaluli, Feld develops a similar idea of music as "metaphorical expression of one symbolic order that is instantly and prim­arily feelingful" (Feld 1 984: 1 6) to suggest that sound and social identity are cognitively and affectively integrated "as a felt iconic wholeness" (ibid. 1 988b: I 07). Feld ties the intuitive and immediate capacity to collapse equivalent domains (i.e., to create icons) to the way feeling and knowing occur as processes that require each other to operate, as in Rosaldo's ( 198 1 ) notion o f "feelings as embodied thought" o r Williams's ( 1 977) notion of "thought as felt and feelings as thought."

Two points must be emphasized before offering a third example of the generation of local White identity. First, the process of legitimating identity through indigenous or folk traditions is by no means unique to South

1 4 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Africa. Other instances have been documented in Southeast Asia (Anderson 1983), Nazi Germany (Kamenetsky I 972), Central Europe (Karnoouh 1982), the Soviet Union (Oinas 1 978), Spain (Manuel 1989), and Eastern Europe (Silverman 1983), for example. The above authors have shown how national self-consciousness has been strengthened through the appropriation of features of peasant history and folk tradition. Peasant/folk features have been used in these cases to construct and legitimate a national heritage and identity.

Second, although the focus of the nationalist Grace/and metacommentary illustrated above excludes Simon, it is nevertheless dependent on his parti­cipation in the collage. His White presence provides access to the unfamiliar through familiar sounds; it is unlikely this group of listeners, White South Africans, would have been motivated to listen to indigenous Black music of their own accord for its own sake.

A third example of how links to indigenous traditions in Grace/and are seized upon and how paths of inference are followed in order to tie these traditions to social identity is offered by the response of the South African "ideological state apparatus" (Althusser 1 97 1 ). State support for Grace/and is suggested by the ample airplay that the album has received on state­owned media. It is further evidenced by a report of Ladysmith Black Mambazo's Grammy success that appeared in a Christian National Party­aligned newspaper. In 1 988 the group won a Grammy in the traditional folk category for their post-Grace/and album, produced by Simon. The report was reprinted in the state Bureau of Information's South African Digest ( 1 8 March 1988:7).

State Supporters, it seems, are proud to claim Ladysmith's international success as an achievement for South Africa and therefore as an achieve­ment for themselves. [n order to do this, some bond must be forged that can override the fact that they are supporting people who certainly do not support the state. This is attempted by means of three rhetorical moves.

First, they acknowledge Ladysmith Black Mambazo as cultural ambas­sadors for South Africa. Each international tour is reported in the media, usually along with information about its success and its value in promoting or exposing South African music. They are represented as messengers of goodwill exchanging information, entertainment, and cultural goods for assistance. There are examples of similar treatment of other Grace/and participants: Stimela band leader Ray Phiri's criticism of the cultural boycott on the grounds that, among other factors, "it denies the outside world an opportunity to learn our culture and how can they help us if they don't know our culture?" (quoted in Hlahla 1987) was pervasively reported in South African mainstream dominant media. Here Phiri's presentation of himself in this ambassadorial role is embraced and circulated.

The second rhetorical strategy involves the use of indicators (possessive pronouns) which do not explicitly define the social group being referenced.

142

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A CE L A N D

The lack o f contextualization in snippets o f reported speech such as the above facilitates this strategy. Without adequate contextualization, the boundaries of the possessive pronoun ("our culture") are undefined so that the reader is left to interpret who is included and excluded. This ambiguity provides a useful mechanism for claiming shared possession, in this case of culture. The press report which cites Phiri, also quotes Ladysmith Black Mambazo leader, Joseph Shabalala, saying that the tour was "a marvellous opportunity which gave the outside world a chance to hear our music" (ibid.).

The third rhetorical move is to note the ties of the music groups to indigenous folk traditions. Ladysmith is particularly useful here because it has more direct ties to rural Black traditions than the other participating local groups on the album '

In sum, the state and other Grace/and supporters construct a national heritage for themselves by combining these interpretive moves: they fabric­ate an iconic relationship with the musicians and then assume ties to the land for themselves through the musicians' traditions and history. In this way, they are able to validate their positive evaluation of the album despite the political orientation of the musicans vis-a-vis the state. Their evaluation in turn legitimates their identity and, from their point of view, endorses their vision of social cooperation without having to question their privileged access to capital or their sociopolitical control. Culture is shared; history is shared; land is shared; rights are shared.

Some Whites understand themselves to be incorporated into a group because, from their perspective, they share the cultural resources of that group. However, this does not mean that the speakers in the above quotations intend this meaning. They do not necessarily accept th� dominant White strategy which attempts to make them, the speakers, represent the dominant faction. Shabalala and Phiri could be referring to Black culture, or to Zulu culture (in the case of Shabalala), or to culture shared by some other social configuration. Clearly the concept of shared identity based on Iieritage and culture, essentially a nationalist identity, is variously understood by different South African social groups.

Confticting claims to national identity are of course not uniquely South African. (See again Anderson [ 1 983], Kamenetsky [1 972], Karnoouh [ 1982], Oinas [ 1978], Manuel [ 1989], and Silverman [ 1 983].) The questioning and refiguring of national constellations occurs worldwide, but particularly in times and places of sociopolitical upheaval and reconstitution. This process of national reconstruction involves the refiguring of social identities. Political alliances are forged through claiming shared identity based on culture, history, language, ethnicity, or geography. Indeed, in South Africa claims on traditions are frequently used to draw boundaries around social groups with common interests and to mobilize support for different political ends (see Spiegel and Boonzaaier 1988).

1 43

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Refinement

While political persuasion does not clearly influence the attitude of White South African listeners to the presence of indigenous Black tradi­tions in Grace/and, the different responses of these listeners to the changes Simon_ brings to those traditions are informed by their specific political orientation.

White South Africans who falI toward the more conservative end of the political spectrum have embraced Graceland because of the changes (in their terms "improvements") Simon has introduced to these very traditions, such as the "clean" sound of the pennywhistle, the studio-produced clarity and definition of sound, and the poetic English language lyrics. Simon "has filtered the [South African] sound with his own style, lyrics and Western influence to concoct a colourful colIage which, while retaining its Afro eIem:nts, makes them less raw, morc flowy, more gentle. And most pleasant!" (BS III Week-end Mercury Oct 18 , 1 986: 10). There is an implied racist critique of the Other in this response. White South Africa's privileging of Itself over Black South Africa in the Western world's "civilising process" (ElIas 1978:50) results in a prejudice against Black expression in its traditional form and context, even though that Black expression is simultaneously embraced for the heritage it offers White South Africans. By branding Black South African traditional music and those who play it as inferior and therefore in need of reworking and updating, these White South Africans validate their superior sociopolitical positioning and their control over the inferior Other.

Clearly the extremely racist far right Afrikaner Nationalists do not consider Black expression or international expression a worthy topic for disclission. However, for less radical conservatives Grace/and can reinforce or justify the racist notion of Black culture as "raw," as needing refine­ment which Western "civilization" can offer it. Whether this so-calIed refinement is valued for the potential market it opens or just because it makes African music more compatible with the listener's personal aesthetic does not alter the fact that Grace/and can be useful to conservative White South Africa."

The critique of crudeness in indigenous Black sound in the above conservative evaluation contrasts with the appreciation expressed for its integrity and artistry by those further to the left in political orientation. Johny Clegg's" appraisal of Simon's "blend" in Graceland stands as an example: Simon's "particular blend is unique because he laid very contem­porary pop lyrics over an undiluted African backing" (cited in Thomas 1 987:72). For Clegg, part of Graceland's success lies in the way it maintains some indigenous aspects in their original form. Clearly, his evaluation of the music is accompanied by respect for its makers.

144

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A CEL A N D

Reform

Just as the different responses of White South Africans to the changes Simon brings to indigenous traditions are informed by their specific political orientation, so are their visions of the social significance of these changes. Conservative listeners, on the one hand, approach the colIaboration as a justification of the present. White South Africans who falI toward the more liberal end of the political spectrum, on the other hand, see Grace/and's colIaboration as the gateway to the future. In both cases, the evaluation of Grace/and is linked to different visions of social reform.

The meaning and value of reform is a point of contention in South African debate. Different interpretations reflect political alignment. Thus, the ruling Christian National Party's [NP] "reform" strategies are embraced by some South Africans, but rejected by others. Opponents to the right of the National Party brand these strategies as death-knelIs for White self determination in general and as selI-out moves for Afrikaner nationalism in particular, while many to the left of the NP slate them as hegemonic control mechanisms, that is, as petty apartheid concessions to the majority.

The left's response to NP "reforms" is shaped by their analyses of how these policies are put into operation. Some consider that NP "reforms" operate through cooptation of Black peoples. Those holding this view are either demanding that the notion of reform be scrapped altogether since it has been appropriated by the NP to denote what in fact is a perpetuation of the status quo, or they are calling for "real" reform, in contrast to that proposed by the NP. Others to the left consider that NP "reforms" present loopholes that can be exploited in order to change the system through incremental (re)appropriation of resources by the resistance. These various visions of reform do not correlate categorically with sociopolitical positioning determined by class and race.

The South African state offers the most pertinent example of how Grace/and can be utilized to justify the present, that is, to substantiate the NP's vision of "reform." The state has lauded Simon for showil>g "how silly cultural sanctions are. ,, 12 Simon certainly lends credence to the state's claims that South Africa is not isolated from the international community. He also proves that racial cooperation can occur within the political system as it exists today and that the ruling National Party's so-called "reforms" are creating a space for social integration. The state has therefore embraced Grace/and's success as a national achievement as described above. Note how, by couching its discourse about reform in nationalist terms, the state can avoid overt talk about race despite the fact that it is attempting to reform a social system based on racial categorization.

Two examples illustrate how more liberally aligned White South Africans see Grace/and's collaboration as the gateway to the future. In the first, the

145

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

reviewer of Ladysmith's and Stimela's post-Grace/and albums uses an international gauge for quality and presents a picture of change for a better future. The review appeared in Bits, a progressive music monthly which raised such issues as the cultural boycott and aimed at promoting local music locally.

Undoubtedly these two groups are among South Africa's best, and the fact that the spotlight of international recognition has fallen on both . . . rather than any of the many other major talents in this country is certainly a measure of that. . . , So, you can look, listen, and then decide whether to hang around in traditional Ladysmith territory, or catch the slow-train up to the new sounds of contem­porary Johannesburg [with Stimela], but either way you won't lose. And with a present as rich as this, nor can the future of South African music.

(Rathbone 1987:5)

A second example is provided by Thomas, whose writing I have dis­cussed above. In the same article in FairLady he describes how the fusion of White popular music with indigenous Black popular music is breaking down social barriers, and how as South African Black music moves out of the townships, out of Black working-class performance settings, out of the servant quarters in White suburbs, and into liberal middle-class (nonracial) venues and record stores in the city centers, it is met by an increasing White audience seeking roots, identity, and a future in Africa. He writes:

T think we conditioned ourselves to think this music [urban Black music heard on Black radio stations] wasn't ours; our parents didn't have to tell us. Instead we mimed Led Zeppelin guitar solos on our tennis rackets.

Now, of course, we can hear somebody like Alec "Om" Khaoli mix his township jive with a guitar owing much to the howling ghosts of Led Zeppelin. Our identities-one African, the other European-are colliding as never before, and the richess of the music is only one positive result.

(Thomas 1 987:73)

Thomas's article is full of talk of social reform coupled with national identity, of incremental change starting with shifts in Whites' evaluation of Black expression.

Music can evoke shared affect, and Thomas seems to feel that this shared affect can provide the basis for building a sense of community. Clearly he is inspired by a liberal belief in the principle of reform, signified by Grace/and

146

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A CE L A N D

and other local music and expressed in the following review of a post­Grace/and appearance of Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Cape Town.

Cynics might scoff at the sight of a relatively tiny proportion of the relatively tiny White population of South Africa suddenly finding out why Ladysmith Black Mambazo is the most popular group in the country, but we have to start somewhere. The sheer sharing joy on people's faces as they cheered the magnificent Mambazo at the Baxter [Theater] should have put all cynicism to rest. On the most basic level possible, a thing like simple warm appreciation is that much-maligned, but undeniably true, "step in the right direction."

(ibid.:73)

Aesthetic distancing

The third type of response to Grace/and, namely to disregard the significance of social collaboration and instead to evaluate the success of Grace/and's musical collaboration in terms of its autonomous artistic value, is almost solely a response of White South Africans. I present this response as a type, that is, it does not occur in real instances in its pure form, but is colored by other features related to the listener's social positioning. Listeners do not evaluate Grace/and in terms of the values of "good art" only. Rather, they are interwoven with other values, such as nationalist sentiment.

The process of abstracting musical expression from its context of creation is an essential component of the bourgeois aesthetic principle which values art as inherently transcendent and autonomous. According to Bourdieu's notion of "aesthetic distancing" (Bourdieu 1 984:34), recognition of "good art" requires a detachment on the part of the witnesser' or listener of the mode of representation from the object represented and of the form from the function. Furthermore, it is ideally a disposition of this class, he writes, to be able to take the aesthetic viewpoint even on objects that in the bour­geois value system/world view are understood to be common� something other than (high) art (ibid.:4D). The South Africans who engage in these "interpretive moves" in regard to Grace/and are predominantly Whites who possess high economic and cultural capital.

Once its political implications have been diffused or trivialized, Grace/and can be circulated as an autonomous artwork and evaluated principally in terms of its formal elements. A conservative Afrikaner journalist, state­aligned Kerneels Breytenbach, provides a fine illustration of this: he has embraced Simon and Grace/and precisely because they are nonpolitical. He dismisses international antiapartheid protest music as "junk," saying "if only foreign musicians would go and learn from Paul Simon!" (Breytenbach 1 986:9)." It is "junk," following Bourdieu, because as protest music it is functional. 14

147

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Breytenbach's aesthetic is framed by strong nationalist sentiment. He praises Black and Afrikaner popular music for exhibiting the character­istics of "good music" that protest music lacks. Local English expression, which is not stylistically rooted in South Africa, is excluded from the dis­cussion. Breytenbach categorizes English-speaking musicians as foreign or different (Other), based no doubt on the fact that the South African English population lacks a strong nationalist history in contrast to Afrikaners and Blacks. This historical background informs his selection of "good music. "

Breytenbach selects three local acts-two Black and one Afrikaner-in his celebration of "good music." He chooses Stimela for its refinement and freedom from "political obtrusiveness";" Black musician Hotstix Mabuse for "no doubt the closest to perfect synthesis of local musics, which include Western pOp";16 and Afrikaner singer Goosen, whose record the "paJid Brits just won't be able to understand, and it is their loss."" Note the aesthetic value in the first, the suggestion of musical synthesis as iconic of social synthesis-with Western elements specifically included-in the second, and the exclusion of the Other (that is, the English-speaking South Africans) on the basis of style and language, in the third.

Black SOllth Africa

I turn now to Black South Africa, where the notion of collaboration is treated somewhat differently. While White South Africans generally respond to Grace/and as representing and expressing domestic nonracial (or for some more specifically interracial) collaboration, Black South Africans highlight the international aspect of the collaboration. Even though many Whites position Simon as an outsider, they subsequently focus on the interracial aspect of Grace/and as opposed to the international and view this in terms of what it represents about domestic politics. This view includes a nationalist move by which Whites position themselves locally using the sign Grace/and. Black South Africans, on the other hand, tend to focus on the collaboration between Black South Africans and Paul Simon, an American with prestige, wealth, and professional musical experience. This focus on international collaboration holds true for both the supporters and critics of Grace/and. Supporters value Grace/and for the access it pro­vides to resources and audience as well as for its social collaboration and musical synthesis. I n addition, some supporters counteract the White nationalist move by reclaiming the oppositional value of indigenous Black expression represented by and in Grace/and. Critics, on the other hand, brand the project on two fronts: it exploits and co-opts Black South Africans and their cultural expression, and it contravenes the cultural boycott.

148

'P

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A C E L A ND

Support

Internationa/ exposure Black South African commentary that supports the project, supports it largely because of the international exposure it offers. To reach the world stage for Black South African artists is both a politically and professionally motivated goal. Politically, the opportunity an interna­tional project like Grace/and affords them to expose apartheid through song, talk, interviews, and other promotional activities is obvious. Professionally, Grace/and positions the musicians in a space which facilitates future con­tacts in the industry for themselves and for fellow musicians at home. This significance is articulated by Ray Phiri in Pace, a South African monthly magazine with a Black readership:

We are aware of the role we have to play in a bid to make our kind of music accepted by the world . . . . Now that Simon is offering us an important platform, we have to use it properly in glorifying African music and making Americans aware that there are many good artists in this part of the world.

(Ray Phiri, leader of the main South African backing band on Grace/and, cited in "PS teams

up with Stimela," Pace June 1985:87)

In other ways, political and professional aspirations are integrally connected. Through Simon, South African musicians are able to reach the international market while bypassing the South African state with its repressive censor­ship, limited access to capital and to media channels, and its restraints upon Black business. They are able to prove that they can make their voices heard. They can be artistically and financially successful �ithout the help of the state, or even despite the limitations it imposes on them. Through such a project, Black musicians are able to gain some independence from the state in this particular domain.

These issues provoked a response in a London Times editori;l, critical of protesters picketing the London Grace/and concert. Although somewhat patronizing in tone, the excerpt below illustrates an awareness of the inter­connection between political and professional activity for South African musicians. What constitutes political activity in this context is framed by the Times's stance of "constructive engagement" toward the South African state.

The arts cannot flourish in isolation. There are talented young Black musicians in South Africa who need room in which to communicate and expand. The demand for their skills, which "Grace/and" is helping to create would also build bridges between them and young

149

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

people abroad-stronger bridges than any politicians could construct. . . . Blacks in SA need helping in positive, practical ways, and Grace/and could have become-indeed, could yet become-a symbol of the hope which this might bring.

(Editorial, Times [London] 7 April 1 987: 1 5)

For Black South African musicians, the international success of the Grace/and project is also important for the prestige and popularity it brings at home. The fact that international success is taken as the gauge for achieve­ment domestically is partly a consequence of the structure of the global music market, as Wallis and Maim ( 1984) have pointed out. Since the U.S. provides more economic capital for production and consumption than any other nations do, the transnational record industry is geared primarily to U.S. interests. U.S. interests therefore dominate and shape the domestic music production in countries like South Africa where aspiring musicians and record companies are desperate for the financial gains an international break promises.

Those South Africans who accept the international gauge also uphold Keil's thesis that the legitimation of a style necessarily occurs through the media of the dominant faction (Keil 1 985: 124). Indeed, the international success of Graceland seems to have brought both attention and value to South African music domestically and globally. Numerous international releases of South African music not mediated by Simon or any other Western artists have followed Grace/and." This suggests that Grace/and could indeed have been a definitive opening for South African music onto the world market.

Domestic revitalization The post-Graceland revival and promotion of indigenous sound within the South African music industry is one indication of the new value assigned to Black music. Recent domestic support for indigenous sound (Zulu masa/wnda and mbube for instance) in South Africa is directly related to the demands of the international market for "ethnic" (i.e., different or other) popular music and not for imitations of Western popular music. This is a source of tension that is played out over the mean­ing and value of Black music traditions.

On the one hand, members of the subordinate group, Black South Africans, are assisting in the maintenance of the status quo by providing appropriate "ethnic" cultural material for international consumption. On the other hand, however, they are challenging the status quo by hailing the value of their own expression. Prioritizing and promoting native values and rejecting the internalization of the values of the dominant group is a significant step toward counteracting the hegemonic (see Keil 1 985: 1 25-26). Restoring value to indigenous music, then, is one step toward strengthening

1 50

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A CEL A N D

resistance against the ruling faction in South Africa. Indeed, i t is one step that counters the White South African nationalistic move which attempts to incorporate Whites into the local Black history and community. That is, while some Whites attempt to construct a national consensus of meaning and feeling about Grace/and, some Blacks arrest it to use in marking their identity as separate from the dominant White faction.

[n this regard, perhaps the South African musicians have successfully "put Simon to work" for their long-term benefit. They certainly participated in the project with long-term benefits in mind. As Ray Phiri says: "Our people sent us to the lion's den; they want us to bring back the lion's skin, and we will do that" (Lloyd 1 987).

Clearly, Graceland's Black South African musicians and their community are not engaged in the project naively. As well as having a keen awareness of the motivation for international exposure, they recognize the necessity to rework indigenous sounds so that they are appealing and accessible to inter­national audiences. As Hugh Masakela says, "People all over the world dig the sound of a pennywhistle or a township guitar. You just have to translate it a little. Just one sentence and away it goes" (Hugh Masakela in Hyde 1 987:3 1 ) . This keen sense of strategy does not detract from the value of South African music in the lives of its makers. Rather, international recog­nition and increased independence (albeit only a little autonomy in little ways) from the South African state seems to have brought a new recognition of the value of indigenous music. As journalist Shuenyane writes, respecting one's music "is an encouraging step toward respecting one's self" (Shuenyane 1985:89).

Internationalization: indigenizalion The dialectic between ,the value of musical "indigenization," i.e., of localizing sounds and their meaning, and of musical "internationalization" places collaborative projects like Grace/and in a pivotal position politically, professionally and stylistically. With regard to stylistic "indigenization" ,on the one hand, ties to Black South African • traditions and the past are desired by people like Shuenyane. These are ties that establish and express a sense of local collectivity. Expressive culture from this angle is a repository of shared feelings, history, and collective identity that marks the social group as a distinct entity bound by common will as opposed to coercion. With regard to stylistic "internationalization" on the other hand, integration into national and global political and market systems is desirable and necessary for Black musicians and their community. Expressive culture from this angle is part of a gigantic complex system of trafficking of sounds and signs that are presentations to the outside world of the collectivity's identity in the form of commodities.

The drive for "internationalization" has two trajectories in the Black South African case. The first refers to the recognition and remuneration

1 5 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

that results from inlernational exposure; that is, it refers to economic rewards for artistic success within the global market system and to the con­comitant prestige for the artist. Working with Simon can achieve this goal. Some Black music entrepreneurs, like Stan Nkosi, president of the Black Musicians' Association and owner of a recording company in Johannesburg at the time of Grace/and's release, therefore support Simon's act. Nkosi offers two related reasons for his support. First, the Grace/and project exposes the neglect of Black music by local White music capital. Black music is neglected according to Nkosi because its artistic value and economic potential are not recognized. Second, it provides the capital lacked by Black South Africans to promote themselves (interview 30 June 1987).

The second trajectory is politically and ideologically based. It refers to the drive for pan-African links that can be expressed, drawn upon, invigorated, and recreated through music. Perhaps the most pertinent illustration of this dynamic is the intricate interweaving of the distinctive styles and political ideologies of James Brown with Fela Kuti over the years. Their musical relationship has inspired some of both these artists' distinctive sounds and combinations of sounds. (See Feld 1 988a:37.)

As South African music critic Makhaya writes in reporting the forma­tion of a South African Black Musicians' Association in 1986 (subsequently d isbanded), it is through Black music and musicians that "Black values, ideas, beliefs, norms, attitudes, customs, aspirations . . . will continue to be internalised and internationalised within the Black individual and the Black nation" (Makhaya 1 986: 1 0) . In the South African case, clearly, working with Simon cannot directly fulfill this goal, although it could open doors for future collaborations. Nkosi, for instance, voiced a preference [or assistance from African Americans (Stevie Wonder and Quincy Jones in particular) rather than from Simon.

Opposition

Because the presentation of identity through sound is subject to com­modification, it risks losing or diITusing the meanings associated with those sounds for that collectivity. The dilemma is articulated by Whitebooi, a colored South African music critic. In his assessment of 1 986 music events, of which one highlight was the international attention directed at South African music due to Simon, Black musician Sipho Hotstix Mabuse is reprimanded for shaping his music for an American audience and "almost forgetting about us" (Whitebooi 1 986)." The danger of selling out to an international audience, that is, of incorporating oneself into the dominant class and discarding the support system and community that facilitated artistic and economic success, is expressed in political terms by the then­imprisoned ANC leader Walter Sisulu. Addressing a writer's forum, he warns his audience:

1 52

...

P A U L S t M O N ' S G R A CEL A N D

You cannot remain aloof from the political struggles of [your] community. You may become famous internationally, but your writing will die because it is not rooted in the people . . . . We are allowing our political development to outstrip our cultural devel­opment, a mistake we should not make-we can see the results in other Third World countries. Let us not create a breeding ground for Unitas, MNRs and Contras.

(Badela 1987:3)

Some Black leftists have taken this fear of artists deserting their own communities in pursuit of success to the point of being opposed to any White or imperialist interference in artistic production. They condemn projects that require any kind of sanctioning by or cooperation with the South African state apparatus. Grace/and, of course, does in part depend on White and state approval: it is sold in White-owned record stores; it has received ample airplay on state-owned radio stations; it has had state-owned television coverage; for its concert in Zimbabwe in 1 987 sound equipment and technicians were brought from South Africa and ticket outlets were set up in major cities. Thus some Blacks in Southern Africa as well as antiapartheid radicals in the U.S. have opposed the project.

The liberation movement

Ironically, the interests of the African National Congress [ANC] and the broader liberation movement were not really served by Grace/and at the time of its release and during the promotional tours. The ANC and its supporting organizations appear from the media commentary to have been thrown into confusion over the issue of Grace/and's �alue to the resist­ance. ANC supporters voiced various opposing opinions on Grace/and, all claiming ANC backing. The position of the Pan Africanist Congress [PAC] was also contested. While the PAC was supporting Simon for his "helping oppressed people by exposing their culture" (Tannenbaum 1987), the U.N. Special Committee Against Apartheid was announcing that anyone buying the album was violating the trade embargo on South Africa. While the U.S. Black Consciousness Movement was supporting Grace/and because it demonstrates there is "more to our people than just suITerers" (ibid.), the then-imprisoned ANC leader Walter Sisulu was calling on South African artists not to "become the old spit in Paul Simon's mouth, something that he has swallowed and is now reproducing according to his own taste" (Badela 1987). Note how this debate wrestles with two popular contemporary conceptions of culture mentioned above, that is, a sense of culture as normative, a repository for collective affect and ideo­logy; and of culture as a commodity circulated within the global market system.

1 53

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

All this controversy is directly related to the confusion over the cultural boycott as a political strategy and how and when to implement it. This is extremely problematic considering the interconnectedness of stylistic revitalization and innovation to the flow of sounds and meaning by means of international media discussed by Feld and Keil (Feld 1988b; Keil 1 985). Nevertheless, the cultural boycott seems to be taking on special significance for antiapartheid activists and for the South African state as economic sanctions and boycotts isolate the regime with increasing success and as oppression in South Africa intensifies. As Louis NeI, former Minister of Information, implied in an interview, reaching an international audience through cultural expression becomes an increasingly significant option for the state as other channels are blocked one after another. International activists have also come to enlist culture into the struggle by encouraging the boycott of all apartheid practices and expression. Their motivation, rather than being fear of isolation as in the former case, is that other forms of protest are proving insufficient-all possible strategies must be employed in all possible spheres of resistance to advance the struggle.

Prior to the Grace/and controversy, there had been no urgent need for the liberation movement to lay out a consistent and working policy to monitor the flow of cultural and intellectual production in and out of South Africa. Debate centered on specific events and boycott contraventions rather than on the aims, scope, and gains of the boycott. This lack of definition about the terms has been widely exposed by Grace/and. Grace/and seems to have raised these issues and pointed to structural weaknesses in the liberation movement.

The controversy also has implications for politically engaged musicians in South Africa. Grace/and musician Ray Phiri expresses how the controversy impacts his personal political and professional involvement:

My records are being banned in South Africa and then suddenly someone comes out and says we don't want YOLI to play that person's records here [overseas]. Then who am I supposed to run to? Pretoria? The Anti-Apartheid Movement? the ANC?

("Simon Denies Apologising to ANC" The Citizen [Pretoria] January 1987. No author)

Having fueled the debate, the Grace/and project seems to have done little if anything to help solve the problems. Various branches of the liberation movement, however, have taken up the task of refining the principles concerning the cultural boycott. They have also begun to construct a work­ing policy for its implementation. The groundwork for this was initiated at two international meetings, the Culture of Another South Africa conference and festival in Amsterdam, and a U.N.-sponsored symposium of artists and diplomats held in Athens. Various organizations within the Mass Democratic

1 54

P A U L S t M O N ' S G R A CE L A N D

Movement in South Africa (Congress of South African Trade Unions [COSATU] cultural wing and South African Musicians Alliance, for example) continue to be actively engaged in this debate.

These debates, like much of the White discourse, exhibit a nationalist thrust. Here, however, talk of social reform is phrased in terms of national liberation; national identity is phrased in terms of nonalliance with the state. For instance, at the same time as the state was embracing Grace/and, an ANC press officer warned against always equating South Africaness with the state apartheid apparatus. This statement appeared in response to international calls to boycott South African cultural production, initiated by the Grace/and controversy.

As well as debating the problematics of Grace/and, the resistance has reworked and incorporated aspects of the music into its cultural repertoire for its own oppositional purposes. At the National Conference of COSA TU in July 1989, for instance, the COSATU cultural group ended an mbube song about equal rights with a choreographed routine. This was danced to the vocables and melody sung on Grace/and by Ladysmith Black Mambazo to conclude the song "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes."

Conclusion

Grace/and has alerted South Africans to the richness and currency of Black South African expression. Interest in other local music not mediated by Simon seems to have followed interest in Grace/and. On the one hand, this opens up opportunities on the local market for Blacks, since most record companies, major record outlets, and performance venues arc owned by Whites. On the other hand, Grace/and encourages the app�opriation of Black music by White South Africa as a means of establishing a White African (as opposed to colonial) identity. Keil has argued for a dialectic relation in the appropriation of Black music by the dominant market. He notes that one effect of the appropriation of Black music and the exploitation of Black • musicians by White musicians and entrepreneurs in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s was that it encouraged the revitalization of Black music and promoted it in the form of the soul movement (Keil 1966: 1 85-86). He has also argued for a flip side to the dominant faction's motivation behind this appropriation. He suggests that the dominant faction regulates and controls the oppressed faction by containing its identity in stereotypes which are incorporated into the dominant discourse and reproduced as a discourse of consensus and (imagined) consolidation (Keil 1 985: 1 20-2 1) .

Hall also articulates this dialectic: to regulate and incorporate subordinate groups, the dominant class is forced to reformulate itself constantly so that its core values are not threatened. In reformulating itself it necessarily takes on some features of the subordinate groups that it suppresses. While the ruling faction reduces the oppositional potential of a sign, in this case the

1 55

M U S I C A N D SOC I A B I L I T Y

sign Grace/and, by attempting t o construct a national consensus of meaning and feeling about it, subordinate factions arrest it to mark their identity as separate from that of the ruling faction. Subordinate factions claim or reclaim the sign as their own and as a sign of resistance to domination. This dialectic manifests itself as a struggle over the meaning of the sign (Hall 1979:337). The plurality of South African claims made for and about the sign Grace/and stands as a pertinent example.

In conclusion, there are patterns in the way the sociopolitical orientation of these interest groups relates to how various groups evaluate the presenta­tion of Grace/and as a collaborative project. The first significant dimension relates to the transcendency of musical meaning. In one view, music is regarded as a universal language that bridges cultural barriers. The diametr­ically opposed view states that music can only be understood in culturally specific terms. Each listener must locate him or herself somewhere between these two dimensions.

A second dimension refers to the stylistic revitalization versus appropriation argument articulated by Keil ( 1985 , 1987:4), Feld ( 1 988a), and Frith ( 1987). Here the question is whether or not royalties and respect, as represented by copyright, are sufficient compensation for the use of musical ideas, or if this constitutes cultural and economic rip-off.

The convergence of these two discourses is not clear-cut. One prominent point of intersection is determined by class alliance. Those with higher capital tend to support the idea of music as a universal language and the legitimacy of the notion of copyright. This tendency can be expected: the ruling class is unlikely to reflect on its domination, but rather will tend to favor Grace/and as benign collaboration.

Another interacting dynamic refers to listeners' specific political orientations toward South Africa. Does the listener support or reject sanc­tions against South Africa? Does he or she support or reject the South African state? Here political alignment rather than class alliance is significant. In radical leftist sectors the collaboration that is manifested in Grace/and tends to be criticized as sell-out behavior. One can expect that right wing racists will not support interracial Grace/and either. If, however, these conservatives rate high in cultural capital-that is, if their values and social position fall within the leisure class and accordingly they value music as transcendent-they may well support the project as an apolitical purely artistic endeavor despite its racial mixing. The extent to which collaboration is favored by a wide range of listeners between the radicals and reactionaries is not neatly aligned along a continuum from left to right wing. This is due largely to the complicated issues pertaining to the cultural boycott-not all people to the left of the National Party support sanctions or boycotts, especially of intellectual and cultural production.

Furthermore, where cross-cultural, nonracial, intrac1ass collaboration is most salient to the listener, this collaboration may be understood in quite

1 56

rpz

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A CEL A N D

opposing but equally positive terms by pro- and antistate listeners: to the one it is a sign that racial cooperation is possible within the apartheid system; to the other it is a sign of resistance to that system.

Grace/and is a composite polysemic sign vehicle. The political discourse surrounding and embedded in the album is as complicated as the musical construction. The listener interprets the layers of musical and sociohistorical meaning packed into the grooves. The metacommentary constructed around the album forms an additional sign vehicle. The listener then mediates the listening experience through the culturally determined political discourse about social reform and national identity to establish for him or herself a significant relationship to Grace/and. Grace/and's enormous success can thus be accounted for by examining the paths of inference that connect differ­ent sets and layers of musical signs with other sets and layers of signs for specific listeners in specific spatio-temporal locations. The discourse of politics is not a separate domain with its exclusive meanings. Neither is the musical domain. The one is embedded in the other. The political is simul­taneously articulated with the musical in the international market to create a transnational flow of meaning.

As the Boy in the Bubble on Grace/and sings "These are the days of lasers in the jungle/Lasers in the jungle somewhere/Staccato signals of constant information . . . . " To which Ray Phiri has the response on Stimela's album Look, LiSlen and Decide "Who's fooling a who?/who's fooling a me?/are you fooling a me or am I fooling a you?/Who's using a who?/who's using a me?/ are you using a me, baby, or am I using a you? . . . "

[t is the timing and placing of Grace/and in South Africa in the 1980s as well as the prominence and problema tics of South Africa's positioning within the global system that has made Grace/and controversial and, along with the artistic and technical skills of its makers, the winner of the 1986 Record of the Year Grammy award. Grace/and illustrates that the meanings of transcultural musical styles are located at the conjunction between the multileveled global economic and political system and the local Jived experi­ence of specific creators and interpreters.

Notes

I am indebted to Steve Feld and discussion with UT graduate students in a seminar on popular music and the mass media for development of this notion of musical collaboration in Grace/and. (University of Texas at Austin)

2 Collaboration, in Peircean terms, is an interprctallt. Following Peirce's triadic theory of signs, the interprctant is here understood to be a sign itself that is used to understand the object-sign vehicle relation in its own triad. It is "perhaps a more developed sign" created in the mind of the interpreter in the process of under­standing the meaning of the first sign.

3 Harry Belafonte's album Paradise in Gazankllill. also made with South African musicians, and released SOOI1 after Grace/and is an example of a project with an explicitly political agenda.

1 57

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

4 Instead he i s receiving the profit from the sale of the video of the event which has been distributed internationally.

5 Some radicals criticized Makeba and Masekela for their collaboration; some liberation movement advocates questioned their participation.

6 A token can in turn become a formal type, that is it can be taken up as a new stylistic convention by successive artists. Two distinctive elements from Grace/and that are currently being taken up and circulated by South African musicians are ( 1 ) the sound quality of the synthesized interjections in the Grace/and song "You Can Call Me AI," and (2) the combination of this with stark accordion and bass lines. For example, Bakithi Khumalo's "Takumba" on Step on the Basslille (1988), Sipho Mabuse's " Room of Horror" and "Jika Jive" on Chant of the Marching ( 1988), and Merle Thompson's "Uli Themba Lethu" on Spiril Wind ( 1 989).

7 "Too 100 100" is commonly heard in Irish and Anglo-Saxon folksong refrains. The vocables are likely to index these traditions for the listener familiar with them.

8 These observations are based on my reading and analysis of popular press coverage of the Graceland project.

9 Ladysmith was awarded the Autumn Harvest Music Personality of Personalities Award 1 988 in South Africa for "having guided the South African community at large to a re-discovery of the essence and richness of our indigenous sound" (Hlahla 1988).

10 According to the Graceland promotions manager at Gallo/Africa, which distributed the album in South Africa, sales were high in some areas with a predominantly state-supporting Afrikaner population (lvor Haarburger of Gallo/Africa, pel's. com., Johannesburg, August 1987).

1 1 Clegg is a White South African musician and co-founder of Juluka, the first integrated band with an indigenous blended sound which had a national following among Black and White youth. He currently heads the band Savuka.

1 2 The opposed view is articulated by the Zimbabwean journalist quoted above who considers collaboration with Simon to be a breach of the cultural boycott. For him, collaboration signifies so-called "reform" that operates through co-opting black South Africans.

1 3 "Snert. . . . Het hulle maar by Paul Simon gaan leer!" (my translation in text). 14 Breytenbach's articulation of art and politics as two separate domains echoes

Simon's own bourgeois view. 15 "politieke opdringerigheid" (my translation in text). 16 " . . . waarskynlik die vohnaakste sintese van plaaslike musiek . . . en dit sluit

Westerse pop in" (my translation in text). 17 "Dit is 'n plaat wat die bleek Brine genadiglik nie sal kan verstaan nie, en dit is

hul verlies" (my translation in text). The style-land-nat ion-identity iconic complex is also evident in Breytenbach's criticism of international antiapartheid protest music. One reason he gives for its failure is its "pathetic attempt to recreate a South African style in cold London" (" . . . patetiese poging om 'n soort Suid Afrikaanse musiekstyl to herskep in koue Londen" [my translation; Breytenbach 1986] ) .

18 For example: Hugh Masakela Tomorrolv (Warner Brothers), Miriam Makeba Sangoma (Warner Brothers), Ladysmith Black Mambazo Shaka Zulli (Warner Brothers), Mahlathini The Lion of SOlVeto (Earthworks), and compilations SOHieto Never Sleeps (Shanachie), The Heartbeat of Soweto (Shanachie), Thunder Before DCIlvn (Earthworks), and Homeland (Rounder).

19 " 'n Taai klap aan Sipho Mabuse omdat hy na Burn Out geprobeer het om musiek te maak waarvan die Amerikaners hou, en ons (byna) vergeet het" (my transla­tion in text). I t is unclear in this quotation whether the "us" refers to progressive South African music fans in general or specifically to Black South Africans.

1 58

p

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A C E L A N D

Acknowledgments

Thank you to all who read and commented on versions of this paper. I am especially grateful to Gerard Behague, Steve Feld, Laurie Graham, Frank Magne, Tom Turino, and Greg Urban for their valuable contributions.

References

Althusser, L . 1971 "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses." In Lenin and Philosophy,

and Other Essays, 1 27-86. London: New Left Books.

Anderson, Benedict 1983 Imagined Communities: On the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London:

Verso. Becker, Judith, and Alton Becker

1981 "A Musical Icon: Power and Meaning in Javanese Gamelan Music." In The Sign in Music and Literature, ed. Wendy Steiner, 203-16. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre 1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press.

Coplan, David 1985 111 Township Tonight! SOUlh Africa's Black City Music and Theatre.

London: Longman Press. Elias, Norbet

1 978 The History of Manners. Vol I. London: Blackwell Press. Erlmann, Veit

1987 " 'Singing Brings Joy to the Distressed': Race, Class, Social Control and Resistance in Zulu Migrant Workers' Choral Competitions." Paper presented to the History Workshop, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

1988 "The Music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo: Working Class, Traditional, or Popular?" Paper presented at the 33rd Annual Meeting of t.i1e Society for Ethnomusicology, Tempe, Arizona, October 20-23.

Feld, Steven 1984 "Communication, Music, and Speech about Music." Yearbook for

Tra{litional Music 16 : 1 - 1 8. 1 988a "Notes on World Beat." Public Cullure Bul/elin 1 / 1 :31-37. 1988b "Aesthetics as Iconicity of Style, or 'Lift-up-over-Sounding': Getting into

the Kaluli Groove." Yearbook for Traditional Music 20:74- 1 1 3.

Frith, Simon 1981 SOllnd Effects: YOllfh, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock'n'Rol/. New York:

Pantheon. 1987 "Copyright and the Music Business." Popular Music 71 1 :57-75.

Giles, Jennifer, and John Shepherd 1988 "Theorizing Music's Affective Power." Arena 85: 1 06-2 1 .

1 59

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Hall, Stuart 1 979 "Culture, Media and the 'Ideological Effect . '" In Mass Con1l11lmiClIlioll and

Society, ed. J. Curran, M. Gurevitch, and J. Woolacot, 3 1 5-48. London: Sage Publications.

Harnrn, Charles 1 988 Afro-American Music, South Africa, and Apartheid. New York: ISAM

monographs, no. 28. Karnenctsky, Christa

1972 "Folklore as Political Tool in Nazi Germany." Jot/mal of American Folklore 85/337:221-36.

KarnoQuh, Claude 1982 "National Unity in Central Europe: The State, Peasant Folklore and

Mono-ethnisl1l ," Telos 52:95-1 05. Kcil, Charles

1966 Urban Blues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1 985 "People's Music Comparatively: Style and Stereotype, Class and Hege­

mony," Dialectical Alllhropology 10: 1 1 9-30. 1987 "Participatory Discrepancies and the Power of Music." Cultllral Anthropo­

logy 213:275-83. Keil, Charles, and S. Papadimitriou

1987 "On Copyright." Echology 1 :4. Lodge, Tom

1983 Black Politics in South Africa since 1945. Johannesburg: Raven Press. Manuel. Peter

1 989 "Andalusian, Gypsy, and Class Identity in the Contemporary Flamenco Complex." Etllllomusicology 3311 :3 1-46.

Oinas, Felix

1 978 "Political Uses and Themes of Folklore in the Soviet Union." In Folklore, Nationalism, and Politics, 77-96. Columbus: Slavica Publishers.

Rosaldo, Michele 1 9 8 1 "Towards an Anthropology of Self and Feeling." In CU/lUre Theory:

Essays ;11 Milld, Self and Emotion, ed. R . A. Schweder and R. A. LeVine, 137-57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sharp, John 1988 "Ethnic Group and Nation: The Apartheid Vision in South Africa."

In South African Keywords: The Uses ami Abuses of Political Concepts, ed. E. Boonzaier and J. Sharp, 79-99. Cape Town: David Philip.

Silverman. Carol

1983 "The Politics or Folklore in Bulgaria." Allthropological Quarterly 56/2:55-62.

Spiegel, Andrew, and Emile Boonzaier 1988 "Promoting Tradition: Images of the South African Past." In SOUlh African

Keyword,,: The Uses and Abuses of Politic{II Concepts, cd. E. Boonzaier and J. Sharp, 40-57. Cape Town: David Philip.

Turino, Thomas

1989 "The Coherence of Social Style and Musical Creation among the Aymara in Southern Peru." Ethnol11usicology 3311 : 1-30.

1 60

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A CE L A N D

Urban, Greg 1985 "The Semiotics of Two Speech Styles in Shokleng." In Semiotic Mediation,

ed. P. Mertz and R. Parmentier, 3 1 1 -29. New York: Academic Press. Wallis, Roger, and Krister Maim

1 984 Big Soumis from Small Peoples: The Music Industry in Small Coulltties. New York: Pendragon Press.

Williams, Raymond 1977 Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Populal' p,'ess a,.ticles

Badela, Mono 1987 "A Pollsmoor Finger-wagging for Paul Simon." Weekly Mail (Braamfontein,

South Africa) 3-9 July:3. Breytenbach. Kerneels

1986 '''n Plaaslike Avontuur." Die Burger (Cape Town) 3 October:9. Feldman, Peter

1987 "Simon Can't Play in SA, but. . . . " Citizen (Pretoria) 1 6 February.

Davis, John 1 987 "Los Lobos Go Uncredited for Work on 'Graceland."· Austin Americall­

Statesman (Austin) 24 April.

Gordon, Steve 1987 "The Hugh and Paul Show Shakes 'Em." Weekly Mail (Braamrontein) 6

February.

Hlahla, Patrick 1986 "Stimela for Spring Festival." Preforia News (Pretoria) 23 October. 1987 "Phiri Says Cultural Boycott 'Not Helping. ' " Pretoria News (Pretoria) 1 8

March. 1988 "Ladysmith is Autumn Harvest Music Personality." Pretoria News.

Hyde, Russel '

1987 "Steaming Hot: Mbaqanga Mania." Flying Sprillgbok August:28-34.

Lloyd, Fiona 1987 "A Day or Miracles and Wonders." Prize Africa April:I 8f.

Makhaya, Elliot • 1986 "A Home for Black Talent." SOJllet(l1l (Johannesburg) 1 8 June: IO.

NdloVll, Phineas 1987 "There is No Grace in Grace/am!." The Herald (Harare) 1 6 February.

Rathbone, Gary 1 987a "Sound Shaper Supreme." Bits 3(March):3. 1987b Review of Stimela-Look, Listen (Il1d Decide (G.R.C.) and Ladysmith

Black Mambazo-ZibllyinhlaZ(lne (G.R.C.). Bits 3(March):5. Rathbone, Gary, and Charles Talbot

1987 "Gracelands." Bits 3(March):6-8. Shuenyane, Morakile, ed.

1985 "Music in Exile." Pace 8112:89-94. Tannenbaum, Rob

1987 "UN Group Attacks Paul Simon." Rollillg Stolle 493( 1 2 February): I I .

1 6 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Thomas, Jeremy 1987 "The Sound of Roots Growing." Fair/ady I April:72-73.

Thomson, Garner 1987 "Black Mambaso 'One of SA's Treasures. ' " Pretoria Nellis 2 February.

Tissong, Michael 1 987 "Artists Tell of Tour," The Star (Johannesburg) March 18 . Reprinted in

South African Digest 3 April 1 987. Whitebooi, Melvin

1 986 "Die jaar wat was." Ekslra-Rapport (Capetown) 14 Deccmber:4. Wrench, Nigel

1986 "Simon's Whimsy Springs SA Roots," Weekly Mail (Braamfontein) 1 2 September: 1 8.

1 987 "Homesick Soweto Blues in Harare." Weekly Mail (Braamfontcin) 20 February.

Ullsigned articles

BS. Review of Grace/and. Week-end Mercury (Durban) 1 8 October 1986:10. "Paul Simon Teams Up with Stimela." Pace June 1985:87. "The Picketing of Grace/and." Editorial in Times (London) 7 April 1 987: 15 . "Simon Denies Apologising to ANC." Citizen (Pretoria) January 1 987. "Ladysmith Black Mambazo Wins Grammy." In SOllth African Digest 18 March

1988:7. Reprinted from the Citizen (Pretoria).

Televisioll ,.epo,.ts

McNei/ Lehrer Reporl. PBS 25 February 1987.

Illterviews

Louis Nel, 3 1 August 1987, Pretoria, RSA. Stan Nkosi, 30 June 1 987, Johannesburg, RSA.

Alblll""

Art of Noise. Yebo. Polygram. 1989. Belafonte, Harry. Paradise in Gazankulu. EMI�Manhattan Records EI-4697 I . 1988. Bush, Kate. Sensual World. Columbia. 1989. Copeland, Stewart. The Rhythmatisl. A&M Records AMLS 65084. 1985. Gabriel, Peter. So. Geffen Reeords GHS 24088. 1986. Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Shaka Zulu. Warner Brothers 25582. 1987. The Heartbeat of SOllie to. Shanachie Records 4305 1 . 1988. flame/and: A Col/eclion of Black South African Music. Rounder 5009. 1987. Khumalo, Bakhiti. Slep on Ihe Bassline. Flame (V) 406324 1 . 1988. Mabuse, Sipho Hotstix. Chanl of Ihe Marching. Gallo/GRC HUL 40185. 1988. Mahlathini. The Lion of Soweta. Earthworks/Virgin Records America 90867. 1 987. Makeba, Miriam. Miriam Makeba: Sangoma. Warner Brothers 25673. 1988.

162

p

P A U L S I M O N ' S G R A C E L A N D

Masakela, Hugh. Tomorrow. Warner Brothers. 1 987.

Rolling Stones. Steel Wheels. Warner Brothers. 1989.

Simon, Paul. Grace/and. Warner Brothers 25447 � 1 , 1986.

SOltielO Neller Sleeps: Classic Fema/e Mbaqallga Jille. Shanachie Records 43041 .

1986. Slimela. Look, Lislen, and Decide. Gallo/GRC I-I U L 40109. 1986. Talking Heads. Remain in Lighl. Sire Records 6RK 6095. 1980. --. Naked. Fly/Sire Records 9 25654- 1 . 1988. Thomson, Merle. Spirit Wind. Umkhonto Records MLP 00 1 . 1989. Thunder Before Dawn. Earthworks/Virgin Records America 90866. 1987.

•

1 63

68

' !v1 Y LOVE I S I N A M E R I C A' :

M I G R AT I O N A N D I R I S H M U S I C

Graeme Smith

Source: P. O'Sullivan (cd.) ( 1994) The Crellf;I'c Migralll. Leicester: Leicester University Press,

221-36.

[n the sleeve notes to the only commercial recording of the influenlial accor­dionist Joe Cooley, another player and commentator, Tony MacMahon describes the reel known as 'My Love is in America' as

ideally suited to his style of playing and the long b flat note he makes in the first part has the same wild and haunted call in it that Johnny Doran had in his piping of that tune. Whether or not this music was made in the black famine times of death and the living death of emigration, nobody knows, but it has in it the lonesome cry of our people of those not too-long gone times. '

McMahon's is a conventional, if romantic, understanding of the social and historical context of Irish dance music. But though the namer of this reel did not intend its title to indicate a fondness for America, the ambiguity alerts us to alternative readings of the relationships between Irish dance music and migration.

[ n the late twentieth century Irish traditional dance music has a vigorous musical life. As well as continuing to attract performers and audiences in I reland and abroad, it has a small but secure place in the burgeoning world music market, combining the aura of authenticity with the reach provided by the transnational recording giants. Although Irish traditional dance music has been much recorded, transcribed, lauded and loved, its relationship to Irish society has been scarcely investigated. Scholars have most often seen it as folklore, and so emphasised its survival and stylistic continuity. Their categories of tradition and authenticity are little help, however, in under­standing the vitality of the music this century. That Irish dance music is still so vigorously performed and so popular cannot be understood in terms of

164

•

' M Y L O V E I S I N A M E R I C A '

the persistence o f cultural forms and of 'traditions' proving resistant to the destructive forces of modernisation. The music continues to be played because Irish men and women have found it relevant to their experience of the modern world, and this relevance has been based in the music's long­standing accommodation with emigration. Paradoxically, emigration, that supposed destroyer of traditional, rural [reland, has strengthened rather than eroded the music.

This chapter is mainly concerned with the social place of Irish dance music in the first half of the twentieth century, the musical ground which was the basis of the public revivals of interest of the 1 960s - Comhaltas Ceol16iri iDrealll1, the populist ballad revival and the Chieftains - and the subsequent folk revival of the 1970s and 1980s. When one examines the music's social meaning in this earlier period, particularly for its performers, what one finds, I will argue, is not a music tightly integrated into the social patterns of rural Ireland, but a music shaped by the integration of rural Ireland into the rest of the world through emigration.

Two musicians

Bill Moran was born into a musical family in Galway in 1 930. He took up the melodeon in childhood, and the two-row accordion in his teens. By his late teens he was playing well enough to join the acclaimed Aughrim Slopes Ceili Band, and his musical world quickly expanded beyond the limits of household and townland. He toured with the band through the lively Irish clubs of Britain in 1947, but declined the chance to go on to America, a decision he later regretted. Like many of his generation, he did not settle back long in Galway, but returned to Britain, playing there with men he described to me as 'the cream of I reland', in the confident Irish musical subculture in English pubs and Irish clubs arter the Second World War. From Britain he moved to Australia, where he has continued to play and has participated in the infusion of Irish Iraditional dance music into Australian popular folk music. •

I interviewed Bill Moran in Melbourne in 1 983 as part of a study of accordion-playing styles, and I will return to the interview at the end. During his life, music has provided a challenge of skill and craft, a social role and a source of sociability. It has also been a powerful personal expressive medium, in which individual performances, styles and aspects of the genre itself are joined in a complex network of meanings and connotations. In my discussion at the end I will contrast the meanings Bill attaches to Irish dance music with those of Martin Mulroe, another player of similar age also now living in Australia. For both these men the music they play contains con­trasting attitudes to Irishness and emigration entwined with understandings of their own lives. [ will argue that the music's capacity to carry individually nuanced meanings such as these is the basis of its continuing strength. But

1 65

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

before doing this I wish to discuss the public meanings which have been associated with traditional Irish music in the projection of an Irish national cultural identity. The social meaning of the music emerges from both its public and private interpretations.

Irish music and national culture

Irish dance music first attained some cultural and political significance in the early nineteenth century, when antiquarian collectors were constructing a place for Irish music in their mythologised image of a Gaelic Ireland. Within this, dance music was included, although it was treated by collectors such as Edward Bunting and George Petrie as subordinate to the genre of song airs which had a more easily imagined relationship to a Gaelic past '

Around the mid-century the 'Young Irelanders' began to espouse the idea of a cultural nationalism. The leading figure of this movement, Thomas Davies, who was explicitly influenced by the German romantic Herder, argued that a culturally defined nation was the necessary basis for an effect­ive and legitimate political unit ' Though broken in their abortive uprising in 1 848, the Young Irelanders left their imprint on the Irish nationalist movement. Henceforth distinctive Irish cultural activities were seen as an expression of an historically-based national culture, and such activities became an indispensable part of the struggle for political independence.

Irish dance music did not have a consolidated place in Irish national culture until the Gaelic revival movement of the turn of the century. This movement urged the maintenance and revival of the Irish language, of Irish sports and pastimes, and of Irish music and dancing, and spawned two organisations, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1 884, and the Gaelic League in 1 893. These organisations, although not overtly political, provided an intellectual focus for political activists.'

The two organisations, the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Asso­ciation, appealed to different sections of the Irish population. The Gaelic Athletic Association gained the support of the rural masses, organising and promoting traditional Irish sports, primarily Gaelic football and hurling, and grew into a massive popular movement in Ireland. Its events and organisational bodies became a focus for many popular cultural activities beyond the games it championed and formalised. The Gaelic League drew a small number of middle-class city dwellers. The call for an 'Irish Ireland' in the abstract provided worthy goals for these followers - learning Irish, studying literature, promoting the historical tradition.

The Gaelic League was dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the Irish language as the corner-stone of a national culture, and it promoted associated activities, including Irish music and dance. When first formed, it espoused a secularist conception of Irish identity, a legacy of the Anglo­Irish cultural activists of the earlier part of the century, but as the nationalist

1 66

•

' M Y L O Y E I S I N A M E R I C A '

movement developed a mass base, it became a militant Catholic organisa­tion and a cultural focus for a new generation of radical nationalists and began to reject the attenuated policies of the Home Rule movement and call for full republican independence '

In 1 897 the Gaelic League held in Dublin its first Feis Ceoil or music fest­ival. With the emphasis on 'competitions of archeological interest', the aims of the organisers were similar to those of the nineteenth-century collectors. They were a good deal more interested in the possibility of unearthing a player of the defunct wire-strung harp than in contemporary 'country fiddlers" The interest of the Gaelic League in the 'invented tradition' of the Irish war pipes also exemplifies its active attempts to guide Irish music into forms considered appropriate for the national culture. Pipe bands, with national costume and regalia, were better suited to the public display of Irishness, and more like the folkloric displays of European national­isms than were the popular forms of entertainment provided by country musicians.

The most important musical initiative of the Gaelic League was the ceili dance. The first of these was held by the London branch of the Gaelic League in 1 897, in imitation of the dance meetings of Caledonian Societies. The ceili dance seemed a possible public form for Irish music and dance, although the League sponsored the resuscitation of defunct dance forms rather than commonly practised local forms of quadrille sets.' The respect­able Irish bourgeoisie of the Gaelic Leagues, socially distant from the cottier musicians of Ireland, were proposing a new public role for Irish dance music, in which its national cultural status could be furthered. In the early part of this century, Gaelic League meetings established the ceili dance as a social institution. ,

The Gaelic Athletic Association, with its sponsoring of Irish games, was much closer to the activities of the Catholic rural lower classes than was the language-centred Gaelic League. One of the most important achievements of the nationalist movement was to weld together these two groups of cul-• tural activists ' While the Gaelic League established the national emblematic significance of Irish music, the Gaelic Athletic Association maintained and expanded its audience for Irish music through the organisation of dances, and through a conception of an Irish popular culture outside a literary, or at least verbal, tradition. The ban on its players participating in 'foreign sports' extended to attending 'foreign dances'. It was thus constrained to forbid 'foreign dances' at its social functions and became one of the most important promoters of Irish dance music in the countryside in the first half of the twentieth century '

After the establishment of the Irish Free State, the demands of the Gaelic revival were constitutionally enshrined and the Irish language given official status. The ideology of the state, espoused by the victorious national populism of Prime Minister de Valera in the 1 930s accorded Irish traditional music a

1 67

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

special place. I t was 'the musical equivalent of Irish thought and its modes'. It was also part of an idealised vision of social stability built on the small family farm, which was seen as the base of the national ideology vigorously promoted by de Valera's Fianna Filii Party." Tobin describes de Valera's vision of Ireland as

a touching, idealistic and wholly fantastic piece of nonsense. But it did not seem like nonsense to a majority of Irishmen in 1943, or in 1 950, or in 1 955. In those years it enshrined a national idcal in which it was still possible for people to believe. It was the conventional wisdom , l l

But the status of this ideology in the life of Irish country people was more complex than this quotation suggests; while it was widely assented to in the abstract, it was often rejected in actuality. Although the public ideology of national Irish culture plays an important part in the altitudes of musicians to their music, they also build their musical understanding on more personal understandings of their life experience; and although nationalist political ideologies have dominated the public meanings given to Irish experience, they do not necessarily dominate individuals' private interpretations of their experience. At the centre of the contradictions of the ideology of nationalism was its attitude to emigration.

Ireland and the emigrant

Joseph Lee suggests that the position accorded to emigration within Irish views of the social order remained essentially unchanged from the Great Famine till the late 1 950s, and he emphasises the destructive social conse­quences of a public failure to face honestly the consequences of emigra­tion." Kerby Miller argues that the ideas of nationalism and emigration entwined to become the cornerstone of the Irish social consciousness created in the nineteenth century and 'on both general and individual levels, emigra­tion and nationalism epitomised the oft times tortuous Irish efforts to resolve the tensions between tradition and modernity' ." But if nationalism and emigration are a pair linked in their contradictions they also reflect the difference between public and private understandings and actions. While nationalism is the main way in which Irish people are called upon to see their collective relationship with larger social structures, so emigration represents a private response, apparently individual and isolated, even if grounded in historical and economic circumstances. In the eyes of the nationalist movement, the church, and the post-independence state, emigra­tion was a capitulation before the pull of the secular, materialist world epitomised by America, yet masses of Irishmen and women felt compelled to choose it. The emigrants were put into the position of feeling guilty for

1 68

' M Y L O V E I S I N A M E R I C A '

their emigration and the ideology o f exile was defence against this guilt and ambivalence. The ideal of the sacralised family gave a personal focus to the guilt. For although a chosen emigration superficially implied a rejection of the authority of parents, the maintenance of the inviolable family farm and impartible inheritance was rigidly dependent on emigration."

Ireland proved incapable of halting emigration after independence, in spite of nationalist hopes. The essential dilemma of the emigrants' appro­priate attitude to their action remained: to what extent were they guilty of deserting their family, land and country, when that country had in fact proved incapable of adequately supporting them?

The contradictions of the emigrant's attitude were mirrored by those who stayed at home. In the 1950s, Meenan identified a popular contradiction in Irish consciousness: namely, that though emigration is seen in Ireland as a national problem and a weakness in the social fabric, individuals 'still congratulate themselves if their children obtain good employment abroad'."

The act of emigration, with its attendant social complications and per­sonal costs is of monumental significance to emigrants. But emigration also affected those who stayed in Ireland and its pervasive presence became part of the way in which they understood the relationship between themselves and the rest of the world.

Emigrants are unlikely to see themselves as a social problem. Though emigration has had a conventional representation as exile, there is always a gap between conventional cultural explanations and individuals' actions, where each life must create some resolution of the complexity of the dilemma which emigration presents.

The drift to the city has dominated rural communities all over Europe for the last two centuries. In Ireland, however, migration has ,been little directed to Irish cities. The Irish countryside is a hinterland to the large metropolitan centres of the world, to New York and London, as much as to the provin­cial cities and towns of Ireland. Since the mid-nineteenth century the social consciousness of Irish country people has been defined within. this world, and a global metropolitan culture has continually been seen as an alternative to rural life. The existence of this alternative has meant that Irish countrymen and countrywomen have constructed systems of social meaning which comment on, explain and describe these alternative ways of life and their personal consequences. I will now elaborate this general argument in rela­tion to Irish dance music.

Emigration and Irish dance music

Irish dance music has been seen as a traditional folk art, interpreted as inseparable from Irish cultural and national experience. Under such inter­pretations, performances by emigrants are likely to be read as conservative and backward-looking, and as attempts to keep tradition alive in greatly

1 69

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

changed circumstances. Cut off from the source o f the music's meaning, their fate is thus to become increasingly ossified and irrelevant. But such has not been the fate of Irish migrant players. Many have become key figures in the continuing development of the music. In numerous ways which will now be discussed Irish music has thrived on emigration.

The most significant and influential collector of Irish dance music was Francis O'Neill. O'Neill was born in West Cork in 1 849, of a relatively prosperous family. He left Ireland in 1 865, eventually settling in America in 1 869, and rose to become chief of the Chicago Police Force. A traditional flute player and a man of irrepressible public spirit, he organised the Chicago Irish Musicians Association, gathering together scores of players in that city, dedicating himself to the study of Irish history and culture, and from Chicago carrying on correspondence with like-minded spirits around the world. Here he embarked upon collecting the tunes which he eventu­ally published in a number of printed collections. O'Neill had joined the Chicago police force in 1 873, and rose rapidly through its ranks to become Chief of Police from 1901 to 1905. His administration was lauded. O'Neill was able to use his social power to assist musicians, apparently guaranteeing to any musician employment in the police force he controlled. No doubt this contributed to his success as a collector. His published collections appeared from 1903 to 1922 and most of the tunes included were noted down from his fellow musicians in Chicago. The most important of his books was Irish Dance Music: 1001 Gems. Published in 1907 it became the most highly regarded collection of Irish dance music, the closest thing to a canon for the genre."

The publication of his collections enabled a massive expansion in the repertoire of individual musicians. Other collections had appeared before O'Neill's, and a similar, but smaller series was published in Ireland around the same time by the Gaelic League enthusiast Francis Roche." But O'Neill's was the only one to be widely used by traditional musicians, and to begin to consolidate relatively small local and personal repertoires of dance tunes into an impressive national genre. Although O'Neill's publications were used directly only by reading musicians, their effect filtered through to aural musicians. Versions of tunes which were assembled in his publications for the first time have become standard settings widely played by musicians within an aural tradition, and his 1001 Gems is generally considered with veneration by performers, even if they do not use it.

Emigration presented many musicians with enhanced opportunities for demonstrating and developing their art. Most locally circumscribed musicians in rural Ireland, relying on a limited number of musical contacts, had a small repertoire of tunes. Emigration greatly expanded the opportunities of many for learning new tunes. Players from many areas, with many different styles, were 'now only a street-car ride away'. The most talented players could perform on public stages for general audiences, and within the Irish

1 70

:p

' M Y L O V E I S I N A M E R I C A '

community music was appreciated, and 'even more significantly, paid for', 18 Emigration, far from depleIing a traditional form, enhanced the power of the genre enormously.

O'NeiWs collections were an important initial stage in the consolidation of Irish dance music into a broadly available yet distinctive genre, but sound recording was more influential. The commercial recordings which appeared from the 1920s onwards were much better suited to the needs of performers than was notated music. Recordings of Irish dance music have been available almost since the beginning of commercial recording. Cylinder recordings of an anonymous Irish piper were issued in USA before the turn of the century ." The first important period of recording of Irish music was from the mid-I920s to the 1940s, during which the great majority of 78 r.p.m. recordings of Irish music was produced. Most of these recordings were of Irish-American players in America and were issued in the 1920s and early I 930s. Nicholas Carolan estimates that about three thousand Irish recordings were made on both sides of the Atlantic during this period, but the majority were from America.20

The Irish-American recording emerged as part of a new marketing strategy initiated by recording companies in the I 920s. In their attempts to tap new markets, American companies issued many recordings aimed at ethnic, racial and regional groups. This commercial tactic resulted in the genres of 'hillbilly' and 'race' recordings, which can be seen as instigating the two major forces in the subsequent development of popular music styles, Country and Western and Afro-American blues. As well as these now familiar musical styles, many 'foreign series' were included in the output of recording companies. It has been estimated that one of the major companies, Victor, issued more than 1 5 ,000 so-called 'foreign' records from the 1920s and I 930s, many recorded in the United States, ranging 'from Finnish fiddlers to Sicilian bagpipe players'.2l Irish recordings were amongst these.

The Irish music recorded in this era included instrumental dance music, as well as a number of genres of vocal music. The most import�nt of these were nineteenth-century genteel ballads of Irish origin or reference, Irish-American sentimental song, comic song, traditional ballads and rural narrative song, nationalist and political song and occasional religious songs. Recordings of Irish dance music from this period do not appear to have differed greatly from contemporary live performance. It seems that recording company executives did little more than call a performer or group into the studio and request them to play for thre� minutes as they would in a public live performance.

By far the most important players of this period to be recorded were a group of fiddle players from South Sligo, who all emigrated in the first twenty years of this century. Of these, the most influential were Michael Coleman, Paddy Killoran and James Morrison. They were all from around Ballymote and Killavel in South Sligo, and born around 1 890. Coleman

1 7 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

emigrated to America around 1 9 1 2, his musical compatriots a little later. These three players established publicly what is regarded as 'Sligo style' and their playing, particularly that of Coleman, has been regarded as the highest expression of Irish dance music. Their recordings sold widely, and they influenced the repertoire and style of almost all serious performers.

The three players probably had the same teacher and musical background. Although their playing techniques differed in some aspects of bowing style and degree of note separation and inequality, the features which they shared, however, were more prominent than the differences: a highly ornamented style, using a wide variety of fingered and bowed ornaments; a flexible and animated bowing style; and a relatively fast tempo with a tendency to use melodic variation. Their performances gave the impression of great virtuos­ity." The Irish-American Sligo fiddlers were of unparalleled importance in delineating the position of Irish music in the twentieth century, not merely through their skill, but through the symbolic associations which were ascribed to their playing style.

Hall has indicated that Coleman's impact on Irish music might be read sociologically as well as musically. He compares him with the young Louis Armstrong:

In another musical tradition, the New Orleans trumpeter, Louis Armstrong, was credited for his originality and ability to improvise when he was in fact playing common material from his hometown (there is evidence that he was playing a lot of Buddy Petit's music). I suspect Coleman drew on the common storehouse of music rest­ing in the local fiddlers back home, like Jamesy Gannon, Phillip O'Beirne, John Dowd and Cipin Scanlon. Just as Armstrong was the down-home boy who made it in Chicago, Coleman symbolised the country Irish boy who found fame in America "

Coleman's success and his impact on Irish music reflected contemporary Irish attitudes to emigration and the emigrant. Aspects of his musical style such as its great technical brilliance, its speed, and its spontaneous varia­tions, could readily be interpreted by listeners as evidence of the best aspects of urbanisation. The undeniable musical ability of Coleman and his fellow Sligo players made bold statements about the social hierarchies of musical communities back home. The Sligo fiddlers were removed from the localised rural society and the social precedence of older teachers and players. From the emigrant perspective, the comparatively limited styles of most Irish playing could be seen as expressions of a limited, conservative traditionality which emigration could circumvent and ignore. The individual in the city stands on his own merit and ability.

Such urban emigrant players could have had little impact without widely disseminated recordings. The impact was enhanced by the suitability of

1 72

,.

' M Y L O V E IS I N A M E R I C A '

recordings for the needs o f performers. Irish dance music was often taught by painstaking imitation of another performer, and recordings substituted well for the teacher in this process. A recording could be played over and over again. One player has described how learning tunes from recordings in the 1930s he anticipated the techniques of ethnomusicologists, and would slow down the mechanical turntable with a finger 10 discern the details of ornamentation to imilate.24

Recordings, then, had a number of effects on Irish dance music. They stimulated a great increase in the size of individual repertoires. They elevated the individual player and brought great respect to lechnique and virtuosity. Ornamentation, now frozen in a recording rather than fleeting in ils very execution, was probably elevated in importance. Playing for listening became firmly entrenched and the music grew as an autonomous expressive form independent of its use for dancing.

These musical modifications do not exhaust the role of recordings in reshaping the meaning of Irish dance music. The recording placed the musical sound within new social relations. Music played by friend or family was embedded in the relationships amongst the participants; the recording, by contrast, was a commodity. lIs social significance lay in its economic origins, which were far from the family farm. Many recordings came directly to Ireland from the Uniled States, gifts from emigrant relatives, and in Ireland the gift expressed the social relations between emigrant and sedent­ary in a way that echoed the cash remittance. The emigrant cash remittance, the focus of the relationship between the emigrant and the family farm, bore both obligation and guilt. As Brody points out, by reversing the relations of dependency between child and parent, it tended to erode and challenge the patriarchal power of the farm proprietor and family head, and to be a manifest example of the economic superiority of urban existence." Similarly, the musical remittance, the recording, was both a masked criticism of Irish rural existence, and an attempt to redefine Irish music. A product of technology, recordings showed that the music could indeed take its place in the urban world. While on the one hand the recordings reassured the family back home that the symbols of Irish identity still survived vigorously in the corrupting city, on the other hand they challenged the backwardness and limitation of country life. Recordings brought friends and family still at home tunes they would never have heard from local musicians, and many recorded performances had a virtuosity and precision which challenged live performance. Just as the cash remittance disguised social criticism with dutiful filial obligation, the recording displayed the superiority of emigrant performance even as it affirmed a continuing commitment to Irish values. The power of recordings depended on their availability, their convenience as a source of tunes, and on the social meaning which they took on. They also showed that Irish music had a place in the modern world, and could take on a new, cosmopolitan meaning. In the broader context of cultural politics,

1 73

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

the vitality o f emigrant music undermined the socio-musical definitions of Irish music offered by Irish urban middle-class cultural activists, which limited the music to the role of a national cultural treasure, and ignored its value as entertainment.

The changes in I rish music wrought by recordings and by O'Neill's collec­tions can be seen as part of the challenge which emigration presented to rural life. For the individual the recognition and freedom which awaited in America included enhanced possibilities of musical repertoire and experience. The new meanings for the genre did not confront or repudiate the music's place in rural Ireland, but modified and redefined it. They suggested how, even within the ideology of emigration, the rural and the metropolitan could be linked.

Emigration and music: structures of feeling

The effects of emigration in Irish dance music are not merely to be found in the repertoire and styles inspired by emigrant performers. As important is the way Irish people used the category of emigration to understand their lives and their music. Emigration was an issue for those at home as well as for those who chose to leave, and emigration has influenced the way in which all players and listeners understand Irish music.

To understand the significance of emigration in the consciousness of individual musicians, we must move beyond descriptions of broad histor­ical effects such as those given above. These are the musical symptoms of emigration, general patterns which have emerged from the collective yet varied responses of individuals. To discuss these individual responses requires a change of perspective from a general social view to a detailed analysis of individuals.

The term 'structures of feeling' was coined by the English Marxist cultural critic Raymond Williams to counter the tendency in most cultural analyses to reduce the notion of the social to that which is fixed and institu­tional, with culture and society expressed 'in a habitual past tense'. This is not a consequence of the fact that we are studying the past, but of an attitude to social consciousness. That which refuses to be accommodated is regarded as personal; the personal becomes the category to which all that 'seems to escape from the fixed and the explicit' is consigned." To under­stand consciousness as a lived process, whether past or present, Williams argues that we must move beyond such a reduction of the category of the social to the fixed and institutional.

The concept of the 'structures of feeling' of cultural acts attempts to bridge the gap between social structures and formations and individual consciousness. Even if consciousness is situated in material existence, it is believed, felt, and acted on, not simply determined by circumstance. The term 'structures of feeling' is internally contradictory, to capture the paradoxical

1 74

T'

' M Y L O V E I S I N A M E R I C A '

nature of social action. 'Structures' suggests rigidity, determination and fixed relationships. 'Feeling' evokes the most personal, individual part of con­sciousness; that which seems to be immune from social constraint.

The historical developments already described and the socially constructed understandings of these constitute the structural framework of Irish music as a social phenomenon. The emigrant performer, the remitted record, O'Neill's collections and the understood institution of emigration are all part of a network of social meanings. In as much as these are consolidated into institutions, systems of ideas or patterns of actions, they contribute to the systematic beliefs about Irish dance music, what it is publicly held to mean and represent, and how it is played and used. But if we are 'concerned with meanings and values as they are actively lived and felt' by individuals, these meanings and values are not simply reducible to systematic beliefs. The relationship between lived meanings and public beliefs can vary 'from formal assent with private dissent to the more nuanced interaction between selected and interpreted beliefs and justified experiences'."

Players do not simply adopt the publicly available theories of the nature of Irish dance music to explain the musical behaviour and attitudes of themselves or others. Rather, received knowledge provides possible patterns of social meanings from which they make their selection; and thus they participate in the continuing creation of meaning. The structures of feeling associated with emigration are central to the construction of the social meaning of Irish music. Emigration provides a central category for the under­standing of a network of social and economic relations and experiences, including musical experience.

To illustrate and amplify this point, the musical opinions and attitudes of two emigrant Irish musicians now living in Australia,. Bill Moran and Martin Mulroe, will be discussed. This discussion will show how attitudes to emigration organise their musical views on a range of questions, how they take certain institutional given understandings and mould them to their own require­ments, and how their 'feelings' about [rish music are 'structure�' through their understanding of emigration and its general social significance.

Tile COlIst,'uct;OIl of lIlusical attitudes

Bill Moran and Martin Mulroe are men of about the same age, born around 1 930, and from contiguous counties of Ireland, Galway and Mayo respectively. Both were raised in active Inusical families and had an early period of playing in Ireland. They emigrated to Britain around 1 950, and then subsequently to Australia: Bill Moran in the 1950s, and Martin Mulroe in the late 1 960s.

Though these men's childhood experiences of the music are similar, there are significant and symptomatic differences in their attitudes to the genre of Irish dance music. Close examination of the patterns of these differences

1 75

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

reveals how, even in their divergence, they have been structured by shared experiences and understandings.

The differing altitudes of these two performers to the question of regional style are particularly illuminating. Regional, usually county, categories are orten used by musicians and commentators to explain and discuss musical differences between players. In some cases the pallerns of differences are elusive and subtle, and research suggests that even the most experienced listeners cannot consistently distinguish stylistic differences." This does not imply that discussion of regional styles of playing is delusion or meaning­less, but that more than merely musical sound is being discussed. When Bill Moran was asked about the difference between the musical environment of Galway and the England of the early 1950s, he commented:

there was a lot more [music] in I reland of course, but you got blokes from all the different counties coming to England, like they had a lot of different styles. Well, you could nearly tell any bloke where he came from the way he played. [ could, anyway, and I think I nearly could now.19

When asked if the stylistic difference rested in differences of repertoire or in playing technique, he continued:

It's the way they play. It's the style of their area, county. You can always tell anyone up around the Northern area, they have a different style to the Western, the West or the South.

He also used more localised categories. A player from only eight or nine miles away from where he was brought up would have 'a different style altogether' .

Contrast these opinions with those of Martin Mulroe:

Now, I've picked up records here, and the sleeve on the record says, somebody from, say, Meath or Offaly goes to America and gets in with the musicians there and he gets on a record, and then he describes himself as playing in 'Offaly style'. Now, another man will say Galway style, another man will say Waterford or Wexford style, something like that. Now to me, none of them are true. The whole thing is somebody's idea of his own value to Irish music and that doesn't ring true. To me there is only one style, and that is an Irish style of Irish music.

When further discussion focused on the possibility of regional differences in earlier times, when communication and travel between areas was more difficult, he continued:

1 76

' M Y L O V E I S I N A M E R I C A '

[there would be] different interpretations of the tunes. Say, like someone would play a different finish on it, or say, a different change over from the first sixteen bars to the second and so on. But this has been corrected by the likes of Joe Burke and Sean McGuire and Michael Coleman in particular and Paddy Killoran . . . They made it an international thing.

He went on to state that every player has his individual style, which is virtually impossible for another to emulate:

every player puts his own, ah, Ravour is the word I would say, more than say . . . [a county style] . . . I cannot see how there is a different county style, there isn't.

These players' differences of musical opinion on questions of regionality are in each case part of the way in which they imagine the relationship of the individual player to Irish music, and ultimately the relationship of Ireland to the rest of the world. Where Bill Moran wants to see differences in playing style between players in terms of differences of place and region, and so tie the music closely to the detail of Irish rural life, Martin M ulroe places Irish music on an international stage where the achievements of individual players are prominently displayed.

These two men diverge in similar ways on other related issues. Mulroe places great emphasis on the recordings of the Irish-American fiddle players such as Michael Coleman and Paddy Killoran, and thereby further em­phasises the emigrant, international perspective of Irish music. By contrast, Moran was relatively dismissive of these players, seeing them in terms of the Irish-American cultural nexus exemplified in rural Ireland by the figure of the 'returned Yank'.

Mulroe and Moran also differ on another product of Irish emigrant experience, the tune collections of Francis O'Neill. O'Neill's collections are held in canonic status by some players, and Mulroe is one of th�se. Though he does not read music, Mulroe regards O'Neill's collections as authoritative versions:

O'Neill's book, the 1 00 I tunes, that is, the original O'Neill's book, that was straight out Irish music . . . and anyone who picks up a tune out of O'Neill's book is picKing the tune up straight as it should be . . . to me O'Neill's is the original, the best.

Moran has a different opinion. Though he also does not read music, he notes the inadequacy of printed versions for the transmission of the music, and stresses instead the importance of aural communication between players:

1 77

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

j often heard fellows that was able to read it [O'Neill's collection] and in a couple of weeks time, you'd hear another fellow coming in who wasn't able to read a bit of music, with the same tunes that were completely different . . . he would listen to it . . . you know the ear, I think, is better than the mind . . . if you have the ear for music you can tell immediately whether it's a nice one or a nasty one anyway.

But emigration itself structures the understanding of the relationship between fural lreland and metropolitan society. This can be seen in Mulroe's recol­lection of the circumstances under which he left Ireland.

I'll tell you why I left. I was building houses with my father . . . the last job I did, j built the local dance hall for the priest and he said, 'I hope you'll play for me when we hold the first dance', but the week I finished the hall I left for England.

And the reason I left Ireland was because all my mates, the fellows [ grew up with, fellows who would have been 1 7, 18 , 19 and 20 year olds, they'd all left and went to England.

[ was lucky. I was earning money, building houses with my father, but these fellows 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 in families, they just went to England to earn money . . . they could have gone to Dublin if they wanted to, but they decided to go to England.

[ went to a . . . dance hall and everyone was in my age group, and they all seemed to be . . . well built. If one wasn't tall he was broad. I was building a hall for a priest in another parish. I used to go to his dance more than anything else.

(Later), [ decided to find out what the local dance hall was like, so I went to the dance there one night, and [ thought [ was in school . . . it seem there everyone was a schoolkid, they all looked like that. Also all my friends, who hadn't married and settled down, they all had gone to England or gone to America, something like that, so [ decided that I would go to England, all my friends were there, my brothers were there, so, that's why [ left [reland.

In this description of the experiences leading to his emigration, we see a rural society through the eyes of a young man. His was not the emigration of necessity, but one of dissatisfaction with his surroundings. He does not show a hatred or an active rejection of rllral society, but a restlessness in a limited social environment. The central image of the restrictiveness of his own area is the perceived immaturity of his local peers. By contrast the lads in a neighbouring village hall dance are tall, well built: by extension, how much more so are the men of the diaspora. Home is small and limited. Emigration holds the hope of expansion and growth.

1 78

tp

' M Y L O V E I S I N A M E R I C A '

These social attitudes pervade his opinions about Irish music. In a sense, it is only 'grown up' when it can be seen from a global perspective. Local variations arc not particularly valuable. Individual virtuosic performers have transformed the music from relatively trivial local entertainments to a re­spected and internationally recognised canon. Thus performers like Michael Coleman, Joe Bourke, Sean McGuire and Paddy Killoran have 'corrected' the idiosyncrasies in Irish dance music, and 'made it an international thing'. [n different ways, the players named by Mulroe epitomise the importance of emigration and modernisation in Irish music. Coleman and Killoran are two of the famous Sligo fiddlers. McGuire is a fiddle player of the next generation, whose recordings of the late 1950s and 1960s established widely his models of precise execution and his complex sets of variations. Joe Bourke is one of the main figures of the modern accordion style, which emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, largely in the attempt to emulate the virtuosity of Sligo fiddlers on the button accordion. From Mulroe's perspective, all these players represent the process of unifying and organising the public repertoire and its interpretation, and in so doing they demonstrate the power of individual skill and interpretation to move Irish dance music beyond localistic and limited contexts into an international cuitural sphere. Martin Mulroe views Irish music from the perspective of the emigrant, rather than that of the resident of a local area or county. From this point of view, the national transcends the regional. The individual virtuoso, his importance emphasised by these basically metropolitan perspectives, provides the model for a theory of stylistic difference.

Bill Moran's attitude to the music could be regarded as 'Iocalistic' by comparison. This is not to say that he is necessarily a morc conservative character than Mulroe, nor that his attitudes are simply. a reflection of his personal history. His early adulthood was marked by unsettled moving through a series of jobs in unskilled labouring, a pattern common to many Irish emigrant men of his generation. Within this social experience he had personal freedoms and a varied social life which were unobtainable at home. • Though he sees his emigration as having provided expanded social possibil-ities, his musical focus is distinctly tied to his native place and the social circumstances which surrounded the music there, and he will not surrender this to a national conception of the music. Thus he has chosen to locate his music in a different place in a ideological system which he, none the less, shares with Mulroe.

.

The construction of the genre of Irish 'traditional dance music has a social history. On a public level, this is part of Irish social and political movements with wider goals and aspirations. The struggle for the definition of Irish music, fol' the assertion of its social, national and political significance, has been part of a general movement of cultural nationalism exemplified in organisations slIch as the Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Association and the revivalist organisation Comhaltas Ceolt6iri Eireallll, which through

179

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

the 1960s, carried o n the process of locating Irish traditional music within a changing cultural and political environment. Though these organisations have differed in focus and in the constituencies which they addressed, and have been influential in different periods, they have all placed Irish music in a national context. Music has been regarded as capable of speaking for the nation, rather than merely for the individuals who play or use it.

The foregoing discussion questions the exhaustiveness of national inter­pretations of Irish traditional dance music. Though formal public institu­tions and public ideologies have contributed to the construction of musical meaning, individuals, particularly players, modify and reinterpret the relatively rigid formulations which are publicly presented. Many of the social meanings for the music which they have created have been shaped by the place of emigration in their ideas and experience.

Emigrants have played a large part in Irish traditional dance music, but they have not merely preserved the genre, but reconstructed its meanings. Because they enabled the music to be tacitly associated with a cultural nexus of emigration and modernity, it could continue to speak to a broad constituency of players, both in and out of Ireland. Its vigorous existence today is attributable to this.

Notes

Tony McMahon, sleeve notes to LP recording Cooley, Gael Linn CEF 044 mono, Dublin, 1975.

2 Edward Bunting, A general collection of the ancienr music of Ire/and, Waltons, Dublin, 1969 ( 1 796, 1 809, 1 840); George Petrie, The Pelrie col/eclion of Ihe ancielll music oj Ireland Vols 1&2, Gregg Press, Farnborough, 1967 (1 855), and The complete Petrie collection of (lncient Irish music. 3 Vots, ed. Charles Villiers Stanford, Boosey & Co, London, 1905.

3 Conor Cruise O'Brien, Stales of Ire/alld, Pantheon, New York, 1972, pp. 74-84. 4 J. C. Beckett, The making of modern Ireland, Faber and Faber, London, 1966,

p. 417. 5 Oliver MacDonagh, Stales oj milld, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1983,

pp. 1 04-25; O'Brien, Stales of Ire/and, pp. 74-84. 6 Breandan Breathnach, 'The Feis Ceol and piping', Ceol 8, 1&2, 1986, pp. 13-16. 7 Barry Taylor, 'The Irish ceilidh band - a break with tradition?', Dal gCais 7,

1984, pp. 67-9. 8 O'Brien, States of Ire/and, pp. 74-84. 9 'The ban' was finally removed in 1 97 1 . See Fergal Tobin, The best of decades:

Ireland in the 1960s, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1984, p. 1 1 9. 10 Edward O. Henry, 'Institutions for the promotion of indigenous music: the case

of Ireland's Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann', Ethnomusicology 33, I , 1989, p. 69. I I Tobin, Tile besl of decades, p. 4. 12 J . 1 . Lee, 'Reflections on the study of Irish values' in M. P. Fogarty, L. Ryan and

J. J. Lee, Irish values and attitudes: the Irish report of the European vailies system study, Dominican Publications, Dublin, 1984, pp. 1 14, 1 1 8.

1 3 Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and exiles: Ireland alld the Irish exodus to North America, Oxford University Press, New York, 1985, p. 3.

1 80

' M Y L O V E I S I N A M E R I C A '

1 4 Miller, Emigrants and exiles: pp. 467-9, 482-92. 1 5 James Meenan, 'Some features of Irish emigration', Intel'llational Labour Review,

69, 1 954, p. 129. 16 Francis O'Neill, The dance music of lre/Cllul: 1001 Gems, Waltons, Dublin, 1965

[ 1907J. 17 Francis Roche, The Roche collection of traditional Irish music. vols 1-3. Ossian,

Cork, 1982 ( 1 927). 1 8 Barry O'Neill, sleeve notes to LP recording The lvheels oJ the world, Shallachie,

3300 I, New York, 1974. 1 9 Reg Hall, 'Note', Traditional Music 2, 1975, p. 24. 20 Nicholas Carolan, 'A discography of I rish traditional music', Ceol 4, 2, 1984,

p. 45. 21 Pekka Gronow, The Columbia 33000-F series. A numerical listing, John Edwards

Memorial Foundation, Los Angeles, 1982, p. I . 22 Lawrence McCullough. 'Michael Coleman, traditional fiddler', Eire-Ireland. 10,

I, 1 975; and Katherine Potter and Daniel Michael Collins, sleeve notes to LP recording The pure genius of James Morrison, Shanachie 33004, New York, 1978.

23 Reg Hall, inserted notes to LP recording Irish dance music, FW 8821, Folkways, New York, 1973, p. I .

24 Interview with Martin Mulroe conducted by Peter Parkhill, 1980, Parkhill collec­tion, Oral History section, National Library. Canberra.

25 Hugh Brody, InishkUlane, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1974, pp. 1 2 1-2. 26 Raymond Williams, Marxism and literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford,

1977, p. 128; see also Raymond Williams, Problems in materialism and culture: selected essays, Verso, London, 1980, p. 38.

27 Williams, Marxism and literature, p. 132. 28 Fionnualla Scullion, 'Perceptions of style amongst Ulster fiddlers' in Studies in

traditional music and dance: proceedings of the 1980 Conference oJ the UK National Committee (International Folk Music Council) , UK National Committee ( International Folk Music Council), London, 1980, pp. 33-46, 7 1-2.

29 The following quotations are taken from an interview conducted with Bill Moran by the author, 1983 (tape in possession of author) and from Mulroe and Parkhill, cited in note 24.

•

1 8 1

69

S O U N D S A U T H E NT I C :

B LA C K M U S I C , E T H N I C I T Y

A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E O F

A CHA NGING S A M E

Paul Gilroy

Source: Black Music Research Journal 1 1(2) (1991): 1 1 1-36.

My nationality is reality

-Kool G Rap

Since the mid-nineteenth century a country's music has become a political ideology by stressing national characteristics, appearing as a representative of the nation, and everywhere confirming the national principle . . . . Yet music, more than any other artistic medium, expresses the national principle's antimonies as well.

-T. W. Adorno

The basic labors of archaeological reconstruction and periodization aside, working on the contemporary forms of black expressive culture involves struggling with one problem in particular, and that is the puzzle of what analytic status should be given to variation within black communities and between black cultures. The tensions produced by attempts to compare or evaluate differing black cultural formations can be summed up in the following question: How are we to think critically about artistic products and aesthetic codes that, although they may be traced back to one distant location, have been somehow changed either by the passage of time or by their displacement, relocation, or dissemination through wider networks of communication and cultural exchange? This question serves as a receptacle for several even more awkward issues. These include the unity and differen­tiation of the creative black self, the vexed matter of black particularity, and

1 82

E T H N I C I T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E OF A CHA N G I N G S A M E

the role of cultural expression in its formation and reproduction. These prob­lems are especially acute because black thinkers have been largely unwilling or unable to appeal to the authoritative narratives of psychoanalysis as a means to ground the cross-cultural aspirations of their theories. With a few noble exceptions, critical accounts of the dynamics of black subordination and resistance have been doggedly monocultural, national, and ethnocentric.

The transnational structures that brought the black Atlantic world into being have themselves developed; these structures now articulate its myriad cultural forms into a system of global communications. This fundamental dislocation of black cultural forms is especially important in the recent history of black musics which, produced out of racial slavery, now dominate the popular cultures of the Western world. In the face of the conspicuous differentiation and proliferation of black cultural styles and genres, a new analytic orthodoxy has begun to grow. It suggests that since black popularity is socially and historically constructed, the pursuit of any unifying dynamic or underlying structure of feeling in contemporary black cultures is utterly misplaced. The attempt to locate the cultural practices, motifs, or political agendas that might connect the dispersed and divided blacks of the New World and of Europe with each other and even with Africa is therefore dismissed as essentialism, idealism, or both.

The alternative sketched below offers a tentative rebuke to this position, which I regard as a careless and premature dismissal of the problem of theorizing black identity. I suggest that weighing the similarities and differ­ences between black cultures remains an important element of some urgent concerns. This response relies crucially on the concept of diaspora (Glissant 1989; Drake 1 987), which [ believe is still indispensable in focusing on the political and ethical dynamics of the unfinished history. of blacks in the modern world.

The dangers of idealism and pastoralization associated with the idea of the diaspora ought, by now, to be obvious, but the very least that it offers is a heuristic means to focus on the relationship of identity and nonidentity in • black political culture. It can also be employed to project the rich diversity of black cultures in different parts of the world in counterpoint to their common sensibilities-both those features residually inherited from Africa and those generated from the special bitterness of New World racial slavery. This is not an easy matter. The proposition that the postslave cultures of the Atlantic world are in some significant way related to each other and to the African cultures from which they partly derive has long been a matter of great controversy that sometimes arouses intense feeling which goes far beyond dispassionate scholastic contemplation. The situation is rendered even more complex by the fact that the fragile psychological, emotional, and cultural correspondences that connect diaspora popUlations in spite of their manifest differences are often apprehended only fleetingly and in ways that persistently confound the protocols of academic orthodoxy.

1 83

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

There is, however, a great body o f work that justifies the proposition that some cultural, religious, and linguistic affiliations can be identified even if their contemporary political significance remains disputed. There are also valuable though underutilized leads to be found in the work of the feminist political thinkers, cultural critics, and philosophers who have formulated stimulating conceptions of the relationship between identity and difference in the context of advancing the political project of female emancipation (Flax 1990; Harding 1 988; Butler 1990; Spelman 1 988).

Precisely because some of the most idealized constructions of blackness, Africanity, and pan-Africanity have ironically relied upon an absolute contempt for the lived complexities of black vernacular cultures in the New World, I want to propose that the possible commonality of postslave, black cultural forms be approached via several related problems that converge in the analysis of black musics and their supporting social relations. One particularly valuable pathway is afforded by concern with the distinctive patterns of language use that characterize the contrasting populations of the modern African diaspora (Baugh 1 983). The oral focus of the cultural settings in which diaspora musics have developed presupposes a distinctive relationship to the body-an idea expressed with exactly the right amount of impatience by Glissant ( 1 989, 248): "It is nothing new to declare that for us music, gesture, dance are forms of communication, just as important as the gift of speech. This is how we first managed to emerge from the plantation: aesthetic form in our cultures must be shaped from these oral structures."

The distinctive kinesis of the postslave populations was the product of these brutal historical conditions. Though more usually raised by analysis of sports, athletics, and dance, it ought to contribute directly to the under­standing of the traditions of performance that continue to characterize the production and reception of African diaspora musics. This orientation to the specific dynamics of performance has a wider significance in the analysis of black cultural forms than has so far been supposed. Its strengths are evident when it is contrasted with approaches to black culture that have been premised on textuality and narrative rather than, say, dramaturgy, enunciation, and gesture-the pre- and anti-discursive constituents of black metacommunication.

Each of these last three areas merits detailed treatment in its own right (Thompson 1983, 1 990). All of them are marked by their compound and multiple origins in the mediation of the African and other cultural forms that are sometimes referred to as "creolizatioI1." However, my concern here is less with the formal attributes of these syncretic expressive cultures than with ( I ) the problem of how critical (anti)aesthetic judgments on them can be made and with (2) the place of ethnicity and authenticity within these judgments. If, for example, a style, genre, or performance of music is identi­fied as being expressive of the absolute essence of the group that produced

1 84

E T H N I C I T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E O F A CHA N G I N G S A M E

it, what special analytical problems arise? What contradictions appear i n the transmission and adaptation of this cultural expression by other diaspora populations, and how will they be resolved? How does the hemispheric dis­placement and global dissemination of black music get reflected in localized traditions of critical writing, and, once the music is perceived as a world phenomenon, what value is placed upon its origins in opposition to its contingent loops and fractal trajectories? Where music is thought to be emblematic and constitutive of racial difference rather than just associated with it, how is music used to pinpoint general issues pertaining to the prob­lem of racial authenticity and the consequent self-identity of the racial group?

UK blak

Born and raised this way Is a different game bi-culturally Fresh direction, new ideas Opening our eyes and ears

-Caron Wheeler

All these questions have acquired a special historical and political significance in Britain. Black settlement in that country goes back many centuries. Indeed, affirming its continuity has become an important part of the politics that strive to answer contemporary British racism. However, most contem­porary black communities are of relatively recent origin, dating only from after World War II . I f these populations are unified at all, it is more by experience of migration than the memory of slavery and the residues of plantation society. Until recently, this very newness and c<?nspicuous lack of rootedness in the "indigenous" cultures of Britain's inner cities conditioned the formation of syncretic racial subcultures that drew heavily from a range of "raw materials" supplied by the Caribbean and black America. This was true even where these subcultures also contributed to the unsteady equilib-

• rium of antagonistic class relationships into which Britain's black settlers found themselves inserted not only as racially subordinated migrant laborers but also as working-class black settlers.

The musics of the black Atlantic world were the primary expressions of cultural distinctiveness which this population seized upon and sought to adapt to its new circumstances. It used these separate but converging musical traditions if not to create itself anew as a conglomeration of black communities, then at least as a means to gauge the social progress of the spontaneous self-creation that was formed by the endless pressures of eco­nomic exploitation, political racism, displacement, and exile. This musical heritage gradually became an important factor in facilitating the transition of diverse settlers to a distinct mode of blackness. It was instrumental in producing a constellation of subject positions that was openly indebted to

185

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

the Caribbean, the United States, and even to Africa. It was also indelibly marked by the British conditions in which it grew and matured.

It is essential to appreciate that this type of process has not been confined to settlers of Afro-Caribbean descent. In reinventing their own ethnicity (Sollors 1989), some of Britain's Asian settlers have also borrowed the sound system culture of the Caribbean and the soul and hip hop styles of Afro-America, as well as techniques like mixing, scratching, and sampling, as part of their invention of a new mode of cultural production and self­identification.' The experience of Caribbean migrants to Britain provides further examples of cultural exchange and of the ways in which a self­consciously synthetic culture can support some equally novel political identities. The cultural and political histories of Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad, and Saint Lucia, like the economic forces at work in generating their respective migrations to Europe, are widely dissimilar. Even if it were possible, let alone desirable, their synthesis into a single black British culture could never have been guaranteed by the effects of racism alone. Thus the role of external meanings around blackness, drawn in particular from Afro-America, became important in the elaboration of a connective culture that drew these different "national" groups together into a new pattern that was not ethnically marked as their Caribbean cultural inheritances had been. Reggae provides a useful example here. Once its own hybrid origins in rhythm and blues were effectively concealed, it ceased, in Britain, to signify an exclusively ethnic, Jamaican style and derived instead a different kind of cultural power both from a new global status and from its expression of what might be termed a pan-Caribbean or Creole culture.

The style, rhetoric, and moral authority of the civil rights movement and of black power suffered similar fates. They too were detached from their original ethnic markers and historical origins, exported and adapted with evident respect but little sentimentality to local needs and political climates. Appearing in Britain through a circulatory system that gave a central place to the musics that had both informed and recorded black struggles in other places, this legacy was rearticulated in distinctively European conditions. How the appropriation of these forms, styles, and histories of struggle was possible at such great physical and social distance is, in itself, an interesting question for cultural historians. It was facilitated by a common fund of urban experiences, by the effect of similar but by no means identical forms of racial segregation as well as by the memory of slavery, a legacy of Africanisms, and a stock of religious experiences defined by them both. Dislocated from their original conditions of existence, the soundtracks to this African-American cultural renaissance fed a new metaphysics of blackness that was elaborated and enacted within the underground and, alternatively, public spaces constituted around an expressive culture that was dominated by music.

1 86

E T H N I C I T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E O F A CHA N G I N G S A M E

The inescapably political language of citizenship, racial justice, and equality was one of several discourses that contributed to this transfer of cultural and political forms and structures of feeling. A commentary on the relationship of work to leisure and the respective forms of freedom with which these opposing worlds become identified provided a second linking principle. A folk historicism, animating a special fascination with history and the significance of its recovery by those who have been expelled from the official dramas of civilization, was a third component here. The repres­entation of sexuality and gender identity-in particular, the ritual public projection of the antagonistic relationship between black women and men in ways that invited forms of identification strong enough to operate across the line of color-was the fourth element within this vernacular cultural and philosophical formation reproduced by and through the music of the black Atlantic world.

The conflictual representation of sexuality has vied with the discourse of racial emancipation to constitute the inner core of black expressive cul­ture. Common rhetorical strategies developed through the same repertory of "enunciative procedures" have helped these discourses to become inter­linked. Their association was pivotal, for example, in the massive seculariza­tion that produced soul out of rhythm and blues and persists today. It can be observed in the bitter conflict over the misogynist tone and masculinist direction of hip hop. The most significant recent illustration of this is provided by the complex issues stemming from the obscenity trial of 2 Live Crew. This episode is also notable because it was the occasion for an important public intervention by Afro-America's best-known cultural critic, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Gates went beyond simply affirming the artistic status of this particular hip-hop product, arguing that the Crew's material was a manifestation of distinctively black cultural traditions that operated by particular satirical codes in which one man's misogyny turns out to be another man's parodic play. In dealing with the relationship of "race" to class it has been commonplace to recall Stuart Hal1's suggestive remark that the former is the modality in which the latter is lived. The ta'e of 2 Live Crew and the central place of sexuality in the contemporary discourses of racial particularity points to an analogous formulation: gender is the modality in which race is lived. Experiencing racial difference through par­ticular definitions of gender has been eminently exportable. The forms of connectedness and identification it makes possible cannot be confined within the borders of the nation-state. They deate new conceptions of nationality in the conftictual interaction between the women who reproduce the black national community and the men who aspire to be its soldier-citizens.

These links show no sign of fading, but the dependence of blacks in Britain on black cultures produced in the New World has recently begun to change. The current popularity of Jazzy B and Soul I I Soul, Maxie Priest, Caron Wheeler, and Monie Love in the United States confirms that, during

1 87

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

the eighties, black British cultures ceased to simply mimic o r reproduce wholesale forms, styles, and genres that had been lovingly borrowed, respectfully stolen, or brazenly hijacked from blacks elsewhere. Critical space/time cartography of the diaspora needs, therefore, to be readjusted so that the dynamics of dispersal and local autonomy can be shown along­side the unforeseen detours and circuits that mark the new journeys and new arrivals, which, in turn, prompt new political and cultural possibilities (Said 1983).

At certain points in the recent past, British racism has generated turbulent economic, ideological, and political forces that have seemed to act like a kind of centrifuge upon the people they oppressed, concentrating their cul­tural identities into a single, powerful configuration. Whether these people were of African, Caribbean, or Asian descent, their commonality was often defined by its reference to the central, irreducible sign of their common racial subordination-the color black. More recently, though, this fragile unity in action has fragmented, and their self-conception has separated into its various constituent elements. The unifying notion of an "open" blackness has been largely rejected and replaced by more particularistic conceptions of cultural difference. This retreat from a politically constructed notion of racial solidarity has initiated a compensatory recovery of narrowly ethnic culture and identity. Indeed, the aura of authentic ethnicity supplies a special form of comfort in a situation where the very historicity of black experience is constantly undermined. These political and historical shifts are registered in the cultural realm. The growth of religious fundamentalism among some populations of Asian descent is an obvious sign of their significance, and there may be similar processes at work in the experience of the peoples of Caribbean descent, for whom a return to ethnicity has acquired pronounced generational features. Their desire to anchor themselves in racial particularity is not dominated by the longing to return to the "Victorian" certainties and virtues of Caribbean cultural life. However, in conjunction with the pressures of economic recession and populist racism, this yearning has driven many older settlers to return to the lands in which they were born. Among their descendants, the same desire to withdraw has found a very different form of expression. It has moved toward an overarching "Afrocentrism," which can be read as inventing its own totalizing conception of black culture. This new ethnicity is all the more powerful because it corresponds to no actually­existing black communities. Its radical utopianism, often anchored in the ethical bedrock provided by the history of the Nile Valley civilizations, transcends the parochialism of Caribbean memories in favor of a heavily mythologized Africanity that is itself stamped by its origins not in Africa but in a variety of pan-African ideology produced most recently by Afro­America. This complex and frequently radical sensibility has been recently fostered by the more pedagogic and self-consciously politicized elements within hip hop. The "college boy rap" of groups like X Clan and Brand

1 88

E T H N I C I T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E O F A C H A N G IN G S A M E

Nubian represents one pole in the field, while the assertive stance of hip hop's "five percenters"-artists whose raps make explicit demands for sup­port on behalf of the Nation of Islam-represents the other. This political changc can be registered in the deepening splits within hip hop over the language and symbols appropriate for black self-designation and over the relative importance of opposing racism on the one hand and elaborating cultural forms of black identity on the other.' These necessary tasks are not synonymous or even coextensive. This issue merits a far more detailed treat­ment than I can give here. What is more significant for my purposes is that in the Afrocentric discourse the idea of a diaspora tends to disappear somewhere between the invocations of an African motherland and the powerful critical commentaries on the immediate, local conditions in which this music originates. These complexities aside, hip-hop culture (which is not neatly reducible to its Afrocentric components) is simply the latest export from black America to have found favor in black Britain. It is especi­ally interesting then that its success has been built on structures of circula­tion and intercultural exchange established long ago.

From the Jubilee singers to the Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Hendrix Hairdo, frizzy and bountiful, was viewed by many cultural onlookers as one of the most truly remarkable visual revolts of London.

-David Henderson

The distinctive patterns of cross-cultural circulation on which the rise of Afrocentric rap has relied precede the consolidation of �oherent youth cul­tures and subcultures in the post-World War II world. They can be traced directly back to the beginnings of black music's entry into the public domain of late nineteenth-century mass entertainment. The worldwide travels of the Fisk Jubilee Singers provide a little-known but nonethele�s important example of the difficulties that, from the earliest point, attended the passage of African-American "folk" forms into the emergent popular-culture indus­tries of the overdeveloped countries. At that time, in the late nineteenth century, the status of the Jubilee Singers' art was further complicated by the prominence and popularity of minstrelsy (Toll 1974; Boskin 1 986). One review of the earliest performances by the group was headlined "Negro Minstrelsy in Church-Novel Religioui Exercise" while another made much of the fact that this band of Negro minstrels were, in fact, "genuine negroes" (Silveri 1989, 106). Doug Seroff ( 1 990, 4) quotes another contemporary American review of a concert by the group: "Those who have only heard the burnt cork caricatures of negro minstrelsy have not the slightest con­ception of what it really is." Similar problems arose in the response of European audiences: "From the first the Jubilee music was more or less of

1 89

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

a puzzle t o the critics; and even among those who sympathized with their mission there was no little difference of opinion as to the artistic merit of their entertainments. Some could not understand the reason for enjoying so thoroughly as almost everyone did these simple unpretending songs" (Marsh 1 875, 69; emphasis added).

The role of music and song within the abolitionist movement is an additional and equally little-known factor that must have prefigured the Jubilee Singers' eventual triumph (Dennison 1982, 1 57-1 87). The choir, sent forth into the world with economic objectives that must have partially eclipsed their pursuit of aesthetic excellence in their musical performances, initially struggled to win an audience for black music produced by blacks from a constituency that had been created by fifty years of "blackface" entertainment. Needless to say, the aesthetic and political tensions involved in establishing the credibility and appeal of their own novel brand of black cultural expres­sion were not confined to the concert halls. Practical problems arose in the mechanics of touring when innkeepers would refuse the group lodgings having mistakenly assumed that they were a company of "nigger minstrels" (i.e., white). One landlord did not discover that "their faces were coloured by their creator and not by burnt cork" (Marsh 1 875, 36) until the singers were firmly established in their bedrooms. He still turned them into the street.

The choir's progress was dogged by controversies over the relative value of their work when compared to the output of white performers. The Fisk troupe also encountered the ambivalence and embarrassment of black audiences unsure or uneasy about serious, sacred music being displayed to audiences conditioned by the hateful antics of Zip Coon, Jim Crow, and their ilk. Understandably, blacks were protective of their unique musical culture and fearful of how it might be changed by being forced to compete on the new terrain of popular culture against the absurd representations of blackness offered by minstrelsy's dramatization of white supremacy. The Fisk singers' success spawned a host of other companies that took to the road to offer similar musical fare in the years after 1 87 1 ' The meaning of this movement of black singers for our understanding of Reconstruction remains to be explored. I t will complement and extend work already done on representations of blackness during this period (Gates 1988) and promises to go far beyond the basic argument I want to emphasize here: black people singing slave songs as mass entertainment initiated and established new public standards of authenticity for black cultural expression. The legitimacy of these new cultural forms was established precisely through their distance from the racial codes of minstrelsy. The Jubilee Singers' journey out of America was a critical stage in making this possible.'

Almost one hundred years after the Jubilee Singers set sail from Boston for England on the Cunard ship Batavia, another black American musician made the same transatlantic journey to London. Jimi Hendrix's importance

1 90

f

E T H N I C I T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E O F A CHA N GI N G S A M E

in the history of African-American popular music has increased since his untimely death in 1 970. The European triumph that paved the way for Hendrix's American successes represents another interesting but rather dif­ferent case of the political aesthetics implicated in representations of racial authenticity. A seasoned, if ill-disciplined, rhythm and blues sideman, Hendrix was reinvented as the essential image of what English audiences felt a black American should be. Charles Shaar Murray ( 1990, 68) quotes the following diagnosis of Hendrix's success by rival guitarist Eric Clapton. "You know English people have a very big thing towards a spade. They really love that magic thing. They all fall for that kind of thing. Everybody and his brother in England still think that spades have big dicks. And Jimi came over and exploited that to the limit . . . and everybody fell for it."

Sexuality and authenticity have been intertwined in the history of Western culture for several hundred years. The overt sexuality of Hendrix's own "minstrel" stance seems to have been received as a sign of his authentic blackness by the white rock audiences on which his pop career was solidly based. Whether or not Hendrix's early performances were parodic of the minstrel role or simply confirmation of its enduring potency, his career points to the antagonism between different local definitions of what black­ness entails and to the combined and uneven character of black cultural development. The complexity of his relationship to the blues and his fluctuating commitment to overt racial politics extend and underscore this point. The creative opposition in his work between blues-rooted tradition and an assertively high tech, futuristic spirituality distills a wider conflict, not simply between the premodern or anti modern and the modern but between the contending definitions of authenticity that are appropriate to black cul­tural creation on its passage into international pop com.modification.

Music criticism and the politics of racial authenticity

That [the 2 Live Crew situation] ain't my problem. Some people might think its our problem because rap is one big happy family. When I make my bed, I lay on it. I don't say nothin' I can't stand up for, 'cause I seen one interview, where they asked him [Luther Campbell] a question and he started talkin' all this about black culture. That made everybody on the rap tip look kinda dense. He was saying "Yo this is my culture." That's not culture at all.

-Rakim

The problem of cultural origins and authenticity to which the examples of the Jubilee Singers and Jimi Hendrix point has persisted and even assumed an enhanced significance as mass culture has acquired new technological bases and black music has become a truly global phenomenon. It has taken on greater proportions as original, folk, or local expressions of black culture

1 9 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

were identified as authentic and positively evaluated for that reason, while subsequent hemispheric or global manifestations of the same cultural forms got dismissed as inauthentic and therefore lacking in cultural or aesthetic value precisely because of their distance (supposed or actual) from a readily identifiable point of origin. The fragmentation and subdivision of black music into an ever-increasing proliferation of styles and genres has also con­tributed to a situation in which authenticity emerges as a highly charged and bItterly contested Issue. The conflict between trumpeters Wynton Marsalis and Miles Davis is worth citing here. The former insists that jazz provides an essential repository for wider black cultural values while the latter insisted upon prioritizing the restless creative energies that can keep the corrosive processes of reification and commodification at bay. Marsalis's assertive suit-wearing custodianship of "jazz tradition" was thus dismissed by Davi� as a "safe," technically sophisticated pastiche of earlier styles. This was done not on the grounds that it was inauthentic, which had been Marsalis's critical charge against Davis's "fusion" output, but because it was felt to be anachronistic: "What's he doin' messing with the past? A player of his calibre should just wise up and realize it's over. The past is dead. Jazz is dead . . . . Why get caught up in that old shit? . . . Don't nobody tell me the way it was. Hell, I was there . . . no one wanted to hear us when we were playing jazz . . . . Jazz is dead, God damn it. That's it, finito' It's over and there's no point apeing the shit" (Davis as quoted by Kent 1986, 22-23).

. There are ma�y good reasons why black cultures have had great difficulty III seelllg that displacement and transformation are unavoidable and that the developmental processes regarded by conservatives as cultural con­tamination may be enriching. The effect of racism's denials not only of black cultural integrity but of the capacity of blacks to bear and reproduce any culture worthy of the name are clearly salient here. The place prepared for black cultural expression in the hierarchy of creativity generated by the pernicious metaphysical dualism that identified blacks with the body and whites with the mind is a second significant factor that has roots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discussions of aesthetics. However, beyond these general questions lies the projection of a coherent and stable culture as a means to establish the political legitimacy of black nationalism and the notions of ethnic particularity on which it has come to rely. This defensive reaction to racism can be said to have taken over its evident appetite for sameness and symmetry from the discourses of the oppressor.

European romanticism and cultural nationalism contributed directly to the development of modern black nationalism. It can be traced back to the impact of European theories of nationhood, culture, and civilization on elite Afro-American intellectuals through the first half of the nineteenth century. Here, Alexander Crummell's endorsement of Lord Baconsfield's views on the primary importance of race as "the key to history" should sound a cautionary note to contemporary cultural critics who would give artists the

192

•

E T H N I C l T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E O F A CHA N G I N G S A M E

job o f refining the ethnic distinctiveness o f the group or who are tempted to use the analogy of family to comprehend the meaning of race and the mechanics of racial identification: "Race, like families are the organisms and the ordinance of God; and race feeling, like family feeling, is of divine origin. The extinction of race feeing is just as possible as the extinction of family feeling. Indeed race is family. The principle of continuity is as master­ful in races as it is in families-as it is in nations" (Crummell 189 1 , 46).

Today's absolutist varieties of black nationalism have run into trouble when faced with the need to make sense of the increasingly distinct forms of black culture produced from various diaspora populations. These are often forms that have deliberately reconstructed the cultural heritage of the black Atlantic world in novel ways that do not respect the boundaries of discrete nation states or the supposedly authentic political communities they express or simply contain. My point here is that the unashamedly hybrid character of these black cultures continually confounds any simplistic (essentialist or antiessentialist) understanding of the relationship between racial identity and racial non identity, between folk cultural authenticity and pop cul­tural betrayal. Pop culture has, in any case, been prepared to endorse the premium on authenticity. I t supplements the appeal of selected cultural commodities and has become an important element in the mechanism of the mode of "racialization" necessary to making them acceptable items in the pop market. The discourse of authenticity has been a notable presence in the mass marketing of successive black folk cultural forms to white audi­ences. The distinction between rural and urban blues provides one good example of this, though similar arguments are still made about the relation­ship between authentic jazz and fusion styles supposedly corroded by the illegitimate amalgamation of rock influences or the struggle between real instruments and digital emulators. Similar issues arise iIi the sale of "world music" as a subgenre of pop. Paul Simon's borrowings from Africa, Latin, or Caribbean musics have, for example, been licensed by the discourse of cultural authenticity as much as by simple commercial success. In all these cases, it is not enough for critics to point out that representint authenticity always involves artifice. This may be true, but it is not helpful when one is trying to evaluate or compare cultural forms, let alone when trying to make sense of their mutation. More important, this response also misses the opportunity to use music as a model that can break the deadlock between the two unsatisfactory positions that have dominated recent discussion of black cultural politics.

Soul music and anti-antiessentialism

Rather than seeing [the modern soul] as the reactivated remnants of an ideology, one would see i t as the present correlative of a certain technology of power over the body. [t would be wrong to say that

1 93

M U S I C A N D S O C I A I3 I L I T Y

the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary it exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of power that is exercised.

-Michel Foucault

Critical dialogue and debate on these questions of identity and culture currently stage a confrontation between two, loosely organized perspect­ives that, in opposing each other, have become locked in a symbiotic and entirely fruitless relationship. Both positions are represented in con­temporary discussions of black music and both contribute to staging a conversation between those who see the music as the primary means to critically explore and politically reproduce the necessary "ethnic" essence of blackness and those who would dispute the existence of any such unifying, organic phenomenon. Wherever the confrontation between these views is staged, it takes the basic form of conflict between a tendency focused by some variety of exceptionalist claim (usually though not always of a nationalist nature) and another more avowedly pluralistic stance that is decidedly skeptical of the desire to totalize black culture, let alone to make the social dynamics of cultural integration synonymous with the practice of nation building and the project of racial emancipation in Africa and elsewhere.

The first option typically identifies music with tradition and cultural continuity. Its conservatism is sometimes disguised by the radical nature of its affirmative political rhetoric and by its laudable concern with the rela­tionship between music and the memory of the past. It currently announces its interpretive intentions with the popular slogan, "It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand." But it appears to have no great enthusiasm for the forbidding, racially prescriptive musical genres and styles that could make this bold assertion plausible. There has been no contemporary equivalent to the provocative, hermetic power of dub, which supported the radical Ethiopianism of the I 970s, or the antiassimilationist unintelligibility of bebop i n the 1940s. The usually mystical Afrocentrism that animates this position perceives no problem in the "internal" differentiation of black cultures. Any fragmentation in the cultural output of Africans at home and abroad is only apparent rather than real and cannot therefore forestall the power of the underlying racial aesthetic and its political correlates.

Elitism and contempt for black popular culture are common to this exceptionalist position and to the would-be postmodern pragmatism that routinely and inadequately opposes it. Something of the spirit of the sec­ond "antiessentialist" perspective is captured in the earlier but equally historic black vernacular phrase, "Different strokes for different folks." This notional pluralism is misleading. It makes aesthetic judgments difficult to form, and its distaste for uncomfortable questions of class and power make political calculation hazardous if not impossible.

1 94

E T H N I C I T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E O F A CflA N G I N G S A M E

This second position refers pejoratively t o the first as "racial essential­ism.'" It moves toward its casual and arrogant deconstruction of blackness while ignoring the appeal of the first position's powerful, populist affirma­tion of black culture. The brand of elitism that would, for example, advance the white noise of Washington, D.C.'s Rasta thrash punk band the Bad Brains as the last word in black cultural expression is clearly itching to abandon the ground of the black vernacular entirely. This abdication can only leave that space open to racial conservationists who veer between a folkish, even proto fascist sensibility and the misty-eyed sentimentality of those who would shroud themselves in the supposed moral superiority that goes with victim status. It is tantamount to ignoring the undiminished power of racism itself and forsaking the mass of black people who continue to comprehend their lived particularity through what it does to them. Needless to say, the lingering effects of racism institutionalized in the political field are overlooked just as racism's inscription in the cultural industries that provide the major vehicle for this exclusively aesthetic radicalism passes unremarked upon.

It is ironic, given the importance accorded to music in the habitus of diaspora blacks, that neither pole in this tense conversation takes the music very seriously. The narcissism that unites both standpoints is revealed by the way that they both forsake discussion of music and its attendant dramat­urgy, performance, ritual, and gesture in favor of an obsessive fascination with the bodies of the performers themselves. For the unashamed essential­ists, Nelson George ( 1 988) denounces black musicians who have had facial surgery and wear blue or green contact lenses, while in the other camp, Kobena Mercer ( 1 986) steadily reduces Michael Jackson's voice first to his body, then to his hair, and eventually to his emphatically disembodied "parodic" image. I want to suggest that even though it ,,jay have once been an important factor in shaping the intellectual terrain on which politically engaged analysis of black culture takes place, the opposition between these rigid perspectives has become an obstacle to critical theorizing.

The syncretic complexity of black expressive cultures alone supplies powerful reasons to resist the idea that an untouched, pristine Africanity resides inside these forms working a powerful magic of alterity in order to repeatedly trigger the perception of absolute identity. Following the lead established long ago by Leroi Jones, I believe it is possible to approach the music as a changing rather than an unchanging same. Today, this involves the difficult task of striving to comprehend the reproduction of cultural traditions not in the unproblematic transmission of a fixed essence through time but in the breaks and interruptions that suggest that the invocation of tradition may itself be a distinct, though covert, response to the destabilizing flux of the postcontemporary world. New "traditions" are invented in the jaws of modern experience, and new conceptions of modernity are produced in the long shadow of our enduring traditions-the African ones and the

1 95

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

ones forged from the slave experience that the black vernacular so powerfully and actively remembers. This labor also necessitates far closer attention to the rituals of performance that provide prima facie evidence of linkage between black cultures.

Because the self-identity, political culture, and grounded aesthetics that distinguish black communities have often been constructed through their music and the broader cultural and philosophical meanings that flow from its production, circulation, and consumption, music is especially important in breaking the inertia that arises in the unhappy polar opposition between a squeamish, nationalist "essentialism" and a skeptical, saturnalian "plural­ism" which makes the impure world of politics literally unthinkable. The preeminence of music within the diverse black communities of the Atlantic diaspora is itself an important element in their essential connectedness. But the histories of borrowing, displacement, transformation, and continual reinscription that the musical culture encloses are a living legacy that should not be reified in the primary symbol of the diaspora and then employed as an alternative to the recurrent appeal of fixity and rootedness.

Music and its rituals can be used to create a model whereby identity can be understood as something other than a fixed essence or a vague and utterly contingent construction to be reinvented by the will and whim of aesthetes, symbolists, and language gamers. Black identity is not simply a social and political category to be used or abandoned according to the extent to which the rhetoric that supports and legitimizes it is persuasive or institutionally powerful. Whatever the radical constructionists may say, it is lived as a coherent (if not always stable) experiential sense of self. Though this identity is often felt to be natural and spontaneous, it remains the outcome of practical activity: language, gesture, bodily significations, desires. These significations are condensed in musical performance, although it does not, of course, monopolize them. In this context, they produce the imaginary effect of an internal racial core or essence by acting on the body through the specific mechanisms of identification and recognition that are produced in the intimate interaction of performer and crowd. This reciprocal relation­ship serves as a strategy and an ideal communicative situation even when the original makers of the music and its eventual consumers are separated in space and time or divided by the technologies of sound reproduction and the commodity form which their art has sought to resist (Gilroy 1 982, 1987). The struggle against commodity status has been taken over into the very forms that black mass-cultural creation assumes. Negotiations with that status are revealed openly and have become a cornerstone in the antiaesthetic which governs those forms (Gilroy 1 990). The aridity of those three crucial terms-production, circulation, and consumption-does scant justice to the convoluted transnational processes to which they now refer. Each of them, in contrasting ways, hosts a politics of "race" that is hard to grasp, let alone fully appreciate, through the sometimes crude categories that political

1 96

•

E T H N I C I T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E OF A C H A N G I N G S A M E

economy and European cultural criticism deploy in their tentative analyses of ethnicity and culture.

Some black works of art in the age of digital simulation

Like law (one of its models), culture articulates conflicts and alternately legitimises, displaces or controls the superior force. It develops in an atmosphere of tensions, and often of violence, for which it provides symbolic balances, contracts of compatibility and compromises, all more or less temporary. The tactics of consump­tion, the ingenious ways in which the weak make use of the strong, thus lend a political dimension to everyday practices.

-Michel de Certeau

Hip-hop culture grew out of the cross-fertilization of African-American vernacular cultures with their Caribbean equivalents. The immediate catalyst for its development being the relocation of Clive "Kool OJ Herc" Campbell from Kingston to 1 68th Street in the Bronx. The syncretic dynamics of the form were complicated further by a distinctly Latin input into the breakdance moves that helped to define the style in its early stages. But hip hop was not just the product of these different, though converging, black cultural traditions. The centrality of "the break" within it and the subsequent refine­ment of cutting and mixing techniques through digital sampling, which took the form far beyond the competence of hands on turntables, meant that the aesthetic rules that govern it are premised on a dialectic of rescuing appro­priation and recombination that creates special pleasures and is not limited to the technological complex in which it originated. .

The deliberately fractured form of these musical pieces is worth consider­ing for a moment. It recalls the characteristic flavor of Adorno's ( [ 1 938] 1978, 1 27) remarks in another, far distant context:

. . They call (it) uncreative because (it) suspends thelf concept of

creation itself. Everything with which (it) occupies itself is already

there . . . in vulgarised form; its themes arc expropriated ones.

Nevertheless nothing sounds as it was wont to do; all things are

diverted as if by a magnet. What is worn out yields pliantly to the

improvising hand; the used parts win second life as variants. Just as

the chauffeur's knowledge of his old second hand car can enable

him to drive it punctually and unrecognised to its intended destina­

tion, so can the expression of an up beat melody . . . arrive at places

which the approved musical language could never safely reach.

Acoustic and electric instruments are disorganically combined with digital sound synthesis and a variety of found sounds: typically, screams, pointed

197

I M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

fragments o f speech or singing, and samples from earlier recordings-both vocal and instrumental-whose open textuality is raided in playful affirmations of the insubordinate spirit that ties this radical form to one important definition of blackness. The nonlinear approach, which European cultural criticism refers to as montage, is a useful principle of composition in trying to analyze all this. Indeed, it is tempting to endorse the Brechtian suggestion that some version of "montage" corresponds to an unpreced­ented type of realism, appropriate to the extreme historical conditions that form it. But these dense implosive combinations of diverse and dissimilar sounds amount to more than the technique they employ in their joyously artificial reconstruction of the instability of lived, profane racial identity. An aesthetic stress is laid upon the sheer social and cultural distance that formerly separated the diverse elements now dislocated into novel meanings by their provocative aural juxtaposition.

Ronnie Laws's recent instrumental single release, "Identity," is worth mentioning here. Produced in a low-tech setting for an independent record company, the record is notable not just for its title, but as an up-to­date case of the more radical possibilities opened up by this new form of the old genre, which demands that the past is made audible in the present. The architect of the tune, the eccentric Californian guitar player Craig T. Cooper, has utilized an ambient style that recalls the over-smoked dub of the Upsetters' Black Ark studio at its peak. The track combines a large number of samples from a wide range of sources: a sampled frag­ment from the chorus of the Average White Band's "Pick up the Pieces" (already a Scottish pastiche of the style of James Brown's JBs) struggles to be heard against a go-go beat, half audible screams, and a steady, synthetic work-song rhythm reconstructed from the sample sound of the Godfather's own forceful exhalation. Having stated an angular melody and playfully teased out its inner dynamics, Laws's soprano saxophone embellishes and punctuates the apparent chaos of the rhythm track. His horn has been phrased carefully so as to recall the human voice trained and disciplined by the anti phonic rituals of the black church. "Identity" is the product of all of these influences. Its title offers an invitation to recognize that identity can be experienced fleetingly in the relationship between improvisation and the ordered articulation of musical disorder. The chaos that will tear this fragile rendering of black identity apart is forestalled for the duration of the piece by the insistent, inhuman pulse of the digital bass drum.

It bears repetition that the premium which all these black diaspora styles place on the process of performance is emphasized by their radically unfinished forms-a characteristic that marks them indelibly as the product of slavery (Hurston [ 1 933a] 1970a). It can be glimpsed in the way that the basic units of commercial consumption, in which music is fast frozen and sold, have been systematically subverted by the practice of a racial politics

1 98

•

E T H N I C I T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E O F A CHA NGING S A M E

that has colonized them and, in the process, accomplished what Baudrillard ( 1 990, 1 1 8) refers to as the passage from object to event:

The work of art-a new and triumphant fetish and not a sad alienated one-should work to deconstruct its own traditional aura, its authority and power of illusion, in order to shine resplendent in the pure obscenity of the commodity. It must annihilate itself as familiar object and become monstrously foreign. But this foreignness is not the disquieting strangeness of the repressed or alienated object; this object does not shine from its being haunted or out of some secret dispossession; it glows with a veritable seduction that comes from elsewhere, having exceeded its own form and become pure object, pure event.

From this perspective, the magical process whereby something like a twelve-inch single, released from the belly of the multinational beast, comes to anticipate, even demand, supplementary creative input in the hidden spheres of public political interaction that wait "further on up the road," seems less mysterious. We do, however, need an enhanced sociology of consump­tion that can illuminate its inner workings and the relationships between rootedness and displacement, locality and dissemination that lend them vitality. The twelve-inch appeared as a market innovation during the late 1970s. It was part of the record companies' response to the demands placed upon them by the dance subcultures congealed around the black gemes­reggae and rhythm and blues. Those demands were met halfway by the creation of a new type of musical product that could maximize companies' economic opportunities, but this had other unintended �onsequences. The additional time and increased volume made possible by the introduction of this format became powerful factors impelling restless subcultural creativity forward. Once dubbing, scratching, and mixing appeared as new elements in the deconstructive and reconstructive scheme that joined, production and consumption together, twelve-inch releases began to include a number of different mixes of the same song, supposedly for different locations or purposes. A dance mix, a radio mix, an a cappella mix, a dub mix, a jazz mix, a bass mix, and so on. On the most elementary level, these plural forms make the concept of a changing same a living reality.

Record companies like this arrangement because it is cheaper to play around with the same old song than to record more tracks, but different creative possibilities open out from it. The relationship of the listener to the text is changed by the proliferation of different versions. Which one is the original? How does the memory of one version transform the way in which subsequent versions are heard? The components of one mix separated and broken down can be more easily borrowed and blended to create further permutations of meaning. The twelve-inch single release of LL Cool J's

1 99

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

current rhythm and blues/hip-hop hybrid hit "Round the Way Girl" comes in five different versions. The LP cut is built around a sample from the Mary Jane Girls' 1983 Motown poplsoul hit "All Night Long," and several remixes extend and transform the meaning of the original rap and this first sample by annexing the rhythmic signature of Gwen McCrae's "Funky Sensation." This funky Southern soul record from 1 98 1 was an original B-Boy cut, used by the old school OJ's and rappers who originated hip hop to make breaks. These borrowings are especially noteworthy because they have been orchestrated in pursuit of a means to signify Cool J's definition of authentic black femininity. The record's mass appeal lies in the fact that his authenticity is measured by vernacular style reviled by the Afrocentrics as preconscious because it doesn't conform to the stately postures expected of the African queen but also disavowed by the black entertainment industry where bizarre, white-identified standards of feminine beauty have become dominant. To be inauthentic is, in this case, to be real:

I want a girl with extensions in her hair Bamboo earrings at least two pair A Friendly bag and a bad attitude That's what it takes to put me in a good mood.

-LL Cool J, "Round the Way Girl"

The hybridity that is formally intrinsic to hip hop has not been able to prevent that style from being used as an especially potent sign and symbol of racial authenticity. It is significant that when this happens the term hip hop is often forsaken in favor of the alternative term "rap," preferred precisely because it is more ethnically marked than the other. These issues can be examined further through the example of Quincy Jones, whose per­sonal narrative has recently become something of a cipher for black creativ­ity in general and black musical genius in particular. The figuration of black genius constitutes an important cultural narrative that tells and retells not so much the story of the weak's victory over the strong but explores the relative powers enjoyed by different types of strength. The story of intuitive black creative development is personalized in the narratives of figures like Jones. It demonstrates the aesthetic fruits of pain and suffering and has a special significance because musicians have played a disproportionate part in the long struggle to represent black creativity, innovation, and excellence. Jones, an entrepreneur, preeminent music producer, record company execut­ive, arranger of great skill, sometime bebopper, fundraiser for Jesse Jackson's campaigns, and, currently, emergent TV magnate, is the latest role model figure in a long sequence that stretches down the years from slavery. He is untypical in that he has recently been the subject of a biographical film sup­ported by a book, CDltape soundtrack, and single. In all these interlocking formats the "Listen Up" initiative seeks to celebrate his life, endurance,

200

#'

E T H N I C I T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E O F A C H A N G I N G S A M E

and creativity. Most of all, it affirms black participation i n the entertainment industry, an involvement that Jones has summed up through his surprising invocation of the British Broadcasting Company's distinctive corporate code: the three Es, "Enlightenment, Education, Entertainment." The process that has culminated in this novel commemorative package was clearly encouraged by Jones's growing involvement with TV as producer of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" and "The Jesse Jackson Show." But it began earlier with the release of his 1 989 LP Back on the Block. This set made use of rap as its means to complete the circle of Jones's own odyssey from poverty on Chicago's South Side through Seattle, New York, Paris, and thence to Los Angeles and mogulhood. The positive value of Back 011 the Block is its powerful and necessary argument for the seams of continuity that, although invisible to most, connect the discrete, generational styles found in African­American musical culture. However, there were other more problematic and even insidious elements also at large in Jones's album. One track, a version of Austria-born Joe Zawinul's "Birdland," typifies the spirit of the project as a whole by uniting the talents of old- and new-school rappers like Melle Mel, Kool Moe 0, Ice-T, and Big Daddy Kane with singers and instrument­alists drawn from earlier generations. George Benson, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, and Zawinul himself were among those whose vocal and instrumental input was synthesized by Jones into an exhilarating epic statement of the view that hip hop and bebop shared the same fundamental spirit. According to Jones ( 1 990, 1 67), "Hip hop is in many ways the same as Bebop, because it was renegade-type music. It came from a disenfranch­ised sub-culture that got thrown out of the way. They said, 'We'll make up our own life. We'll have our own language.' " Rap provided this montage (it is tempting to say melange) with its articulating and ,framing principle. Rap was the cultural and political means through which Jones completed his return to the touchstone of authentic black American creativity. Rapping on the record himself, in the unlikely persona of "The Dude," he explains that he wanted the project "to incorporate the whole family of black American music, . . . everything from Gospel to Jazz that

'was part of

my culture" (Jones 1990, 1 70). Brazilian and African musical patterns are annexed by and become continuous with his version of Afro-America's musical heritage. They are linked, says Jones, by the shared "traditions of the African griot storyteller that are continued today by the rappers." The delicate relationship between unity and differentiation gets lost at this point. Old and new, cast and west simply dissolve into each other or, rather, into the receptacle provided for their interaction by the grand narrative of African-American cultural strength and durability. However compelling they may be, Jones's appropriations of Brazilian rhythm and African language are subservient to his need to legitimate African-American particularity. The promise of a truly compound diaspora, even of a global culture, that could shift understanding of black cultural production away from the

201

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

narrow concerns of ethnic exceptionalism recedes rapidly. The potential signified in the inner hybridity of hip hop and the outer syncretism of musical forms that makes Jones's synthesis plausible comes to an abrupt and premature end. It terminates in a portrait of the boys, back on the block, where they ride out the genocidal processes of the inner city through the redemptive power of their authentic racial art.

Young black teenagers then and now

The times are always contained in the rhythm -Quincy Jones

Assuming for a moment that most black cultural critics do not want to simply respond to the death of innocent notions of the black subject with festivities-whether they are wakes or baptisms---<lo we attempt to specify some new conceptions of that subjectivity that are less innocent and less obviously open to the supposed treason that essentialism represents? Or do we cut ourselves off from the world where black identities are made­even required-by the brutal mechanics of racial subordination and the varieties of political agency that strive to answer them?

As a child and a young man growing up in London, I was provided by black music with a means to gain proximity to the sources of feeling from which our local conceptions of blackness were assembled. The Caribbean, Africa, Latin America, and, above all, black America contributed to our lived sense of a racial self. The urban context in which these forms were encoun­tered cemented their stylistic appeal and facilitated their solicitation of our identification. They were important also as a source for the discourses of blackness with which we located our own struggles and experiences.

Twenty years later, with the sound tracks of my adolescence recirculating in the exhilaratingly damaged form of hip hop, I am walking down a street in New Haven, Connecticut-a black city-looking for a record shop stocked with black music. The desolation, poverty, and misery encountered on that fruitless quest force me to confront the fact that I have come to America in pursuit of a musical culture that no longer exists. My skepticism toward the master narrative of family, race, culture, and nation that stretches down the years from Crummell's ( 1 89 1 ) chilling remarks means that I cannot share in Quincy J ones's mourning over its corpse nor his desire to rescue some democratic possibility in the wake of its disappearance. Looking back on the adolescent hours I spent trying to master the technical intricacies of Albert King and Jimi Hendrix, fathom the subtleties of James Jamerson, Larry Graham, or Chuck Rainey, and comprehend how the screams of Sly, James, and Aretha could punctuate and extend their metaphysical modes of address to the black subject, I realize that the most important lesson music still has to teach us is that its inner secrets and its ethnic rules can be taught

202

E T H N I C l T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E O F A C H A N G I N G S A M E

and learned. The spectral figures of half-known or half-remembered musicians like Bobby Eli, Steve Cropper, Tim Drummond, Andy Newmark, John Robinson, and Rod Temperton appear at my shoulder to nod their mute assent to this verdict. Then they disappear into the dusk on Dixwell Avenue. Their contributions to rhythm and blues leave behind a whispered warning that black music cannot be reduced to a fixed dialogue between a thinking racial self and a stable racial community. Apart from anything else, the globalization of vernacular forms means thaI our understanding of anti­phony will have to be changed. The calls and responses no longer converge in the tidy patterns of secret, ethnically encoded dialogue. The original call is becoming harder to locate. If we privilege it over the subsequent sounds that compete with each other to make the most appropriate reply, we will have to remember that these communicative gestures are not expressive of an essence that exists outside of the acts that perform them and thereby transmit the structures of racial feeling to wider, as yet uncharted, worlds.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Vron Ware, Jim Clifford, Hazel Carby, Robert Reid Pharr, bell hooks, Kellie Jones, Robert Forbes, Rigo Vasquez, and the members of my Yale graduate seminar during the fall of 1990 for the conversations that helped me to put this together. The staff of Integrity in Music in Weatherfield, Connecticut, were of great help to me. Long may they stay in the vinyl business.

Notes

These processes have been explored in Gurinder Chudha's film I'm British BUI (BFI 1988). The adaptation of these forms by Hispanic hip hoppers in Los Angeles should also be recognized here. Kid Frost's absorbing release "La Raza" borrows the assertive techniques of black nationalist rap, setting them to work in the construction of a Mexican-American equivalent. •

2 The field of cultural forces that comprises this movement is triangulated by three sets of coordinates that can be ideal typically represented by Kool G. Rap and OJ Polo's "Erase Racism" (Cold Chillill), the calculated and utterly insubstantial defiance of NWA's " Hundred Miles and Running" (Ruthless), and the program­matic jive of King Sun's "Be Black" (Profile).

3 Seroff's ( 1 990) research lists over twenty choirs in the period between 1871 and 1878. 4 The musical authenticity of the Jubilee Singers has been explicitly challenged by

Zora Neale Hurston ( [ I933a] 1 970a, 223-255) who refers 10 their work as "a trick style of delivery" and a "misconception of Negro Spirituals."

5 This apparently serious insult was laced with some fraternal acid and gently lobbed in my direction by Kobbie Mercer. It appears in his 1990 Third Text article criticizing my earlier attempts to discuss black culture through the concept "populist modernism ." My response to his position is formulated here, though I wish to emphasize that his reconstruction of my position fails to represent my thinking accurately.

203

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Discography

Brand, Nubian. 1990. Wake up. Elektra 0-66597. Jones, Quincy. 1989. Back all Ihe block. Qwest 26020 - 1 . --. 1990. Lislell up. Qwest 926322-2. Kid Frost. 1 990. La Raza. Virgin 2-91 377. King Sun. 1 990. Be black. Profile PRO 73 1 8A. Kool G Rap and OJ Polo. 1 990. Erase racism. Cold Chillin 2 1 8 1 10. Laws, Ronnie. 1990. Identity (Hype Mix). LSNCD 300 1 1 . LL Cool J . 1990. Round the way girl. ocr Jam 4473610. NWA. 1990. Hundred miles and running. Ruthless 4973370.

References

Adorno, T. W. (1 938] 1978. On the fetish character in music and the regression of listening. In The essential Frankfurt school reader, edited by A. Arato and E. Gebhardt. London: Blackwell.

Baugh, John. 1 983. Black street speech. Austin: University of Texas Press. Baudrillard, J . 1990. Fatal strategies. New York: Semiotcxt(e), Boskin, J. 1986. Sambo: The rise and demise of an America" jester. Cambridge:

Oxford University Press. Butler, J. 1990. Gellder lrouble. New York: Routledge. Crummell, A. 1 8 9 1 . Africa and America. New York: Wiley. Dennison, S. 1982. Sca1ldalize my name. New York: Garland Press. Drake, St. C. 1987. Black folks here am/ there. Berkeley: University of California

Press. Flax, J. 1990. Thinking in /ragments. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gates, H. L., Jr. 1988. The trope of the new Negro and the reconstruction of the

image of the black. Representations 24: 1 29-1 56. George, N. 1 988. The death of rhythm and blues. New York: Omnibus. Gilroy, P. 1982. Stepping out of Babylon-race, class and autonomy. I n The empire

strikes back: Race and racism in 70s Britain, edited by University of Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. London: Hutchinson.

--. 1987. There ain'l llo black in the Union Jack. London: Hutchinson. Gilroy, P. 1990. One nation under a groove. In Anatomy of racism, edited by

D. T. Goldberg. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Glissant, E. 1989. Caribbean discourse. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Harding, S. 1988. The instability of analytical categories of feminist theory. In Sex

and scientific inquiry, edited by S. Harding and J . O'Barr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Henderson, D. 1 983. 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky. New York: Bantam. Hurston, Z. N. ( 1 933a] 1 970a. Spirituals and nco-spirituals. In Negro, edited by

N. Cunard. New York: Ungar. Hurston, Z. N. ( 1 933b] 1970b. Characteristics of Negro expression: Conversions and

visions, shouting, the sermon, Mother Catherine, U ncle Monday. In Negro, edited by N. Cunard. New York: Ungar.

Jones, Q. 1 990. Listen up-the lives of Quincy Jones. New York: Warner Books. Kent, N. 1986. Miles Davis interview. The Face 78: 1 8-1 28.

204

ET H N I C I T Y A N D T H E C H A L L E N G E OF A C H A N GI N G S A M E

Marsh, J . B . T. 1875. The story of the Jubilee Singers with their songs. New York: Hodder & Staughton.

Mercer, K. 1986. Monster metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson's "Thriller." Screen 27, part 1 :53-74.

--. 1 990. Black art and the burden of representation. Third Text 1 0 (Spring):61-79.

Said, E. 1983. Travelling theory. In The world, the text and the critic. London: Faber. Sereff, D. 1 990. The original Fisk Jubilee Singers and the spiritual tradition, pt. l .

Keskidee 2:4-9.

Shaar Murray, C. 1 990. Crosstown traffic. London: Faber. Silveri, L. D. 1 989. The singing tours of the Fisk Jubilee Singers: 1 871-1874. 111 Feel

the Jpiril: SllIdies in nineteenth cenlury AFo�American mllsic, edited by G. R. Keck and S. V. Martin. New York: Greenwood Press.

Spelman, E. 1988. lnessemial woman. Boston: Beacon Press. Soliors, W. 1989. The invention of etlmic;ly. Cambridge: Oxford University Press. Thompson, R. F. 1983. Flash of the spirit. New York: Vintage. --. 1990. Kongo influences on African�American artistic culture. In Ajricanisms

ill American cullllre, edited by J . E. Holloway. Bloomington: I ndiana University Press.

Toll, R. C. 1974. Blacking up: The minstrel show ill lIineteel/lh�cenlllry America. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.

•

205

Part C

ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

•

. ,

I

70

CA NTA ND O LA CA MA VA CiA : LOV E , S E XUAL I T Y A N D

G E N D E R R E LAT I O N S H I P S I N

D O M I N I CA N BA CHA TA

Deborah Pacini Hernandez

Source: Popular Music 9(3) ( 1990): 351-67.

EI hombre dominicano es machista, quiere que sus ordenes sean cumplidas. Pero a sus mujeres no les gusta cumplirlas, y de alii vienen sus pleilos. Bachala es una defensa de los hombres.

Dominican men are mach islas, they want their orders to be obeyed. But their women don't like to obey them, and from this comes their conflicts. Bachata is a defence of men.

(Young bach�tero)

'Bachala' is an autochthonous Dominican popular music form that emerged around 1961 characterised by a guitar-centred ensemble, unpolished sing­ing style, colloquial language, the low social status of both musicians and • audience, and, most prominently, its preoccupation with relationships between men and women (see Pacini 1989 and Pacini Hernandez 1989). While bachata is listened to by both men and women, its principal thematic concerns, the dramas of courtship and relationship, are presented almost exclusively from the male point of view: bachata is essentially men's music­written about women, but by and for men.

The drama of courtship expressed iu song

Love and the drama of courtship are without question the most common subject of popular songs all over the world; on this level, then, there is nothing particularly unique about bachata. What is unusual is the transformation of bachata from a musical genre defined by its concern with romantic love,

209

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

into a genre principally concerned with sexuality, and moreover, a specific kind of sexuality: casual sex with no pretence to longevity, often mediated by money, whose principal social context is the bar/brothel. This does not mean that bachata songs no longer relate to the emotional domain, but that the relationship between romantic love and sex is defined in different ways. This article explores the evolution of bachata - textual, musical and contextual - and how it corresponds to profound changes in Dominican society.

Romantic music in the Dominican Republic - as elsewhere in the Hispanic world - has never been intended to be neutral, merely providing suitable background sound for courtship; instead, the power of the song is used to construct and deconstruct emotions and emotional states. Romantic music serves as a surrogate voice for people who feel incapable of articulating their emotions, for publicly expressing private feelings; it assists listeners to negotiate relationships, whether in the early stages of courtship, in the fullness of a mutually satisfying relationship, or in the painful and bitter stages of separation and solitude. [n the Dominican Republic men actively lise songs in courtship: singing a serenade; singing along with a romantic song while dancing with a woman; giving a woman a record with particu­larly appropriate lyrics; or sitting in a bar and playing a relevant song on the jukebox over and over again in order to reinforce feelings that may be expressed later in person. Similarly, if a relationship does not develop as desired, or if it falls apart, music about these aspects of the relationship can be used to cope with the resulting feelings.

Changing contexts

In the 1960s and 1970s demographic changes, principally massive migrations to the cities, began to yield the all too familiar socio-cultural disruption and dislocation typical of rapid urbanisation: acute poverty, unemploy­ment, overcrowding, crime, prostitution, alcoholism and violence. or the new arrivals in the city, more than half were women. These were expelled from rural areas at greater rates because they were less central to the rural agricultural economy. Women also found employment more easily in the city as domestic workers or in the informal sector (Duarte 1986, p. 1 88); by 1983 53 per cent of those underemployed in the informal economy were women (ibid. , p. 205). The incrcased participation of women in the work force did not, however, translate into an improved economic status for women migrants; on the contrary, their situation remained quite desperate, since even those that found regular employment were paid consistently lower salaries than men. Given this bleak economic scenario, many women turned to employment in bars as waitresses and prostitutes as a last resort - either permanently or on an occasional basis. '

[n urban shantytowns, men had similarly limited but different options than women for making a living. Some found employment in factories or in

2 1 0

C A N T A N D O L A C A M A VA ciA

construction, but most created work for themselves in the informal sector as chiriperos or vendedores ambulantes - street vendors and hawkers. Another strategy available to a man was to seek a woman who could help support him. [ n Dominican society in general and in the barrio (urban neighbour­hood) context in particular, no social stigma is attached to men receiving support from women; [ was told repeatedly by both men and women of several different social classes that it is not uncommon for Dominican men to be supported by women, if not totally, then at least partially. This observation is supported by Duarte's 198 1 study in the city of Santiago, which revealed that in 82 per cent of the families interviewed, part or all of family income is provided by women. Duarte points out, 'The woman is obliged to work because the man (father, brother, husband or other family member) does not have regular employment or works independently. This irregularity of income leads to a situation in which, although the man may be present in the home, it is the woman who provides the family food. ' (Duarte 1 986, pp. 246-7, translation mine).

Whether formal or informal, legal or illegal, socially acceptable or soci­ally proscribed, women's increased economic activities and contributions to household maintenance have had profound consequences on traditional values and patterns of male/female relationships. Women, no longer tied to a stable home, family, kinship and community networks, experienced much more sexual and social flexibility than they had in rural areas. At the same time, they did not have the same kinds of social supports they enjoyed in rural areas, and they were required to struggle, just like men, to define and maintain a space for themselves within the social and economic desperation of an overcrowded and impoverished city.

Men, less connected to stable job and home, tended to spend more time in bars and brothels, where alcohol became a favoured way to combat the hopelessness and depression of urban life, and where sexual favours could be easily purchased without strings attached. While most patrons in a neighbourhood bar certainly might know each other well, bars, unlike homes, are open to strangers, and they operate under a completely different set of social rules than does a family home. But more significantly, these bars, unlike family or community settings, are unequivocally masculine spaces, where women with traditional values of social propriety do not belong. On the other hand, women who avoid these establishments are excluded from a major locus of recreational activity available to men. The shift of recre­ational social space out of the familial, predominantly feminine domain to the impersonal, masculine domain has had profound implications for both men and women, and for bachata as well.

A close relationship exists between bachata and the shantytown bar; this association, in fact, is often cited by bachata's detractors to substantiate its disreputability. All sorts of music can be heard in shantytown bars -

merengue, bak"la, some sa/sa - but the music listened to most, whether live

2 1 1

M U S I C A N D SO C I A B I L I T Y

or recorded, is bachata. First, i t is the music that most patrons, of rural and poor origins, have grown up listening to and associate with recreational activity. Second, bachata lyrics reflect the changing social environment and increasingly refer explicitly to what is happening in the bar context: drinking, easily obtained sex, male camaraderie. Songs about eternal love and family are not appropriate in these contexts; instead, the songs tend to address the problems of transient relationships mediated not by tradi­tional values of romantic love, but by the harsh social and economic realities of the urban shantytown. But most important, the bar and bachata songs about the bar have become structural features of a male social space in which men, not women, are the providers of emotional support. Women's place in the bar context is to provide sexual favours, not reliable companion­ship, and in fact they are perceived as sources of social disorder and emotional pain rather than of social stability and emotional warmth.

Changing texts

When the first bachata songs were recorded in the early 1 960s, they were usually modelled arter the slow and quintessentially romantic bolero that had been the preferred form of romantic music throughout the 1950s in both rural and urban areas. Early bachata songs tended to be tragic, plaintive laments of love lost or unrequited, and were still unequivocally part of the broad, pan-Hispanic tradition of romantic song and patterns of courtship and love. Most lyrics of these early bachatas could be categor­ised, using traditional categories of verse, as either de amol' (romantic), or a 10 divino (pleas, either specifically to God or to an unspecified other, for assistance in obtaining the desired love), or el1 que}a (complaints about love lost or unrequited). These latter, while complaints, still tended to be highly romantic songs, expressing tragic, intense emotion, and while the singer bemoaned his breaking heart, he usually expressed an unflinching devotion to the woman he loved. The following song by Jose Manuel Calderon is typical of early bachata.'

. LlJgrimas de sangre'

Aim te lIevo dentro Til me has hecho 1I0rar Lagrimas de sangre Te sigo esperando Te sigo queriendo Igual que ayer Til ya no me quieres Pero eso no importa Y si tu me odias yo te quiero mas

I've still got you inside me You've made me cry Tears of blood I'm still waiting for you I'm still loving you As much as yesterday You don't love me anymore But that doesn't matter If you hate me I love you more

2 1 2

•

Piensa en mi Oye mi canci6n Adios

C A N TA N D O L A C A M A VA ciA

Think of me Hear my song Goodbye

This song, which dates from the formative period of the genre - the early to mid 1960s - is clearly a love song, and its tempo is appropriately slow and romantic. Calderon's voice is plaintive, almost sobbing, as if to suggest great emotional sensitivity. He addresses the song directly to the woman, and his lyrics, expressing the heartbreak of abandonment, nevertheless vow eternal love. The implied relationship is not situated in any particular space or time - it could be taking place in an urban or a rural setting; in the past, present or future; in a home, a party or a serenade: Calderon's love exists in a timeless emotional space defined only by the presence of feelings associated with the love relationship.

In the 1 970s, bachata songs began to address a wider and more multi­dimensional range of possible relationships between men and women. Early bachatas, like the romantic bolero before it, expressed pain without rage; later bachatas, on the other hand, are saturated with anger, disillusion and, in many, an implacable hostility towards women. If song texts serve to deal publicly with private emotions, then these songs reveal conflictive and indeed disturbing gender relations. While in early bachata a man might indeed complain that a woman has left him, in the later songs he orten goes on to vilify her and to condemn all women. To be sure, there were - and are - still many unequivocally romantic love songs being produced, and in fact, some singers such as Luis Segura and Leonardo Paniagua have specialised in such songs. But the bulk of bachata production since the mid-1970s reveals a changing kind of relationship between men and women that is explicitly as well as symbolically expressed.

.

Contemporary bachata's most common themes include: ( I ) love, desire and sexuality; (2) engaiio - deception - by a woman; (3) abandonment, despair and isolation; (4) the bar - as the location for male camaraderie, or as the place to find a woman with whom to have sexual reTations; and (5) drinking - as a prelude to finding a woman, as therapy for heartbreak or anger, or simply as a pleasurable recreational activity in itself. What is no/ mentioned in the songs tells us as much as what is mentioned: marriage, family, children, commitment, jobs. While there are, of course, occasional exceptions, these latter themes are noticeably absent in the lyrics, and reflect men's lack of relationship ' with - or responsibility to - the domestic domain.

In contrast, work, wives and long-term relationships are not unusual themes in numerous popular music forms similarly associated with lower socio­economic classes such as US blues and country music (country more than blues, however). Ruben George Oliven's 1988 study of Brazilian popular music in the 1 930s and 1 940s provides another comparative case: he points

2 1 3

M U S I C A N D SOC I A B I L I T Y

out that women and work are seen as threatening to the freedom of the vagrant's life exalted in the songs. Nevertheless work and women, who are associated with family and stability, are at least part of the thematic landscape within which the Brazilian singers situate themselves as bohemians. With few exceptions, work and family are virtually never mentioned in bachata.

Moreover, the narrative space constructed in bachata has changed since the 1960s from an intimate one occupied by the two people involved in an emotional relationship (into which a listener to the song could insert him/herself), to a wider, more inclusive public space occupied by a group of people - the male companions of the singer. I analysed dozens of bachata songs from the 1960s and found that most of them referred to the female subject of the song directly, in the second person familiar, the Iu. With time, fewer songs were directed to the woman herself, but instead, to the man's drinking companions. By the 1 980s only about half the songs referred to the female subject directly: the other half were directed at other men, and referred to the woman indirectly, in the third person ella. Other songs were mixed: the singer shifted halfway through the song from the third person to the second person, or vice versa, again de-emphasising the prim­ary two-way relationship. The use of the third person not only d istanced the woman from the singer, but objectified her as well: she became the problematic 'other'. These songs, then, are not so much a dialogue (albeit imaginary) between men and women, but a dialogue between men and men aboul women. The listener to these songs is not situated within an intimate relationship between a man and a woman, but in a more public, masculine narrative space defined by the absence of women. The following is a typical example:

'£;pero par mi morena' by Bolivar Peralta

Desde temprano yo estoy Sentado aqui en esta mesa Digame Usted por favor Si no ha vista a mi morena Y no prequnte senor Que hago yo en este lugar Ando en busca de mi hem bra Y no la voy a dejar Porque hasta que ella no venga No me canso de gritar Que venga, que venga M i morena otra vez Espero par mi morena Que me sa be comprender

I've been here a long time Sitting at this table Tell me, please If you've seen my morena And don't ask, sir What I'm doing in this place I'm looking for my female And I'm not going to leave here Because until she comes I won't tire of calling I want her to come, to come My morena to come again l'm waiting for my morena She knows how to understand me

2 1 4

C A N TA N D O L A C A M A VA ciA

Ando en busca de mi amor Y aqui la eslOy esperando Y si la tiene escondida Anda buscimdose un Iio Porque es la que me domina Cuando yo estoy mas prendi'o

I'm looking for my love And I'm waiting for her And if he is hiding her He's looking for a problem Because she's the one who dominates me When I'm most inflamed

Contrasting this song to the one by Calderon cited above, we can see that while the music is about a woman ardently desired by the singer, the lyrics are directed not at the woman herself, but to implied third persons. Further­more, unlike Calderon's relationship that existed in a non-specific, ethereal realm, this song's location is quite mundane, clear and explicit: Peralta is in a bar, where the woman he desires works as a bar girl (i.e. prostitute). And what Peralta wants from her is not the emotion of undying love but rather satisfaction of his sexual needs.

In addition to expressing sexual desire, Peralta's song also refers to the social tension associated with the client/prostitute relationship. When he says 'if he is hiding her there's going to be trouble', he is referring to the woman's pimp, and to a threat of violence if the pimp interferes. Thus, while the fact that she is a prostitute means he can easily obtain her sexual favours, on the other hand, because her sexuality is economically mediated by another male she becomes a potentially disruptive element in the male environment.

In bachata songs, men are not merely talking to each other; they are teaching each other as well. Bachata, like other forms of popular music, has cognitive as well as recreational functions, and instructs young men about women and emotional and sexual relationships .' Coml?osers of popular bachata songs tend to be men with some urban experience able to express the complex relationship between rural expectations and urban constraints. Those who listen to bachata, whether they are long-time residents or recent arrivals, or campesinos who have not yet left the countryside, learn what to

• expect from life in the city - especially in terms of the relationships between men and women. Bachata's didactic functions can be implicit in songs of emo­tional pain and disruption, or quite explicit, as the following song illustrates:

'Aqui la l11ujer se dmia' by Manuel Chalas

Voy a hablar de la mujer Que viene a la capital A los tres dias se pone Que no se puede aguantar Y se lira a caminar A la calle sin campana Y hasta can otro te engana

I'm going to tell you about women Who come to the capital After three days she gets So you can't put up with her And she starts to walk In the streets alone And she even deceives you

2 1 5

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Quizlts con I u proprio amigo Y por eso es que te digo Que aqui la mujer se dana Oye hermano mio Aqui la mujer se dana Si te hace falta el calor De tu linda mujercita No, no vendas tu casita Pa traerla a la capital Que aunque sea la mas formal Aqui coge mala mana Y hasta con otro te engana Quizas con tu propro amigo Y por eso es que te digo Que aqui la mujer se dana Oye Miguelito Aqui la mujer se dana Yo tengo on amigo mio Que vi no y busc6 trabajo Cuando la mujer se trajo Se Ie fue a los cuatro dias Como una que yo tenia Que baje de la montalia Y que cortaba la cana Para mi mayor testigo Y por eso es que te digo Que aqui la mujer se dal;a Lo se, 10 se, 10 se, 10 se Lo digo con experiencia Aqui la mujer se dana

Perhaps with your own friend And that's why I'm telling you That women here go bad Listen, my brother Women go bad here If you miss the warmth Of your beautiful liUle woman Don't, don't sell your house To bring her to the capital Because even if she's well-behaved Here she'll take on bad ways She'll deceive you with another Maybe even your own friend And that's why I'm telling you That women go bad here Listen, Miguelito Women go bad here I have a friend Who came to look for work When he brought his woman She left him after four days Like one that I had I brought her down from the mountain Where she used to cut cane And as I'm a witness That's why I'm telling you Tha t women go bad here I know, I know, I know, I know I say it from experience Women go bad here

In this song the lesson is clear and specific: the singer asserts emphatically that when women come to the city traditional female behaviour is replaced by disruptive new customs: women begin to act independently, they betray their husbands, they abandon the home, and threaten friendships between men.

The following song is equally explicit. Here, the singer taunts another man, calling him a 'pariguayo', a Dominican slang word that overtly refers to an inexperienced fool, but which implicitly suggests the naive and unsophisticated rural manner of a country bumpkin. The male voices at the end of each verse calling out ' Pariguayo!' challenge the social competency -and hence the very masculinity - of any man who believes what a woman tells him, and urge all men with these or similar delusions to wise up as soon as possible.

2 1 6

C A N T A N D D L A C A M A VA ciA

'Pariguayo' by Toribio Jimenez

Esa mujer que til tienes Te dice "lIoro por ti" Eso es mentira de un peso Y tiI, como un pariguayo al fin Pariguayo! Pariguayo, aprcnde a vivir

Si esta tomando contigo Te dice, esperame aqui Te deja y se va con otro

Y ttl, como un pariguayo al fin Pariguayo Pariguayo, aprcnde a vivir

Cuando por ti Ie preguntan Le dan ganas de reir Ella dice que te trata Como un pariguayo al fin Pariguayo Pariguayo, aprende a vivir

Cuando te ve por la calle Te dice "estoy buscandote a ti", Mentira! Ella se Ie esta buscando, y tu Como un pariguayo al fin Pariguayo PariguHYo, aprcnde a vivir

Piensalo bien patantiIn Esa mujer no cs un maiz Es machete de dos filos, y tu Como un pariguayo al fin Pariguayo Pariguayo, aprcnde a vivir

That woman you have Says 'I cry for you' That's a big lie And you, like a bumpkin after all Pariguayo! Pariguayo, wise up

If she's drinking with you And she says, wait for me here She leaves you and goes off with

another And you, like a pariguayo after all Pariguayo Pariguayo, wise up

When they ask her about you She feels like laughing She says she treats you Like a pariguayo after all Pariguayo You big pariguayo, wise up

When she sees you on the street She says 'I'm looking for you', Lies! She is looking for him, and you Like a pariguaYQ after all Pariguayo Pariguayo, wise up

Think about it carefully, you jerk That woman is no suc�er She's a two-edged machete Like a pariguayo after all Pariguayo Pariguayo, wise up

These songs suggest that women are unreliable because they have no sense of self-control and therefore cannot resist sexual desire. (The idea of women's sexuality as a potentially dangerous natural force that can only be controlled by containment is not, of course, new, but part of the cultural baggage inherited from the country's Spanish/Mediterranean colonisers.) Women's sexuality, kept under control in the confines of the rural home and community setting, is unleashed when they discover freedom of movement

2 1 7

M U S I C A N D SO C I A D I L I T Y

i n the city. Since uncontrolled female sexuality is blamed ror most o f the bachatero's problems, they thererore do not need to assume any responsibility for failed relationships; they virtually never mention other possible reasons - ror example, their failure to provide adequate consistency, support or arrection - that might cause a woman to leave a man.

When women decide to establish a relationship with another man, men complain or engCllio, deception, one of bachata's most common themes; the word despecl/O, which means 'spite' or 'indignation', is also llsed to describe this kind or song, which expresses the kind of hostile anger that is by no means atypical of bachata. Unlike the early bachatas, in which abandonment caused extreme grief but not anger, contemporary bachatas address this situation with desperation, rage, or in some cases, violence. The following song, a typical expression of despecho, contains, interestingly, a rarc mention of children and implies a family breakup.

'La al/antosa' by Luis Emilio Felix

Desde el dia que te fuiste No habias vuelto Ahora vienes a 1I0rar adonde mi. Sigue, y siguc tu camino con

quien quieras Que este negro no quiere saber

de ti

En el mundo hay mujeres desgraciadas

Pero tll, ttl no tienes compailcra Abandonaste a tus dos hijos

enfermos Y ahora vienes a pedirme que te

quiera Las mujeres como tu no

valen nada Ttl no tienes nada, nada de valor

Solo un hombre que este ciego 0 estc loco

Puede dar una moneda por tu amor

Since the day you lert You haven't been back Now you come crying to me Get going, get on your way with

whoever you want This negro doesn't want to hear

about you

In this world there are miserable women

But you, you don't have a match You abandoned your two sick

children And now you're asking me to love

you Women like you aren't worth a thing

You've got nothing, nothing of value

Only a man who's blind or crazy

Would give two cents for your love

Songs expressing the pain of disillusion and separation are so common that the word used to refer to that pain - amargue - has become synonymous with bachata as the name to identify the musical genre - H?Llsica de amal'gue.

2 1 8

C A N T A N D O L A C A M A V A c i A

'Amargue' literally means bitterness - specifically the bitterness caused by deception, not the more generalised feelings or sadness brought on by unre­quited love or separation due to causes other than deception. The concept of amargue is similar but not identical to the US concept or 'blues'. Blues suggest a certain emotional depression, even despair, perhaps caused by a woman, but it can also be caused by the hopelessness of the singer's socio­economic reality. Amargue, on the other hand, is an emotional state caused only by unsuccessful relationships with women. A man who is amargado is one who has been deceived, who has lost a presumed innocence at the hands of a treacherous woman. The amargado typically consoles himselr in a bar, drinking with friends who commiserate with his plight, as the following song by the extremely popular Confesor Gonzi\lez (now deceased) illustrates:

'No Ie amargues pOl' ella'

Ya me desengane De toditas las mujeres POl·que a un amigo mio Yo vi 10 que Ie paso EI confiaba en su senora Y Ie daba hasta la vida Y fue tanta la confianza Que con otro 10 engano Ya no creo en ningunas las mujeres

Porque cada dia ellas se ponen peor Elias se vuelven mariposas en los

jardines Y van cogiendo el sabor de

cada flor Amigo mio, siimtate en mi mesa Que te voy a brindar un trago

de licor No te amargues por ella Que un hombre vale mas que

una mujer

I've lost my illusions About all women Because I saw what happened To a friend of mine He trusted his wife He would have given her his life And he trusted her so much She betrayed him with another I don't believe in any women

anymore Because every day they get worse They become butterflies' in the

garden And they flutter rrom flower to

flower My rriend, come sit at my table I'm going to orfer you'a toast or

liquor Don't get bitter over her Because a man's worth more than

a woman

Since there are few social or economic constraints binding a woman to an unwanted relationship, men have limited power to make women change their behaviour when they fail to rulfill men's needs or expectations. In these cases, when men's potency seems to have no effect, men rail at women through a show or bravado, claiming that women, like other commodities, can be easily replaced. As Bolivar Peralta sings:

2 1 9

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

'Que venga Olra muje,.'

Mundo de amor y desengano Hoy nada es raro para mi Y si una hoy me ha olvidado Otra conmigo ha de venir Quien quiera Yen mira mi mesa Hoy siento ganas de brindar Uno por la que ya se aleja Y otra por ia que ha de llegar Me va la vida, paso el ayer Si una me olvida, Que venga otra mujer Junta tu copa con mi copa No hay diferencia, son igual

World of love and disillusion Today nothing surprises me And if one forgets me today Another's bound to come along Whoever wants to come to my table Today I feel like toasting One for she who is leaving Another for she who will come My life goes on, yesterday's gone If one forgets me, Let another woman come Join your cup to mine There's no difference, they're all the same

Interestingly, the arena of struggle between the sexes transcends the material world and extends into the realm of the supernatural, where men can more easily assert their potency. Dominicans, especially those of rural origins, firmly believe that certain spirits, or misterios (see Davis 1987) can be enlisted in the effort to either obtain (or retain) a partner - or conversely, to resist the efforts of another to manipulate them through similar magical means. In the following song a man boasts he has more magical prowess than the unfaithful woman he has 'discarded' who is using magic to try to get him back.

'No soy un maiz' by Sijo Osoria

La mujer que yo tenia Amigo mio, la bote Por andar de bochinchera Yo por otra la cambie La que quiera traicionarme La boto lejos de mi Porque aunque a veces me desgrano

Pero no soy un maiz Til creiste muchachita Que por ti me iba a morir Pero te has equivoca'o Ahora es que estoy feliz Ahora til te estils muriendo Porq ue no te tengo a ti No me importa que til llores Tu llanto me hace feliz

220

The woman I had, My friend, I threw away Because she ran around I changed her for another She who betrays me I'll throw far away from me Because while I might fall apart

(lose my kernels) I'm no sucker You thought, little girl That I'd die for you Bu t you are wrong It's now that I'm happy Now you're the one who's dying Because you don't have me I don't care if you cry Your tears make me happy

• -

•

I

C A N TA N D O L A CA NIA VA ciA

De nada te valieron tus mechitas Soy mas malo que el demonio Lili EI dinero que Ie distes al brujo Junto con el, mujer Me 10 pedi He sabido que 10 esta Vendiendo todo Para a las fuerzas Tenerme junto a ti No me de risa, mujcr Te 10 repito No botes tus cheles Yo no soy un maiz

Your little candles were useless I'm badder than the demon Lili The money you gave the shaman Together with him, woman I asked [the spirits] for i t I hear you are Selling everything To use forces To have me at your side Don't make me laugh, woman I tell you again Don't throw away your money I'm no slicker

Clearly, as traditional forms of marriage and consensual union have fallen apart in the cities, interactions between men and women have become more transient, conflictive and increasingly mediated by money, and the emotions of love and pain, the physicality of sex and loneliness, have consequently assumed meanings that go beyond the emotional: when a man loses a woman it can cause an economic and social loss as well, since he loses not only her financial support, but the status that comes along with her support. This is most explicit in the pimp-prostitute relationship, but is also implicit in relationships where economic dependence on a woman is at least partial. Pain at losing the economic benefits of a relationship is not usually mentioned specifically in song texts, but the economic basis of relationships is not far below the surface; bachateros make frequent reference to being the dl/eno

- the owner - of a woman, suggesting that she is considered an economic resource much like a piece of land or a cow or car. 'Owning' a woman bestows a man with all sorts of benefits of which her sexual favour is only one; losing this property deals a serious blow to a man's social status and self-esteem. The following song (whose title and singer are not identified on tape) typifies the references to owning a woman and the necessity of defend­ing this 'property' from usurpation by others.

Sabes que soy to dueiio Y que vengo prendi'o' No quiero nada de 01, no Yo reclamo 10 mio Quizas hay otro con ella Va haber tremendo lio A nadie 10 soporto Que juegue con 10 mio A mi no tengo moda?? Porque me yean prendi'o

22 1

You know I'm your owner And that I'm inflamed I don't want anything of his, no I'm demanding what's mine If there's anyone else with her There's going to be a big problem I won't put up with anyone Playing with what's mine I don't care I f people see me inflamed

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Sabes como me pongo Par defender 10 mlo Mis amigos me dicen Que ya estoy perdi'o Yo vengo a partir brazos A rescatar 10 mia

You know how I get Defending what's mine My friends tell me That I'm already lost I've come here to break arms To reclaim what's mine

Vendiendo huevo: the packaging and selling of sex

While the social and emotional disruption caused by uncontrolled female sexuality characterise the category of songs of disparagement, another cat­egory of bachata songs, called canciones de doble senlido, or double entendre songs, are concerned with sex, but with no particular interest in the social or emotional consequences of sex. These songs are extended narratives of sexual activity, in which sex is graphically described by substituting objects (either natural or manufactured) for body parts (of both men and women) or for sexual acts, with the word play drawn out as far as the composer's ingenuity will permit. The explicit nature of these songs clearly distinguishes them from the romantic ballads listened to by the middle classes, in which a singer might make veiled references to a night of bliss, or to a woman's beautiful lips, hair or eyes, but which - unlike bachatas - will never refer to her sexual organs.

The most commercially successful bachata songs have been of this vari­ety, so clearly there are economic motives for producing this type of song. Nevertheless, the pleasure of manipulating language appears to be as much the subject of the song as sex itself: the doble sentido song plays with language, between what a word is supposed to mean and what it can be made to mean. Interestingly enough, when men refer to sex in these songs, it is not always their needs and their pleasure, but also the woman's, that can be the subject of the song. Female sexual desire in itself - when not complicated by emotional and social considerations - seems to be accepted as natural, fun, even if physically exhausting: doble sentido songs often refer to sexually voracious women who besiege the hapless singer with endless sexual demands. But this seems to be considered a humorous rather than a threatening situation. The following example by Tony Santos, who has become famous on the basis of his double entendre songs, is typical:

'£1 aparow di mi mujer' by Tony Santos

Los vecinos de mi casa Fueron a la policia A poner una den uncia En contra d'ia negra mia Ellos no pueden donnir N i de noche ni de dia

222

My next door neighbours Went to the police To make a complaint Against my negra They say they can't sleep By night or by day

•

C A N TA N D D L A C A M A VA ciA

POl'que mi morena vive Con la musica subi'a Y la negra, incomodada Asi se puso a gritar Ella por danne cacM Asi se puso a gritar, Papi Subeme el volumen Que aqui nadie esta 'susta'o Que este aparatico es mio Yo no 10 cojl presta'o Yo Ie bajaba el volumen Sin que ella se diera cuenta rem ella me gritaba Sube hasta que amanezca Yo se 10 desconectaba Y en eso el brazo eaia Y 1a negra con sus manes Ella volvia y 10 ponia

Because my morena always Has the music turned up loud And negra, upset Started to cry out In order to -Screamed like this 'Papi! Turn up the volume! No one here is frightened This little gadget is mine I didn't borrow it' I turned down the volume Without her realising it But she yelled at me 'Turn it up until dawn!' I disconnected it And the tone arm dropped And negra with her hands Put it back again

While these songs certainly objectify women and their bodies, they also reveal a humorous and frank approach to sexuality very different from the tragic, violent and contemptuous songs about emotional loss that characterise some of the 'straight' songs. In fact, doble sentido songs are rarely, if ever, used to condemn women or their sexuality. Furthermore, men equally objectify their own sexual organ and activity for narrative purposes.

'£1 iluevero' by Bias Duran

Como no encuentro trabajo Me dedieo a vender huevo Y a mi morena querida Con eso yo la mantengo Todos los dias por la manana Cuando Ie doy desayuno Quiere que Ie busque huevo Y que se 10 de bien duro Con pique 0 sin pique Yo vendo mis huevos Y bien sabrosito Que yo tengo mis huevos

Y a la hora de las dace Cuando cmpezamos a comer Quiere que Ie de mas huevo Esa bendita mujer

Since I can't find a job What I do is sell eggs And that's the way I support my dear mOl'r!l1a Every day in the morning When I give her breakfast She wants me to get her eggs And to give them to her real hard With or without hawking

. I sell my eggs

223

And very tasty My eggs are

At the noon hour When we start to eat She wants me to give her more egg That blessed woman

L

M U S I C A N D S D C I A B I L I T Y

Esa mujer que yo tengo Le gusta los huevos grandes No les gustan los chiquitos Porque se queda con hambre

Hablado: Los que tiene uno que haeer para ganarse la vida

That woman that I have She loves big eggs She doesn't like little ones Because they leave her hungry

Spoken: What one has to do to earn a livingS

TypicaUy, women's sexual organs are substituted by names of fruits and other foodstuffs - liame (a tropical tuber), coconut,' onions, cotton:

'El liame' by Julio Angel

Yo vay para mi conuea Con los claritos del dia A vcr a una mata de name Yo sembre el otro dia

Ahora estoy asombrado Porque no 10 creia Que fucra un name tan grande EI de la matita mia

Yo me la voy a Uevar El liame de la mat ita Pa' comermelo solito Por aUi por ia nochecita

['m going to my garden With the first light of day To see a liame plant [ planted the other day

Now I'm amazed Because I couldn't believe it That my plant has Such a big liame

I 'm going to take The Hame from the plant To eat it by myself Over there at night

Men's penises, on the other hand, become mechanical devices slIch as cars, combs, light bulbs and record players, suggesting that women are con­sidered as belonging to the natural world, while men belong to the cultural world of man-made objects. While women's sexual organs are almost never referred to by means of manufactured objects. men's sexual organs can also be referenced by natural objects; for example, penises can become birds or sticks, suggesting that men, unlike women, can straddle the natural and man-made (i.e. cultural) domains.

That women's sexual organs are substituted by items such as coconuts, onions, cotton, flame and so on is related to the common practice of referring to women as food, who are consumed by men in the sex act. This could be seen as crass sexism, with men wishing to obliterate women by consuming them, but there are also other ideas that might be resonating. First of all, fruits and vegetables are living, growing things, and hence suggest fertility - unlike manufactured items which offer no possibility of growth or repro­duction. Second, the idea of union through assimilation could simply be a male way of symbolising both fertility and completeness, and moreover, men's relationship with the natural world. By equating women with natural

224

•

C A N TA N D O L A C A M A VA ciA

objects, perhaps assimilating them somehow re-establishes men's connection with a natural world from which they are becoming increasingly alienated.

The silent voices - women in bachata

So far this discussion has revolved around perceptions of women expressed by men in bachata, and the reader may be wondering what women have to say in bachata. Very few female bachateras have recorded and become widely known; the only nationally known female bach a teras have been Melida Rodriguez (deceased) and Aridia Ventura. Interestingly enough, Melida Rodriguez, undeniably bachata's most unique and powerful female voice, emerged in the 1 960s, the genre's formative period. Unfortunately she re­corded only one LP and a few singles before she died young sometime in the late 1 960s. Nevertheless, the songs she left are truly haunting and powerful statements of a woman's experience of social and economic dislocation, which, according to Melida, was suffused with solitude and suffering. In the following song, she alludes to leaving her small hometown to go to the city, where she ends up alone, in a bar, cut off from all family supports.

'La solitaria ' by Melida Rodriguez

Yo no te quiero Til bien 10 sa bes No quiero un hombre Que me haga sufrir Me voy de tu lado Me voy para siempre Y salgo un dia No nos vol vamos a vel'

Oye mi amiga Oiga un consejo Til no sabes Lo que me ha pasado a mi Mireme los ojos Que ya no tienen I"grimas Que pOI' los hombres No se deje sufrir No tengo madre No tengo padre Ni un hennanito Que me venga a acompanar Yo vivo triste Vivo solitaria En mi barquito Yo me voy a navegar

225

I don't love you You know it well I don't want a man Who makes me suffer I'm leaving your side I'm leaving for good I'm leaving one day We won't see' each other again

Listen my [girljfriend Hear this advice You don't know What has happeneJ" to me Look at my eyes They have no more tears Don't let yourself Suffer for men I have no mother I have no father Nor even a brother To come and keep me company I live in sadness I live in solitude In my little boat I'm going to sail away

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Deje a u n pueblito Solitario Entre a una barra Y me puse a tomar Ey, cantinero Sirvame otra copa POI'que mis penas Aqui las vengo a ahogar

1 left A lonely little town I went into a bar And started to drink Hey, barman, Serve me another glass Because I've come here To drown my troubles

Significantly, most of Melida Rodriguez's songs, which she composed herself, are situated in the bar, which is highly unusual, given that most songs by her male counterparts at the time were still situated in the indef­inite and nebulous space of romantic love that I discussed above: in her songs, the bar clearly emerges as a symbol of urban alienation, Even more extraordinarily, she openly discusses her decidedly non-traditional sexuality, While she is quite clear that her sexual behaviour is independent of the constraints imposed by men or family, the nature of her sexual activity - is she a prostitute? - is nonetheless ambiguous. Her sexuality is expressed as her personal prerogative - as a means of seeking pleasure -although she admits it cannot substitute for the kind of emotional intimacy she desires:

'La trasnochadora' by Melida Rodriguez

Dicen que soy trasnochadora Porque vivo tomando de bar

en bar Lo que busco son mitad de cariiio Y dinero que me pueda remedial' Vivo en un mundo de place res Perdida en esta oscuridad Pero se la pido al infinito Que me guie por la claridad Yo no se Lo que me pasa a mi (??) que yo las tengo asi Le pido al sefior que me acompafie Y me quite este mal de mis pesares

They say I'm a nightbird Because I live drinking from

bar to bar I'm looking half for affection And money that can heal me I live in a world of pleasures Lost in this darkness But I ask the infinite To guide me to the light I don't know What's happening to me (??) I have them this way I ask the lord to stay with me And to take away this burden of

sorrows

In another song, she directly challenges traditional ideas about female sexuality, adamantly rejecting the social stigma attached to sexually active women and the equation of the 'goodness' - that is, the legitimacy - of women with the nature of their sexual activity.

226

+

•

C A N T A N D O L A C A M A VA ciA

'La su}i'ida ' by Melida Rodriguez

Va no me importa Que me digan que soy mala En esta vida Yo me siento feliz En la otra vida Que es la que llaman la buena Yo sufri mucho Y pOI' eso la cambi"

Ahora me culpan Mis amigos pOl'que ignoran Lo sufrida que yo he sido Por ser buena Yo solo se La amargura que se pasa Siendo buena Y que me culpen de mala

Yo soy mala Y seguire siendo mala Porque es mucho Que sufri pOI' ser buena Es mejor ser mala. Y parecer buena. Que ser buena Y que me culpen de mala

I don't care anymore If they tell me I'm bad In this life I feel happy In another life The one they call good I suffered a lot And that's why T changed it

Now my friends blame me Because they don't know The suffering I've endured For being good Only I know How bitter it is To be good And to be blamed for being bad

I'm bad And I'll keep being bad Because I suffered Too much for being good Its better to be bad And seem good Than to be good And be blamed for being bad

In 1 987 Aridia Ventura was the only female bachatera of national sig­nificance.' Ventura has been singing bachata since the 1 970s, but she has remained dependent on her producer, Rhadames Aracena, owner of Discos La Guarachita, throughout her recording career. In contrast, many of her male counterparts left Guarachita as soon as they established a name for themselves because Aracena pays no royalties. While she does not compose most of her songs, some of them provide an alternative viewpoint to that of male bachateros. The following song expresses a response to engmio -

so typical of bachata - but this time from the female point of view; and furthermore, it invokes the feminine sphere, the home.

'La fiesta' by Aridia Ventura

Si es cierto que te vas Voy a pedirte un favor Que revises bien la casa Lo que te vas a llevar

227

If it's true that you're going I'm asking you a favour Check the house well For what you're taking with you

\

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Que n o se te olvide nada No tcngas que regresar Y si puedes darte prisa Que voy a usar el lugar

Si es cierto que te vas Te 10 pi do por ravor No te tomes tanto tiempo Cuando vayas a empacar Que no se te olvide nada Que puedas necesitar No vaya ser que por eso Se te ocurra regresar

Si es cierto que te vas Una fiesta voy a dar POI'que la verdad sea dicha Ya no te aguantaba mas Y no intentes regresar Con mi fiesta en la mitad Que pueda ser que te atienda Quien ocupa tu lugar Si con alguien til me ves No te pongas a botear Porque rui tuya sola Y no me supiste aprovechar Puedes seguir tu camino POI' aqui no vuelvas mas Porque yo ya tengo en lista Quien ocupara tu lugar

Don't rorget anything So you won't have to come back And ir you can, hurry I'm going to use your place

If it's true you're leaving I ask you please Don't take such a long time When you pack Don't rorget anything You might need So that to get it You even consider coming back

Ir it's true you are leaving I'm going to give a party Because if the truth be said I couldn't stand you anymore And don't try to come back In the middle or my party The one who answers the door Could be the one taking your place Ir you see me with someone Don't have a fit Because I was yours once And you didn't appreciate me You can keep going Don't come back here Because I already have on the list Someone to take your place

Women's overall silence in a musical genre so obsessed with women and relationships is really extraordinary. This has nothing to do with a cultural prejudice against women making music: in ract, the Dominican Republic probably has more women making commercial popular music than any other Latin American country - and I do not mean merely singing, which is common all over Latin America, but makillg music: actually playing instru­ments and constituting the core of the musical ensemble. The Dominican Republic has had several all-women commercial orquesta merengue bands, among them Las Chicas del Can, La Media Naranja and Las Chicas del Pais; in the tipico style or merengue, both Fefita la Grande and Maria Diaz play the lead instrument - the accordion - and the ensembles take their names. While many songs sung by women merengue musicians have been written by men, others are composed by the women themselves and reflect a remale point or view. Furthermore, these women musicians orrer a highly

228

C A N T A N D D L A C A M A VA ciA

potent visual image: women playing trombones, saxophones, congas and the other instruments traditionally played only by males. In bachata, how­ever, women have not yet achieved a similar level of participation, and remain the silent subjects of men's commentary.

Summary

Several patterns emerge in bachata's discussions or love, sex and relationships with women. There is little sense or place in the songs - rarely is a specific place name mentioned or invoked, in marked contrast to other Caribbean musical genres associated with listeners of rural origins, in which place names are constantly invoked ror arrective purposes. The people in bachata songs do not seem to exist anywhere - except the bar, which, [ suggest, is a metaphor ror the urban shantytown itselr. Neither is there a sense or move­ment, or going anywhere. There is no imagery or journey, or travel, unlike other musics, such as Brazilian popular music or US country music, in which the road and trucks figure prominently. People are neither being pulled or pushed anywhere - out or home, into home, out or work, into work.

Life, as expressed in bachata songs, seems rragmentary and lacks coherence - and in that sense, these songs are thoroughly modern. The songs as texts are vignettes, brief snapshots - bites, to use contemporary jargon - that evoke salient parts of events or situations, rather than descriptive narratives that carerully develop a story over time and place. (The only exceptions are the double entendre songs, in which narrative is more a necessity as a rramework ror the word play than an end in itselr.)

Bachata songs focus on the pain of losing a woman, but the difficulties or city life are implicitly to blame. Given that both men and, women experience this pain, it seems odd that bachateros express no sense or solidarity with women, of shared social and economic trouble, as can sometimes be found in rock songs, ror example, where singers invoke the power of love to over­come economic hardship or social prejudice. Bachata expresses a.strong sense or vulnerability, betrayal, alienation and despair; yet the songs' anger is directed not at those above - the middle and upper classes - who have indeed betrayed and abandoned the poor as a class: instead, men's wrath is directed below, to a group or people - women - even more vulnerable to exploitation than men themselves. As we have seen, in bachata women are often portrayed as the aggressors and men as victims. Yet men certainly know that even if they can no longer control women as ihey once may have, in the modern world men clearly exercise more power over their lives than women. Men can, in ract, arrord the luxury or expressing vulnerability to emotional pain. Women are the silent ones; their voices are not heard, although their presence can nevertheless be relt intensely. These unresolved tensions, between owner and property, aggressor and victim, voice and silence, rreedom and control, order and chaos, are all symbolically explored in bachata.

229

M U S I C A N D SO C I A B I L I T Y

Notes

I t is important to emphasise that there arc several varieties of prostitution; not all prostitutes are 'professional' - that is they do not practice full time, and not all of them are connected with brothels. Some women act independently, and simply expect some sort of paymcnl for sexual favours. Others have some sort of arrange­ment with the owner of the bar whereby the owner receives a fee (paid by the client) for allowing the woman to work out of his establishment, but he has no control over what the couple do or where they go. SOIne bars have rooms in the back (servicio comp/eto) that can be rented for the night (para amal1ecel') or by the hour (de paso), but the women live elsewhere. Finally. there are establishments ­brothels as we tend to think of them - with women residing on the premises.

2 This and following lyric translations are mine. 3 Frith and McRobbie develop this idea in relation to rock, claiming that rock is

' . . . a necessary part of understanding how sexual feelings and attitudes are learnt' ( 1 978, p. 4).

4 In Dominican street slang, a 'mariposa de la noche' (a 'butterfly of the night') is a prostitute.

5 This song is unusual in that it makes explicit reference to a man who cannot find work, but who has found a woman he 'supports' only with his sexual activity.

6 Both the liame and the coconut have hair-like fibres on their exteriors, making their secondary meanings quite apparent.

7 There have been other women bachateras, but little is known about them and their records are difficult to locate: Leonida Alejo, Alida Liranzo, aka La Chiquitica del None (the second bachatera to emerge after Melida Rodriguez), Lisette (a very young woman recording in 1 987), and Carmen Lidia Cedeno, aka Zorangis la Soberbia (who sang with a group called Los Reyes del Este, from San Pedro de Macoris).

Bibliography

Baez, C. 1984. La Subordinacion Social de la Mujer Dominicana en Cifras (Santo Domingo)

Davis, M. 1 987. La Olra Cieneia: EI Vodti DOll1inicano Como Religion y Medieina Populares (Santo Domingo)

Duarte, I. 1980. Capitalismo y Superpoblacion en Sanlo Domingo (Santo Domingo) 1986. Trabajadores Urbanos: £nsayos sobre jilerza laborct! en Reptiblica Dominicana

(Santo Domingo) Ferran, F. 1985. 'Figuras de 10 dominicano', Ciencia y Sociedad, 10(1), pp. 5-29 Frith, S. and McRobbie, A. 1978. 'Rock and sexuality', Screen Education, 29, pp. 3-

1 9 Oliven, R . G . 1988. ' ''The woman makes (and breaks) the man": The masculine

imagery in Brazilian popular music', Latin American Music Revielv, 9(1), pp. 90-108

Pacini, D. 1989. 'Social identity and class in bachata, an emerging Dominican popular music', Lalin American Music Review, 1 0( 1 ), pp. 69-9 1

Pacini Hernandez, D. 1989. 'Music of Marginality: Social Identity and Class in Dominican Bachata', PhD dissertation, Cornell University

230

•

7 1

SOMOS E L PER U: " C UMBIA A NDINA " A N D T H E C H I L D R E N

O F A N D E A N M I G R A N T S

I N L I M A

Thomas Turino

Source: SllIdies ill La/in Americall Popular Culture 9 ( 1990): 15-37.

Introduction

A new urban-popular musical style known as cumbia (melina, tropical andina, or chicha emerged among Andean migrants, and more importantly among their teenage children, in Lima and other Peruvian cities beginning in the I 960s. It has since been diffused to urban centers throughout the country. In many respects this phenomenon parallels the evolutioI] of certain urban musical styles in Africa I and elsewhere in the fusion of traditional-rural and urban-popular components for the articulation of new social identities. Specifically, chicha incorporates the urban cumbia, aspects of the Andean wayno (or huayna), and electric instrumentation.

By 1 985, chicha had become the most ubiquitous urban-popl�lar musical form in Peru.' It is singularly disparaged by middle- and upper-class Iime/ios [residents of Lima] and considered a blight by certain "traditionalist" migrant organizations. According to Jose Antonio Llorens, chicha is also opposed by the directors of highland radio programs and migrant performers dedicated to the commercial diffusion of more traditional highland styles in Lima. It is heralded by some Peruvian intellectuals as a positive repres­entation of the "new face" of Peru,3 while others, particularly leftists, see it as politically counterprogressive. As an index for the fastest growing demographic group-the city-born children of Andean migrants-however, the importance of cumbl'a anelina is generally recognized even among its detractors. Its popularity has led to commercial mainstreaming and co-option by the media, the Peruvian government, and business concerns.

23 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Generally unconcerned about the polemics or the co-option, first- and second-generation migrants have incorporated chieha music into a broad spectrum of social occasions ranging from mass weddings in the pueb/osj6 venes [squatter settlements] to traditional Andean first haircutting ceremonies.

This essay is concerned with an analysis of the style and meaning of chiC/w, its contexts of use, as well as attitudes regarding the style among provincianos themselves (used here to mean first- and second-generation Andeans in Lima). Although ehicha is performed elsewhere in Peru, I will restrict my comments to the Lima context because of the situationally relative meaning the phenomenon might have in other locales, as well as because the style is largely diffused from the capital.

Cumbia (me/ina provides a particularly clear example of how cultural forms emanate from, express, and mediate the ambiguities of bicultural and transitional social situations where asymmetrical power relations are fun­damental in shaping identity. In stylistic and thematic terms, chicha is an iconic reproduction of the complex social self-perceptions and aspirations of many second-generation Andeans in Lima.

The analysis is based on a theoretical assumption that most social units have multiple identity bases, or features, that the members use in a criss­cross fashiOn to draw themselves together and to distinguish themselves from others. Identity bases frequently include components such as class, ethnicity, religious affiliation, occupational status, residence, age set, and so on. Since groups need to mark themselves semiotically, both for purposes of unification and distinction, it is further assumed that, typically, the major components of a style will correspond with the major identity bases in newly created-or non-anachronistic-cultural forms that serve an emblematic function. For the analysis of the "meaning" of a musical style in such circumstances, it is therefore necessary to identify all the identity bases of concern to the participants (since it is they who do the marking) rather than using one or two a priori categories such as class or el/lI1icity. I also wish to stress that emblematic cultural forms not only reflect the identity of group members, but rather, that they are important in the creation, reproduction, and evolution of group members' self-perceptions and self-definitions.

Migration and highland music ill Lima

As recently as 1940, Lima-Callao had 645, 1 72 inhabitants as compared to approximately six million in 1 984 ' Internal migration accounts for a large portion of this growth with the majority of migrants coming from the Andean highlands.' Historically, social prejudice was explicitly manifested by the dominant criol/o [New-World Hispanic] group against Andean migrants in the capital. Consequently, a denial of highland heritage and attempted assimilation into criol/o society was the primary strategy for upward mobility before the 1960s.' For this reason, the presence of highland music in Lima

232

S O M a S EL P E R U

prior to the 1950s was negligible as was the use of other semiotic markers that would publicly identify the migrants as Andeans.

The demographic shift compounded by a growing economic crisis in the country led to major political changes around the General Juan Velasco period ( 1 968-1975). In seeking popular participation and support for their socioeconomic reforms, the government took certain actions that aided the legitimization of Andean culture in Lima.' In the realm of language, for example, Escobar describes the process of making Quechua an official national language during the Velasco period ' The government also required radio stations to devote more time to Peruvian music, thus fostering greater diffusion of certain highland forms such as "urban-country" waynos. After democratic rule returned in 1980, the large migrant population was perceived by politicians as an important voting block.

In economic terms, the huge number of highlanders in the city led to a boom of migrant-owned and operated businesses in the informal sector, and it also provided a market to support them. This reduced the Andeans' dependence on eriol/o-controlled employment and fostered an alteration in prior power relations. In addition, experience with trade unions and other grassroots self-help movements generated a greater organizational sophistica­tion among the migrants by the 1960s '

Although many migrants still attempted to integrate themselves into eriol/o society, a partial shift away from the assimilationist pattern to the greater role of migrant regional associations for bolstering highlander identity and unity became a prominent social strategy by the 1970s among lower-class migrants.

As more highlanders came, lower- and working-class migrants increasingly stressed the specific sierra district or community of origin as the identity base around which associations and self-help networks were formed. Signi­ficantly, in many cases the performance of traditional highland musical styles from the region in question took on a central unifying and emblematic function W Migrants from the southern sierra state of Puno, for example, began performing their local indigenous-styled panpipe music ii, Lima after 1970 just as the "scissors dance" with harp and violin blossomed among Ayaeuehano [from the department of Ayacucho] migrants . "

The growing presence of indigenous Andean musical forms i n Lima is interpreted by migrants and eriol/os alike as an indicator of the weakening of eriol/o sociocultural hegemony." Since musical styles (as well as speech styles, clothing styles, etc.) index group identity and derive their status and acceptance from that of the social group with which they are associated, changes in power relations are frequently indicated by changes in levels of diffusion and acceptance accorded different cultural forms. In dialectical fashion, this situation strengthens the self-confidence, unity, and thus power of subordinate units in the on-going competition with the dominant group."

233

M U S I C A N D SOC I A B I L I T Y

This is not to say, however, that criol/o cultural hegemony is now inoperative. Harking back to traditional criol/o criteria ror success, ror example, many first-generation migrants stress education and attainment or proressional (white collar) status ror their children and, thus to a certain degree, assimilation into the dominant society. This is not the path that most first generation migrants have taken because or a realistic assessment or their possibilities. Yet with their belier in hard work and with their internalization or criol/o definitions or success, they set 'higher' goals ror their children." The children or migrants have internalized these aspira­tions as well, but still find the opportunity structure within the dominant society to be largely closed.

Identity among the second generation

While many first-generation migrants continue to identiry themselves primarily in terms or their highland place or birth, and thus stress the emblematic importance or its musical traditions, their Lima-born children find themselves in a more ambiguous position. Once at a migrant associ­ation function I asked an unfamiliar young man where he was from. He answered: "My rather is rrom Puno and my mother is rrom Huancayo [a city in the central Andes]. I do not know where I am rrom. I was born in Lima, I suppose I am rrom here." Another Lima-born son or pW1eIio [rrom Puno] parents told me that he sometimes encountered prejudice rrom his limeno classmates who considered him a pUl1elio (with the negative connotation or Indian heritage). He went on to relate how his parents and other puneno rriends and relatives considered him to be limelio because or his place or birth. His own selr-perception straddled these two social perceptions, but len him with a reeling or not rully belonging anywhere.

It is important to remember that the distinction between highlander and limelio birthplace and identity carry the weight or a larger ethnic/class identity complex that determines rank in the social hierarchy. Criol/os, or what­ever class, attempt to maintain a distinction between themselves and people or highland heritage." Thus, while assimilating limeno ways to a greater degree than their parents in terms or speech and interactional styles, values, and worldview, second-generation pl'ovincianos continue to be defined as highlanders by criol/os, and limeiios by sierra-born migrants.

The lire experience or second-generation provincianos contributes to this situation. Many live in pueblos j6venes which are basically highland-migrant settiements around the city. They are surrounded by prOl'incianos rrom all over the sierra, but they continually come in contact with eriol/os in schools and the workplace, and with urban culture in its provincial1o and l-Tiol/o variants. Not belonging completely in either sphere, the obvious response is an identification with people in the same situation and the rorging or a new identity unit ror which cumbia anelina has become the primary emblem.

234

S O M O S EL P E R U

As should be apparent rrom the previous discussion, the identity bases or this group include: age set among teenagers and people in their twenties; urban birth and/or residence; a pan-highland heritage (with an ethnic/class compon­ent); and lower/working class status. The value orientation and worldview include eriol/o definitions or success and the assimilation or limeiio behavioral, speech, and interactional patterns rused with the provinciano belier in, and capacity ror, hard work. These elements as well as the identity bases are all clearly reproduced in the song texts and musical style or cumbia andina.

Cllmbill lllldilla: background and style

As in most cities in Latin America, the cumbia, which had evolved from an Arro-Colombian rural tradition into an urban popular rorm," became extremely popular in Lima by the 1960s. In that decade, various proressional ensembles comprised or provincial1os began to play cumbias and other IInlsica tropical [tropical music] basically in its standard urban-popular style." International Latin-American popular styles, and the cLlmbia in particular, had become an index or urbanism particularly ror migrants rrom the high­lands. Doughty, ror example, notes that in 1 966 and 1 967, the Colombian cumbia was by far the most popular music at the migrant association dances that he observed in Lima."

Gradually during this early period certain aspects and accents or sierra music began to be incorporated by ensembles playing m!lsica tropical. One or the first ensembles to do so was a provil1ciano group rrom the highland state or Junin, "Los demonios del Mantaro" ["The Devils rrom Mantaro"], who sold 200,000 copies or a hit called "La Chichera" [Chic//{{ seller]; chicha rerers to the indigenous Andean corn beer. According to some SOl)rCeS, the name ror the music was taken rrom this song title, and a movement was identified." Also in the late 1960s and early 1970s, American and British rock music became popular with the younger generation in Peru. These three elements: urban-Latin music in the form of cumbia, Andean musical res,purces, and the electric instrumentation or rock music, coalesced into a single style.

Presently, chieha ensembles are characterized by lead and rhythm electric guitars, electric bass, electric organ, a trap set, a timbales and/or conga player, one or more lead vocalists (who may double on percussion such as giiiro or bell), and, ror wealthier groups, synthesizer. The use or the "wa-wa" pedal, "fuzz tone," heavy echo effects, and synthesized "video­game" sounds are central characteristics' or the style.

The rhythm section primarily plays the parts as would be done in a typical urban-cumbia ensemble. Two-four, three-four, and six-eight patterns are juxtaposed or superimposed within an overall binary meter, and the rhythmic gestalt, usually marked by the giiiro, timbales, or bell part emphasizes the upbeat while the bass marks the downbeat as well as sometimes plays syn­copated patterns (Appendix, Example I ) . I n particular, the chic//{{ timbales

235

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

player either imitates the sound of the cumbia gtiiro pattern with brushes on the drum head, or the bell pattern using rim-shots or mounted double bells.

As in cumbia performance, the f11 figure is prominent. The urban cumbia,

then, is clearly the rhythmic/metric underpinning for the chicha style. Andean influences in chicha are derived from the mestizo lVayno which is

the most ubiquitous song genre in the highlands (Appendix, Example 2). With the advent of migration to Peruvian cities it was this genre, rather than more indigenous forms, that first became widely diffused by commercial "country singers" in the 1 950s and I 960s .'0 The mestizo wayno thus became the most prominent musical index for highland culture among members of the dominant society and for people in Lima generally.

Just as cumbia provides the rhythmic/metric basis for chicha music, the 1I'0yno supplies central features in the melody and phrase structure. Tn addition, chicha groups make direct iconic references to highland musical culture. For example, a second generation puncHo proudly noted that in certain songs by the best-known chicha group, Los Shapis, the synthesizer part imitates the sound of panpipes (an instrument strongly associated with highland Puno). Their hit song "Somos Estudiantes" ["We Are Students"] (Appendix, Example 3), begins with an introduction in this fashion. The melodic phrase of the introduction mirrors the mestizo lI'ayno in the prominent use of the In rhythmic figure, the use of a minor pentatonic scale, and in melodic movement (compare Examples 2 and 3 in Appendix).

In this chicha song, vocal phrase A is repeated twice, and uses the same melodic material heard in the introduction but with a simpler rhythmic treatment. The cumbia rhythm section enters after two statements of the A phrase. Two vocal phrases follow comprising an AA, BC, BC form with phrase A cadencing on E, phrase B cadencing on B, and phrase C cadencing on G. This use of phrase cadence pitches alternately, suggesting a major and minor tonality, is another feature based on the highland lI'ayno. In general, cumbia andina songs commonly incorporate lVayno-derived phrase structures such as this one, or others including: AA, BC; AA BB; and AA, BB.

The overall form of chicha pieces is either strophic like the lVayno or exhibits a verse-chorus structure, and instrumental interludes are usually inserted between verses. In "Somos Estudiantes" the rhythmic figures m--...n. and Qfl heard in phrases B and C also indicate 1I'0yno

influence as does the melodic shape, phrase length, and the insertion of an extra beat at the final cadence (again, compare Examples 2 and 3 in Appen­dix). In sum, then, a variety of major features of chicha song structure is derived from the pre-existing wayno genre.

Although many contemporary cumbia andina songs are new compositions which fuse elements from the cumbia and waylto genres, it is not uncommon to hear traditional mestizo waynos such as Cusco's " Va/icha" played in

236

+

S O M a S EL PER U

Cllmbia rhythm. One recording by Los Shapis features a medly of lI'aynos in chicha style, and the piece begins with the use of a charango [a small stringed instrument associated with Andean musical culture]. The lVaynos chosen were particularly well-known emblem pieces for various highland states in an attempt to appeal to feelings of regional identity as well as to fuse a pan-highland unity as is explained below.

The shift from the lI'aylto to the cumbia rhythm is easily accomplished because of their basic similarity. The rhythmic underpinning of the lVayno falls between an eighth-two sixteenth note figure, and an eighth-note triplet (marked m in Example 4) with a heavy accent falling on the first eighth

. ,

note. The defining rhythmic pattern of the urban cllmbia (usually played by a giiiro or a bell) is also an eighth-two sixteenth note figure but with the accent falling on the first sixteenth note. The basic resemblance between the two rhythms may be one reason for the easy incorporation of the cwnbia into Andean migrant musical culture.

The fusing of elements from the cumbia (an index of urbanism) and the wayno (the highland musical emblem par excellence) is a clear iconic repro­duction of second generation migrant identity. The third aspect of the style, electric instrumentation associated with rock, is related to the fact that chicha is a music for young people who are striving for modernity. The flexible, multi leveled nature of musical forms makes them particularly apt media for publicly articulating complex combinations of indices and images as the cumbia anc/;na example illustrates.

Chicha groups reflect another aspect of second-generation identity: its pan-highland character. Thus, while performers and regional associations among first-generation migrants stress their exact place of origin, e.g., Centro Social Conima [Conima Social Center], or Paisanita Ancasliina, chicha groups stress regional neutrality and unity. For example, Los Shapis are billed as "Los Shapis del Peru," and the wayno medley discussed above also reflects the pan-highland identification. In addition, this characteristic is illustrated by radio programming in Lima. Highland music shows aimed'"at the first generation increasingly address specific groups: the 'punel1o colony [in Lima],' or the 'countrymen of Cusco.' The announcers on tropical Gndina shows, however, constantly address the 'people of Peru' as a whole.

The song texts

Like popular music directed at young audiences in many places, the vast majority of chicha song texts (sung in Spanish) deal with love and usually unrequited love; for example: "I have a great sorrow inside / because 1 have no one to love / because I have no one to tell this to / I am tormented by my loneliness / for this reason I drink bad liquor / to see if I can forget everything / for this reason I drink bad liquor / to see if I can forget you

237

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

woman" (Vico y s u Grupo Karicia [Vico and His Group Karess] ). Other songs like "Love Me," "Because I Love You," l'Ideal Love," and "Come, my Love" (Chacalon y La Nueva Crema [Chacalon and New Cream], Volume 2) are typical.

A number of songs, however, address social issues related to the class and occupational status of provincianos in Lima as well as their aspirations. Two songs by Los Shapis will illustrate the point. The first, "Ambulante Soy" ["I am a Street Vendor"], speaks to the huge group of provinciallos who work as street vendors in the city. It also defines their situation in class terms.

Ay yay yay yay yay How sad is life Ay yay yay yay yay How sad i t is to dream

Chorus I am an ambulante. 1 am a proletarian. 1 am an ambulante. I am a proletarian.

Verse

Selling shoes. Selling food. Selling jackets. Supporting my home [family].

Chorus repeated Verse repeated

The simplicity of the lyrics and of the music itself is often criticized by people of the middle and upper classes in Lima as being "mindless" and " artless." For example, one commentator for the uppercrust magazine Care/as [Masks} calls chicha "poor" and "monotonous" resulting from a "lack of culture." He writes: "Almost all the [chicha musicians] play by car, and for the most part these ears like noise and monotony."" The disparagement of chicha by the upper classes, like their rejection of Andean music previously, is largely an articulation of prejudicial attitudes towards the highland social group that is associated with it. In addition, the directness and concrete quality of chicha lyrics strongly conflict with criollo aesthetics that favor more elaborate, and often flowery, speech style and poetry, just as the repetitive nature of the music is out of keeping with the urban-Western preference for greater contrasts.

Nonetheless, on one occasion, I was struck by the importance of even so simple a message as the one provided in "Ambulante Soy" while listening to it with a provinciano friend. During the chorus, he turned to me with evident

238

+

+

S O M a S EL P E R U

pride and said, "Ambulante soy, they are singing about us." Although this person does not work as an ambulanle, it was clear that he identified with the people who do, and the fact that they were being recognized in a popular song seemed to mean a great deal to him.

Another Shapis song, "Somas Estudiantes" ["We are Students"] echoes the aspirations of second generation provinciallos. With youthful idealism the song expresses the notion that through education and professional status, this group will achieve the power to shape their own destiny and that of their country. While a certain challenge to the existing criollo power structure is implicit, in that prol'incianos are perceived as an up-and-coming force, the importance placed on education and professional occupations derives from internalizing criollo values.

Chorus We are students. We are Peru. We are students. We are Peru.

Verse We are teachers For our children. Doctors we will be For the orphans.

We are engineers For our country. We are architects Of our destiny.

(Repeat Chorus)

We are lawyers Of the poor. •

Songs such as "Pequeno Luchador" ["Little Fighter"] by Grupo Alegria describe the real-life situations of lower-class migrants, and the urban under­class generally, with touching clarity:

It is a small child That runs through the city Hawking advertisements that will sell.

Little boy with dirty face, Little fighter, Your hands now know What it means to work.

239

\

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Hawking advertisements, You go without ceasing. In your house, Your mother is waiting.

Little boy with dirty face, Little fighter, Your hands now know What it means to work.

In sum then, some chicha song texts, like the music itself, articulate the concerns, idcntity, and experiences of migrant families. Most appeal to adolescent interest in love, but others, like the ones discussed above realitic­ally express the economic position and occupational status of pro:incianos, and the lower classes generally, in Lima. Such songs faithfully depict their hard times as well as their hopes. The fact that chicha neither meets upper­class definitions of fine poetry nor leftists' desires for a revolutionary vehicle IS melevant to thc chicha fans who see themselves in what is sung.

Performance contexts

As reported by Salcedo, cumbia andina groups currently "sell more records than Julio Iglesias and Michael Jackson combined, not to mention [more than] recordings of valses [criollos], or even of huaynos of the central sierra" (i.e., Ancash and Junin).12 Although statistical evidence for this statement was not provided, chicha records are indeed widely diffused, as are the even greater number of pirate chic/w tapes sold." In conjunction with record production, radio stations that program highland music have also begun to dedicate time to cumbia anclina in recent years (see note 2). Some of the wealthier groups even lease radio time to air their own records on a regular basis.

An important aspect of the cumbia (Indina phenomenon, however, centers around the live performances that occur every Sunday afternoon in the "popular" (i.e., poorer) areas of the city such as on Avenida Mexico and the carretera celltral [central road], and in the pueblos jovenes. Walled-in vacant lots have been converted into "chichodromos" ["chicha-drames"] complete with stage, large PA system, cement dance floor and stalls to sell soda, beer, and food. For the most part, only young people attend these ''fiestas de cMcha" ["chic//{I parties"]. They are largely second generation provincianos, but some young, recently-arrived migrants also participate. The chic!Jeros are from the lower and working classes. They are students as well as domestic servants, ambulantes, and laborers. As many as 500 to 1 ,000 can attend a tYPICal event, and their dedication to these fiestas is all the more salient in light of the costly entrance fees for the better-known groups.

240

S O M a S EL PER U

On stage the cumbia anclina ensemblcs perform the chic/w genre as well as rock numbers, salsa, boleros, and even occasionally a valse. While per­formll1g, the ensemble does different variations of a group choreography 111 colorful, modern, ul1lform dress. As the fiesta progresses, the majority of teenagers in attendance dance in couples in a very subdued style unique to the chicheros. This includes a shuffle step, slight movement of the arms with hardly any motion of the hips. The straight body position is more reminiscent of highland dancing than of the more sensuous criollo styles or urban cumbia.

In addition to these jiestas de chicha, cumbia andina groups are also sometimes hired to play at the religious fiestas and social events of first­generation migrant regional associations. Typically, occasions organized by associations of a given region feature music specifically from their highland home. Cumbia cmdina groups sometimes perform at the end of these events however, to "involve the children of migrants."24 Indeed such inducement� are necessary since the children of migrants generally show little interest in the folkloric music and activities organized by their parents' regional aSSOCiatIOns.

In 1 985, a wedding in the pueblo joven Villa Salvador was witnessed in which three hundred couples, primarily provinciallos, were wed en masse for reasons of economy. A chic/w band provided the music after the ceremony and opened wIth the "Blue Danube Waltz," traditional for the first dance at c,.iollo weddings. Since the couples hailed from all over the sierra, the use of regionally specific highland music was not possible, and cumbia andilla served as a common denominator which is regionally neutral but still associated with pl'ovinciano identity,25

Among the first-generation puneiio migrant associa,tions with whom research was conducted in 1984-1986, chicha records were commonly played during a wide variety of social events. The occasions included birthday parties, first hair-cutting ceremonies, roof-raising fiestas, and weddings. Indigenous-styled panpipe ensembles, affiliated with the associations, were the musical mainstay for dancing and entertainment. During

"ihe migrant

musicians' rest periods, however, chicha records were played most frequently, followed by recordll1gs of urban-lVaynos fram the central sierra and Colom­bian cumbias. This indicates an acceptance of chicha among first-generation migrants; and with a few exceptions, most of the lowerlworking-class pune/los who were questioned stated that they liked the style.

Well-known chicha groups such as Los Shapis and Alegria are being used by the current APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) govern­ment in propaganda campaigns aimed at provincianos in support of variolls social programs. Chiclw performances have been included in cultural events organized by President Alan Garcia's government, including several at the national palace, as a sign of their solidarity with the large provinciano population. The government's decision to use chiclw is based in its regionally

241

\

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

neutral character while at the same time being associated with prollincianos in general. (To use a specific highland regional style would alienate migrants from other regions.)

Finally, the growing economic power and consumer potential of the provil1cial1o population is evidenced by the increasing use of chicha music for commercial advertising. Whereas until recently television was entirely dedicated to upper- and middle-class audiences, a 1985 TV ad in Lima features Los Shapis whose members sing, dance, and invite all the cholitas [Indians, prol'incianas] to come and save at a particular bank "where dividends are the highest." This ad clearly illustrates the mainstreaming and co-option of provinciano cultural manifestations which is criticized by Peruvian leftists and more politicized migrant groups. The com­mercial marketing of chic/w groups and their recordings by the music industry, however, represents the most obvious form of exploitation of the style.

Summary aud conclusions

The swelling population of second-generation Andeans in Lima has led to the growing importance of cumbia andina as a commercial and cullural phenomenon. [n terms of sheer numbers, Los Shapis' declaration aimed at second-generation provincianos, "Somes el Peru" ["We are Peru"], is indeed accurate. Unlike their parents, however, the members of the second generation have yet to organize themselves into specific associations for mutual aid or sociopolitical action. They comprise a much more loosely knit identity unit with little political cohesion or direction. Given the dom­inant society's opportunity structure and the second generation's desire to enter it , Los Shapis' idealistic call for shaping their own destiny in "Somos Estudiantes" seems hollow in the absence of alternative strategies for rcalizing this goal.

In this context, and in regard to the fatalistic and assimilationist messages in some of the lyrics, leftist critics claim that chicha does not serve as a positive model for social action. Certain politicized migrant groups assert that it corrupts traditional Andean music, steals attention and radio time from more traditional forms, and diminishes the symbolic advances made by diffusing indigenous musical styles in the city." These positions are understandable, and yet the music, as this article has tried to show is nothing more than an iconic reproduction of the attitudes and iden; ity of the second generation. Therefore, the critique of the music is really a misdirected critique of the group itself.

In the last assessment, chicha is, to lise Charles Keil's terms, "a people's music," in that it faithfully articulates the nature of the group that produces and enjoys it, as well as fulfills a variety of needs." Speaking of the import­ance of cumbia andina, a punel10 migrant observed:

242

•

S O M O S EL P E R U

Chicha is the new wave of music among migrants in Lima. At one time it was the music of people like Pastorita Huaracina [a commercial-huayno singer from Ancash]. Now many of the pro­vincianos are no longer from the sierra, and they are not from the city either [referring to the second generation]. Chicha has become popular because with it they can become involved with city music without having to give up the lI'ayno totally."

Here he quite clearly pinpoints the ambiguous and transitional situation of second-generation provincianos in Lima. He also astutely analyzes why the particular synthesis of wayno and cumbia so adequately fills the bill for this group.

In addition to the use of the lVayno and cllmbia that serve as identity-base indices, the electric instrumentation and the love lyrics correspond with the age set component, just as the pan-highland identification of chicha bands indicates this feature of the identity unit. The song texts discussed here clearly articulate central values and life experiences of pl'ovincianos in Lima. That these messages and the style as a whole have been taken to heart by both first- and second-generation prol'incianos is clear from the inclusion of chicha into the variety of contexts that have been described.

By now the fusing of elements from the cumbia and lVayno has become organic. In some cases, the manipulation of cultural indices-as with the pan-highland lI'ayno medley discussed earlier, or the use of panpipe sounds-appears to be the result of conscious strategic decisions on the part of musicians seeking wide audience appeal. It is a moot point whether provinciano musicians initially created the chicha style as the result of such strategic manipulation, or because of the normal proce�s of externalizing -in an observable cultural form-a set of internalized dispositions that evolved from their objective life experiences. Most likely both aspects were involved, and a dialectic between the audience's and musicians' aesthetics, needs, and goals may be assumed. ..

What is theoretically important, however, is that once the style began to emerge, its concrete and repeated articulation in a public arena began to define and shape internalized self-perceptions and dispositions among performers and audience alike. In turn, the style, at the formal level, con­tinued to evolve out of the changing set of internalized dispositions of its creators and audience. This circular process-of externalizing internalized dispositions at the level of form and continually shaping the dispositions by internalizing the "models" presented in the forms-is fundamental to sociocultural reproduction and dynamism." In this light, the continual public presentation of a hybrid form such as c"icha mediates the ambiguities of bi-cultural identity by creating an observable synthesis that is again inter­nalized and that, having become part of the objective conditions, provides a model for the self-definition and self-perception of individuals. Thus, in a

243

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

very important sense, cumbia (tndina helps to create and reproduce the social identity that it iconically represents.

Notes

See Christopher A. Waterman, "Juju: The Historical Development, Socioeco­nomic Organization, and Communicative Functions of a West African Popular Music" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1 986); David Coplan, 111 Townsh ip TOllight! South Africa's Black City Music (Ind Theao'e (London: Longman Press, 1985).

2 The research for this paper, conducted in Peru between November 1984 and July 1986, was supported by a Fulbright Fellowship, which is gratefully acknow­ledged. The major part of the work was conducted in Lima with Aymara migrants from the southern highland stale of PUIlO, and in Conima. Puna, their district of origin. The description of cumbia ellie/ilia provided here thus pertains to the time prior to, and during, the research. Recent data supplied in a 1988 personal communication from Jose Antonio Llorens, a scholar of Peruvian media, suggests that the chicha phenomenon may have peaked during the 1985-86 period. This is indicated by radio time in Lima dedicated to chic/Ill which declined "on a typical weekday" from 37.7 percent in 1985 to 28.6 percent in 1987. During a brief trip to Peru in the summer of 1988, this writer also had the general im­pression that the excitement surrounding chic/w had waned somewhat, although time constraints and another research focus prohibited a probe for verification or explanations. As a working hypothesis, however, the generally slicker, more commercial character of some of the new groups emerging after 1986 suggests that the co-option and mainstreaming of the style may be contributing to its decline as a "subculture" identity emblem, and hence to its diminished popular­ity. This is certainly a typical phenomenon in the realm of urban popular musics; see Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1986).

3 Jose Matos Mar, Desborde popular y crisis del eslCtdo (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1 984).

4 Narda Henriquez, et ai., Lima pob/acioll, lrabajo y politica (Lima: Ponti/leia Universidad Cat6lica de Perll, 1985), pp. 12; Matos, p. 67.

5 Jose Matos Mar, Urbemizacion y barriae/as en America del sur: Recopilaci6n e/e eSludios realizae/os enlre 1956 y 1966 (Lima: Institutos de Estudios Peruanos, 1968), p. 22; Henry Dietz, Who, How, alld Why: Rura/ Migrmion 10 Lima (Cam­bridge: MIT Center for International Studies, 1 976), p. 10.

6 Richard Schaedel, "From Homogenization to Heterogenization in Lima, Peru," U,.ball Allth,.opology, 8 ( 1979): 399-420; Thomas Turino, "Power Relations, Identity and Musical Choice: Music in a Peruvian Altiplano Village and Among its Migrants in the Metropolis" (Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 1987); Turino, "The Music of Andean Migrants in Lima, Peru: Demographics, Social Power, and Style," Lalifl American Music Review, 9 ( 1 988): 127-1 50.

7 Schaedel, p. 408. 8 Alberto Escobar, Jose Matos Mar, and Giorgio Alberti, Pellll: iPais bilingiie?

(Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peru an os, 1975), pp. 6 1-74. 9 Douglas Uzzell, "Cholos and Bureaus in Lima," Internalional Journa/ of

Comparative Sociology, 1 5 ( 1 974): 143-1 50; Uzzell, "Mixed Strategies and the Informal Sector: Three Faces of Reserve Labor," J-Juman Organization, 39 ( 1 980): 40-49.

244

S O M a S EL P E R U

1 0 Regular highland music radio programming began in the 1950s as a manifesta­tion of increased Andean presence and social power in the capital. Indicating the growth of regional specificity, in 1970, 36 percent of the titles for Andean music programs referred to Peru in general, 28 percent to the "provinces" in general, and 36 percent to the Andes in general, with no specific regional programs being aired. By 1 9 8 1 , 20 percent of the program titles maintained the general "Peru" identification, and only 14 percent referred to the Andes in general terms. By that year. 52 percent of the Andean music programs were dedicated to specific high­land regions. As another example, by the 1980s the pan-Andean performance contexts controlled by urban entrepreneurs in the 1950s and I 960s (coliseos) gave way to events-controlled by migrant organizations-that only featured the music identified with their highland home, such as panpipe music from Puno and the "scissors dance" from Ayacllcho. Sec Jose Antonio Llorens, "Los 'pro­gram as folk16ricos' en la radio difusi6n limcfia," Materia/es para la cOl11unicacion poplIla,., 6 ( 1 985): 1-16.

t t Lucy Nunez, "La virgencia de la danza de las tijeras en Lima metropolitana" (Masters thesis, Ponti/icia Universidad Cat61ica del Peru, 1985).

12 Antonio Gramsci, Selectiolls/rom tlte Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York: I nternational Publishers, 1 97 1 ), p. 12.

13 Turino, "The Music of Andean Migrants." 14 Susan Lobo, A House of My OWII: Social Orgallizmioll in Squaller Selt/ements

in Lima, Peru (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982); William Mangin, "Similarities and Differences Between Two Types of Peruvian Communities," Peasants ill Cilies, ed. William Mangin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1 970), pp. 20-6 1 ; Mangin, "Sociological, Cultural, and Political Characteristics of Some Urban Migrants in Peru," Urban Anthropology, ed. Aidan Southall (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 325-349; Dietz, Who. HoII', and Wiry.

1 5 Richard W. Patch, "La Parada, Lima's Market, Parts I, I I , and III ," West Coast SOUlh America Series, 14 ( 1 967).

1 6 George List, Music and Poetry ill a Colombian Vii/age: A Tri-Cultura/ Heritage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983).

1 7 Jaime Razuri, "La Chicha: Identidad chola cn la gran ciudad," Dehme, 24 ( 1 983): 72-76, see p. 72.

18 Paul Doughty, "Behind the Back of the City: 'Provincial' Life in Lima, Peru," Peasants ill Cilies, ed. William Mangin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1 970), pp. 30-45, see p. 40.

19 Razuri, p. 72. 20 See Turino, "Power Relations," and "The Music of Andean Migrtftlts." 2 1 Fernando Ampuero, "El tsunami de la chicha," Caretas, 831 ( 1 984): 64-67, see

66. 22 Jose Maria Salcedo, "EI Peru informal," Qluilracer, 3 1 ( 1 984): 75-97, see 88; see

also Ampuero, 65. 23 Turino, "The Music of Andean Migrants." 24 NUI;ez, p. 120. 25 The use of the "Blue Danube Waltz" at this and other migrant weddings the

author observed indicates an assimilation of aiollo custom by both first and second generation proJlil1cianos.

26 Jose Antonio Llorens has suggested that the performers and radio announcers involved in the commercial highland music industry, many of whom are migrants themselves, are critical of chicha groups because of their use of pre-existing lIIaynos without compensating the alleged composers. The issue becomes complex because of the similarity of many waynos, as well as because many professional urban

245

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

highland music performers derive material frol11 the public domain, or from unknown composers in the sierra themselves. The stealing of musical material undoubtedly goes on, but it should be pointed out that this is not unique to the chicha musicians. It seems likely that a major, although unstated, objection to chicha among those whose self-interest is tied to the highland music industry emerges over issues of market competition.

27 Charles Keil. "People's Music Comparatively: Style and Stereotype, Class and Hegemony," Dialectical Anthropology, 10 ( 1 985): 1 1 9-1 30.

28 Turino, Field Notebook 2: 12/22/84. 29 Pierre Bourdieu, Ou/line of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1977).

2. 4

Appendix for musical examples

o r

0 '-

Example / Cumbia GiiifO and Bass Patterns.

246

-

S O M a S EL P E R U

•

� ::;:3 '" '2 � " .,. � " u .� �

'Z :; Co � U , ..

� � <:>

"" � '" � � <:l

247

\

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

r"' ...... "' .

ill CPI ,1)1 iJJ !T11Ji

�* n p I J J I Jl nl; 311

�" (¥ ! u I J] CQfo' j J Id J 1&.1 � :11 Example 3 ChicJw Song by Los Shapis: "Somos Estudiantes".

m m ) rn rn 7 3 > J 7

Example 4 Rhythmic Shift from the Wayno to CumNa.

248

•

72

NAT I ON A L I S M O N S TAGE :

M U S I C A N D C H A N G E I N

S OV I ET U KR A I N E

Catherine Wanner

Source: M. Slobin (ed.) ( 1996) Retullil1g Cliliure: Musical Challge ill Cel/lral and Eastem Europe. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 1 36-55.

Exactly eight days before the failed coup of 1 99 1 , which brought down the Soviet regime and unraveled the Soviet Empire, a Ukrainian nationalist song festival opened in a highly Russified region of Ukraine. Through the medium of music and the intercultural connections it provides, the Chervona Ruta I Music Festival showcased aspects of the Ukrainian historical experience that had been suppressed, marginalized, or discredited by the Soviet regime. In this Russified area of Ukraine, the festival became a site of transmission of an unofficial past, a past that glorified Ukraine and its suffering under Soviet rule. By portraying an alternative historical interpretation not sanctioned by the Soviet state, organizers of the fest­ival hoped to raise Ukrainian national consciousness among a primarily Russian-speaking population and challenge Soviet power by recruiting con-verts to the nationalist cause.

-.

In 1 989 the first Chervona Ruta Music Festival was held in Chernivtsi in western Ukraine.2 Because the western provinces were annexed to Soviet Ukraine by Stalin's Red Army only during World War II , Soviet culture was imported much later. Therefore, Ukrainians in western Ukraine managed to keep alive national histories and to continue using the Ukrainian language to a greater degree than in eastern Ukraine in spite of the Russification policies implemented by the Soviet regime following annexation. Chervona Ruta was the name of an immensely popular love song written by Volodymyr Ivasiuk, a pop culture icon. The song was a top hit played throughout the former Soviet Union and was widely known by Russians and Ukrainians alike. Ivasiuk was frequently persecuted by Soviet authorit­ies, and in 1 973 he was found hung in Chernivtsi. The authorities claimed

249

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

that he committed suicide, but it was widely believed that he was murdered by the KGB. Holding the festival in Chernivtsi, the town where Ivasiuk was born and died, and naming the festival after his most renowned song created much emotionally charged symbolic capital.

A rendition of the song "Chervona Ruta" opened the festival, with many in the audience singing along. Featuring traditional folk balladeers and Ukrainian rock, this initial festival was a celebration of Ukrainian culture and aimed to promote the Ukrainian national revival that was already underway. Kobza, a Ukrainian-Canadian joint-venture company and one of the festival's main sponsors, insisted that all songs be sung in Ukrainian. The festival was considered a raging success and generated considerable momentum and support for Rukh, the Ukrainian Popular Movement for Restructuring. The festival followed on the heels of Rukh's inaugural con­gress, which was held 8-10 September 1989 in Kiev. Within a year of the festival, Rukh emerged as a burgeoning umbrella opposition movement that effectively united a variety of national, ecological, gender-, and religion­based anti-Soviet groups under the banner of U krainian independence.

Technology has given the first Chervona Ruta Music Festival a multiple and long-lasting life. The 1989 festival was videotaped and recorded. In addition to being sold in Ukraine, the audio and video recordings were widely marketed to the Ukrainian community in the West. From the comfort of their living rooms, through the medium of music, diaspora Ukrainians took part in the struggle for Ukrainian independence and thereby reaffirmed their Ukrainian origins and commitment to an independent Ukrainian state.

This initial success coincided with the increasing vulnerability of the Soviet state, as the policy of glasnost unleashed an unforeseen barrage of heated criticism of the Soviet system. This combination of factors influenced the decision to move the next festival to eastern Ukraine, where a Ukrainian music festival would find a less receptive audience. In 199 1 , Chervona Ruta was held in Zaporizhzhia, a provincial, industrial, highly Russified, Communist Party stronghold. Throughout the Soviet era this region was heralded as the "cradle of the proletariat." Although the political and cultural realities of this region in Ukraine were comparatively inhospitable to a Ukrainian nationalist song festival, Zaporizhzhia is a rich site of his­torical myth and legend. Choosing Zaporizhzhia, the historic "homeland" of the Cossacks, as the second location for the festival held out the promise of softening local antagonism to a nationalist agenda by evoking the appeal of historical nostalgia through the medium of music.

Using the intercultural allure of music, the festival provided the possibility of extending membership in the Ukrainian nation to Russians, Jews, and Russified Ukrainians-all of whom knew by heart the words to the famous song "Chervona Ruta." The term Russified Ukrainian refers to those living in Ukraine who are Ukrainian by nationality but who speak Russian as a

250

N A T I O N A L I S M ON S T A G E , M U S I C A N D C H A N G E

first language. Most of the Ukrainian population is bilingual. However many in the large urban centers and in eastern and southern Ukraine have at best a passive knowledge of Ukrainian.' Although the atmosphere at the second music festival established sharp boundaries between Ukraine and Moscow in an anti-Soviet tenor, the essentialist "we" that it posited was an inclusiv­ist one, which hinged largely on the intercultural connection of music. Ironically, the festival closed the day before the coup attempt on 19 August 199 1 , which led to the demise of the Soviet state. This Chervona Ruta Festival was the last event orchestrated by Ukrainian nationalist groups in an oppositional mode to Soviet rule.

The beat of the nation

The opening performance of the 1 99 1 Chervona Ruta festival presented a barrage of symbols, derived from both a reinterpretation of the past and a reassessment of the present, in a highly charged political context. The performers tried to channel the anti-Soviet feelings of anger and disillusion­ment into hopes for empowerment by advocating Ukrainian independence as a save-all strategy to the ills currently plaguing their society. By present­ing symbols of what an independent Ukrainian state would stand for, in contrast to its nemesis the Soviet Union, nationalist supporters hoped to generate enthusiasm for Ukrainian independence among an alienated, Russified population.

Riding the wave of new-found popular interest in the spiritual world and emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between religion and nationalism, Rukh wanted to begin the opening ceremony of the festival with a mass conducted by a priest from one of the two historically .national churches, either the Ukrainian Greek-rite Catholic Church or the Ukrainian Auto­cephalous Orthodox Church, both of whose clergy were severely persecuted by Soviet authorities. By 1946, both churches had been officially outlawed and driven underground. Paradoxically, Zaporizhzhia has ofly Russian Orthodox churches. As an enduring sign of the tenacity of Tsar Nicholas I's proclamation of the indissoluble unity of autocracy, orthodoxy, and nation­ality, local Communist Party officials refused to allow the local Orthodox church to be outcast. With the notable exception that the Greek-rite Catho­lic Church submits to papal authority, there is great similarity in the rituals, symbols, and architecture of the three churches ' The critical distinction is their different political visions. Previously, the decision to practice religion was a political statement, regardless of one's faith. Today the church with which one chooses to affiliate carries strong political overtones.

The dispute proved irresolvable and the plan to launch the music festival with a mass was dropped. The organizers opted instead for clerical patti­cipation in the opening ceremonies. Thus, the rock concert began with a religious procession. A stream of priests solemnly entered the soccer stadium

25 1

\

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

walking along the track in long black robes carrying candles and crosses. In this way, twenty chanting priests introduced, so to speak, the first rock band. Subsequent songs were interspersed with priests from both churches saying prayers and giving speeches that emphasized the necessity of a Ukrainian cultural revival as an antidote to Sovietization.

Beginning the music festival on this sacred note challenged the "natural­ness" of the historic links between a pan-Slavic identity and Orthodoxy. By undermining the authority of a pan-Slavic organization such as the Russian Orthodox Church, the organizers extended a parallel challenge to the legitimacy of the Soviet Empire in the age of the nation-state. By insist­ing that the Ukrainian national churches participate, Rukh lent its support to the nationalizing of religious institutions, inverting and at the same time perpetuating the historic link between identity and religious affiliation in this part of the world.

Following the priests, a lineup of rock bands mixed with folk singers was the featured entertainment for the opening night ceremonies of Chervona Ruta. Rock music helped to combat the prevailing stereotype that con­temporary Ukrainian culture is marginal, on the brink of extinction, and interminably locked into its peasant origins. Over time, the Soviet acknow­ledgment of national differences had added up to no more than caricatures of nineteenth-century peasants performing in folkloric dance troups, theaters, and choral groups around the Soviet Union. By confining Ukrainian culture to the realm of folklore, Ukrainian musical groups were left with little appeal beyond evoking nostalgia for innocent days past.

In contrast, the heavy metal music of long-haired, rebel guitarists was obviously meant to debunk this stereotype and to appeal to eastern Ukrainian youth. Rock groups also showed that Ukrainian pop music had kept pace with the West. The ability to mimic the Western pop music tradition lent some credence to nationalists' claim that Ukraine is an Eastern European country and does not belong in an "Asiatic Empire," as many independence supporters refer to the Soviet Union.

Like Western performers, these rock musicians sported the same long hair, passion for black clothing, and rebel attitude, which permeated their appearance and conduct on stage. Yet even while mimicking the Western rock music tradition, these rock groups emphasized their Ukrainianness. Indigenous characteristics were made to overlay a Western musical style that could be embraced by a broad audience, including ethnic Ukrainians, Russified Ukrainians, Russians, diaspora Ukrainians, and other Westerners. Every step of the way, through their critical lyrics and irreverent comments about Soviet life, the musicians were testing the limits of official tolerance before a multitude of uniformed police officers, who stood around the track lining the bleachers.

During the third song of the opening ceremony of the fcstival, as the feeling of solidarity and cuphoria accelerated, most of the audience poured

252

•

N A T I O N A L I S M O N S T A G E , M U S I C A N D C H A N G E

down from the bleachers onto the soccer field to dance. They brokc the traditional segregation of performer and audience and joined hands or elbows in a human chain, encircling the singers on stage and each other. Some formed spinning circles of twenty or more people all holding hands. Others formed swirling chains connected by interlocking hands and traveled up and down the length of the soccer field. The musicians were warmly received as children of the nation, proof of their collective talent. The soccer stadium became the central town square as the "imagined community" of Ukrainians, at least for one night, was reified and celebrated in music and dance.

The cosmopolitan appeal of Western-style rock music provided an inclusivist mode in which to present the often fiercely nationalistic and exclusivist lyrics of the performers. For example, one of the most well received rock bands, the Snake Brothers, who integrate an anarchy symbol into the written name of the band, sang a song titled "Peace and Order in Ukraine," which criticized both the Russification and Sovietization of Ukrainian people. The lyrics, which incorporated several Russian words to stress the point, told of a people whose spirit had been broken:

The oppressed and the hungry have gone to sleep Whoever was no one has become nothing That's the way it will be tomorrow and today If you don't want to sleep, lie down and be quiet Peace and order in Ukraine The nightingale is chirping The Party and God are with us .'

Many audience members who had long feared being .accused of espous­ing nationalist ideals, a crime often punishable by years in prison, began shouting nationalist slogans and denunciations of the Soviet regime as the police stood idly about. The familiar Soviet-imposed taboos on social and political criticism in the public sphere appeared to have been suspended. .. As the musicians sang, all the while encouraging members of the audience to disassociate themselves from the Soviet regime and from the Soviet experience, more and more blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags popped up. Some members of the audience began waving them from the bleachers, while others danced around on the playing field with the flags blowing in the wind behind them.

In another of their songs, the Snake Brothers confronted one of the most controversial and inflammatory moments in the history of Ukrainian nationalism by performing their song "We're the Boys from Banderstadt," referring to L'viv, the cultural center of Ukrainian-speaking Ukraine. Reference in public to the legendary nationalist leader, Bandera, who masterminded Ukrainian nationalist collaboration with the Nazis against the Soviet Red Army during World War II, was forbidden for decades.

253

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Additionally, the Snake Brothers used the German word "Stadt" for city to underline the links and heighten the connections among Bandera, western Ukrainians, and the Nazis. Once the singers had cracked this taboo wide open with their song, a half dozen members of the audience began to wave the forbidden black-and-red flags of Bandera's outlawed organization.

The song, which began with soft distant flutes pierced by angry cries of "Hey!," had the following refrain:

We're the boys from Banderstadt We go to church We respect our fathers No one knows how to party like us Till the bugles don't play Till the drum doesn't beat Some say we're bandits, hooligans From this swamp There won't be human beings'

The fiercely critical lyrics and the highly vocal reaction they drew from the audience provided a forum in which to reject the Soviet definition of what i t means to be Ukrainian. No longer marginalized subjects of a suppressed history, the band's songs tried to reposition Ukrainians as agents participating in their own historical experience.

In sharp contrast to these contemporary rock performers, the folk music that followed catered to an age-old tradition of singing minstrels, immortal­ized in the work of the national poet Taras Shevchenko, and harked back to an "authentic" and unique Ukrainian cultural tradition. These folk per­formers, who ironically carried forward-and in doing so, endorsed-the Soviet image of a Ukrainian "peasant" culture, were dressed in traditional folk costumes. They performed a round of peasant ballads using traditional string instruments, slich as the bandura. But here too, there was evocation of the West. The four groups of folk performers, all dressed in nineteenth­century Ukrainian peasant costumes, were from the diaspora community. With cries of "Slava Ukraini!" ("Glory to Ukraine!"), they brought greetings and signs of solidarity from the Ukrainian communities in Canada, the U.S., France, and Australia. Their performance suggested that the "real" and "authentic" Ukrainian culture, protected from the ravages of the Soviet experience, was viable and thriving in the West. The appearance of Ukrainian-speaking, diaspora folk performers also showcased the breadth and strength of the Ukrainian nation outside Soviet borders, suggesting the existence of a worldwide network of Ukrainian independence supporters safeguarding the Ukrainian cultural heritage. All except the group from France introduced themselves and addressed the audience in Ukrainian.

254

•

N A T I O N A L I S M O N S T A G E , M U S t C A N D C H A N G E

The French group, a highly accomplished four-piece instrumental band of guitars, band",.a, and percussion, called themselves Les Banderistes.

The decision to mix folk ballads with rock music is a critical one. It is important for nationalist leaders to keep the peasant motif alive. Among other things, it supports nationalist claims that, since Ukrainians were a peasant people, Stalin's brutal policies of collectivization-which triggered a sustained famine that took the lives of an estimated six million Ukrainians in 1932-33-amounted to genocide. The famine and the devastation it wrought on Ukrainian peasant culture have become the definitive Ukrainian national myth of the twentieth century. The Famine, like Chernobyl, is submitted as evidence of the victimization of Ukraine at the hands of a Moscow-based government.

Rukh chose the city of Zaporizhzhia in part because it is the historic "homeland" of the Cossacks. Many scholars have noted that nationalists inevitably refer to a glorious past to evoke images of future grandeur via national liberation (see Anderson 1 983 and Smith 1986). For Ukrainian nationalists, this glorious past is Cossack. From this warring group, nation­alists have created a myth of a fiercely independent people who successfully resisted subjugation and lived autonomously. Except for the three years following the Revolution, after which a fragile Ukrainian state succumbed to Bolshevik pressure during the Civil War, there is no real period of independent statehood to point to in the modern era. Nationalist leaders nonetheless try to illustrate a (frustrated) spirit of independence and self­sufficiency. The resurrection of a particular historical consciousness fueled by a myth of Cossack heroism was also a goal of the festival and a key reason that Zaporizhzhia was chosen as its location. In commemoration of Cossack warriors, many young men in the audience had their heads shaven the way Cossacks supposedly did, leaving only a long tu'ft of hair on the top of the backs of their heads.

The myth of Cossack bravery burst onto the scene during the festival in the form of crowd-pleaser improvisation. In spite of the fact that Zaporizhzhia produces vast amounts of electricity, twice during the first song and period­ically thereafter the entire sound system collapsed due to power failure. During these moments of technical difficulty, Cossack horsemen, ejected into the arena at a full gallop, performed gravity-defying, life-threatening stunts to the delight of the crowd as they encircled the hordes of Polish technicians desperately trying to jump-start the sound system. (One of the financial backers of the festival brought in technicians from Poland as a hedge against anticipated party sabotage.) One by one the horses galloped around the track at a full speed as the Cossack horsemen dismounted, remounted backwards, dismounted in somersault, and remounted again on their hands. As the horsemen raced around the stadium track for the third time, the crowd began to shout "Ukraine without Moscow!" Little did they know lhat this would soon become reality.

255

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

The illusiveness of belonging

As jubilant as those dancing on Ihe soccer field were, it quickly became apparent that not all in attendance were able to partake of the euphoria. The notion that the vitality and vibrance of Ukrainian music was dir­ectly correlated to the vitality of the Ukrainian nation and an independent Ukrainian state failed to carry some members of the audience into the dancing, celebrating crowds. For those who remained in the bleachers and did not dance in unison with others on the playing field, equally intense feelings and forms of consciousness were generated. Made aware of their Russianness at a Ukrainian nationalist festival, they understood themselves to be trapped in an amorphous colonial space. Suddenly, these people were unsure as to whether they were the colonizers or the colonized.

I had gone to the festival with a Ukrainian woman from Kiev who worked as a nurse at the Higher Party School, a training ground for Communist Party elites. At the outset of the festival she was buoyant in spirit, curious, and ever so slightly beaming with pride that she was at a Ukrainian nation­alist festival. Although her family speaks Ukrainian at home and she was educated in Ukrainian through high school, she claims that she understands Ukrainian but does not speak it. For others silting nearby in the audience who did not understand Ukrainian, she translated the speeches and announcements and words of welcome written on the electronic scoreboard, which here doubled as a message board. The three letters that are unique to Ukrainian and not found in Russian were represented by numerals, add­ing a sense of displacement and foreignness to finding things Ukrainian in eastern Ukraine. It became undeniably clear at this festival that although Ukrainian by nationality, Natasha was socialized in Russified Kievan society and this is where her allegiances lay. It didn't take long before she felt uncomfortable.

During the third sound system collapse, when the Cossack horsemen raced around the stadium and the crowd chanted "Ukraine without Moscow!" Natasha instantly began explaining that it was unwise for these nationalist hotheads to be advocating such a cavalier policy. She made an emphatic distinction between her unrelenting criticism of the failures of the Soviet system and Russians. She countered that perhaps Ukraine needed economic independence but she was certain that the historic link between Ukraine and Russia would never be-in fact, could never be-broken by political independence. When asked whether she thought it was feasible to have rcal economic independence (an end to a centrally planned economy) and still politically remain tied to Moscow, she said, "I hope it is possible, because it would be impossible to completely split from Russia. We've lived so long together. It would be like cutting off one side of my body." Ultimately, she was arguing for independence from the Soviet Union, but not from Russia. Twelve days later Ukraine declared independence.

256

N A T I O N A L I S M ON S T A G E , M U S I C A N D C H A N G E

Also with us was Vitalii and his wife Gala. Vita Iii is Ukrainian but was born in Vladivostok in eastern Siberia, where his parents were exiled in the 1 930s for no apparent reason. Except for university studies in Latvia, Vitalii has lived his whole life in Russia. Of late, he has become very mterested 111 exploring his Ukrainian roots. He joined a recently formed Ukrainian club in his hometown, developed an interest in Ukrainian folk mUSIC, and began studying the Ukrainian language with his wife. His newfound enthusIasm for his ethnic origins is what prompted him and his wife to spend the summer in Ukraine. They were delegates from their hometown club to a Ukrainian-language summer program in Kiev. It was through the auspices of this language program that they had come to the festival. . . . .

His wife, an ethnic Russian, never lived in Russia until she marned Vltaill. She was born and raised in Riga, Latvia. She was clearly aghast by the anti-Moscow chants that erupted when the sound system broke down. She and Vitalii blamed it on the incompetence of the Polish technicians, whose inability to master the technical difficulties caused a lull in the entertainment in the first place. In a moment of extreme discomfort, Gala claimed that she had always suspected, but now she was certain, that Rukh was "an instrument of the KGB." She argued that the KGB staged this festival and was behmd the other Rukh events as well. The KGB used Rukh, she explained, to stir up nationalist sentiment so as to have an excuse to send in the army and crush Ukrainian separatism. Vitalii told her that she was very naIve and glared at her in such an uncharacteristically aggressive way that she knew not to voice other opinions on Ukrainian politics that night. Each of the three wanted so much to feel the euphoria of celebrating Ukraine, but they just couldn't. Condemning Russia was too mixed up in the. process. This heightened consciousness of being different from the Ykralntans around them, triggered by the performers' lyrics and use of symbohc Imagery that was alien to them, gives insight as to why the abundant pleasure the musIc was bringing to others failed to carry these three and others like them II1tO the performance space. For most of the concert they sat ston�.-faced, theIr empty eyes following the intertwining chains of line dancers ctrclmg the performers.

. . The multiple and fluid qualities of nationality in the Soviet Unton begll1 to explain the ambivalence Natasha, Vital ii, and Gala felt at th� Chervona Ruta Festival. Why couldn't they and the others who remamed III the bleachers celebrate Ukraine? In part, their ambivalent attitude toward theIr own nationality has deep roots in the structure of the Soviet system. . .

According to the 1 989 census, approximately 73 percent of the Ukramlan population is Ukrainian by nationality, 22 percent is Russian,. and 5 percent are of various nationalities. Yet, an exclusive look at natIOnalIty does not 111 any way portray the very intricate and difficult task of building national consciousness among Ukrainians on the eve of the breakup of the SovIet Union.' The privileging of blood ancestry over actual cultural practices in

257

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Soviet bureaucratic national designation served to undermine the experiential meaning of nationality.

Under Stalin, a statewide process of cultural integration-which amounted, in essence, to Russification-was advocated as a means to realize the goals of communism sooner. The methods employed were numerous: Russian language was granted a privileged status, especially in education and state bureaucracies; religion was suppressed; historiography served the political machine exclusively; and in-migration of Russians to the republics was encouraged. When the process of Russification met with "local nationalist" resistance, state officials swiftly resorted to the KGB and the Gulag to stifle opposition.

However, by recognizing national groups along the Empire's borders with a republican political structure (in essence, a proto-state), the Bolsheviks allowed an alternative regional identity to develop, supported by regional social institutions, such as schools, the press, academies of sciences, and unions of artists.' Such institutions functioned to perpetuate regional cultural practices, including language, and, paradoxically, a non-Soviet source of identity. The efforts of the Soviet leadership to craft a Soviet identity as they simultaneously created nationally based cultural institutions resulted in a bifurcated sense of identity and allegiance among many members of the Soviet populace.

The practice of adopting the nationality of one's ancestors-regardless of experiential cultural, linguistic, or residential considerations-linked the concept of nationality to blood, cast it with an aura of ahistorical etern­ity, and perpetuated an ability to "imagine" the Ukrainian nation. This was, I believe, an underlying motivating factor that brought Natasha, Vitalii, and Gala to the festival. At the same time, Russification undermined the meaning of their Ukrainian nationality and erased its tangible relevance in everyday practice. I would argue that even those at the festival who rushed to embrace Ukraine and Ukrainian culture did it in part to replace Soviet values and Soviet practices, which have been discredited ("From this swamp / There won't be any human beings") by sharp criticism since the policy of glasnost relaxed the threat of retribution.

The nationalist reinterpretation of the Ukrainian historical experience and its accompanying redefinition of what it means to be Ukrainian provided for some a point of orientation to understand present predicaments and future aspirations in a rapidly changing society. Yet, after decades of Soviet discourse that divided the world into "socialist" and "capitalist," attempts to form an experiential "we" in terms of "us" (Ukrainians, the colonized and the oppressed) and "them" (Russians, the colonizers and chauvinists) rang hollow to many Ukrainians. Decades of assimilation, coerced and noncoerced, and comparatively little cultural and linguistic difference between Russians and Ukrainians mean that some cannot dislodge the weight of their past in favor of a new identity quite so easily. The redefinition of the

258

N A T I O N A L I S M ON S T A G E , M U S I C A N D C H A N G E

relationship o f Ukraine to Russia-and, by extension, of Ukrainians to Russians-for some becomes yet another destabilizing factor.

Why did advocates of Ukrainian independence turn to music to recast the critical relationship between Russia and Ukraine? The demarcations between musical styles, genres, and performances, while nonetheless reflect­ive of a cultural tradition, are infinitely more porous than other avenues of culture that also inform identity. Other cultural elements that were also part of the opening performance of the festival-such as religious affiliation, historical memories and myths, and language-do not command the immedi­ate acceptance and visceral reactions that music has the power to trigger.

Although presented as a music festival, for analytic purposes Chervona Ruta could best be conceived of as a cultural performance, as it united a multitude of cultural elements in a performative setting .' The opposition's use of cultural performance was distinguished from that of Soviet authorit­ies by its voluntary, interactive, and improvisational nature. In contrast, the highly predictable and prescribed nature of Soviet rituals was designed to reinforce the established social order. 1O

Victor Turner argues that cultural performances are a form of perform­ative reflexivity: they do not merely "reflect" or "express" a given social order or cultural configuration, rather they are "active agencies of change." [n particular, Turner identifies the dialectical and reflexive qualities embodied in the critiques they deliver of the way society handles history ( 1 988: 22).

The public liminality created by the festival provided a forum in which individuals could publicly reject the Soviet definition of what it means to be Ukrainian and articulate an alternate version. The performers accelerated this process by encouraging members of the audience to disassociate them­selves from the Soviet regime and from the Soviet experience, prompting for some a change in historical and national consciousness, as they imagined themselves belonging to a different community.

Identity through history ..

The significant use of historical representation in popular attempts to gal­vanize Ukrainian nationalist sentiment and challenge Soviet authority on Ukrainian soil began in 1988 with the celebration of the Millennium, the I,OOO-year anniversary of Christianity in Kievan Rus', which shone a glar­ing light on the repression suffered by religious institutions. The festivities surrounding the Millennium were followed by a round of fiftieth anniversary commemorations of various Nazi atrocities, most notably the Babii Yar massacre, in which over 200,000 Jews and Ukrainians were executed. On 22 January 1 990, the anniversary of Ukraine's declaration of independence in 1 9 1 8, Rukh organized a human chain from L'viv to Kiev, in which over 400,000 people participated, to highlight how the nascent Ukrainian state was struck down by zealous Bolshevik ideologues following the Revolution.

259

M U S I C A N D SOC I A B I L I T Y

Each commemoration revived memories o f suffering and destruction on a colossal scale.

The transformation of an ethnic community into a politically conscious nation occurs as nationalist leaders assess the significance of their historical heritage. This was a complex process in Soviet Ukraine, where historiography had been manipulated to serve the Soviet political machine. According to Anthony Smith, without myths there would be no nations, only populations bound in political space ( 1 986: I S). In the process of myth making, a double dynamic is operating on the manipulation of history: first, selective historical amnesia becomes political capital; and second, political and intellectual leaders give voice to a heretofore disqualified interpretation of historical experience. H istoriography at this point becomes the critical ideological battleground for national identity. This is particularly true for a population as fractured and as culturally diverse as that of Ukraine.

Recalling images that hark back to experiences seemingly shared by members of the audience can ignite certain forms of historical and national consciousness. In such situations, the images recalled represent a redemp­tion of the hopes of the past, an attempt at "rescuing" what is past for the present. The images meant to inform collective representations of the past at Chervona Ruta were of two types: either they were historical images from revered myths of national genesis, or they were from the more recent, consciously experienced past and therefore were used to contextualize the past as a steady stream of destruction. National grandeur was brought to life by Cossack mythology in the form of acrobatic horsemen and by the young men in the audience who shaved their heads and dressed in imitation of Cossack warriors. The use of peasant motifs to illustrate the more recent past, expressed by performers and audience members dressed in national costume, underlined the peasant base of Ukrainian culture and indirectly supported the claims of Ukrainian genocide due to the Famine of 1932-33,

which Stalin's policies of rapid industrialization both triggered and sustained.

At Chervona Ruta the Soviet past was represented as an undesirable other, much like Walter Benjamin's Angel of History, who moves away from, yet faces, an ever-growing pile of senseless human tragedy, otherwise known as history ( 1 968: 257). From among the smashed bits and pieces, nationalist advocates scour the past for events that could redeem the pop­ular hopes of the present and legitimate their present political aspirations. Instances of victimization and betrayal are selected and made to represent the Ukrainian-Russian historical experience, so as to argue more cogently for an independent Ukrainian state.

Realigning this relationship and infusing the categories of "us" and "them" with new meaning will not be easy, jUdging from local reactions to the festival. The audience at the Chervona Ruta Music Festival on the eve of the breakdown of the Soviet Union was made up primarily of diaspora

260

T

-

N A T I O N A L I S M O N S T A G E , M U S I C A N D C H A N G E

Ukrainians, supporters o f Rukh from the western provinces who arrived specially for the festival, and some Ukrainians from the area. But judging by the fact that only a third of the stadium was full on opening night and successive performances were even more sparsely attended, it is safe to con­clude that the festival had minimal appeal for Russified eastern Ukrainians. I am quick to note, however, that unexpected concert delays, some of which lasted up to nine hours, last-minute schedule changes, such as performances starting in the evening, breaking for the night, and finishing up the following morning, and overall poor communication about the time and location of events also diminished local interest in the festival.

Attendance at formal events, however, is but one avenue of exposure to nationalist ideas. Such cultural performances derive their power through their ability to communicate multiple messages in a variety of expressive forms. For the residents of Zaporizhzhia, the festival most likely represented the first time in their lives that they had seen their city draped in the Ukrainian national flag. From flag-toting pedestrians, to bumperstickers, to makeshift fliers, to buttons (znach/d), the national symbol of Ukraine, the tryzub, and the Ukrainian blue-and-yellow flag were everywhere apparent.

In addition, a half dozen disgruntled residents decided to capitalize on the attention and influx of foreigners generated by the music festival to launch a group hunger strike in protest of the abominable environmental conditions produced by a sea of Zaporizhzhian smokestacks belching gray air. The pitiful sight of disempowered individuals in makeshift tents sleeping and literally starving in the center of Great October Revolution Square under­lined the failures of the Soviet system and heightened consciousness of the environmental devastation it has wrought on Ukraine. In a very real sense then, the festival, its very occurrence a voice of oppositio!" opened the flood gates of protest so long hammered shut.

.

The former Soviet Union is a land of ironies and paradoxes. One of the greatest ironies surrounding the Chervona Ruta Music Festival is that it provided a rare public forum in which to express spontaneous support for Ukrainian culture in the modest hope of advancing the

"struggle for

an independent Ukrainian state. As I stated earlier, the festival achieved mixed results, alienating some Ukrainians and embracing others. Yet, the festival promoted Ukrainian music up until the night before the beginning of the August Events, as the putsch is euphemistically called. On the morning of 1 9 August 1 99 1 , as the news of the coup became public, those who were involved in the staging and promotion of the festival went underground, fearing retroactive punishment and a return to the pre-glasnost policies that forbade public expression of anti-Soviet agitation. Within three days, however, the coup had failed and the irreversible process of dismantling the Soviet Union and its social system had begun. Ironically, the end of this modest Ukrainian music festival coincided with the end of the Soviet era.

261

\

M U S I C A N D SO C I A D I L I T Y

The past in the present

Attempts were made to perpetuate the tradition of Chervona Ruta in post­Soviet Ukraine. In 1993 the festival was held in DoneIsk, a town similar to Zaporizhzhia in its ethnic and economic make-up. Donetsk, a highly Russified, immense industrial center, is located in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The 1 993 festival was plagued with problems of all kinds from the start. The festival became quite controversial when the organizers decided to bar Russian-speaking groups from performing. Up until a month before the festival was scheduled to begin, it was unknown whether local opposition and financial and organizational difficulties would prevent the festival from occurring at all. In its brief, six-year biennial existence, the festival diminished rapidly in its appeal to local and national audiences, which was reflected in declining attendance and vanishing media coverage. At the festival, as in the other anti-Soviet, pro-Ukrainian commemorations and spectacles realized before Ukrainian independence, unofficial histories and alternative remembrances were represented and reexperienced. Such events gave a physicality to alternative historical representations and pro­vided a site of voiced opposition to Soviet rule. Interestingly, these one-time dramatic enactments of alternative histories, designed to generate new forms of historical and national consciousness, have all but ceased in post-Soviet Ukrainian society.

Now that an independent Ukrainian state has been established and the Soviet Union recedes into memory, these unofficial histories and unsanctioned recollections of the Ukrainian experience of Soviet rule are becoming insti­tutionalized. No longer presented as spectacle, the unsanctioned, unofficial perspective of the Soviet period has now become the standard rhetoric of the new Ukrainian state. The historical representations seen at the Chervona Ruta Festival-such as Cossack mastery, religious devotion, and folklore­are essentially mythic images that ignore chronology and historical accuracy. These elements, however, are being integrated into new national historical narratives and national charters. Formerly unsanctioned historical repres­entations now find a home in the post-Soviet curricula in schools, in new slale holidays and commemorations and in monuments, to name some of the more visible sites.

However, just as official histories advanced by the Soviet regime never precluded the construction and transmission of alternate interpretations, correspondingly, Ukrainian state-sponsored historical narratives are vulner­able to the challenges of alternative histories by groups that remain or have become excluded. Indeed, a multitude of subnationalisms fueled by diverse regional, ethnic, and religious allegiances have spurred various new histories that challenge the legitimacy of the unofficial-turned-official historical representations in post-Soviet Ukraine. Demarginalizing one group by creat­ing state-sponsored representations of "our past" inevitably disenfranchises

262

• •

N A T I O N A L I S M O N S T A G E , M U S I C A N D C H A N G E

other groups. Constructing historical representations that reftect the Soviet experience and resonate at the individual level is proving to be a difficult task. Oppositional events in the late Soviet period, such as the Chervona Ruta Music Festival, merit our attention because the historical representa­tions showcased in an anti-Soviet mood became the raw material from which new histories are being written and public remembering is being practiced in post-Soviet Ukraine.

Notes

I would like to acknowledge support received from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Harriman Institute, and the Department of Anthro­pology of Columbia University. I also benefited from the insightful comments and criticisms of Kathryn Dudley, Katherine Newman, Paula Rubel, Michael Taussig, and Adrian Wanner. The translations of song lyrics arc my own.

"Chervona Ruta" is the title of an immensely popular love song. It literally means "red rue," a strongly scented, henna-like herb that grows only in the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine.

2 For an overview of contemporary rock music in Ukraine as well as a discussion of the 1 989 Chervona Ruta Festival, see Romana Bahry's essay "Rock Culture and Rock Music in Ukraine" in Rocking the State: Rock Music alld Politics in Eastem Europe and Russia (Bahry 1 994).

3 When the 1926 census instituted categories for nationality and language, the extent of "denationalization" among certain nationalities was recognized. The term "Russified Ukrainian" essentially indicates a linguistic designation, but it also implies a cultural orientation that usually follows closely behind language use. In keeping with the Bolshevik policy of korellizalsiia (indigenization) imple­mentcd following the Revolution, Russian-speaking Ukrainians were obliged to learn their "mother tongue." However, in spite of this tacit acknowledgement of national differences and the rights of national minorities, Russification, especi­ally in education, continued unabated throughout the Soviet period. According to state censuses, in 1970, 1 4 percent of the Ukrainians claimed Russian as their first language, compared to 1 7 percent in 1979 and 1 9 percent in 1989. In 1970, 36 percent claimed to have proficiency in Russian; in 1979, it was 50 percent; in t 989, 56 percent. In addition, by 1989, 22. t percent of the populatiOn in Ukraine was Russian. The level of Russian in-migration to Ukraine is exceeded only in Estonia and Latvia (Rahl'a H(w!, 1 9 September 1989, citing Naselenie SSSR).

4 The Ukrainian AlitocephaJous Orthodox and the Ukrainian Greek-rite Catholic churches historically have served as institutional bases for the expression and maintenance of nationalist sentiment and political agitation. Such religiously based nationalist ferment bumps up against the large Orthodox community. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church was incorporated into the Moscow patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1686. The Russian Orthodox Church consistently positions itself as a Slavic institution. Metropolitan Filaret, the leader of the Ukrainian eparchies and second in rank to Patriarch Pimen, often represented the Russian Orthodox Church abroad. Filaret has since left the Moscow-based Orthodox church, claiming that a Ukrainian Orthodox Church should be estab­lished, in keeping with the Orthodox tradition of organizing along national lines (e.g., the Bulgarian, Greek, Romanian Orthodox churches). Exactly how each of these Orthodox churches will relate to one another and which one, if any, wilt be

263

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

able to position itself as the Ukrainian Orthodox church remains unresolved as of this writing.

S Following is the Ukrainian text as transcribed from the album My Khlopts; z Balldersilladw, recorded in 1991 and distributed by Audio Ukraina: "Zasnuli hnani i holodni I KhlO buv nikym loi slav nichym I Tse bude zavtra a s'ohodni / Ne khochesh spaty to lezhy i l110vchy I A na Ukraini lad i snokii I Shchebeche soloveiko I Z narny Parliia i Boh."

6 The Ukrainian text, as transcribed from the album My KhloplSi z Bandershtadlll: "My khloPlSi z Bandershtadtu I Khodiemo do tserkvy / Shanuiemo bat'kiv I Nikhto tak iak my ne vl11ie huliaty I Poki curmy ne zahrali I Baraban ne zbyv I Ie khto hovorit' bandyty, khulyhany I Z toho bolota I Liudei ne bydie."

7 Maurice Bloch ( 1 989) has argued that an important factor in Western nation­building has been an identification by the elite with a particular territory, as represented by a single name. Ukrainian lands were initially called "Rus'" during the period of Kievan Rus' from the ninth to the eleventh centuries. In the seventeenth century, however, the Cossacks referred to "Ukraina," which means borderland. In the eighteenth century, this gave way to "Malorossiia" ("Little Russia"). Two centuries later with the formation of the Soviet Union, the ter­ritory once again became known as Uknline. When the parameters of the group and the implications of membership consistently shift so widely, its appeal is diminished.

8 For decades, Stalin's definition of a nation, written before the Revolution in 1 9 1 2, was a critical determinant of nationality policy in the Soviet Union. Stalin wrote that a nation is j'an historically formed and stable community of people which has emerged on the basis of common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up, the latter being manifest in a common shared culture" (cited in Hobsbawm 1 990: 5; Stalin 1 972 [ 1 936]: 8). In spite or the ract that nations are constantly emerging, evolving entities, this list of static, ahistorical criteria was rigidly applied to determine whether a cultural group was a nationality or not, and if so, to establish ethnoterritories.

9 The term cultural performance was first used by Milton Singer ( 1 955), who expanded the concept of performance to include social drama as well. Singer argues that perfonnative genres (concerts, plays, rites, ceremonies, festivals, etc.) are often orchestrations of various nonlinguistic modes of communication and as sllch provide a window on how "cultural themes and values were communicated as well as on the processes of social and cultural change" ( 1 972: 77).

Building on Singer's initial cultural performance concept, Victor Turner ( 1 988) argues that cultural performances create a space of public liminality. Liminality is the "betwixt and between" antistructural stage of the tripartite ritual process and the point at which new forms of consciousness can be created and a change of status can occur. The entire audience, by virtue of its attendance and/or participation in the festival, is thrown into public Iiminality.

10 Many interesting parallels can be drawn between contemporary nationalist use of mass cultural performance for political purposes and the Bolsheviks' use of mass spectacles rollowing the Revolution or 1 9 1 7 . See von Geldem ( 1 993), Stites ( 1 989: esp. 70-100, "Festivals or the People"), Deak ( 1 975), and Hedgbeth ( 1 975).

Works cited

Bahry, Romana. 1 994. Rock Culture and Rock Music in Ukraine. In Rockillg the SltIte: Rock Music and Politics in Easlern Europe and Russia, cd. Sabrina Petra Ramel. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.

264

N A T I O N A L I S M ON S T A G E , M U S I C A N D C H A N G E

Benjamin, W.alter. 1968. Illuminations: Essays alld Reflectiol1s. New York: Schocken.

Bloch, MaUl:lce. 1989. Feudal Society. London: Routledge. Deak, Franllsek. 1975. Russian Mass Spectacles. Drama Review 1 9(2):7-22. Hedgbeth: Llewellyn H. 1975. Meyerhold's D. E. Drama Review 1 9(2):23-36. Smger, Mlitoll. 1955. The Cultural Pattern of India. Far Eastern Quarterly 1 5:23-36.

--.

. 1972. When a Great Tradition Modernizes. New York: Praegcr. Sml�h, Anthony D. 1 986. The Ethnic Origins oj Nations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Stalll1, Jo�ef. 1 972 [ � �3�]. Marxism in Linguistics. In Marxism and Art: Writings ill

AeS/�1eIlCS and CnIlCISIJ1, cd. Berel Lang and Forrest Williams, 80-87. New York: David McKay.

Sti.tes, Rjchar�. 1989. R�llo/ution{l/Ji Drelllns: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life

III the R.llSSI(IIl RevolutIOn. New York: Oxford University Press.

Turner, VIctOr. 1988. The Anthropology oj Peljormance. New York: PAl. Von Geldern, James. 1 993. Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920. Berkeley: University or

California Press.

•

265

l

73

F A N TA S I E S O F H O M E

The antinomies of modernity and the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Veil Erlmann

Source: V. Erlmann (1999) Music, ModemilY and the Gfobal lmagill(l/ioll: SOllfh Africa and lite Wesl. New York: Oxford University Press, 199-213.

Few musics of South African ongin have attracted more international acclaim in recent years than the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. And unlike other African musical styles that have become established com­ponents of the global music industry, the a cappella choral music known as isicallwmiya has come to be regarded a·� one of the most powerful expressions of Africa's musical heritage and, what is more, as one of black South Africans' most resilient statements of defiance against apartheid. The fact that traditional expressive forms emerge as part of a broader narrative critical of modernity and that these forms then themselves constitute some new master discourse that makes modernism look like a curiosity cabinet is in itself a historical phenomenon, one that is rooted as much in the shirting notions of tradition as in the crisis of modernity itself For instance, as my earlier discussion of the place of musical aesthetics in late-twentieth­century Western thought has suggested, the figures and fictions that have enabled Western intellectuals to both celebrate difference and disjuncture and at the same time express a deep yearning for wholeness and certainty, in a paradoxical move, led many pop performers back to one of the found­ing gestures of modernism: the search for truth elsewhere, on the edges and the margins, on the other side of the circular canvas. And, I concluded, it is within such attempts at recasting the world arter colonialism, that non-Western music comes to play a special role. In order to pursue this line of argument further and to ground my analysis more firmly in the tangle of texts enmeshed in Graceland I am going to examine in this chapter the making and meaning of isicalhamiya, the tradition of male a cappella choral music and dance out of which comes the music of Ladysmith

266

• -

F A N T A S I E S O F H O M E

Black Mambazo and the introduction to "Diamonds on the Soles o f Her Shoes."

But first let me return briefly to the Simon biography by Patrick Humphries discussed in the previous chapter. The chapter "All Around the World," which reviews the Grace/and tour of 1 987, ends with the following sen­tence: "Black African music was one of the strands which Elvis Presley wove into rock and roll in Memphis' Sun Studios in 1 954; but Paul Simon went back even further and introduced the world to the music in a purer and more recognizable form."1

I am quoting this short passage not only because it neatly summarizes the position which music critics around the world have adopted vis-a-vis Simon's encounter with South African music but also because it reflects a view in the West about Africa, its culture, and its musical traditions that, in its persistent exoticism, stands in a direct line with some of the earlier forms of the Western global imagination examined in part I. It is within this discourse about roots and purity, I shall argue in the following pages, that isicalhamiya plays a key role as an emblem of redemption and authenticity. But in outlining the historical trajectory and current practice of isicalhamiya here I shall question the construction in the post-Graceland debate of isicalhamiya performance as the unmediated and authentic expression of a mythic African past. In fact, I shall maintain that, although the songs within the genre voice a quest for identity and security in a dramatically changed social universe similar to Paul Simon's songs, isicalhamiya performance is driven by the same dilemmas of the modern world that also trouble Western middle-class sensibilities. Ladysmith Black Mambazo's songs constitute an African d iscourse about Africa, to be sure, but at the same time these songs represent an attempt to both reject and embrace modernity as part of the same gesture. The search in isicalhamiya performance for an identity and some kind of rootedness in indubitable space-time structures, although it flows from a deep sense of alienation and from the bitter experience of being part of modernity and at the same time excluded from it, is deeply caught lip with m<¥lernity and some of its specifically global fictions. With every step they dance and with every note they sing, the search for what isicalhamiya performers call home, as much as they may seek to return migrant workers to a primordial Africa, a land of redemption and wholeness, draws them ever more inexorably into the West and the modern world. If we are to grasp this dialectic of absence and presence and, more specifically, to comprehend the role of isicalhamiya in the making of Grace/and, the first thing we have to consider is its history.'

Of coons, churches, and competitions: the history of isicllthamiya

ISicalhamiya emerged at the tllrn of the century out of the experiences and struggles of isiZulu-speaking migrant workers in Natal. Fleeing desperate

267

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

living conditions i n the countryside, growing numbers of males were drawn into South Africa's burgeoning industrial economy, where they took up em­ployment in the harbor and railway yards of Durban, white households, or the embryonic manufacturing industry of the Witwatersrand. /sicalhal17iya was born of the encounter between these two worlds-the world of rural homesteads, warfare, ancestor spirits, and wedding ceremonials on the one hand and the realm of factories and urban popular culture on the other hand. Certainly these worlds rested on two vastly different sets of images of personal identity, sociability, and aesthetic value. At the same time, during the formative period of isicalhamiya-a period that stretched from around World War I to the mid-l 930s-both spheres were also associated with and constructed through specific performance genres.

Thus social relations in the countryside centered around a body of danced song and sung dance that celebrated and ritually constituted the lineage as the quintessential unit of meaningful human existence, both for itself and in relation to other lineages. Within this larger body of genres, wedding songs (izingoma zomlshado) occupy a central position. Of the enormous variety of songs and dances that accompany the highly intricate and lengthy process of Zulu marriage negotiations, betrothal, and the final wedding ceremony, the ones called isigekle and ikhelho were the most crucial in shaping early isicalhamiya. Performed by the bride's and by the bridegroom's parties, respectively, isigekle and ikhelho were characterized by a formation of dancers in a single line and by vigorous polyphonic singing in call-and-response. Also crucial was ukubika ibala, a dance more commonly encountered at Christian weddings, when the bride's party, umlhimba, led by a "conductor," entered the homestead of the bridegroom to escort the bride to her new home.

Present-day isicalhamiya performance to a substantial degree is indebted to these three main categories of wedding song. At the level of lyrics, for instance, as we shall see in a moment, a significant portion of isicathamiya songs either directly derive from wedding songs or otherwise elaborate on gender issues, problems of parental authority, and other such questions as arise from the profound transformations that affected rural households in modern South African society. Similarly, the single straight line of performers is the principal choreographic formation in both early and contemporary isicalhal17iya-a constellation which, like some of its rural models in wedding dances, is frequently called imashi (march), reflecting the impact on Zulu society of Western and particularly Christian notions of social order. Finally, within their sonic structure, too, isicathamiya songs share some of the charactei·istics of rural wedding songs, notably the call-and-response form and a strong admixture of Christian hymnody. Wesleyan hymns have had a pervasive influence on many traditional genres from very early on in the nine­teenth century, but in wedding songs the missionary impact is most clearly felt in a certain squareness of the melodic contour and metrical form. In fact, the influence of Western hymns has been such that the older generation

268

F A N T A S I E S OF H O M E

of isicalhamiya practitioners, when referring to the wedding component of old-style isicalhamiya, still prefer to talk about ameleki (American)-the hymns, religious imagery, and practices of the American Board of Missions, the earliest and for a long time predominant Christian mission in Natal.

But more than these structural correspondences, what determines the close relationship between wedding songs and dances and isicalhamiya per­formance, past and present, is the role of these genres as symbolic mediators between two closely connected realms of the precolonial social world: the worldly and the sacred, the public and the private, the male and the female. For these dances are more than mere embellishments of the ritual proceed­ings. They are the wedding itself. Dancing (ukusina) solemnizes and sacralizes a marriage, and thus the most common question asked in determining the stage of the ceremonial process, characteristically, is, "Umakoti usesinile?" (Has the bride danced?)

Another subcategory of rural performance on which early isicalhamiya practitioners drew was the songs and dances associated with warfare. Dating back to the time of Shaka and in some cases even earlier, regimental war anthems (amahubo empi) remained an important element of group cohesion even in colonial and postcolonial times, serving in contexts as diverse as tourist entertainment and trade unionism. Beyond this, when singing such songs performers form single lines as in an impi (regiment) marching into the field, and thus much of the social organization of isicalhamiya choirs is metaphorically predicated on the world of precolonial Zulu military power.

I f by the 1 920s the voices and narratives of the countryside had lost none of their resilience, South Africa's cities offered no less rich an arsenal of genres for migrants to draw upon. By far the most potent urban influences on early isicalhamiya were the songs and dances associated \Vith the minstrel and vaudeville theater of the nineteenth century. Up until the turn of the century, minstrel shows had been without any doubt the most popular form of stage entertainment in South Africa, and although essentially a grossly racist genre pandering to white colonial anxieties, burnt cork s!Jows met with no small degree of enthusiasm among the country's black population. Inspired by the seminal tours of Orpheus M. McAdoo's Jubilee Singers in the I 890s and drawing on "Coloured" adaptations of blackface minstrelsy, scores of local minstrel troupes in towns and on rural mission stations famil­iarized migrant laborers with the genre. What attracted these audiences to songs such as "Ohl Susannah," ragtime dancing, and the figure of the "coon," besides the novelty and hilarious drama embodied in these core symbols of the minstrel stage, were two things. Minstrelsy, and here especially the "coon," provided images of urban sophistication and modernization and by simul­taneously deriding black elite idiosyncrasies offered a means of distancing oneself from modernity's discontents. Black audiences knew that not all black people were boisterous and mischievous, but they also knew that some were. And thus the image of the "coon," once it was wrested from

269

\

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

the exclusive domain o f white supremacist discourse, became a tool of intracommunal criticism, a way of dealing with an increasingly differentiated social environment. The "coon" and the dances and vocal style of the minstrel stage, in the minds of early isicathamiya performers, all added up to isikhunzi ( literally, coons), the earliest known proto-style of isicathamiya.

Wedding songs, regimental war songs, and the minstrel repertoire in the beginning may have arisen from two diametrically opposed worlds, but by the turn of the century such forms of popular performance had long since become entangled with one another. In fact, one of the most striking historical lessons to be learned from the rise of a performance tradition like isicathamiya is how inextricably meshed different social worlds and forms of imagination already were in the early history of modern South Africa and how the expressive genres that emerged from this intermixture were anything but primordial, undiluted, or ancient. Thus, by as early as the 1 920s, ragtime choreography had become a major influence on some of the long-entrenched rural wedding dances like ikhelho. In fact, ukureka, as Zulu speakers came to name the new urban dance style, in time became an umbrella term for Christian wedding dances in general. And as if to under­score the modern connotations of ukureka, an accompanying genre of wedding songs was created, called amakhoti (chords).

Conversely, urban performance genres were more than just the modern echoes of the "tribal" past. Zionist ritual, to name but one example espe­cially relevant within the context of isicathamiya, is tooled on the symbols and rituals of the rural and the precolonial world in ways that convey a sense of stubborn insistence, a deliberate attempt amid the experiences of urban deprivation and alienation to refashion the self to more accustomed designs. As Caesar Ndlovu's research on the parallels between isicalhamiya performance and Zionist ritual has shown, isicalhamiya singers and dancers are mostly amaZayoni-adherents of black independent Zionist churches­and as such consider their performances as analogies of and commentaries on ancestor worship and Zionist church ritual. Thus both isicathamiya singers and amaZayoni use the term umlindelo (waiting time) when referring to the warm-up section of the competitions, when everybody awaits the arrival of the judge, and all-night religious services and the anticipation that precedes the arrival of the Holy Messenger.' Similarly, the circling around with fast, shuffling steps in both Zionist prayer meetings and isicathamiya performances is called isifekezeli, a form of choreography associated with homeward motion and with the search for a sanctuary amid the chaos of the modern world. In short, both types of urban performance, rather than merely representing varying degrees of urbanization or positions on an ima­gined rural-urban continuum, intercede between some of the contrarieties engendered by the modern world-oppositions between the sacred and the profane, between the past and the present-and seek to transcend them in ways that furnish people with the power essential for correct living.'

270

+'

F A N T A S I E S O F H O M E

The heterogeneous blend o f styles and traditions I have described here characterized isicathamiya during a first, experimental period, which lasted until the mid-1930s. Following this early initiatory phase, a second period of maturity can be established, one that is now generally regarded as the classic era of isicathamiya performance and that extended into the late 1960s. Its pioneer and principal moving force was Solomon Popoli Linda. Born in 1 909 in the vicinity of Pomeroy in the poverty-stricken labor reserve of Msinga, Linda was steeped in the traditions of amahubo and izingoma 2omlshado. But as a boarder at the nearby Gordon Memorial School he also came into contact with Western mission culture, with its choir con­tests, hymns, and strangely antithetical notions of social order. Both these traditions furnished him with the necessary competence to compete with other early choirs in Johannesburg, a task Linda excelled in first as a member of his uncle's choir and then from the mid-1 930s on as leader of his own group, the Evening Birds. The real breakthrough, however, was not to come until 1 939, when Linda, now working as a packer at the new Gallo record pressing plant, was discovered by talent scout Griffith Motsieloa. Gallo was then South Africa's premier record company and the plant at Roodepoort the first of its kind in Africa. And thus when the company in 1 939 released Solomon Linda's composition "Mbube" (Lion) not only did the record become South Africa's first "hit" and Linda's choir isicathamiya's uncrowned kings, but also the word mbube became synonymous with the whole genre of male a cappella choral singing. All this demonstrates that Linda's career and isicathamiya's classical period were deeply tied up with the rise of South Africa's recording industry and, through it, the expansion of the country's nascent manufacturing industry.

In performance, all this expressed itself in quite paradoxical figures: a series of innovations and modernizations and, at the same time, a new, redirected sense of the past and the countryside. Thus Solomon Linda was the first choir leader to make it a point that his singers appear onstage in uniform dress and in line with the latest trends in urban fashion. The Even­ing Birds sported pinstriped three-piece suits, Florsheim shoes, and hats and indulged in a fast-paced, energetic choreography called iSlep that made performers look like resolute men defiantly walking the streets of the white man's city. Another more Western and hence urban element in Linda's songs is manifest in a tune such as "Mbube." After a short introduction remin­iscent of the metrically free, pentatonic ihubo, the choir launches into the main section of the song, in which only a few elements are retained of deep­Zulu musical grammar. The harmonic framework is a plain 1_IY_I:_y7 progression in four bars, the solo vocal line moving strictly in synchrony with this triadic structure. (For a full analysis of "Mbube" see chapter 14.)

Despite all these symbolic turns toward the urban sphere, Linda also remodeled a number of core musical icons of the rural world to fit the new mbube style. Among other things, he strengthened the bass section of his

271

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

choir, a move which not only departed from the isikhunzi principle of one singer per voice part but also implied a return to more rural, precolonial forms of male performance, with their preponderance of deeply sonorous bass registers. By far the most persistent and potent expression, however, of isicathamiya's place within the culture and consciousness of South Africa's black migrant workers is in a certain Janus-faced notion of male identity that is encoded in these symbolic layers. For, on the one hand, suits, iSlep dancing, and booming basses all signaled the indomitable desire to mark the urban space with a presence, to assert a notion and practice of manhood that directly challenged white assumptions of black workers as noiseless, almost self-effacing, and ill-clad "labor units." Song texts, on the other hand, worked within the same overall poetics of manhood, if only in a dif­ferent direction: by incorporating a great deal of self-praise. I have shown in chapter 2 how southern African verbal arts and the idea of the person intertwine in izibongo, the praise name. I n African thinking, I noted, the making of a man was not so much a self-reflexive, introspective process by which an individual sought to determine his value and position in society through the inspection of his inner riches. I t was rather that a man was able to build his name by looking outward, by acquiring the preeminence of a hero (umqhalVe), and, finally, by accumulating wealth in people through the construction of ever more proliferating bonds and affiliations.

The contrast between this heroic notion of individual being and Western ideas of rootedness and existential depth can hardly be more pronounced. As can, of course, the contrast between the parallel ideas of the name and performed identity. Throughout southern Africa, praise names are often eloquent and compellingly rich compositions that at once constitute what Hoyt Alverson has called "meaning structures for thinking about the self" and road signs on the path toward the building up of personhood.' isicalhamiya song texts, one might argue accordingly, simply extend this practice to the tribulations and insecurities of labor migration, racial oppres­sion, and urban life, by shifting the object of praise from the precolonial hero to the networks of "home-people" and workmates that migrants from the same rural district or the same factory construct in town and tha t form the social basis of most isicalhamiya choirs.

Another method briefly to be considered here of male empowerment through the skillful manipulation of language consists in the juxtaposition of textual elements from seemingly disparate and disconnected semantic realms. Mbube performers such as Linda often interlaced izibongo-style eulogy with cryptic and ostensibly nonsensical phrases, a fact which Western observers have usually found to be an indication of detribalization and poetic impoverishment. Yet what conventional analyses of lyrical "content" fail to reveal is the crucial fact that the resultant patchwork of sounds and images is not meant to convey a meaning in the first place. Migrant per­formers, as Jonathan Clegg has pointed out, are interested in the tensions

272

, -

l'

F A N T A S I E S OF H O M E

that result from the profuse overlapping of multiple and blurred semantic fields.' Theirs is a concern with the stylistic process of "building up signi­ficance," not with significance as a value in itself. What isicathamiya choirs communicate, then, is not meaning as such-words or images referring to some content-but rather the ability to give meaning. To weave together praise poetry, proverbs, snippets of TV beer commercials, and fragments of Zionist hymns is to move into style, to create ,ymb% n proper, binding elements that bring into relationship with one another different experiential domains of masculinity in the modern world. Thus, ultimately, what isicalhamiya performance in general and song texts in particular achieve is what Michael Herzfeld, writing about the poetics of manhood in Crete, calls a "stylistic transfiguration of action." The performance of these texts focuses the attention not on whal men are and what they do but on how they do it. Being a man and a hero, someone who commands the respect of friend and foe alike, is the same as showing how good one is at being such a man. In short, it is the ability to manipulate style rather than to define content that indicates male identity.

Solomon Linda's Evening Birds dominated South Africa's isicalhamiya scene until the early 1 950s-the last recording was made in 1954-against increasing competition from choirs such as the Durban Evening Birds and Maktshwa's Choir and despite the fact that other groups were beginning to experiment with alternative styles such as isikambu/a, isik/llve/a 10, and 'mbombing (bombing). In essence, all these were structural variations on the mbube model, the only difference being a vocal texture that favored extrcmely high-pitched, almost yelling sounds-vocal explosions not quite unlike the exploding bombs migrant performers were able to watch in World War I I newsreels and, like these, icons of virility and njanly belligerence. Most postwar choirs adhered rather strictly to this aesthetic, thereby increasingly cutting themselves off from the transformations in South African society at large and the situation of migrant labor and culture in particular. As a result, it was not until the early 1970s that isicalhamiy,a began to "-take due account of these changes and that a third phase in its history commenced.

Two broader developments account for this change of direction: the mount­ing crisis of grand apartheid and its "homelands" in conjunction with the growing confluence of migrant and township cultures, on the one hand, and the expansion of radio broadcasting, on the other hand. While it is certainly true that the rise to power in 1 948 of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party led South African society to an even more troubled future of racial conflict, the hardening politics of labor coercion, segregation, and rural resettlement also met with mounting popular resistance-the Durban strikes of 1973 and the Soweto uprising of 1 976 are two of the examples that come to mind here. But, more important perhaps, by the mid- 1 970s, as all sorts of economic and political crises compounded, the ruling oligarchy felt

273

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

impelled to generate some legitimacy ror the reigning order and to initiate a process or rerorm rrom above, part or which consisted in making radio and television morc attractive to black mass audiences as a means of reinforcing existing class and political cleavages within black society.

Finally, important shirts also took place in the situation or migrant labor itselr, especially in the mining industry, the core or South Arrica's migrant labor army. Although rrequently inimical toward permanently urbanized black communities, migrant workers bore the brunt or apartheid repression and, correspondingly, in time came to espouse the same unitary worker consciousness as the township dwellers and even rormed the vanguard or militant opposition to the system.' Furthermore, as Dunbar Moodie has convincingly argued, it was a number of significant increases in mine wages in the early 1970s that enabled migrant workers to consider themselves as "proressional miners whose rami lies continue to reside in the countryside" rather than as rarmers working to rund rural homesteads ' One or the most dramatic consequences or this "purposive organization or lire-worlds," as Moodie calls it, was that the idea or the kin group and the rural homestead acquired new meaning. Although a remarkably elastic network or relations even in precolonial society, in the political economy or the labor reserve traditional kinship systems were constantly dissolved and remolded and thereby became phases in a developmental cycle that equally included other types or household compositions like the nuclear ramily ' At the same time, as the rural homestead ceased to be the center or migrants' sociomoral universe and came to resemble more an orrshoot in what was essentially a world dominated by urban ways, migrants' culture and consciousness experi­enced a marked shirt toward more urban-based rOrmS. lO

The rapid expansion or radio broadcasting in South Arrica was the second ractor in shaping the evolution or isicalhamiya perrormance during its third phase. The development or broadcasting services ror the major Arrican languages had been one or the apartheid regime's top priorities arter it came to power in 1948, and when the South Arrican Broadcasting Corporation's black stations, dubbed Radio Bantu, went on the air in 1962 it was by rar the most powerrul broadcasting service on the entire contin­ent, reaching up to 97 percent or the country's black population. The goal or Radio Bantu was to propagate the apartheid mythology or "separate development," obtain black South Arricans' assent to the idea or the "homelands" as a blueprint ror development, and goad them into a work ethic compatible with the demands or capital. To accentuate these broader political objectives, in the early 1 960s, a vast amount or traditional music, sustaining as it allegedly did apartheid engineers' hygienic vision or separate "tribal" identities, was recorded in the field and broadcast regularly on all the vernacular services. " Even though toward the end or the decade this scheme was broadened to include other types or popular music (provided these did not put in question, by content or association, the goals or

274

f

F A N T A S I E S O F H O M E

Separate Development), isicathallliya remained the ravorite o r both broad­casters and listeners. With its nostalgia ror the countryside and dislike or the city, isicaliwmiya seemed ideally suited to serve the interests or state and capital and, in ract, contributed nicely to what early broadcasting officials had termed the media's role in the "strengthening or native home lire."

At the studio level, this policy was scrupulously overseen by two highly influential broadcasters: Yvonne Huskisson and Alexius Buthelezi. Well versed in matters concerning Zulu and Pedi music, these two individuals were responsible, as one official apartheid organ put it, ror making "a contribution towards preserving the identity or the Black peoples."" In addition to being music director or Radio Bantu, Huskisson published The Banlu Composers 0/ Southern Africa, a patronizing Who's Who or sorts that emphasized South Arrican black composers' pristinely discrete ethnic identities . " Buthelezi, ror his part, compiled a compendium or isicathamiya choirs and, more important, hosted a weekly show called COlhoza M/ana."

Based on a tune by Gershon Mcanyana and the Scorpions that cautions the choir to tiptoe (colhoza) while in the studio, Buthelezi's show proved enormously successrul with listeners and in time became the premier national showcase ror fledgling isicalhamiya choirs. Between them, these concerted errorts at "preserving" alleged ethnic identities not only helped to canonize and rossilize what in historical practice had been highly intertextual, crossbred genres but also contributed to the survival or a genre which by the 1970s was rapidly losing hold in the emerging culture or "urban displacement." In ract, as Bhekizizwe Shabalala once remarked, had it not been ror "some radio personalities who very much liked the style," isicalhamiya in the late 1960s "would have really nearly died."

All this implies, or course, a paradox-the ract, namely, that the emer­gence or isicm/wmiya as a genre or the Zulu core was in rblity the product or a prolonged entanglement with the rorces or modernity, especially with the media. At the same time, I must stress the ract that this state-sponsored construction or "tribal" identities was never simply a matter or downright imposition rrom above or docile acquiescence rrom below. fhe charge, levied by many an observer, that the osmosis in isicllthamiya among media, homelands ideology, and rural nostalgia veered dangerously close to an exoneration or the apartheid regime and its lackeys is or course a serious one-one that needs to be carerully considered in the light or the deepening political crisis or the 1 970s and 1980s. But it is also an accusation that needs to be addressed by unraveling isical/wl11iya's own aesthetic logic, beyond the narrow academic dichotomies or hegemony and resistance. Ir, as I would argue, the development or isicalhamiya in the 1 970s and up until 1986 has to be seen within this rramework or the politics or "homeland" and "displaced urbanization'" it is nevertheless true that the genre posed its own hybrid aesthetics against apartheid's doctrines or racial purity. Perhaps this is nowhere clearer than in the music of two or the undoubtedly preeminent

275

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

isicalhamiya choirs after Solomon Linda's Evening Birds: the King Star Brothers and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

The King Star Brothers had been established in Johannesburg in the early 1960s from a group of young men from the Transvaal town of Standerton, an area that for a long time had known more down-tempo and middle­register forms of vocal performance. As their first SABe recordings of 1963 reveal, it was the King Star Brothers who introduced a less compact, less densely textured sound into the prevailing '",bombing style of the time. Ladysmith Black Mambazo for its part had only been founded in the late I 960s, but after a series of SABe appearances in 1970 and the release of their first album, Amabutho, in 1973, the group soon outstripped the King Star Brothers in popularity. After a rapid succession of several gold records in the mid-1970s, Bhekizizwe Shabalala decided to transform his choir into a full-blown commercial enterprise-the first iSicathamiya group to function solely within the music industry, outside of the conventional circuit of com­petitions. Underlying this cometlike rise, however, were far-reaching changes in a number of areas that relate to performance style. The first of these was a new choreography that incorporated key elements of a dance style called umgqashiyo, which had been popularized in the mid-I960s by the all female band Mahotella Queens and had been a favorite with migrant audiences ever since. The second innovation consisted in the introduction of a certain element of chronology and narrative sequentiality into song lyrics. Whereas the majority of isicalhamiya song texts, as we have seen, build up significance and metaphorical density from the almost formalist juxtaposition of images and thereby, as performance, correlate with the parallel processes of name and personality building, Shabalala in many of his songs chose to foreground himself as a fully constituted author, a knowing subject empowered to take a deliberate stance toward the world as one standing in need of elucidation.

Last, the third and perhaps most important innovation in the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo was in the domain of sound texture. Having greatly refashioned the poetic structure of isicarlwmiya performance, Shabalala felt that when performing, just as "when talking to a person who is sitting next to you, you don't have to shout." So he decided to "bring the range down" by getting his choir to sing what were essentially 'mbombing and isiklnvela Jo tunes in feathery, velvety voices. The outcome of this was isicalhamiya, a sound audiences in South Africa came to treasure as pholile and kumnandi, calm and sweet.

On a superficial reading, the new direction Shabalala had given to isicathamiya performance in these three key areas may not be readily identi­fied with revolutionary politics and antiapartheid bravado per se. But what critics of Ladysmith Black Mambazo's alleged political abstinence tended to overlook in their search for politically explicit lyrics appears to be the fact that Shabalala's reshaping of migrant choral music cut against the grain of some of apartheid's most entrenched mythologies not by openly denouncing

276

F A N T A S I E S O F H O M E

them but by undermining their aesthetic premises. Shabalala's music, primarily through the cross-linkages it maintained with umgqashiyo and I11baqal/ga, bridged migrant culture and township culture in ways that coun­tered apartheid engineers' limited sense of social fluctuation and their attempts to curb it by inventing artificial and eternally fixed social and racial categories. At the same time, Shabalala's work thoroughly deconstructs the notion that, rather than being vehicles of a self-conscious urbanity, black innovation and cultural leadership had to serve "tribal" interests and identi­ties. The individual author speaking through many of his songs, although he rarely articulates himself as an "I," is one who squarely positions himself at the intersection of a wide range of social worlds and experiences, adroitly navigating among them.

My account of isicalhamiya history would be incomplete without mentioning at least briefly the possibility of a fourth phase, one that began with the release of Grace/and, coincided with the end of apartheid rule, and may well continue into the present moment of the reconstruction of South African society. Although it may be premature at this point in time to anti­cipate what precise contours isicalhamiya performance is eventually going to take in the "new South Africa," what the opening chapter of Grace/and and Ladysmith Black Mambazo seems to indicate is that the future story of isicalhamiya will be ever more conjoined with other stories and other musics elsewhere on our planet. At the very least, what the further course of isicathamiya will prove, as indeed my entire historical sketch suggests, is how questionable it is to imagine, in the manner of Humphries and other authors in the West, the genre as being encapsulated in some sort of cultural quarantine of timelessness and uncontaminated authenticity. I nstead, as my short synopsis here indicates, the future will reveal the "Orientalist" legacy inherent in such a stance, by bringing to the fore the fundillnental historicity of isicalhamiya and by highlighting a number of interlocking themes in its rich history of hybridity and intertextuality-themes woven into songs long forgotten and into others, truly global ones, like "Mbube" and "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes." ..

The first of these themes is the troubling feeling of rupture that pervades the genre, a rupture not just of all established social ties-of high and low, male and female, the home and the world-but a radical discontinuity of time as such. At least, this is what appears to be the meaning of such a desolately taciturn song as "Anginamali," by the Empangeni Home Tigers:

Namhlanje kimi, kukude emuva, kukude phambili.

Today, for me, the past is far and the future is far.

What migrant workers seem to register in verses such as these, as well as in the angered and mournful sounds of isicalhamiya generally, is not just

277

I

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

the condition of migrancy. I t is, above all, migrants' growing loss o f agency and sense of continuity. Something more is at stake in a song such as "Anginamali." than placelessness, something more existential and so utterly disquieting that it must inevitably belie any Western fantasies about an Africa at one with itself and the inner sources of human existence.

The second theme that runs through my account is the intermingled boundaries of class, ethnicity, language, and genres that mark isicathamiya performance. From its inception in the 1 920s the genre has been staying on a radically syncretic course, boldly restating the intermingled character of South Africa's social and cultural landscape. Early isicathamiya performers, contrary to the prevailing and apparently indelible image of migrants as politically conservative and culturally introspective, eagerly sought to assim­ilate the old with the new, the indigenous with the foreign, the home with the diaspora. They sang of the wisdom of Shaka but to a tune borrowed from the Christian missions; they modeled their choirs on the image of precolonial war regiments, but the dances bore the elegant mark of the urban flaneur.

Another theme, related to the former, is the symbolic complexity of the genre at the microlevel. Not only do isicathamiya songs and dances defy simplistic notions of performance practice as a homogeneous expression of a monolithic consciousness of migrant workers, often the vocal timbre, sound texture, lyrical genre, and choreographic and sartorial style also belong to different semantic orders even within the same song. In fact, competition, dissension, and conflict are of the very essence in isicathamiya performance, a fact to be borne in mind not only in light of Ladysmith Black Mambazo's velvet-textured sounds and topical lyrics but also because it is precisely the more strident tonalities of isicathamiya that are being excised from contem­porary discussions of Grace/and. By portraying the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo as the happy alternative to apartheid's unyielding cruelty or, alternatively, as the bold war cry of a proud nation of warriors, Western observers have ignored the creative work of performers struggling to alter the received tropes of Zuluness and, as Rob Nixon has observed, to extricate themselves from the near-monopoly of Inkatha (now called the Inkatha Freedom Party) over a contrived ethnohistory conventionally narrated through male warrior triumphs."

By far the most crucial theme, however, that underlies all these symbolic journeys across social, political, and cultural boundaries and in many ways works against the grain of the brazenly conftictual construction of male identities is, quite paradoxically, the attempt in isicathamiya performance to bound and bind the individual within some presumed harmonious and intact world, to construct a tightly sealed realm of habitus and local moor­ings. The root image of this vastly idealized, fictitious world is that of the home, khaya. An immensely multilayered term in the Zulu lexicon, ""aya denotes a dwelling, an inhabited place, the homestead, a place to which one belongs, or simply the members of a family. The term thus appears to

278

F A N T A S I E S OF H O M E

translate not so much a location as a set of relationships i n space and time; it conveys a sense of what it means to live in a society in which everything flows from within and is mediated by the lineage.

/sicathamiya performance reflects and at the same time enacts migrants' nostalgia for the "home" in a variety of ways. For instance, apart from the fact that most choirs consist of a combination of men from the same kin group and/or the same rural area, isicathamiya choreography, through the association with wedding dances, evokes potent images of domestic unity and, by celebrating basically iniquitous gender relationships, of social con­trol. Conversely, a song text like the following (sung, ironically, to a tune reminiscent of the Top Notes' and Isley Brothers' classic "Twist and Shout") stands for the acute sense of dislocation and yearning for the family at home that is voiced in many songs:

Nisibona silapha siphuma kude. Siphuma Ie ebunzimeni. Silapha nje sizulazula senziwa yindaba zokuhlupheka. Sashiya abazali nezihlobo zethu. Thina sihamba sifuna imali. Ngihlupheka, ngihlupheka, ngihlupheka.

As you see us here, we come from afar. We come from afar. As we are here, we are roaming around because of suffering. We left our parents and family. We travel in search of money. I suffer, [ suffer, I suffer."

Clearly, as these sorrowful lines show, isicathamiya, notwithstanding a ready acceptance of the city and its forms, is tantamount to h�mecoming. Its practitioners are homeward bound. But this "return to the whole"-to paraphrase a key concept in James W. Fernandez's work on metaphor and performance-is more than the goal of all symbolic practice." In a society that inflicted upon its black majority the vagaries of a Fordist economic regime and a ruthlessly oppressive minority rule, this retrieval of an imagined past also takes on quite specific meanings. And thus, in a broader sense, the homecoming of isicathamiya can be seen as part of a much more compre­hensive semantics of social order, one that extends migrants' retrospective quest beyond the realm of the personal and the family into the political and public sphere.

The ultimate expression of this imagined world of orderliness and cohe­sion, the embodiment and source of all material wcalth and spiritual value,

279

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

is ilizlVe, the Zulu nation, the Zulu country. I t is manifest above all in countless song texts that bemoan the loss of Zulu independent power, invoke the grandeur and wisdom of Shaka, and, on occasion, express sup­port for the present king, Goodwill Zwelithini, and Chief Gatsha Buthelezi. Of course, this confluence of the desire for security and the notion of the Zulu nation as the "home" and foundation of all meaningful human exist­ence cannot be taken at face value as the natural disposition, as it were, of the Zulu "people." Rather, it must be placed within the broader context of twentieth-century South African politics and the apartheid system in particular. For as a closer look at the political history of ethnicity in modern South Africa reveals, the idea of a Pan-Zulu ethnic and cultural identity is a recent and, what is more, exceedingly contested construct. It resulted from the intense and interested labors of the black intelligentsia and white ideologues in the 1920s and 1 930s and, beyond this, continued to be a major element of antiapartheid politics of the 1980s and of the present postapartheid era.

Thus if isicalilamiya performers, in the course of battling an oppressive, alien system, have developed complex tactics of defense that draw on a truly cosmopolitan range of traditions and if these same choices are often rep­resented in the West as expressions of an authentic African, Zulu identity, we are dealing with more than just a contradiction. And we have to do with more than the fact that these performers, by adhering to the "Orientalized" images of warlike and yet somehow childish members of something called the "Zulu tribe" the state has concocted of them, appear to be doing exactly what the system expects of them. Rather, we are dealing with one of the core ambiguities of the black experience in modern society. The tension that becomes apparent in the uneasy shifts between an almost modernist cosmopolitanism and a self-styled nativism is part of what Paul Gilroy has called the politics of transfiguration. They are immanent within the utopian desires that are expressed, as he puts it, "on a lower frequency," in a par­tially hidden public sphere." Working under the nose of the oppressor, isicalilamiya performers, much like black popular artists in South Africa in general, have laid claim to the entire range of modern expressive means white South Africa has withheld from them and at the same time invoked alternative social relations by deliberately retreating from modernity into tradition.

In other words, migrant workers and performers, through a genre such as isicalilamiya, have been able to author complex and multiply determined identities-identities that were not given from time immemorial but historic­ally produced in the uneasy confrontation with the West, the world system, and the forces of modernity. Conversely, I have shown how the disembedding logic of modernity prompted a reverse process-that of finding, amid the rampant ambiguities and insecurities of modern South African society, certainty and deliverance in a feeling of belonging and being at home. And

280

F A N T A S I E S OF H O M E

as I said at the beginning, this search for identity links the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo to Simon's soul-searching mission in interesting ways. The overall picture, however, that emerges from my discussion is that of a form of symbolic practice quite inauthentic and rhizomic itself, one that stands in a tense relationship with the forces and processes that made it. It is a picture of a long and venerable tradition that, although it is no longer part of the past, still speaks to the past. And by the same token it is a representation of a creative practice that, although it cannot be placed within the Western mainstream, does not stand outside the West. Rather, the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo has all the discrepancies, failures, and figures of both tradition and modernity available to it.

Notes

I Patrick Humphries. Paul Simon: Still Crazy a/tel' All These Years (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 156.

2 I have documented elsewhere in considerable detail the history of isicarhamiya and shall therefore content myself here with an outline of its main trajectories and actors. See Veil Erhnann, Niglllsong: Pelformance, Power, and PracJ;ce in SOUlIl Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 996).

3 Caesar Nldovu, "Religion, Tradition and Custom in a Zulu Male Vocal Idiom" (Ph.D. dissertation, Rhodes University, 1 996), pp. 149ff.

4 See also Erlmann, Nighlsong, pp. 2 1 8f; and Musa Xulu, "The Re-Emergence of Amahubo Song Styles and Ideas in Some Modern Zulu Musical Styles" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Natal, 1 992).

5 Hoyt Alverson, Mind in the Heart oj Darkness: Value and Self-Identity among Ihe Tswana of Southern Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1 978), p. 1 93.

6 David B. Coplan, "A Terrible Commitment: Balancing the Tribes in South African National Culture," in George E. Marcus, cd., Perilolls States: Conversa­tions 011 Culfllre, Politics, and Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 323.

7 For a useful assessment of this era, see Alfred William Stadler, The Political Ecollomy oj Model'll Sowll Africa (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987), p. 174.

8 Dunbar Moodie, GOingfor Gold: Men, Mines ant! Migrallls ( Berkeley: University or Calirornia Press, 1 994), p. 42.

9 See Colin Murray, "Migrant Labour and Changing Family Structure in the Rural Periphery of Southern Africa," Journal of Southern African Studies 6, no. 2 ( 1 980): 1 39-56.

10 See also some of the articles in Philip Mayer, Black Villagers in an Industrial Society: Anthropological Perspectives on Labor Migration in South Africa (Cape Town: Oxrord University Press, 1 980).

I I Erlmann, Nightsong, p. 252. See also Charles Hamm, "The Constant Companion of Man: Separate Development, Radio Bantu, and Music," in PUlling Popular Music ill Its Place (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 230-32.

1 2 Bal/tu Education JOll/'lla/ (April 1 97 1 ), p. 7. 1 3 Yvonne Huskisson. The Bantll C01'nposers of Southel'll Africa (Johannesburg:

South African Broadcasting Corporation, 1969). 14 Alexius Buthelezi, Cot//Oza MJana ( Pietermaritzburg: Reachout Publications,

1996).

281

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

1 5 Rob Nixon, Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood: South African Culture and the World Beyond (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 250. For a more nuanced treat­ment ormigrant workers and violence in Natal, see Catherine Campbell, "Learning to Kill? Masculinity, the Family and Violence in NataJ,"Jol//'Iw/ of SOlllhern African SllIdie,. 18, no. 3 ( 1992): 6 14-28.

16 Grey town Evening Birds. "Sanibonani Nonke MaAfrika" ( Heritage HT 3 1 3, 1982).

17 James W. Fernandez, "The Argument of Images and the Experience of Return­ing to the Whole," in The Anthropology of Experience, ed. Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner ( U rbana: University or Illinois Press, 1 986), pp. 59-187.

18 Paul Gilroy, Small Acts: Thoughts 011 the Politics of Black Cultures (London: Serpent's Tail, 1993), p. 134.

282

Part D

MUSIC, MOD E R NITY AND POSTMOD E RNITY

\

74

T H E S E A RC H F O R

P E T U L A C L A R K

Glenn Gould

Source: [High Fidelity, November 1967.] The Glel/II Gould Reader ( 1 987), London: Faber & Faber, pp. 300-7.

Across the province of Ontario, which I call home, Queen's Highway No. 1 7

plies for some I , I 00 miles through the pre-Cambrian rock o f the Canadian Shield. With its east-west course deflected, where it climbs the northeast shore of Lake Superior, it appears in cartographic profile like one of those prehistoric airborne monsters which Hollywood promoted to star status in such late-late-show spine tinglers of the 1 950s as Blood Beast from Outer Space or Beak from the Beyond, and to which the fuselage design of the XB 1 5 paid the tribute of science borrowing from art.

Though its tail feathers tickle the urban outcroppings Qf Montreal and its beak pecks at the fertile prairie granary of Manitoba, No. 1 7 defines for much of its passage across Ontario the northernmost limit of agrarian settlement. I t is endowed with habitation, when at all, by fishing villages, mining camps, and timber towns that straddle the highway eveli,Y fifty miles or so. Among these, names such as Michipicoten and Batchawana advertise the continuing segregation of the Canadian Indian; Rossport and Jackfish proclaim the no-nonsense mapmaking of the early white settlers; and Marathon and Terrace Bay-"Gem of the North Shore"-betray the post­war influx of American capital. (Terrace is the Brasilia of Kimberley-Clark's Kleenex-Kotex operation in Ontario.)

The layout of these latter towns, set amidst the most beguiling landscape in central North America, rigorously subscribes to that concept of northern town planning which might be defined as 1 984 Prefab and, to my mind, provides the source of so compelling an allegory of the human condition as might well have found its way into the fantasy prose of the late Karel Capek.

285

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Marathon, a timber town of some twenty-six hundred souls, clings to the banks of a fjord which indents the coast of Lake Superior. Due to a minor miscalculation by one of the company's engineers as to the probable course of the prevailing winds, the place has been overhung since its inception two decades ago with a pulp-and-paper stench that serves to proclaim the monolithic nature of the town's economy even as it discourages any supplemental income from the tourist trade. Real estate values, consequently, are relative to one's distance from the plant. At the boardwalk level, the company has located a barracks for unmarried and/or itinerant workers; up a block, hotel, cinema, chapel, and general store; at the next plateau, an assortment of prefabs; beyond them, at a further elevation, some split-levels for the junior execs; and, finally, with one more gentle ascent and a hard right turn, a block of paternalistic brick mansions which would be right at home among the more exclusive suburbs of Westchester County, New York. Surely the upward mobility of North American society can scarcely ever have been more persuasively demonstrated. "Gives a man something to shoot at," I was assured by one local luminary, whose political persuasion, it developed, was somewhere to the right of Prince Metternich.

A few hundred yards beyond Presidential Row, a bulldozed trail leads to the smog-free top of the fjord. But from this approach, one is held at bay by a padlocked gate bearing a sign from which, in the manner of those reassur­ing marquees once used to decorate the boarding ramps of Pan American Airways, one learns that "your company has now had one hundred and sixty-five accident-free work days" and that access to the top is prohibited. Up there, on that crest beyond the stench, one can see the two indispensable features of any thriving timber town-its log-shoot breaking bush back through that trackless terrain and an antenna for the low-power relay system of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

These relay outlets, with their radius of three or four miles, serve only the immediate area of each community. As one drives along No. 1 7, encounter­ing them every hour or so, they constitute the surest evidence that the "outside" (as we northerners like to call it) is with us still. In the outpost communities, the CBC's culture pitch (Boulez is very big in Batchawana) is supplemented by local programming which, in the imaginative traditions of commercial radio everywhere, leans toward a formula of news on the hour and fifty-five minutes of the pop picks from Billboard magazine. This happy ambivalence made my last trip along " 1 7" noteworthy, for at that time, climbing fast on all the charts and featured hard upon the hour by most deejays was an item called "Who Am I?" The singer was Petula Clark; the composer and conductor, Tony Hatch.

I contrived to match my driving speed to the distance between relay outlets, came to hear it most hours and in the end to know it, if not better than the soloist, at least as well, perhaps, as most of the sidemen who were

286

, -

t

T H E S E A R C H F O R P E T U L A C L A R K

booked for the date. After several hundred miles of this exposure, I checked into the hotel at Marathon and made plans to contemplate Petula.

"Who Am [?" was the fourth in a remarkable series of songs which estab­lished the American career of Petula Clark. Released in 1966 and preceded the year before by "Sign of the Times" and "My Love," it laid to rest any uncharitable notion that her success with the ubiquitous "Downtown" of 1964 was a fluke. Moreover, this quartet of hits was designed to convey the idea that, bound as she might be by limitations of timbre and range, she would not accept any corresponding restrictions of theme and senti­ment. Each of the four songs details an adjacent plateau of experience­the twenty-three months separating the release dates of "Downtown" and "Who Am I?" being but a modest acceleration of the American teen-ager's precipitous scramble from the parental nest.

And Pet Clark is in many ways the compleat synthesis of this experience. At thirty-four, with two children, with three distinct careers (in the forties she was the British cinema's anticipation of Annette Funicelio, and a decade later a subdued chanteuse in Paris niteries), and with a voice, figure, and (at a respectable distance) face that betray few of the ravages of this experien­tial sequence, she is pop music's most persuasive embodiment of the Gidget syndrome. Her audience is large, constant, and possessed of an enthusiasm which transcends the generations. One recent visitor from the Netherlands, a gentleman in his sixties who had previously assured me that American pop trends were the corrupting inspiration behind last summer's "Provo" riots in that country, became impaled upon his grandchildren'S enthusiasm for "My Love." He said it called to mind the spirit of congregational singing in the Dutch Reform church and asked to hear it once �gain.

Petula minimizes the emotional metamorphosis implicit in these songs, extracting from the text of each the same message of detachment and sexual circumspection. "Downtown," that intoxicated adolescent daydream-

Things will be great when you're Downtown, Don't wait a minute, for Downtown, Everything's waiting for you.

is as she tells it, but a step from "My Love," that vigorous essay 111 self-advertisement-

My love is warmer than the warmest sunshine, Softer than a sigh;

My love is deeper than the deepest ocean, Wider than the sky.

and from the reconciliatory concession of "Sign of the Times"-

287

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

I'll never understand the way you treated me, But when I hold your hand, I know you couldn't be

the way you used to be.

The sequence of events implicit in these songs is sufficiently ambiguous as to allow the audience dipping-in privileges. It's entirely possible to start with "Who Am ]?" as I did, and sample "Downtown" later at one's leisure. But a well-ordered career in pop music should be conceived like the dramatis personae of soap opera-dipping in to "The Secret Storm" once every semester should tell you all you really need to know about how things are working out for Amy Ames. And similarly, the title, tempo, and tonal range of a performer's hits should observe a certain bibliographic progression. (You thought Frankie had other reasons for "It's been a very good year"?) I'm inclined to suspect that had the sequence of her songs been reversed, Petuta's American reputation might not have gained momentum quite so easily. There's an inevitability about that quartet with its relentless on-pressing to the experiences of adulthood or reasonable facsimile thereof. To a teen-age audience whose social-sexual awareness dovetailed with their release dates, Petula in her well-turned-out Gidgetry would provide gratifying reassurance of postadolescent survival.

To her more mature public, she's a comfort of another kind. Everything about her onstage, on-mike manner belies the aggressive proclamations of the lyrics. Face, figure, discreet gyrations, but, above all, that voice, fiercely loyal to its one great octave, indulging none but the most circumspect slides and filigree, vibrato so tight and fast as to be nonexistent-none of that "here comes the fermata so hold on" tremolando with which her nibs Georgia Gibbs grated like squeaky chalk upon the exposed nerves of my generation-Petula panders to the wishful thinking of the older set that, style be hanged, modesty prevails. ("Leave the child be, Maw, it's just a touch of prickly heal.")

The gap between the demonstrative attitude of the lyrics and the restraint with which Petula ministers to their delivery is symptomatic of a more fundamental dichotomy. Each of the songs contrived for her by Tony Hatch emphasizes some aspect of that discrepancy between an adolescent's short-term need to rebel and long-range readiness to conform. In each the score pointedly contradicts that broad streak of self-indulgence which per­meates the lyrics. The harmonic attitude is, at all times, hymnal, upright, and relentlessly diatonic.

Well, come to that, almost all pop music today is relentlessly diatonic­the Max Reger-Vincent d'Indy chromatic bent which infiltrated big-band arranging in the late thirties and the forties ran its course when Ralph Flanagan got augmented sixths out of his system. But Tony Hatch's diatonicism, relative to Messrs. Lennoll, McCartney, et ai., is possessed of more than just a difference in kind. For the Beatles, a neotriadic persuasion

288

+

T H E S E A R C H F O R P E T U L A C L A R K

is (was?) a guerrilla tactic-an instrument of revolution. Annexing such vox populi conventions of English folk harmony as the "Greensleeves"­type nonchalance of old Vaughan Williams's lethargic parallel fifths, the new minstrels turned this lovably bumbling plainspeech into a disparag­ing mimicry of upper-class inflection. They went about sabotaging the seats of tonal power and piety with the same opportunism that, in Room at the Top, motivated Laurence Harvey in his seduction of Sir Donald Wolfit's daughter.

Tonally, the Beatles have as little regard for the niceties of voice leading as Erik Satie for the anguished cross-relation of the German postromantics. Theirs is a happy, cocky, belligerentiy resourceless brand of harmonic primitivism. Their career has been one long send-up of the equation: sophistication = chromatic extension. The willful, dominant prolongations and false tonic releases to which they subject us, "Michelle" notwithstand­ing, in the name of foreground elaboration, are merely symptomatic of a cavalier disinclination to observe the psychological properties of tonal background. In the Liverpudlian repertoire, the indulgent amateurishness of the musical material, though closely rivaled by the indifference of the performing style, is actually surpassed only by the ineptitude of the studio production method. ("Strawberry Fields" suggests a chance encounter at a mountain wedding between Claudio Monteverdi and a jug band.)

And yet, for a portion of the musical elite, the Beatles are, for this year at least, incomparably "in." After all, if you make use of sitars, white noise, and Cathy Berberian, you must have something, right? Wrong! The real attraction, concealed by virtue of that same adroit self-deception with which coffeehouse intellectuals talked themselves into Charlie Parker in the for­ties and Lennie Tristano in the fifties, is the need for tl;1e common triad as purgative. After all, the central nervous system can accommodate only so many pages of persistent pianissimos, chord clusters in the marge, and tritones on the vibes. Sooner or later, the diet palls and the patient cries out for a cool draught of C major. .. In filling this need, however, the Beaties are entirely incidental. They get the nod at the moment simply through that amateurishness which makes the whole phenomenon of their C major seem credible as an accident of overtone displacement, and through that avant-garde article of faith that nothing is more despicable than a professional triad tester. The Beaties' "in" versus Petula's relative "out" can be diagnosed on the same terms and as part of that same syndrome of status quest that renders Tristano's G minor Complex arcane, Poulenc's Organ Concerto in the same key banal, the poetry of the Iglulik Eskimos absorbing, Sibelius's Tapiola tedious, and that drives those who feel diffident to buy Bentleys.

But for Tony Hatch, tonality is not a worked-out lode. It is a viable and continuing source of productive energy with priorities that demand and get, from him, attention. "Downtown" is the most affirmatively diatonic

289

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

exhortation in the key of E major since the unlikely team of Felix Mendelssohn and Harriet Beecher Stowe pooled talents for

Still, still, with Thee, when purple morning breaketh, When the bird waketh and the shadows flee . . . .

"Sign of the Times," on the other hand, admits one fairly sophisticated altercation between the tonic with its dominant, and the minor-mediant relation, similarly embroidered, which twice underlines the idea that "Perhaps my lucky star is now beginning to shine"-the harmonic overlay suggests that there is still sufficient alto-stratus cloud cover to hamper visibility. "My Love," though, remains firmly persuaded of its nonmodulating course. Throughout its two minutes and forty-five seconds, the only extradiatonic event which disturbs proceedings is the near-inevitable hookup to the flattened supertonic for a final chorus-two neighborly dominants being the pivots involved. Indeed, only one secondary dominant, which happens to coincide with the line " I t shows how wrong we all can be," compromises the virginal propriety of its responsibly confirming Fuxian basses, and none of those stray, flattened leading-tones-as-root implies a moment's lack of resolution. It's all of a piece, a proud, secure Methodist tract-preordained, devoid of doubt, admitting of no compromise. And as legions of Petulas gyrate, ensnared within its righteous euphony, galleries of oval-framed ancestors peer down upon that deft deflation of the lyrics, and approve.

After the prevailing euphoria of the three songs which preceded it, "Who Am [?" reads like a document of despair. [t catalogues those symptoms of disenchantment and ennui which inevitably scuttle a trajectory of emotional escalation such as bound that trilogy together. The singer's "Downtown"­based confidence in the therapeutic effect of "noise," "hurry," and "bright lights" has been shattered. Those alluring asphalt canyons, which promised "an escape from that life which is making you lonely," have exacted a high price for their gift of anonymity. For though she has now found a place where "buildings reach up to the sky," where "traffic thunders on the busy street," where "pavement slips beneath my feet," she continues to "walk alone and wonder, Who Am [?"

Clearly, it's a question of identity crisis, vertiginous and claustrophobic, induced through the traumatic experience of a metropolitan environment and, quite possibly, aggravated by sore feel. There is, of course, the inevitable apotheosis, complete with falsetto C, in behalf of the restorative therapy of amour. ("But [ have something else entirely free, the love of someone close to me, and to question such good fortune, Who Am I?") Yet the prevailing dysphoria of that existentially questing title is not to be routed by so conventional and haIOlCarted an appendage.

Motivically, "Who Am ]?" plays a similar game of reverse "Downtown"­ism. The principal motivic cell unit of that ebullient lied consisted of the

290

I

I T H E S E A R C H F O R P E T U L A C L A R K

interval o f a minor third plus a major second, alternating, upon occasion, with a major third followed by a minor second. In "Downtown," the composite of either of these figures, the perfect fourth, became the title motive and the figures themselves were elongated by reiterated notes ("When/ you're/a/lone/and/life/is"), shuffled by commas ("downtown, where") ("to help, I") ( ["Pret]-ty, how can"), and constantly elaborated by the sort of free-diatonic transpositioning which seems entirely consistent with the improvisatory fantasies of youth.

In "Who Am I?," however, the same motive, though introduced and occasionally relieved by scale-step passages ("The build-ings-reach-up-to­the-sky") is most often locked into a diatonic spiral-the notes F-E-C and C-A-G serving to underline "I walk alone and wonder, Who Am I?" Furthermore, the bass line at this moment is engaged with the notes D-G-E and G-E-A, a vertical synchronization of which would imply a harmonic composite of the title motive. Now, admittedly, such Schoenbergian jargon must be charily applied to the carefree creations of the pop scene. At all costs, one must avoid those more formidable precepts of Princetonian Babbittry such as "pitch class," which, since they have not yet forded the Hudson unchallenged, can scarcely be expected to have plied the Atlantic and to have taken Walthamstow studio without a fight. Nevertheless, "Downtown" and "Who Am I?" clearly represent two sides of the same much-minted coin. The infectious enthusiasm of the "Downtown" motive encounters its obverse in the somnambulistic systematization of the "Who Am [?" symbol, a unit perfectly adapted to the tenor of mindless confidence and the tone of slurred articulation with which Petula evokes the intermin­able mid-morning coffee-hour laments of all the secret sippers of suburbia.

Strictly speaking, the idea of suburbia is meaningless within the context of Marathon. From waterfront to Presidential Row is but five blocks, and beyond that elevation one can pick out only two symbols of urban peri­phery: the Peninsula Golf and Country Club (NO TRES PASSING-KEEP OFF

THE GRASS- BEWARE THE DOG) and, as summer alternative, a smatT pond cared for by a local service club in lieu of the fjord, which was long ago rendered unfit for swimming. Both are well within range of the transmitter, though its power rapidly declines as one passes beyond the country club toward the highway, and consequently, whether via transistor or foyer PA, one remains exposed to the same single-channel news and music menu.

The problem for citizens of Marathon is that, however tacitly, a preoccupation with escalation and a concern with subsequent decline effectively cancel each other out. And the result, despite the conscien­tious stratification of the town, is a curiously compromised emotional unilaterality.

There are, of course, other ways to plan a town. Terrace Bay was designed two years after Marathon and apparently profited by the miscalculations

29 1

M U S I C A ND S O C I A B I L I T Y

which plagued its eastern neighbor. Wind direction (predominantly nor' westerly) was carefully plotted and the plant accordingly located to the north and east of the settlement. The town was designed around a shopping plaza and set on level ground two hundred feet above Lake Superior. The executives were encouraged to locate like den mothers, one to each prefab block. "Coddling the men don't work," Prince Metternich assured me. "Just robs them of incentive!" I resolved to have a look and set off at dusk for The Gem of the North Shore.

No. 1 7, patrolled at night, affords a remarkable auditory experience. The height of land in northern Ontario, a modest two thousand feet, is attained immcdiately north of Lake Superior. From beyond that point all water flows toward Hudson's Bay and, ultimately, the Arctic Sea. Traversing that promontory, after sundown, one discovers an astounding clarity of AM reception. All the accents of the continent are spread across the band, and, as one twiddles the dial to reap the diversity of that encounter, the day's auditory impressions with their hypnotic insularity recede, then re-emerge as part of a balanced and resilient perspective . . . .

292

r

75

M O D E R N M U S I C C U LT U R E :

O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y NT H E S I S

Georgina Born

Source: New Formations 2 ( 1987): 51-78.

In the modern era, western music culture is fragmented. Throughout the twentieth century, it is possible to see an unprecedented alienation of serious classical composers from the public and, at the same time, the growth of commercial music forms with an extraordinary success and 'popu­larity' in terms of market sales. However crude this depiction of a complex history, music shows a more extreme polarization than the other older art forms. Architecture may be the exemplary medium of an alienated and dominating modernism; and the ideology of the avant-garde was con­structed in late-nineteenth-century visual art as well as in music. But neither the visual arts nor architecture show an expanding and volatile mass market of popular forms synchronously with the development of their modernisms and avant-gardes. '

On the other hand, within commercial popular music there is a prolifera­tion of markets and of production processes which is remarkable compared with other mass media. Television, cinema, the press and radio are by com­parison large-scale, centralized and oligopolistic forms of cultural production, with little entry or influence by small-scale producers and distributors. Some of these media, as their technologies evolve, show signs of the potential development of more active and invasive margins, but the overall trend is still towards concentration.'

Music therefore provides a fascinating object for cultural study. In com­parison with other modern forms it has embodied a uniquely full spectrum of positions across the cultural field, and this makes it possible to examine that field as a historical totality. Musical modernism and popular music, both dramatic expressions of larger cultural movements, developed con­currently. By exploring the interrelation between them - a problem ignored until very recently in cultural theory - we can understand forces at work

293

M U S I C A N D SOC I A B I L I T Y

behind the still-forming character o f postmodernism. Such an exploration must begin by delineating modernist and popular music cultures.

In socia-economic terms, there is a music that is predominantly financed by state and corporate subsidy, and reproduced in educational institutions, and a music primarily produced and circulated through commercial market mechanisms; until recently, i t was largely ignored by educational bodies. This distinction between musical modernism and popular music corresponds to Bourdieu's two spheres of cultural and economic capital.' Aesthetically, the modernist/popular divide is equally clear. The modernist avant-garde grew out of the history and the crisis of the classical-romantic tradition: a music defined at once by a continuity and a break with, a conscious nega­tion of, functional tonality. From a period of polymorphous atonality at the start of the century, the second Viennese school of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg developed in the 1920s the compositional technique and philosophy known as serialism.' This century, whether or not they have used it, most modernist and 'serious' avantgarde composers have been trained in serialist technique. And if they did not use serialism, the impulse of the avant-garde was to find a new underlying compositional rationality or system to replace the overthrown and dying tonal system. This search for new systems has been deterministic, rationalistic and scientistic. Leading composers such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Milton Babbitt have drawn on mathematics, statistics, information theory, acoustics, linguistics, structural­ism as theories to inform their compositional practice. In parallel, they have indulged in a love affair with technology: the modernist desire for new means to match new systems, which has also been an end in itself. For most of us, this outline can best be grasped intuitively, as a 'self-evidence': the atonal (or poly tonal) and arhythmic (or polyrhythmic) complexity of modernist music. My aesthetic sketch becomes a discursive analysis: another charac­teristic of modernism, in which artistic practice and theoretico-philosophical discourse are merged to an unprecedented degree. But the most significant fact is the echoing silence of modernist musical discourse towards popular music, with the rare exceptions who don't entirely ignore its existence (notably Adorno) being unremittingly hostile .' In otller words, for musical modernism, commercial popular music is a repressed and invisible 'other'.

The academic study of popular music aesthetics has hardly begun ' But there exists a consensus of minimal defining characteristics which can suffice for now. Most basic is the centrality and character of rhythm, with roots in Afro-American rhythmic traditions, and from which multiple lines of development and cross-fertilization have grown. Second, popular music displays a tendency for cyclic structures containing, acting as vehicles for, or allied to, improvisational or quasi-improvisational development, rather than the extensional development and syntactic structures of functional tonality. Third, it embraces, rather than avoids, multiple repetition at various leve)s.1 Harmonically, the history of popular music is now recognized as a complex

294

T

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

synthesis involving waves of Afro-American and then European influence. This aesthetic characterization is barely adequate, but it is not vague: it is as possible cerebrally as it is libidinally to distinguish the rhythmic character of popular musics from that of classical or modernist music. In fact, other aesthetic criteria, particularly the timbral inflections and vocal styles of popular music, are less susceptible to written transcription and so far harder to analyse. These criteria have been likened to the difference between mainly notated and mainly aural music traditions. Allowing for aural aspects in the interpretation of modernist music, and notation as also central to pop­ular music, the distinction remains suggestive of their origins and of their continuing character. As to discourse, the theoretical texts of musical modernism have proselytizing and pedagogic functions - they aim to con­vert and educate. By contrast, the primary rhetoric of popular music is an unselfconscious publicity, aiming to sell and to persuade to consume.

There are, to summarize, two distinct and evolving musical cultures, one modernist and the other popular, which circulate in different socio­economic spheres and have distinct aesthetic and discursive forms. But now it is necessary to focus in on their internal structures, since they are not undifferentiated. I n one of the more interesting recent analyses of the phenomenon, Perry Anderson cautions against portraying modernism as timeless and unitary. Instead, he traces the periodization of modernism, defined by its reaction against the earlier movements of romanticism and realism, its uneven geographical distribution and the variety of its aesthetic tendencies - German expressionism, Italian futurism, cubism and surrealism - which none the less shared a common sensitivity to the new inventions and artefacts of the machine age. In relation to technology, Anderson notes that 'the condition of this interest . . . was the abstraction of t�chniques and arte­facts from the social relations of production that were generating them . . . . I t was not obvious where the new devices and inventions were going to lead. Hence the - so to speak - ambidextrous celebration of them from Right and Left alike - Marinetti or Mayakovsky." Both right and left (ltal�an futurism, Russian constructivism), apparently different political positions within modernism, were agreed on an uncritical technological optimism.

As to music, the broad field of twentieth-century composition contains several streams, not all equally modernist - we could, for example, discern a strong populist and nationalist tradition, in Bartok and Kodaly, Ives and Copland, Vaughan Williams and Britten. But for divisions within modernism, it is instructive to look at controversies surrounding the commitment to new technologies, and the major split within the musical avant-garde between the 'serious' post-serialists and 'unserious' experimentalists, who congregated around the leading figure of John Cage ' Both factions were attracted by the new electronic and recording media, but they used them differently. The post-serialists combined the use of electronics with their commitment to scientific rationalities, hoping in this way to 'solve' the problem of the

295

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

future direction o f composition. Stockhausen sought t o achieve the total serial control of musical timbre by combining electronic means with acoustic analysis. Conflicts within this group, for example between Babbitt (the leading figure on the American east coast) and the Europeans, took the form of accusations of insufficient mathematical rigour.

By contrast, the experimentalists and their French counterpart in musique concrete used the new machines artisanally. Musique concrete, which Boulez deplored and considered empiricist, involved the recording of everyday sounds as sources and then manual editing: in other words, music collage. In reaction to the post-serialists' scientism and rationalism, Cage's followers turned to mysticism (Zen), chance, indeterminacy, or the alternative political determinism of Marxism-Leninism, to to theorize their music. In reaction to post-serial ism's hyper-complexity, they used ethnic and 'primitive' musics as sources, stripping their soundworIds bare in the genres called minimalism and systems music.

Socio-economically, the two avant-gardes were differently placed in relation to the state and the academy. While Babbitt ruled the music depart­ment of Princeton, and in Europe Stockhausen and Boulez had the run of state radio stations and research institutes, experimental composers sub­sidized their work by occasional art college teaching (in the USA, Mills College, in the UK, Portsmouth and Maidstone Art Colleges). They inhabited a mixed economy, part performers, part recording artists, part teachers; but, as an American informant told me, 'Those guys never got tenure!' Through these mechanisms of opposition and reaction, post-serial ism and experimental music can be seen as coexistent and complementary, defined by conscious antagonism to one another.

I have defined popular music culture as primarily, and simply, commer­cial. This ignores, with purpose, the line commonly drawn between 'mass' and 'popular' culture - a distinction imbued with evaluative connotations: 'mass culture' as produced by monopoly culture industries, bearing ideology and imposed on a passive public; 'popular culture' as authentic (working­class) and vernacular, an active and self-produced resistance to bourgeois hegemony. This homology model of class and culture - bourgeois domina­tion through mass media, working-class resistance through popular culture - is a legacy of the mass culture critique, Marxian and otherwise. But it goes even further back to what Peter Burke has called the deeply embedded assumptions of 'primitivism'. 'purism' and 'communalism' in writing by late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century romantic and nationalist intellec­tuals who opposed 'people's culture' to the culture of the urban 'mob'." I n fact, Burke doubts whether there ever were pristine 'people's' folk cultures beyond the influence of the market and larger exchange networks. This suggests that it is a fantasized and idealized view of popular culture, seen as authentic, vernacular and resistant to commerce, which is the root of the mass/popular polarity. 'Authenticity' has been an extraordinarily resilient

296

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : ON S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y NT H E S I S

analytic concept in popular music studies, perhaps because, as many authors have noted, it is deep in the heart of rock and country music mythology. It seems to me time to drop this ideological baggage and accept the demise of the homology model, so as to get to work instead on the real and significant differences and conflicts that do exist - within commercial popular culture."

Within musical modernism, the opposition of mass to popular, and the concomitant idealization of ' the popular', was precisely the ideological mech­anism underlying modernists' attitude to non-art musics, and divided them once again. On the one hand, the post-serialist ideologues had little interest in ethic musics. They treated with amused or irritated condescension the 'soft' humanism of those composers who made a great deal of their relation­ship with, and use of, ethnic and folk musics. On the other hand, nationalists such as Bartok, Kodaly and Ives drew on what they believed were their national folk traditions (including military brass band music, for Ives); while Debussy, Stravinsky and, under their influence, the experimentalists drew variously on the rhythmic vitality, modes, tone colours, and simplicity of non-western musics - as did eclectics such as Messiaen. These phenomena are important to examine, since they are often referred to by writers who defend musical modernism as unalienated because of its interest in ethnic musics. There are two critical points which are skated over by the defenders. First, the modernists' relationship was to ethnic or folk musics: they disdained the commercial popular music that was directly, socially present around them. Instead, they went on field trips, or used ethnomusicology, to discover 'authentic' popular musics. This was, just as Burke suggests, a search for the pristine and primitive in musical culture, a romanticization. Second, the modernists used these musics as sources - to borrow frqm, be inspired by, use 'in quotes', transmute. They were still defined as an 'other' to be drawn on and used in modernist terms, rather than understood or 'entered' in their own terms. This second point is particularly relevant to recent assertions about musical postmodernism, which is claimed to be effecting a rapp/'oche-

. , ment, a new syntheSIS, between the modernist and popular music legacies. I return to this question later.

As for the complexity of popular music culture, there is now a growing body of work exploring the significance of socio-economic diversity in its production." The most common analytic distinction is that between large­scale and smallscale sectors. Relations between the 'major' multinational record companies and small 'independent' companies are contradictory: at one level dramatic competition, at another co-operation and interdepend­ence. An influential American model of their relation describes a periodic, cyclical movement whereby the majors, because of their monopoly form, become sluggish, conservative and non-responsive to the audience ." At this point small, upstart independent entrepreneurs, more closely in touch with new audiences, new sources of talent and new technologies, invade the

297

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

majors' market o r create a new one. This period is followed by recuperation by the majors, who bring out their own version (the 'cover') of the inde­pendents' music and star, or co-opt the independent, and so re-appropriate their hold on the market. As Simon Frith has noted, 15 this is the American liberal version of the mass culture critique, a classic free-market model stress­ing the innovative benefits of petty capitalism, with the small capitalist as hero. Despite such ideological interpretation, the dialectic between multina­tional and small record companies remains a force at the heart of popular music production - one that has been useful in explaining major cultural changes in pop history (rock 'n' roll in the 1950s, rock in the 1960s, new wave and punk in the late I 970s), with each musical innovation resting on an efflorescence of small record labels.

Over the years the multinational record companies have diversified pro­duction to control most branches of the music-related 'leisure industries'. Their ownership of both pressing plants and the means of distribution exemplifies the contradictions of the popular music process, since although small record companies depend on the majors for both the manufacture and the marketing of their music, this dependence does not negate the power of the independents themselves as moulders and sensitive barometers of public taste - a power which the majors recognize and even emulate by setting up their own quasi-independent subsidiaries or buying out small labels. But the small companies' role in this process is not static and shifts over time. Frith points out that where the independent labels producing R&B and rock 'n' roll in the 1 950s grew to meet unsatisfied consumer demands, the successful 1960s independents (Virgin, Charisma, Island) were extensions of manage­ment and production companies, or new distribution means (mail order and illegal importation!); while the independents associated with punk and new wave in the 1970s grew mainly out of the ambitions of musicians: 'This was less a response to frustrated consumers . . . than the expression of frustrated producers, excluded from record-making by soaring studio costs and by the new "professional" conventions of the rock industry.'16

In formal terms, the history of popular music is one of accelerating development and variety, of complex aesthetic branchings and fusions. As an indication, one could make a crude and vaguely chronological list of emergent major forms - blues, jazz, tin-pan alley, country and western, R&B, rock 'n' roll, rock, soul, glamrock, heavy metal, teenybop, reggae, punk, disco, electropop. Or one could list the evolutions, some of them parallel, within a form: in jazz, for instance, they would include big band, swing, bebop, cool, progressive, jazz rock, free jazz. Once born, many of these forms continue and their markets coexist An area of recent attention, integral to mapping out such genealogies and aesthetic differences, is genre definition." Since popular music culture is explicitly multitextual, involving visual and written as well as aural codes, defined by packaging and promo­tion as well as by performance, the separation of genres and tracing of their

298

T M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

meaning is a complex affair." American music trade papers, such as Billboard, have long provided weekly breakdowns of figures and charts for each recog­nized specialist market, but the relationship between 'market' and 'genre' has only just begun to be explored. Of course, all of this contrasts with Adorno's depiction of an unrelenting sameness in popular music, of stand­ardized musical goods which display only sufficient variation to reproduce their consumption by listeners whom Adorno sees as regressed and 'childish, their primitivism . . . not that of the undeveloped, but that of the forcibly retarded'." Rather than in these terms of slight variation and motivated obsolescence, popular culture has been theorized positively, after Benjamin, as embodying a new form of 'distracted' perception and the end of reification of cultural goods - a keynote in postmodern cultural theory.

Adorno's modernist account of popular music, however, which reveals such profound and hostile non-recognition, leads to a paradoxical conclu­sion: that the relation between modernist and popular music is historically one of non-relalion. The two stand in a relation of absolute difference. They are mutually 'unconscious'; each is identified by the other as the 'unknown'. Internally, both cultures are differentiated - socio-economically, aesthet­ically and discursively. But at this level, within each unity, the relations of difference are complementary and symbiotic. Within modernism, they are antagonistic and oppositional, with experimentalism being defined by reaction to post-serialism and vice versa. Within popular music, there is a faster play of difference and synthesis, in which major and independent producers compete with and then feed off each other.

Despite a growing understanding of each of these musical cultures (and the development of popular music studies has been striking), until recently attempts to make sense of the total musical field have been rare - which is why Adorno's work, containing as it does the seed of its own deconstruction, remains exceptional. Adorno developed a sociology-philosophy of modern music which, although polemical, did attempt to understand the complex socio-musical world surrounding him - from Wagner and Mah�r, through the serialism of Schoenberg and neo-classicism of Stravinsky, to the swing and big band jazz of the 1930s. Moreover, he theorized their common transformation by the new means of mass production and reproduction -the commoditization of music. Adorno thus took on both modernist and popular music, analysing them as social and as musical forms. Alone in the history of socio-cultural studies, he addressed contemporary music as a totality. It is remarkable that until the publication in the last couple of years of studies by Jacques Attali and Alan Durant," the gauntlet thrown down by Adorno had lain undisturbed for some forty years. In very different ways, both Attali and Durant continue Adorno's project, by analysing music as a socio-historical totality and by touching on the division between modernism and popular music. Why was this problem so long ignored, and why is it being addressed again now?

299

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

The answers lie at two levels. First, i t is clear that this kind of work has been generated by the impasse, or crisis, of modernism, and intellectuals' need to reassess their world. And this in turn relates to thc social and biographical experience of a generation of intellectuals raised on popular and modernist culture and music, needing to heal their own cultural schizo­phrenia: producing modernist cultural theory, consuming popular culture; writing for Tel Quel, listening to Jacques Brei (or, more likely, Talking Heads or Michael Jackson).

Second, there has been a largely unacknowledged, and culturally uncon­scious, intellectual division of labour in studies on music which parallels exactly the modernist/popular split. An interesting recent book by the musicologist Joseph Kerman, amounting almost to a disciplinary confes­sional, and something of a watershed from the reactions it has received, spells out this state of affairs " Studies on music have been of two kinds: musicological and socio-cultural. In general, musicological studies have taken the western art tradition including serious modern music as the object of study, while socio-cultural studies have focused on non-western musics (ethnomusicology, or anthropology of music) and, in the past fifteen years, popular music. Thus western art music has been studied almost exclusively as musical text, while non-western, ethnic and popular musics have (until recently) been studied primarily as socio-cultural practice."

This dissociation of the musical-aesthetic from the social represents another fragmentation, or splitting mechanism, characteristic of modernism. Kerman's book is important for his attempt at self-criticism, for his call that musicology should concern itself with the socio-cultural. However, he still exhibits a traditional musicological reserve towards studies of socio-cultural 'context'. 'My own hesitation before contextual studies . . . is founded on the impression that they are usually tilted much too far towards considera­tion of contexts. They usually deal too little with music as music .'" Kerman's hopes ride on two studies: Carl Schorske's book on fin-de-siecle Vienna," a work of socio-cultural history which examines the whole intellectual milieu, from architecture to psychoanalysis to Schoenberg, and attempts some musical analysis; and Charles Rosen's study of the classical style," also a broad intellectual history woven around musical analysis, which earns praise for its eclecticism and heterodoxy. But it should be noted that this auto­critique by an eminent musicologist, lamenting the lack of socio-cultural perspective, draws primarily on high cultural studies - on intellectual his­tory and the social history of art - rather than on studies of popular music, which remain beyond Kerman's frame of reference.

Kerman gives insight, sociologically speaking, into two further aspects of the kinship between modernism and a-social musicology. First, he describes the increasing, and bewildering, division and specialization within musico­logy that has occurred since the Second World War. There now exist three subdisciplines: musicology, the study of western art music before 1900;

300

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

music theory, the ahistorical study of the structure of western art music, mainly after 1900; and music analysis, the detailed 'internalist' explication of the structure of particular compositions, again usually post- 1900. Thus music theory and analysis, as well as studying modernist texts, take a more compiicit, active role in their construction, Kerman says of music theory that it is not just descriptive, but rather prescriptive: 'much of the power and prestige of theory derives from its alignment . . . with the actual sources of creativity on the contemporary musical scene'.26

Second, this incestuous union of theory and composition was, as Kerman graphically describes, cemented by the post-war academicization of post-serialist music in the USA, a process based in the music departments of the elite east coast universities. The west coast academics looked, signific­antly, towards the experimentalists - the opposition - with their oriental and populist leanings. Kerman writes of Babbitt, the leading east coast ideologue:

Babbitt at Princeton was pointing out that avant-garde music could find its niche after all - though only by retreating from one bastion of middle-class culture, the concert hall, to another, the university. Like pure science, he argued, musical composition has a claim on the university as a protector of abstract thought. . . . Instead of lamenting the no-doubt irreparable breach between avant-garde music and the public, composers like mathematicians should turn their backs on the public and demand their rightful place in the academy. Otherwise 'music will cease to evolve, and in that important sense, will cease to live', As a matter of fact, American composers were already in the academy, well in, but apparently further commit­ments . . . were expected. So Princeton actually set up an academic programme for the PhD degree in musical composition, for which the final exercise consisted of a musical composition plus a theory dissertation or essay. The marriage of theory and comijosition was legitimized by graduate councils around the country; the avant­garde was house-broken into the academy."

Clearly little love is lost between Kerman and musical modernism. His book reads like a plea to wrest musicology from its collusion with musical modernism, and to reconstruct it as a holistic and humanistic interpretative discipline. But how do the developments in musicology he describes compa·re with those in the socio-cultural study of music?

Sociology of music has in the past taken relatively unproductive forms, apart from Adorno's work which shines out with an acute sensitivity to music and to his time. In the hands of earlier social theorists, music provided an extraordinarily 'open' object with which to play. The works of Dilthey, Weber, Simmel and Schutz on music provide evidence of a strange

301

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

property:" music can be used as a transparent medium through which to project a deeper message, like a blank tape on which to record, or a rhythm track to be overdubbed. Music becomes simply a means to express the writer's particular variety of theory. This quality runs through many kinds of writing about music; it was noticed as early as 1939 in a remarkable book by W. Dwight Allen called Philosophies of Music History in which he demonstrates the ideological nature of music historiography."

This quality, whereby music is a transparent medium and highly suscept­ible to a kind of theoretical or ideological predetermination, can be linked to its particular phenomenology. Music in itself is alogogenic, completely unrelated to language,JO and it is non-artefact, having no physical existence. It is an autoreferential aural abstraction. But music also requires a 'historical phenomenology', which would trace the complex and changing mediations of music - as social and ritual occasion, theoretical text and object of discourse, notated score, musical instrument, commodity form (sheet music, radio, soundtrack, record, tape, computer). These two factors - music's pure abstraction, and its complex historical mediations - may explain why it is a difficult medium to study and, therefore, why it is liable to be treated as a tabula rasa.

Mid-century sociology of music, then, was generally a dry, classificatory and abstract affair, hardly getting past the stage of listing its own categories. Compared with this, ethnomusicology was certainly more empirically engaged and interesting, although it was bugged thcoretically by being the poor cousin of cultural anthropology, and tended to conform to whatever paradigm - diffusion, acculturation - was fashionable. The Prague school of sociology of music and some mid-century American studies were also more empirically orientated. In the USA, in particular, there was a move towards the study of 'low' and 'deviant' culture in response to the mass culture critique, so that 1950s sociology included work, with a pluralist bent, on jazz, dance musicians and musical taste. A solid body of research has grown up since then around Howard Becker and his students, and the 'production of culture' approach," in which music is part of a larger sociology of culture and art.

The liveliest development, though, has been the growth, from the late 1 960s and early 1 970s in Britain and Europe, of a new school of popular culture and music studies, based on a reaction against the mass culture critique and the bland sociology of youth, and on the desire to address cultural forms which were, by then, highly visible and audible. Initially, popular music was simply a component in the neo-Gramscian subculture studies of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University, which were the main British expression of the new approach. Increasingly, however, popular music studies have begun to develop in their own right, leading from original classic studies by Charles Keil," Charlie Gillett" and Simon Frith" to a relatively full body of international and

302

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

interdisciplinary work consolidated by the founding, i n 1 982, of the Interna­tional Association for the Study of Popular Music." Subculture theory started as the testing ground for the homology model of class and culture, saw it decline, and nurtured the transition to a new paradigm, spoken through Dick Hebdige's book Subculture: the meaning of style36 - although others were converging on the new ideas at the same time. This paradigm is a new orthodoxy in cultural studies, and I shall call it the postmodern perspective (since some of the authors espousing it use those words).

What is postmodernism? The literature on the subject is confusing and polemical, and the character of post modernism is currently being fought out on the battlefields of cultural theory and art practice. The 'postmod­ern isms' vying for attention in different areas of cultural production (for example, in serious music, pop music, music journalism, but also literary theory, architecture, visual and film arts) are not unified. There are more and less populist, more and less vanguardist varieties; there are politicized and unpoliticized, 'reactionary' and 'progressive' versions. But the single unifying characteristic of postmodernism, as the name announces, is that it reacts against modernism; and more specifically, against modernism's blindness and hostility to popular culture. Post modernism is thus defined by negation of a (modernist) negation, thereby reproducing a modernist mechanism and revealing, paradoxically, an essential kinship with modernism - as its heir. The reactive nature of postmodernism is multiple: there is a lateral, discursive affinity between it and other 'post' -enlightenment positions. For postmodern, read post-Marxian and post-structuralist. The politics of postmodernism, when there are any, are pluralist and populist, espousing the 'new social movements'. Jean-Franyois Lyotard, the leading post modern philosopher and guru, understands it to mean the end of the grand narratives of human­ism and Marxism, and the proliferation in their place of 'petits recits', a celebration of heterogeneity.3J

Post modern cultural studies, in their reaction against modernism, started out with a special interest in popular culture, a primary orienta lion towards consumption and an overwhelming optimism of tone. In reaction to the pessimism of the mass culture critique, and the Adornian-Horkheimer stress on the cultural commodity as exchange value, postmodernists celebrate use value, the reality of purpose and meaning in commercial popular culture. Writers have turned positively to leisure, to pop texts, wanting to understand (buzz words) 'pleasure', 'desire' and the 'romance' of their consumption. The studies include almost mandatory reference to the work of Benjamin - championed as the dissident member of the Frankfurt school - and of Barthes, coming together with other consumption theories. The point is to blast open the view of commercial cultural goods as closed, univocal and aesthetically impoverished - hence the references to post-structuralist notions of the 'end of the author', indeterminate reading, and the fragmented but active reading subject; to reception aesthetics; and, from semiotics, to

303

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

the idea o f cultural texts as polysemic, open, grasped through a 'struggle for the sign',

Two recent books which make use of these approaches to popular music in contrasting ways are lain Chambers's Urban Rhythms: pop music and popular culture" and Dave Laing's One Chord Wonders: pOIVer and meaning in punk rock." Chambers weaves a flowing historical narrative around the major British pop culture and music phenomena from 1 956 to the present; while Laing takes one short, significant moment of pop history - punk rock '76 to '78 - and subjects it to comprehensive semiotic and aesthetic deconstruction. The books have many things in common: both feature Barthes and Benjamin as mentors; both provide useful discographies and photographs to give aural and visual meaning to their text; and both discographies and texts provide rich pickings in genre definitions and pop's meta-aesthetic interrelations.

Both writers also owe much to Hebdige's work, as he created the method that they each use, differently accented - a combination of history, socio­economic analysis and semiotics. But most interesting is Chambers's and Laing's common desire to stick to the specificities of 'pop and its own inter­nal realities'." For Chambers this means popular culture and its intimate interrelations with pop music, their specific movement. For Laing it means, against Hebdige's treatment of punk as a subcultural 'stylistic ensemble', taking punk rock as a specific musical genre and exploring its multitextual forms - the 'punk look', its business structure - and, as music, its relation to previous rock styles. Punk and what happened to it are crucial in understanding why Laing and Chambers want to return to specificities. The discourse that blossomed around punk included the latest, and perhaps the most seductive, version of the 'authenticity' model. Pop music commentary became hot and polarized between those that saw punk and its political style as a direct scream of anguish and frustration by the unemployed lumpenproletariat, versus those who saw it as sheer artifice, a politics of pose manufactured by style svengalis like Malcolm McLaren (the Sex Pistols' manager). Chambers and Laing demonstrate, once and for all, that the surge of moral anxiety, the idealizing political projections, and the press and media storm that together combined to construct punk were nothing unusual. Rather they are a historical constant in the discourse surrounding pop culture and pop music. This mediating discourse, speculating wildly on external causation in pop culture, tends to distract attention from tracing its particular, internal history.

Although there is much that is valuable in these books, they also indicate some of the problems of postmodern cultural theory. I am uneasy, for example, about the way Chambers's rhetorical style glosses over some of the underlying assumptions of optimistic consumptionist theory. Romance is the key word here: 'Pop music is generally used, responded to and each day appropriated through romance. In romance pop acquires its most extensive

304

• -

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

imaginative resonance'; 'Music is not a n "escape" from "reality", but an interrogative exploration of its organizing categories. Imagination and "reality" are brought together in a significant friction and exchange.''' This is reminiscent of Angela McRobbie who, writing about girls' romantic fant­asies in relation to their consumption of films such as Fame and Flashdance, makes the case for 'fantasy, daydreaming and "abandon" to be interpreted as part of a strategy of resistance or opposition; that is, as marking out one of those areas which cannot be totally colonized'." Chambers and McRobbie reject the view of romance in popular culture as escapist, and instead por­tray it as a site of subversion and imaginative reconstruction: a politics of fantasylimagination. One problem here is the blurring together of 'fantasy' and 'imagination'; within certain (non-Lacanian) psychoanalytic traditions, these psychic processes are considered to be distinct and opposing, with fantasy as depowering, imagination as empowering .') Chambers speaks only of 'imagination' and not 'fantasy', yet his message is the same: that there is a subversive politics simply in the experience of consumption of popular culture. In denying 'escapism' and exploring the utopian projections and identifications contained in popular culture, it seems to me that Chambers and McRobbie ignore questions which demand attention: questions of power, of different degrees of passivity and activity, and of the differences between consumption and 'self-production'. Their post modern optimism for consump­tion as subversion is as yet unargued.

Another characteristic tension in postmodern theory is revealed by Laing's analysis of the sexual politics of punk. He notes punk's contradictory stances: on the one hand, anti-rock reactions involving a 'deliberate refusal of romance' and of the macho cult of instrumental virtuosity, and an andro­gynous questioning of gender stereotyping. This was simultaneous with the entry of an unprecedented number of women, who had ,;ot played before, into groups - a development with lasting effects in contemporary pop. On the other hand, Laing reminds us that punk lyrics were not in general positively anti-sexist and that its 'anti-elitism did not preclude the reproduc­tion of macho styles in stage gestures and movement' . Laing's ·final point, however, is that 'it was as if the empty space left by punk's anti-romance and anti-expertise positions made it easier for women performers to them­selves work in a radical manner. It wasn't, then, punk rock itself which was positively anti-sexist . . . but its negative operations opened up greater pos­sibilities for such work within popular music.''' I n this statement, punk rock and its 'negative operations' suddenly become male-typed, and women musi­cians epiphenomenal. Women's highly active and visible presence becomes a residual, passive thing: the result of an empty space left for them by men. But surely the contradictory sexual politics that Laing describes so well should also be attributed to women's struggles as important actors within punk? Indeed, with other writers, Laing neglects to trace the broader effects of women's presence on punk's anti-hierarchical and collectivist politics of

305

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

practice. Despite feminist politics being largely subterranean - a repressed discourse - in punk, these political parallels are not pure coincidence. I t is ironic that although he acknowledges Angela McRobbie's critique of male subculture theory, in which women are mentioned as 'the people who were dancing over in the corner by the speakers'," Laing ends by implicitly reproducing the same view: punk is defined as male and women as marginal. In this, he exemplifies a poignant, and telling, contradiction of the postmodern condition: despite the desire to encourage the 'other' to speak for herself, to efface and disown their authorship, ultimately postmodern writers retain the power of authorship - the text has an author - and so the power of rep­resenting the 'other'. Predictably, Laing's representation of punk's sexual politics and his theorization of its effects are inadequate.

A third central postmodern debate concerns the effects of technology and polarizes between a pessimistic scenario of increasing centralization and monopoly control - for example, in Baudrillard's theory" - and an optimistic vision of the power of new technologies in combination with new social forces to decentralize and democratize cultural production. Chambers and Laing both align themselves with the optimists. While Chambers's text simply seduces us into accepting his contrast between a 'dynamic, and potentially more democratic' popular culture and the 'tired conservative prospects it encroaches upon and supplants'," Laing's arguments are based on an impeccable discussion of the commercial context and production structures of punk: the major/independent record company question, and punk's 'do-it-yourself' ethic. He concludes that:

Certain organisational effects of punk rock may turn out to be harbingers of a future, more widespread medium. In particular, the very small-scale 'do-it-yourself' world of small labels but especially of home-made taped music represented the virtual dissolution of the barrier between performer and audience that was part of the ethos of much punk activity 'S

We are left convinced, yet aware of the limited and conjunctural nature of the developments.

This part of Laing's work returns us to a valuable legacy of critical theory that has been submerged. The veneration of Benjamin has centred on his ideas of distracted reception and the transformation of consumption, but has largely ignored his concern with changes in the 'production relations' of culture - as Laing puts it, 'what can artists do as workers' " In this, Benjamin was responding to Brecht's theories of cultural work, and, significantly, Brecht too has been neglected by cultural theory, despite his influence on the practice of 1970s left journals and theatre and music groups, who experi­mented with non-hierarchical and collective work and (even prior to punk) with 'alternative' circuits of production and distribution. The reappearance

306

+

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

of interest in 'production relations' in Laing, echoed by Jacques Auali and Alan Durant in their recent books, may reflect the fact that consump­tionist theories (such as Chambers's) are stuck in a post-Barthesian, post­Benjaminian impasse. The terms of the debate have become ungenerative and rhetorical.

If the problem of post modern cultural theory is how to go forward, beyond the crisis of modernism and the modernist/popular divide, Durant's and AUali's books can be seen as a 'second wave' in music studies. The first wave (Laing, Chambers) was a compensatory reflex reaction investing all enquiry in popular culture, to redress that absence from cultural theory. This second wave now tries to analyse the historical totality of music, and its internal divisions, in order to understand what the overall possibilities are.

Durant and Attali approach the socio-musical totality from entirely dif­ferent directions. Durant's aim is a careful deconstruction of some major beliefs and tenets of dominant musicological, modernist and serious music discourse, with the aim of exposing their partial, historical and ideological nature, their idealizations and omissions. At the same time, he wants to return us to considering the 'material conditions of music-making'.'" Altali has a grander project, at once an evolutionary narrative and a meta­theoretical analysis. He uses music as a theoretical tool, since 'music is a herald, for change is inscribed in noise faster than it transforms society . . . . Listening to music is listening to all noise, realizing that its appropriation and control is a reflection of power, that it is essentially political.' Attali's meta-theory proposes that 'music does not just reflect society; it also fore­shadows new social formations in a prophetic and annunciatory way'. He finds music a 'prophetic indicator' in two ways: 'in its compositional pro­cedures - the ways in which the violence of noise is channelled or formally controlled - and in the modes of producing, distributing and consuming ITILlsic,.SI Attali thus announces, audaciously, his intention to 'theorize through music', to lise music as a 'credible metaphor of the real', as a medium through which to read history." ..

Durant's book is in two parts. The first part travels through his deconstruct ions of key discursive themes and distorted terms: music and its relation (or non-relation) to language; 'classical' music, the orchestra, and modernism; tuning and dissonance; and, finally, performance, sound and vision, and music reproduction technologies. This part of the book is backed up by a constantly invoked and dizzying range of comparative historical reference, which serves to historicize and to relativize. The second part con­tains two case studies: an analysis of the English Golden Age of madrigals at the turn of the seventeenth century and a study of 'rock today'.

Throughout, Durant stresses change and transition, the non-fixity of music and its base in social, material and particular historical conditions. Despite its many specific insights, however, the book remains overall abstract and non-historical, without clear direction: an exercise only in extending

307

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

frames of reference. There is a tension between two implicit audiences for the book. His critique is partly aimed at a conservative academic music orthodoxy, with the air of wanting to bring into this respectable discourse subjects previously off-limits: jazz, rock, technology, the social. At the same time, according to the blurb, the book also aims to have 'direct implications for current musical activity', by which is implied popular music practice. Yet at crucial moments Durant misses the chance to make his argument deeper and more relevant to contemporary producers. For example, in discussing the effects of new music technologies, he evades what he calls the 'familiar questions of royalties and copyright, or of diminished opportunit­ies for musicians of live employment'." These are complex and unresolved issues for musicians, raised by practices like hometaping and the substitu­tion of synthesizers and backing tapes for live players - developments with major implications for musicians' property rights and for their control over their own creative labour. They are questions about the 'democratiza­tion' of music practice which require urgent attention and which are, incidentally, currently among the main preoccupations of the British Musicians Union.

Durant's deconstruction of dissonance is interesting and through it we can glimpse his own postmodern position. The discussion starts with the his­torical processes by which sounds and progressions previously considered 'dissonant' have become 'consonant' and 'musical'. Against this Durant explores a range of meanings invested in the 'dissonance' concept: as a polemical term for formless noise; in the modernist ideology of the 'eman­cipation of dissonance', whereby all notes share equal possibilities of inter­relation with others; and dissonance as an aesthetic which mirrors or reflects social relations, 'the chaos and ugliness of the [capitalist] world'." Durant distinguishes between Adorno's formalist and Hanns Eisler's broader social use of dissonance. For Eisler, 'composers . . . must become aware of the social function for which their music is being produced'" and should agitate for new conditions of musical practice - for example, performance situ­ations less susceptible than the concert hall to idealizing spectacle. Disson­ance can refer here to consciousness of contradictions in the conditions of practice, and can lead to critical action. Durant, however, avoids discussing the major issue arising from the 'reflection' thesis with the dismissal: 'and in any case, there seems no reason at all to believe that the acoustic properties and social resonances of dissonance are so closely linked as Adorno and others have suggested'. He seems to be convinced by Eisler's social analysis and develops his own structural version: 'dissonance can be directed towards displacing idealizations of music as an engrossing, spectacular object; it can prepare reflection on social relationships rather than offer a reflection of them'. But then he drops this, and returns to dissonance as sound. He cites extended instrumental technique, violence of rhythm and texture, or the electronic distortion of rock, to illustrate dissonance as 'arrangements of

308

•

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

sounds for which there are no established conventions o f association [and which] open up possibilities for new attachments of meaning and value'." Finally, rather than a historically specific aesthetic device, dissonance means for Durant a structural potential of sounds themselves to change music by blasting open meanings, defying association - a Barthesian perspective. (I return to this 'structural' reading of dissonance below.)

Attali's sense of postmodern 'relevance' is refracted through an evolu­tionary prism, his book being in the tradition of speculative Foucauldian historiography. I t is, like Chambers's, an extraordinarily seductive and compelling text, both post-structuralist and Adornian in style. The bones of the argument are rapidly drawn. Music 'simulates the social order, and its dissonances express marginalities. The code of music simulates the accepted rules of society.''' But there is more. 'Music is prophecy. It makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible, that will impose itself and regulate the order of things; it is not only the image of things, but the transcending of the everyday, the herald of the future.'''

However resistant to linear evolutionism, Attali traces his political economy of music as a succession of three 'orders', 'three strategic usages of music by power'" corresponding to three eras of history. For each, he discerns in its musical practice the typification of the era, and the premonition of the following age. Attali calls the first order, an era before exchange value when music is purely social and ritual, 'sacrificing'. Of this he says: 'Primordially, the production of music has as its function the creation, legitimation and maintenance of order. . . . Music . . . constitutes the collective memory and organises society.'60 '[It] is used and produced in the ritual in an attempt to make people forget the general violence.'''

The second order, 'representing', is the era when money enters society and music is commoditized; the labour of the creation and interpretation of music are valorized. '[Music] is employed to make people believe . . . that there is order in exchange and legitimacy in commercial power.'6l The crisis of this era sees the modernist break with tonality, leading to a new 'code of dissonance' - serialism - which announces the 'advent of a power [estab­lished] on the basis of a technocratic language'."

The third order, 'repeating', is the era of industrial capital, mass produc­tion and reproduction. Adorno's position is intensified: use value withers away. Music 'serves to silence, by mass-producing a deafening, syncretic kind of music, and censoring all other human noises'." 'People buy more records than they can listen to. They stockpile what they want to find the time to hear. Use-time and exchange-time destroy each other.''' Of all the four postmodern authors discussed here, Attali alone dares to be entirely negative about popular music; but he is equally polemical about modern­ism, analysing it, precisely, as the 'B side', the 'other', of mass popular music. It is 'elite, bureaucratic music . . . without a commercial market, sup­ported by powers in search of a language, of a project'. The theoretical

309

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

musician . . . remains a musician of power, paid t o perfect the sound form of today's technical knowledge . . . . The absence of meaning is the necessary condition for the legitimacy of a technocracy's power.'''

Attali only reaches an optimistic position in his analysis of a fourth order - a utopian projection of future music and society, based on his analysis of free jazz. This future order is called 'composing' - 'not a new music, but a new way of doing music . . . . Doing for the sake of doing':"

This does not constitute . . . a new form of popular music, but rather a new practice of music among the people . . . a day-to-day and sub­versive practice . . . a collective play . . . . Production takes the form of one collective composition, without a predetermined program imposed upon the players, and without commercialization . . . . No study is required to play this kind of music, which is orally trans­mitted and largely improvisational."

We see here Attali's theory of a politics of musical practice, a theory heavily indebted to Barthes's short essay of 1970 called 'Musica practica', which was in turn influenced by Brecht. This is a neglected side of Barthes's work on music, compared with the semiotics of 'The grain of the voice'. Attali closely echoes Barthes's vision of two musics:

the music one listens to, the music one plays . . . . The music one plays comes from an activity that is very little auditory, being above all manual (and thus in a way much more sensual) ."

Barthes says that 'playing has ceased to exist', and with it the role of the 'amateur' who touched off in us 'not satisfaction but desire, the desire to make that music',70 Barthes predicts the future rediscovery of ' music a practica' in which 'to compose . . . is 10 give 10 do, not to give to hear but to give to write'. The concert will be a workshop 'where all the musical art is absorbed in a praxis with no remainder'.71

From Durant's 'dissonance' and Attali's 'composing' we can take up two central postmodern themes: first, the nature and place of the avant-garde, and of avant-garde aesthetic/cultural political mechanisms - shock effect, dissonance, negation; second, the question of the 'production relarions', or social practice, of culture. These two themes are not just analytic tools. Rather, they embody postmodern scenarios for going beyond, or reintegrating, the modernist/popular divide. In other words, and most important, they together express ideas at the heart of analyses of contem­porary socio-cultural change, and in doing so they carry strong ideological resonance. Thus, the two themes often appear in utopian resolutions of the modernist problem: first, in the idea that a contemporary synthesis of the avant-garde and the popular is possible or has been achieved; and second,

3 1 0

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

in the decentralization-democratization thesis. I want to look critically at both of these arguments.

In the first part of this article I analysed negation as a basic defining characteristic of the modernist avant-garde, reproduced, paradoxically, in postmodern discourse. In depicting a postmodern synthesis of the avant­garde and the popular, writers often fail to note that there are two sides to that process - that the avant-garde becomes integrated into popular culture, and vice versa, that popular culture becomes part of the (postmodern) avant-garde. But before assuming a synthesis, questions arise. Are the avant­garde, and negation, historically specific aesthetic/discursive phenomena embedded in modernism? (One could also ask whether cultural and discursive forms defined by negation - deconstruction, for example, or Barthes's jouissance, desire beyond and outside culture - are themselves embedded in, and limited to, a modernist cosmology.) Or are they 'structural constants', cyclic positions or moments, in all cultural change? In either case, have they any relevance for understanding change in popular culture and music?

References to the avant-garde often overlook three characteristics that together combine to define it. The characteristics emerge from studies -those by Renato Poggioli12 and Francis Haskell," for example - charting the historical rise of 'the concept of the avant-garde' in art practice and critical discourse. First, the avant-garde should be seen as a small group in relation to a dominant larger whole. Second, the avant-garde takes on a self­consciously 'critical' function (aesthetic, political, or both merged) towards the dominant whole. And third, the avant-garde group claims a leadership role, with associated commitments to conversion and to the pedagogic and prescriptive functions of art - functions which bring full circle the contradic­tions of the avant-garde, since successful conversion is i1wompatible with a marginal, critical position and with being socially outcast.

In writing about popular music, there seem to be two positions on the avant-garde and its mechanisms. The first approach, found in Chambers and Laing and common in pop journalism, is to delineate an Fant-garde lVithin popular culture. The implication is that a postmodern rapprochement - consisting of a 'mixed' aesthetic and economy of pop and ( postmodern) avant-garde - is in process, at least on the side of pop music.

The second approach is taken by Laing and Durant on, respectively, the shock effect and dissonance. Both discuss these mechanisms, derived historically from modernism, as structural and cyclical, trans-historical strat­egies, invoking the modernist connotation of them as aesthetic but also 'critical' cultural political devices. Thus Laing cites Walter Benjamin's idea that the 'avant-garde movements of one artistic form are the heralds of a future cultural medium'" in which the shock effect will be more naturalized. This is akin to Lyotard's view of postmodernism as a structural moment within modernism, such that there is no historical break: 'In an amazing acceleration, the generations precipitate themselves. A work can only become

3 1 1

M U S I C A N D SO C I A B I L I T Y

modern if it is first postmodern. Post modernism thus understood is not modernism at its end, but in the nascent state, and that state is constant. .75

Both Laing and Durant also explore shock effect and dissonance as possible social-organizational strategies, linking them in that way to the second theme of production relations in culture. Laing's example is that 'the punk open­ing up of self-production and distribution represented a relatively painless achieving of something avant-garde rock bands of a few years earlier had to go through debilitating tussles with record companies to get' 76

Durant links his structural concept of dissonance as 'sound outside mean­ing', and thus a critical force for changc, to Barthes's 'geno-text': 'music's capability . . . to overflow conventionally attributable meanings in an access to traces of the body and of desire'. Just after this, Durant suggests a critique of Barthes that applies to the general position, including his own, but he fails to follow it through: 'But it remains nevertheless a weakness of these observations, when reworked as a more general critical orientation, that what is sought everywhere is a kind of musical modernism.'''

The idea of the avant-garde and its mechanisms as 'structural' - the second position above - can have a weak or a strong version. The weak version consists of Laing's proposal, or Lyotard's, that small-scale social and cultural experiments can be influential on later forms and can even become domin­ant. This is analogous to a market model of commercial development and innovation and can be subsumed within theories of fashion. The concept of an 'avant-garde' is so weakened as to be meaningless. Alternatively, the strong version of the argument is that modernist aesthetic and discursive forms based on negation always constitute both a critical position in relation to extant cultural forms, and also a premonition, a cutting edge of what is to come. The strong version universalizes certain historically specific modernist characteristics, and grants them discursive and epistemological privilege. I t splits off the avant-garde and negation from the discourse of their birth - modernism - to be treated as structural, trans-historical and trans-cultural mechanisms. This bid for universality, for strategies beyond culture (Barthes), is clearly a bid to retain some power for modernism. One could ask: why bother? More analytically, the splitting and universalizing are symptomatic of a profound ambivalence towards modernism - an ambi­valence based on a sympathy for its utopian, transgressive and alienated beginnings, as against aesthetic dislike, distrust of its rhetoric, and disillusion at its later co-optation and hegemony.

The first position above - the suggestion of a synthesis of avant-garde and pop in some pop music - is less imbued with modernist ideology than the 'structural' position, and is useful once it is integrated into a socia-historical analysis. Allied to the new enquiries into the role of art schools in British pop culture (and situationists in punk)," this suggests the mundane hypothesis that the influence of modernism in pop is a highly self-conscious cultural allusion or reference, by pop practitioners, to an earlier art and politics of

3 1 2

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

transgression and negation. I t is a reference that has occurred a t certain conjunctures in pop history, and has affected only certain limited areas of pop music and culture. This implies, further, that the critical and premonitory functions supposed to be inherent to negation and an avant-garde stance, once they become pure historical allusion, have no more necessary effect on the larger aesthetic and political evolution of pop music and culture than any other stylistic and educational device.

But there are other developments, different processes, going on under the smooth rhetoric of postmodern rapprochement. I t is also important to look at the 'other side' - serious contemporary music. Having sketched a social analysis of avant-garde influence in pop, we should now consider the 'populist avant-garde': serious composers who are trying to effect a reunion with pop music and who, in doing so, identify themselves as postmodern composers. These developments are mainly associated with the 'unserious' post-Cage experimentalists, and especially with systems and minimalist musi­cians who, inspired by ethnic and eastern musics, use bare modal and tonal harmony, and simple cyclic and repetitive structures and rhythms. Since the mid 1 970s, composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich and their English counterpart Michael Nyman have been claiming to bring elements of pop into their music and have produced records that they try to market commer­cially. They are thus keen to be accepted as popular musicians. In fact , they still inhabit a mixed economy of art and commerce. Unlike most pop musi­cians, for example, Glass has his work performed at the English National Opera; he also has a lifetime record contract with the CBS Masterworks label - an honour shared only with Stravinsky and Copland. Aesthetically, too, these postmodern composers remain distinct from popular musicians. They do not (and cannot) work within, or respect the integrity of, extant pop music forms. Their attitude is one of borrowing, using pop music as a source for transformation and, especially, as a source of devices and techniques (of instrumentation, voice production, studio techniques) to bring to their own music. This is, aesthetically, a pseudo-reconciliation, a wielding of empty signs. Even with a rhythm section added, Nyman's music has ;0 rhythm.

There are some new musicians who are increasingly skilled across the musical divide. In Britain they come from improvised music, and they appeared at a conjuncture in the mid 1970s when the politicized post­experimental avant-garde met free jazz, met the new wave and punk. These musicians - people like David Cunningham, Steve Beresford and David Toop - still support themselves in a mixed economy, partly from subsidized performances, partly record production and partly guest involvements in pop. Toop has moved from ethnomusicology to improvisation to producing albums by the Frank Chickens and reviewing records for The Face; Cunningham from Maidstone Art College to systems music to producing albums for Wayne County and the Electric Chairs and his own group, the Flying Lizards. It is interesting to note a tendency for these musicians to

3 1 3

M U S I C A N D S O C I A IJ I L I T Y

regard their skills i n various musics - improvised jazz, electro-funk - as separate, to keep their musical selves fragmented and compartmentalized, with each genre remaining internally intact. The music behind these develop­ments, black American free jazz, is, as we have seen, AllaJi's microcosmic model for 'composing'. 'Free jazz, a meeting of black popular music and the more abstract theoretical explorations of European music, eliminated the distinctions between popular and learned music, broke down the repetitive hierarchy.'''

I t is also worth noting a counter-phenomenon of equal and opposite weight: a new generation of composers inhabiting the serious contempor­ary music networks who listen to the Police and Laurie Anderson while espousing postmodern rhetoric. Regarding their own production, they say that their music is beyond modernism and that they have a relationship with popular music - that the concept of a division between the two is archaic. Yet their compositions, combining orchestral with computer resources, remain resolutely modernist in aesthetic, circulate at festivals like the Venice Biennale, win prizes at Darmstadt and are produced in the computer music studios of MIT, IRCAM in Paris8Q and similar institutions.

In the light of this discussion of the deeper character and limits of avant-garde pop and of the popUlist avant-garde, it is odd and significant that music is so orten cited as the success story of post modern reintegration, particularly by American writers but also, for example, by Chambers " Effectively, these cultural theorists collude in asserting that the postmodern rapprochement has been achieved; but, as I have tried to show, there are implicit assumptions in such an assertion that need questioning. It is only by ignoring the hegemonic 'other' of powerful, contemporary high culture, and failing to deconstruct its rhetoric of rapprochement, that writers have arrived at their optimistic and utopian post modern perspectives. The assertion that modern music culture is moving beyond the modernist/popular divide to achieve a postmodern synthesis or reintegration must be based on empirical study of what that process involves, in pop music and in serious music, popular culture and high culture, commercial and public spheres. In order to understand how music is changing, rather than making facile assertions, it is necessary to analyse real socio-economic and aesthetic differences that exist, differences that are in some senses multiplying, and the directions in which they are actually moving.

Turning to the second major theme of postmodern theory, the production relations of culture, we can take Attali's story of black American free jazz as the clearest illustration of the optimistic decentralization-democratization thesis. Attali describes the emergence of black free jazz from the late 1950s as a struggle against 'the organized and orten consensual thert of black American music . . . a profound attempt to win creative autonomy, to effect a cultural-economic reappropriation' " Attali emphasizes first the economic structures: the development of a 'parallel industry' to produce and promote

3 14

M O D E R N M U S t C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

new music, since the record companies excluded black musicians and 'cov­ered' black music by employing white musicians. Then the aesthetic: free jazz as a complete break with the 'cautious version of jazz that had gained acceptance . . . a truly spontaneous music of immediate enjoyment that escaped all crystallizations and used instruments in new ways' " And the link to politics: 'Thus free jazz very quickly became a reflection of and a forum for the political struggle of blacks in reaction against their insertion into repetition . . . in opposition to the censorship of the official industry.''' All of this leads to the point: new democratic cultural practices in the business organization and in the music - for example, from 1965 in the work of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians CAACM) of Chicago. The AACM was a co-operative structure of about thirty black musicians, which organized to defend professional interests and to foster musicians' interaction, and took on educational functions in the black community.

Attali cites another group - the Jazz Composers' Orchestra Association (JCOA) - as the most interesting attempt by musicians to become more independent of capital. The JCOA tried to develop a production and distribution network for records and concerts that was outside the main structures of the music industry. This 'made it possible . . . to work without being obliged to record purely commercial records at too fast a pace' " Ironically, the JCOA was no longer a black musicians' organization; it was the next generation east coast alternative jazz co-operative, by then part white and also motivated by aesthetic exclusion from the 'mainstream'. The JCOA pooled royalties and shared out equally its total earnings, including university and foundation support. Other similar cultural organizations sprang up, self-managed and collective. But Attali recognizes their limits: ultimately free jazz 'failed as a takeover of power' despiie creating 'locally the conditions for a different model of musical production, '6 His response is to mythologize: free jazz and its improvised and collectivist practices become the 'herald' of his utopian order.

Two things are noticeable here. First, Attali's analysis bears remarkable ..

similarity to Dave Laing's model of decentralization and democratization in punk. Another version has been argued by Chris Cutler and others" in ·

relation to European experimental rock of the early I 970s, which generated a co-operative organization with political aspirations called 'Rock in Opposition' and developed small-scale alternative circuits, self-managed record labels and so forth. In all three cases, small-scale alternative structures of production and distribution are linked to a critical, negative aesthetic, unacceptable to the majors and mainstream, and to a politics. My second observation is that all three examples correspond to my characterization of the avant-garde. Does this mean that all three musics arrived at their common avant-garde stance through unconscious structural influence, that Cas the Barthesian view would seem to have it) the impulse to negation is a trans-cultural politics at the level of perception? Not at all. In fact all three

3 1 5

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

o f these musics may have been consciously influenced by modernism. Further, and more specifically, we can certainly trace a genealogy of direct influence between the three musics ( 1 960s free jazz to 1970s experimental rock to late 1970s punk and new wave). But it is only by recognizing these musics' conscious discursive allusions to the historical avant-garde and its devices, and to prior musics referring to the 'avant-garde', that we avoid reifying those devices as somehow 'structural' or perceptually universal. Instead, we have a more prosaic view: that all three musics were petty capitalist forms of enterprise in the small-scale sector, engaged in reproduc­ing their position as small and specialist markets, with political rhetoric, avant-gardist styles and semiotics as their selling points. This dispassion­ate, sceptical view of the 'avant-garde' and of 'critical' politics in pop is necessary to counterpoint the utopian weight invested in them by writers like Attali and Cutler. It remains to be argued what actual aesthetic or political effects these musics have beyond their ideological aspirations and marketing" - or whether change in popular music has anything to do with modernist ideas of an avant-garde and its 'critical' position at all. The point is that aesthetic and socio-economic innovation in popular music cannot be understood in those old terms, borrowed from a discourse which was itself founded on implicit, but absolute, negation of just those commercial forms. We require an entirely distinct theory, which will itself lead to a more objective reading of contemporary cultural history.

The other assumption of the decentralization-democratization thesis is that certain popular musics are changing the social relations of cultural production: hence free jazz's collective and co-operative structures, avant-garde rock's collectivism, punk's anti-hierarchy and de-skilling - all of which are distilled into Attali's socio-musical utopia. This continues the Brechtian-Benjaminian theory of experiment in cultural work, crossed with broader influences of black and feminist politics. Such developments are explained by reference to the musics' small-scale networks on the one hand, and to new music technologies on the other. Laing, for example, demon­strates that there are qualities of small organizations that do allow for greater democracy of decision-making, more control by the workers and musicians, and less pressure from the profit imperative. But none of this necessarily follows from small enterprise, just as it does not necessarily go along with an avant-garde aesthetic. It is also worth noting that music production cultures other than pop are currently undergoing critiques of their social relations." So we are left with two questions. Does petty capitalist pop music enterprise, or small-scale organization, have any special or necessary role in the politics of transforming contemporary music practice? And can they have any more than a limited effect on the larger industrial and public structures of music production?

Another aspect of this debate, touched on by Durant, concerns the trans­formation of the creative process by music recording technologies. Writers

3 1 6

•

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

have argued, from observation, that the recording and mixing processes in the recording studio necessitate an aural and collaborative group practice, a socialized labour process and division of labour which are potentially demo­cratic and non-hierarchicaI.90 These are undeniable forces changing the heart of contemporary music practice: they only occur in popular and improvisa­tional musics and are necessitated by the technological production processes of music. At their most hopeful, these ideas root Attali's utopia of future socio-musical practice in the technological present. The proliferation of new music technologies in every part of the production process and at every price level is, equally, taken to democratize the circulation of music. The con­sumption of electronic instruments, cassette and tape decks, mini-mixing desks, ghetto-blasters, turntables, digital synthesizers, sequencers, samplers, computers and so on, also makes possible new forms of 'self-production', of an original tape or sound to be consumed. The line between consumption and production thus becomes blurred, as Chambers and others have argued in relation to rap, scratching, disco, dub, as well as punk.'!

This extraordinarily open and volatile access, the closeness of consump­tion goods to 'cultural means of production' and the possibilities that gives for decentralized production, are - so far - unique to music. But there are, at the same time, enormous forces for music-technological centralization and omnipotence. Just as they fail to address the high cultural sphere of modern music, the postmodern optimists draw conclusions without address­ing the other end of the spectrum in technological differentiation: that is, high technology. Examples are the appearance of 'super' music computers such as IRCAM's '4X' (in its time 'the most powerful realtime digital synthesizer in the world'), and its nearest rival, the 'ASP' - the ultimate expression of the new computerized mixing desks - produced by Lucas Film Corporation (of Star Wars fame)." The 4X has a highly significant dual existence both as a means of production for elite, internationally select serious composers such as Boulez, and as a simulator of aircraft noise for training pilots, for which it was sold to the giant arms company Dassault -the only company that was interested in industrializing it. The ASP is, appropriately, more at home in the entertainment industries. It was designed to be the first machine to produce and process an entire film soundtrack, thereby replacing a human chain of skilled labour, and is now being sold to other major film companies. These developments, and the powerful public and private institutions which conceive and nurture them, represent the future of music just as much as street culture and scratch mixing. And despite being musically irrelevant to the majority of people, it is a nasty irony that this high music technology may affect people's lives indirectly but powerfully in other, less pleasant ways - through hidden links to defence technologies, for example.

Although Attali and Durant address music as a socio-historical totality, they lose touch with 'history in the present'. Their methods could generate

3 1 7

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

work with immediate relevance, but in fact their involvement with current issues and experiences is weak. Attali's work approaches past history in a new way, but he conceives the present in what can now be seen to be a re-reading of old Adornian themes plus a libertarian vision. As with Barthes, the transition between the two is not explained. Durant's work remains an anti-doxa and fragmented; while Chambers and Laing remain focused within the borders of pop music and culture. In exploring modernist and/or popular music cultures, these theorists have not as yet fully grasped either their specificity and absolute difference or, therefore, the complexities of their interrelation. I have tried to show reasons for casting a critical eye across the totality: to stop perceiving contemporary realities through the lens of modernist discourse, so as to be clearer about postmodern and pop possibilities. The feedback loop between practice and theory needs to be made shorter: cultural theory should therefore take on the complex present and leave behind its baggage of modernist yearnings. Announcing the 'end of cultural hegemony', helping and colluding in that announcement (just as sociologists colluded with the 'end of ideology'), simply disguises the continuity, and the new forms, of power. A century of sacio-cultural division doesn't just end like that. To understand the present, it is necessary to look closely at the changing forms of power, and particularly at the new relations between the commercial and the public - their opposition and their new­found co-operation. That means critically taking on phenomena across the modernist/popular divide, and asking whether 'reintegration' of such differ­ent and historically autonomous cosmologies is possible, and if so how; or whether - and for whom - it is even desirable.

Acknowledgement

My thanks to Simon Frith for his help and encouragement throughout the development of these ideas.

Notes

Literature is the other medium in which modernist and commercial popular forms developed concurrently. However, until recently the commercial structure of popular literature could not match that of popular music for volatility, for degrees of oligopoly and yet differentiation.

2 Video, in itself and in its relation to film culture, is the medium closest to recorded music in its potential for developing a dirferentiated commercial structure, allowing space for a small-scale production sector which can arfect major forms - an aspect of video usually neglected in trying to account ror its inherent kinship with popular music.

3 See P. Bourdieu, 'Intellectual field and creative project', in M . Young (cd.), Knowledge and Control (London: Collier-Macmillan, 197 1 ); 'The production of belief', Media, CullUre and Society, 3, 3 ( 1 98 1); Distinction: a social critique o/the judgment of taste (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).

3 1 8

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

4 At its simplest, serial ism involves the creation or a 1 2-note 'row', using each of the twelve diatonic notes once, which becomes the seed of a composition. The row is treated to four basic structural transformations, thereby creating four cells - the original row, the inversion, the retrograde and the retrograde-inversion -which can all be transposed and subdivided. This series of transformations generates a set or materials that can in turn generate the larger work.

5 T. Adorno, 'On the fetish-character in music and the regression of listening', in A. Arato and E. Gebhardt (eds), The Essential Frankjilrt School Reader (New York: Urizen Books, 1977). For Adorno's views on musical modernism, see his Philosophy oj Model'll Music (London: Sheed & Ward, 1973).

6 For influential early attempts to develop popular music aesthetics, see C. Keil, 'Motion and reeling through music', JOllrnal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 24 ( 1 966), and A. Chester, 'Second thoughts on a rock aesthetic: the Band', New LeJt Review, 62 ( 1 970).

7 See R. Middleton, ' ''Play it again, Sam": some notes on the productivity of repetition in popular music', Popular Music, 3 ( 1983).

8 P. Anderson, 'Modernity and revolution', New Left Review, 144 ( 1 984), 105. 9 The major account of experimental music is M. Nyman, Experimental Music:

Cage and Beyond (New York: Schirmer, 1 974). Relevant sources on modernist and avant-garde music are P. Griffiths, Modern Music: the avant-garde since 1945 (London: Dent, 198 1 ) and New Sounds, New Personalities: British composers 0/ the 1980s (London: Faber, 1980); P. Boulez, Boulez on Music Today (London: Faber, 1 97 1 ) and Orientalions (London: Faber, 1 986); and P.-M. Menger, Le Paradoxe du Musicien: Ie compositeur, Ie melomane et {'etat dans fa societe COI1-temporaine (Paris: Flammarion, 1983). C. Hamm's Music il1 the Nelli World (New York: Norton, 1983) is exceptional in dealing with both serious and popular music.

10 The leading experimental composers Frederic Rzewski, Christian Wolrf and Cornelius Cardew tried, in different ways, to develop a political music by integrating Marxist political convictions with their musical practice. Cardew's Marxism-Leninism became crudely determinist in his late work with People's Liberation Music.

I I P. Burke, 'The "discovery" of popular culture', in R. Samuel (cd.), People's History alld Socialist Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1 98 1 ),

1 2 See P. Tagg and D. Horn (cds), Popular Music Per!J1Jectives, I (Exeter: Inter­national Association for the Study of Popular Music, 1 982) for a discussion of 'what is popular music?' in relation to a mass/popular debate; for example, C. Hamm's forceful argument in ravour of a commercial definition.

1 3 See C. Gillett, The SOllnd oj the City: the rise oj rock 'n' 1'0// (New York: Dell, 1970); s. Frith, Sound Effects: youth, leisure and the politicS of rock 'n' roll (New York: Pantheon, and London: Constable, 1983); D. Laing, One Chord Wonders: power and meaning in punk rock (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985). Part 2 of Frith (especially ch, 5) is a useful summary of the debates about popular music production. For a comparative global perspective, see R. Wallis and K. Maim, Big Sounds from Small Peoples: file music industry in small countries (London: Constable, 1 984).

1 4 R. Peterson, 'Cycles in symbol production: the case of popular music', American SOciological Review, 40 ( 1 975) and R. Peterson and D. Berger, 'Entrepreneurship and organization: evidence from the popular music industry', Administrative Science Quarterly, 1 6 ( 1 97 1).

15 Frith, op. cit., 90. 1 6 ibid., 1 56.

3 1 9

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

1 7 See F . Fabbri, 'A theory o f musical genres: two applications', i n Tagg and Horn, op. cit.; and Fabbri, 'What kind of music?', Popular Music, 2 ( 1 982).

18 The classic reading of style/genre is D. Hebdige, Subculture: the meaning of style (London and New York: Methuen, 1979).

19 Adorno, 'On the fetish-character . . . ', 286. 20 J. Attali, Noise: the political economy of I'1IUsic (Minneapolis: Minnesota Uni­

versity Press, and Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985); A. Durant, Conditions of Music (London: Macmillan, 1 984).

21 J. Kennan, Musicology (London: Fontana, 1 985). 22 In fact, some ethnomusicology has been concerned with analysing the music

itself. Equally, the new field of musical semiotics includes studies which try to reconcile the musical and the social by analysing the musical text itself, and not just the extramusical, as bearer of social meaning, ideological connotation. See, for example, P. Tagg's influential study, Kojak: 50 seconds of television music (Gothenburg: 1979); and also J. Shepherd, P. Virden, G. Vulliamy and T. Wishart, Whose Music? A SOciology of musical languages (Eastbourne: Transaction, 1977).

23 Kerman, op. cit., 1 80. 24 C. Schorske, FilHle-Siec/e Vienna: politics and culture (New York: Knopf, 1 980).

On the Viennese modernists, see also O. Neighbour, P. Griffiths and G. Perle, The New Grove: second Viennese school (London: Macmillan, 1983) and C. Rosen, Schoenberg (London: Fontana, 1976).

25 C. Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (New York: Norton, 1 97 1 ).

26 Kerman, op. CiL, 1 5. 27 ibid., 1 0 1 . 28 Sec, for example, M . Weber, The Rational and Social Foundations of Music

(Carbondale, III.: Southern Illinois University Press, [ 1921] 1958) and A. Schutz, 'Making music together', in Collected Papers, vol. 2 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973).

29 W. D. Allen, Philosophies of Music History: a study of general histories of music (New York: Dover, [ 1939] 1 962). Interestingly, Kerman, citing Allen, also argues that the musicological disciplines that he discusses 'should not be defined in terms of their subject matter . . . but rather in terms of their philosophies and ideologies' (Kennan, op. cit., 1 5).

30 I am indebted to Philip Tagg for this point. Durant's first chapter (op. cit.) is a useful discussion of the vexed question of music's relation to language.

3 1 For an overview of the 'production of culture' approach to popular music, see Joumal of Popular Culture (Fall 1 982).

32 C. Keil, Urban Bilies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 966). 33 Gillett, op. cit. 34 S. Frith, The Sociology of Rock (London: Constable, 1978). 35 For details of lAS PM, contact Andy Linehan, National Sound Archive, 29

Exhibition Road, London SW7, UK; or Lawrence Grossberg, Department of Speech Communication, University of I llinois, USA.

36 Hebdige, op. cit. 37 J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodem Condition: a report on knowledge (Minneapolis:

Minnesota University Press, and Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1 984). For debates on the character and varieties of post modernism, see also J. Habermas, 'Modernity versus postmodernity', New German Critique, 22 ( 1 98 1 ); and the special issue of New German Critique, 33 ( 1984) on 'Modernity and postmodernity', especially F. Jameson, 'The politics of theory: ideological positions in the post­modernism debate' and A. Huyssen, 'Mapping the postmodern'.

320

•

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : O N S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

38 [ . Chambers, Urban Rhythms: pop music and popular culture (London: Macmillan, 1 985).

39 Laing, op. cit. 40 Chambers, op. cit., 205. 41 ibid., 207-9. 42 A. McRobbie, 'Dance and social fantasy', in A. McRobbie and M. Nava (cds),

Gender and Generation (London: Macmillan, 1 984), 1 34. 43 See S. Robinson (,The art of the possible', Free Associations: Psychoanalysis.

Groups, Politics, Culture, Radical Science Joumal, 1 5, 1 984) on the difference between fantasy and imagination. Robinson's approach draws on British post­Freudian developments, notably the work ofD. W. Winnicott and Melanie Klein, which have been comparatively neglected in recent cultural studies.

44 Laing, op. cit., 125. 45 A. McRobbie, 'Settling accounts with sub-cultures: a feminist critique', Screen

Education, 34 ( 1 980), 43. 46 See J. Baudrillard, 'Requiem for the media', in For a Critique of the Political

Economy of the Sign (St Louis, MO: Telos Press, 1981 ). 47 Chambers, op. cit., 207. 48 Laing, op. cit., 78. 49 ibid., 1 27. 50 Durant, op. cit., 56. 5 1 Allali, op. cit., flyleaf. 52 ibid., 4-5. 53 Durant, op. cit., 109. 54 Durant (quoting Hanns Eisler), op. cit., 78. 55 ibid., 83. 56 ibid., 82-5. 57 Allali, op. ciL, 29. For another perspective on music as encoding the dominant

social order. see J. Shepherd, 'The musical coding of ideologies', in Shephcrd et al., op. cit.; and fA theoretical model for the sociomusicological analysis of popular music', Popular Music, 2 ( 1 982).

58 Attali, op. cit., I I . 59 ibid., 19. 60 ibid., 30. 61 ibid., 19 . 62 ibid. 63 ibid., 83. 64 ibid., 19. 65 ibid., 1 0 1 . 66 ibid., 1 1 3, 1 1 2. 67 ibid., 1 34. 68 ibid., 1 40-1 . 69 R. Barthes, Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana, 1 977), 149. 70 ibid., 1 50. 7 1 ibid., 1 54. 72 R. Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant Garde (Cambridge, MA: Beiknap/Harvard,

1982). 73 F. Haskell, 'Enemies of modern art', NelV York RevielV of Books (30 June 1983). 74 Laing, op. cit., 77. 75 Lyotard, op. cit., 74. 76 Laing, op. cit., 78. 77 Durant, op. cit., 9 1 .

321

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

7 8 For the influence of art schools on British pop music, and of situationists on punk, see Laing, op. cit., eh. 7; Chambers, op. cit., ch. 7; S. Frith and H. Horne, AI" into Pop (London and New York: Methuen, forthcoming); and J. A. Walker, Cross-overs: thirty years of art and pop music (London: Comcdia, forthcoming),

79 Altali, op. cit., 140. 80 IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Co-ordination Acoustique/Musiquc) is the

music wing of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. It is a large, ambitious computer music research centre, handsomely endowed by the state, and directed by Pierre Boulez. IRCAM produces computer music hardware and software as well as new music itself - strictly serious, avant-garde music. I t is the largest such European institution and is part of a network of high-tech computer music centres, the majority and most powerful of which are North American - for example, Stanford University's Centre for Computer Research in M usic and Acoustics, or MIT's recently opened Media Laboratory, an art and technology centre, which includes a revamped Experimental Music Studio. (This article forms part of my research into modernism and postmodernism in music, which focuses on an ethnographic study of IRCAM and its milieu.)

8 1 Postmodernists claim, often in significant throwaway remarks, that in music modernism and the popular are reconciled, that modernism has come in from the cold and disowned its elitist and alienated past. For example, Fredric Jameson's more optimistic argument hinges on a reference to 'the synthesis of classical and "popular" styles found in composers like Phil Glass and Terry Riley, and also in punk and new wave rock' (,Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism', Nell' Left Review, 146 ( 1984), 54). Sec also G. Ulmer, 'The object of post-criticism' (on Cage), in H. Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1985), published in the USA as The Anti-Aesthetic (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983); S. McClary, 'Afterword: the politics of silence and sound', in AUali, op. cit.; J . Rockwell, All American Music: composition ill the late twentieth century (New York: Vintage, 1984).

82 Allali, op. cit., 138. 83 ibid., 1 39. 84 ibid., 1 38. 85 ibid., 1 39. 86 ibid., 140. 87 C. Cutler, File Under Popular (London: November Books, 1985), chs 5 to 7,

and 'Technology, politics and contemporary music: a theory and a project', in Poplilar Music, 4 ( 1984); M. Paddison, 'The critique criticised: Adorno and popular music' and P. Wicke, 'Rock music: a musical-aesthetic study', both in Popular Music, 2 ( 1 982).

88 This kind of politics of popular music is relativized particularly by the recent reaction against it expressed in Band Aid and similar developments, a reaction towards a populist politics of what might be called moral internationalism (or imperialism?), based on the recognition of pop music's enormous power to create a sense of 'community' and to raise money.

89 There is some evidence that even orchestras - embodiments of romantic individualism and a hierarchical division of labour - are 'collectivizing' commer­cially and modifying their authoritarian communicative practice. I n addition, within the classical music teaching profession there are moves to lessen the authoritarian nature of teaching and organizations are developing to fight against competition as the major dynamic of the career structure.

90 On the division of labour in the popular music recording process and its implica­tions, see Cutler, op. cit.; A. Hennion, Les Professionels du Disque (Paris:

322

M O D E R N M U S I C C U L T U R E : ON S H O C K , P O P A N D S Y N T H E S I S

A . M . Metailie 1 9 8 1 ) and 'The production o f success: a n anti-musicology of the pop song', in Poplllar Music, 3 ( 1 983); J.-P. Vignolle, 'Mixing genres and reaching the pUblic: the production of popular music', in Social Science Informa­tiOIl, 1 9, I ( 1980); E. Kealy, 'The real rock revolution: sound mixers, social inequality and the aesthetics of popular music production' (unpublished PhD thesis, Northwestern University, Evanston, III., 1 974).

9 1 See, for example, D. Toop, The Rap Attack: African jive to New York hip hop (London: Pluto Press, 1 984); on New York disco culture and DJs, see S. Harvey, 'New York City's disco underground', Col/usion, 5 (September 1983).

92 Despite apparent dissimilarities, lRCAM and Lucas Film Audio Division have rival yet close relations, swapping personnel and research. There is a certain contemporary significance in this competitive but also co-operative, symbiotic relationship between a pre-eminent European state cultural institution and one of the most commercially sllccessful American entertainment corporations -two powerful institutions epitomizing, respectively, the domains of cultural and economic capital.

323

76

C RU I S IN G A RO U N D

T H E H I S TO R I CA L B LO C .

P O S T M O D E R N I S M A N D P O P U L A R

M U S I C I N E A S T L O S A N G E L E S

George Lipsitz

Source: Cultl/rol Critique 5 (1986): 157-77.

During his first visit to Los Angeles, Octavio Paz searched in vain for visible evidence of Mexican influences on that city's life and culture. The great Mexican writer found streets with Spanish names and subdivisions filled with Spanish Revival houses, but to his surprise and regret he perceived only a superficial Hispanic gloss on an essentially Anglo-American metropolis. Mexican culture seemed to have evaporated into little more than local color, even in a city that had belonged to Spain and Mexico long before it became part of the United States, a city where one third of the population traced its lineage to Olmec, Maya, Toltec, Aztec, Spanish, and Mexican ancestors, and which had more Mexican residents than all but two of Mexico's own cities. Paz identified a "vague atmosphere" of Mexicanism in Los Angeles that manifested itself through "delight in decorations, carelessness and pomp, negligence, passion and reserve." But he felt that his "ragged but beautiful" ghost of Mexican identity rarely interacted with "the North American world based on precision and efficiency." Instead, this Mexicanism floated above the city, "never quite existing, never quite vanishing." i

As both the oldest and newest immigrants to Los Angeles, Mexican­Americans have faced unique problems about cultural identity and assimila­tion. But the anguish of invisibility that Paz identified among them is all too familiar to minority ethnic communities around the globe. Everywhere, the cultural domination by metropolitan elites eviscerates and obliterates traditional cultures rooted in centuries of shared experience. For ethnic minorities, failure to become assimilated into dominant cultures can bring exclusion from vital economic and political resources, but successful

324

•

C R U I S I N G A R O U N D T H E H I S T O R I C A L B L O C

integration into them can annihilate prized traditions and customs essential to collective and individual identity. Cultural institutions and the mass media depict dominant cultures as "natural" and "normal," while never representing the world from the vantage point of ethnic minority commun­ities. Active discrimination and prejudice reinforce a sense of marginality, but mass media images never grant legitimacy to marginal perspectives. Traditional forms of cultural expression within minority communities lose their power to order and interpret experience, but they persist as important icons of identity and alienation. Surrounded by images that exclude them, included in images that have no real social power, ethnic minorities come to feel that they never quite exist and never quite vanish.

But the transformation of real historical traditions and cultures into super­ficial icons and images touches more than minority ethnic communities. A sharp division between life and culture constitutes an essential characteristic of life in modern industrialized societies, and it affects dominant as well as subordinated groups. At one time in world history, cultural production grew organically out of collective experiences of class and community, of neighborhood and nation. But the invention of electronic mass media has separated communication from transportation, making it possible for people in different locations and circumstances to experience simultaneously the same sensations. The rise of capitalism encouraged the commodification of culture - the marketing of cultural objects to mass audiences unconcerned with the organic roots of the cultural artifacts they consumed. As Walter Benjamin points out, the production and distribution of art works under these circumstances of mechanical reproduction and commodity distribution lead to an alienated world in which cultural objects are received outside of the communities and traditions that initially gave them shape and meaning .' Created artifacts from diverse cultures blend together into a contextless homogenized mass when encountered independently from the communities that gave birth to them. Mass communications and culture rely on an ever­expanding supply of free-floating symbols only loosely connected to social life. Experience and traditions seem to have no binding claims on the present. I t is a world in which "all that is solid melts into air," as Marshall Berman asserts in a phrase appropriated from the Communist Manifesto '

Members of dominant social groups might not feel the same anguish of invisibility that oppresses ethnic minorities, but cultural identity has become an exercise in alienation for them as well. The collapse of tradition and the division between cultural commodities and social life make mass cultural discourse a study in confusion and conflict. A proliferation of composite cultural creations and marginal subcultures contains the same "authority" wielded by traditions rooted in centuries of common experience. The revered "master narratives" of the past - religion, humanism, Marxism ­survive in truncated form, influencing social discourse but not dominating it. Instead a multivocal and contradictory culture delighting in difference

325

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

and disunity seems to be at the core of contemporary cultural conscious­ness. This "postmoderll" culture leaves the residue of many historical cultures floating above us, "ragged but beautiful," "never quite existing and never quite vanishing.

,,4

But ethnic minority cultures play an important role in this post modern culture. Their exclusion from political power and cultural recognition has enabled them to cultivate a sophisticated capacity for ambiguity, juxtaposi­tion, and irony - all key qualities in the postmodern aesthetic. The neces­sity of adopting to dominant cultures while not being allowed entry into them leads to complex and creative cultural negotiations that foreground marginal and alienated states of consciousness. Unable to experience either simple assimilation or complete separation from dominant groups, minorit­ies accustom themselves to a bifocality that reflects both the way they view themselves and the way that they are viewed by others. In a world that constantly undermines the importance and influence of traditions, ethnic minorities remain tied to their pasts as a way of explaining and arbitrating the problems of the present. Because their marginality involves the pain of exclusion, minority group culture speaks eloquently about the fissures and frictions of society. Because their experience demands bifocality, minority group culture reflects the decentered and fragmented nature of contempor­ary human experience. Because their history identifies the source of their marginality, minority group cultures have a legitimacy and connection to the past that distinguishes them from more assimilated groups. Masters of irony in an ironic world, they often understand that their marginality makes them more appropriate spokespersons for society than mainstream groups unable to fathom or address the causes of their alienation.

The Mexican-American community of Los Angeles that so disappointed Octavio Paz on his visit there provides an instructive example of the capacity of minority ethnic groups to fashion forms of cultural expression appropriate to the postmodern world. Paz's static and one-dimensional view of Mexican identity prevented him from seeing the rich culture of opposi­tion embedded within the Los Angeles Chicano community. What seemed to him like an ephemeral cloud "hovering and floating" above the city, in actuality represented a complicated cultural strategy designed to preserve the resourccs of the past by adapting them to the needs of the present. In many areas of cultural production, but especially in popular music, organic intellectuals within the Los Angeles Chicano community pursued a strategy of self-presentation that brought their unique and distinctive cultural tradi­tions into the mainstream of mass popular culture. Neither assimilationist nor separatist, they played on "families of resemblance" - similarities to the experience and culture of other groups - to fashion a "unity of disunity,'" In that way, they sought to make alliances with other groups by cultivating the ways in which their particular experiences spoke with special authority about the ideas and alienations felt by others. They used the techniques and

326

•

C R U I S I N G A R O U N D T H E H I S T O R I C A L B L O C

sensibilities of postmodernism to build a "historical bloc" of oppositional groups united in ideas and intentions if not experience.6

Although discussions about postmodern sensibilities in contemporary culture often revolve around trends and tendencies in painting, architec­ture, and literature, they are most relevant to analyses of popular culture. It is on the level of commodified mass culture that the most popular, and often the most profound, acts of cultural brico/age take place .' The destruction of established canons and the juxtaposition of seemingly inappropriate forms that characterize the self-conscious postmodernism of "high culture" have long been staples of commodified popular culture. With their facility for cultural fusion and their resistance to univocal master narratives, works of commodified popular culture contain important lessons about the problems and promises of culture in a world in which "all that is solid melts into air."

The rock-and-roll music created by Mexican-American musicians in Los Angeles over the past forty years bears particular relevance to the issues of ethnicity, identity, and culture raised by Paz. From the Don Tosti Band of the 1 940s through Los Lobos in the 1980s, Los Angeles Chicano musicians have made commerically successful records blending the folk musics of Mexico with the cultural fusions of the modern day barrio ' Their procliv­ities for blending eclectic styles, making references to their community and its history, and acknowledging the diverse influences of their art display a conscious or intuitive postmodernism - delighting in difference, undermin­ing univocal master narratives, and celebrating the decentered and polyglot nature of popular culture. In its most successful commercial forms, Chicano rock-and-roll music from Los Angeles transformed a specific ethnic culture rooted in common experiences into more than a novelty to be appropriated by uncomprehending outsiders. Confronted with media monopolies and public sentiment blind to the unique circumstances of Mexican-Americans, Chicano musicians drew upon both residual and emergent elements in their community to win some measure of participation in the creation and dissemination of mass popular culture. Musical forms and social attitudes emanating from the isolation and marginality of barrio life took on new meaning when apropriated as "youth" music by consumers with little know­ledge or concern about the ethnicity of the musicians '

In his superb work on ethnic autobiographies, anthropologist Michael M. J. Fisher identifies the core components of the post modern sensibility as bifocality or reciprocity of perspectives, juxtaposition of multiple realities - intertextuality, inter-referentiality, and comparisons through families of resemblence.1O Fischer's categories encompass the central practices of Los Angeles Mexican-American rock-and-roll musicians over the past four decades. Caught between the realities of life in their community and the hegemony of Anglo-capitalist culture, Chicano artists fashioned a bifocal music accessible from both inside and outside of their community. They juxta­posed mUltiple realities - blending Mexican folk music with Afro-American

327

M U S I C A N D SOC I A B I L I T Y

rhythm and blues, playing English language songs in a Mexican style for Spanish speaking audiences, and answering requests for both Mexican music and rock-and-roll with the same song - "La Bamba."" They practiced particularly intricate forms of intertextuality by connecting their music to community subcultures and institutions oriented around speech, dress, car customizing, art, theater, and politics. References to shared historical and cultural experiences permeated Mexican-American rock-and-roll songs, but these references extended beyond the immediate Chicano community to include cultural forms like rockabilly and soul music nurtured in white work­ing class and black communities. That inter-referentiality complemented an equally adept facility for comparisons through families of resemblance. Chicano musicians and artists could incorporate white rockabilly or black rhythm and blues musics into their songs because they recognized similarities in form and content to their own music that transcended sur­face differences. Yet even while drawing upon families of resemblance, Mexican-American musicians in Los Angeles never lost sight of the unique and singular historical realities shaping them and their community.

The emergence of Los Lobos as a significant commercial rock-and-roll band in the 1 980s provides a recent illustration of the persistence of bifocality, juxtaposition of multiple realities, intertextuality, inter-referentiality, and comparison through families of resemblance in Los Angeles Chicano music. Mixing Mexican Norteno accordions and guitarrons with Afro-American and Anglo rockabilly drums and electric guitars, Los Lobos stands between Chicano and mass culture, playing to audiences in both camps. The five members of the group first learned to play their instruments in response to the popularity of the Beatles, but they did their first work as professional musicians, playing Mexican folk music for neighborhood gatherings. In response to critics who charge that the band's forays into rock-and-roll betray their roots in folk music, drummer Louis Perez explains that "We always aspired to play to everybody, but there was no place to expose it. We haven't gone back on the basic philosophy of this band, which was to play cultural music. It's a music that's as much Mexican culture as it is American, and that's what we arc. ,,]2

Rock-and-roll audiences first discovered Los Lobos when they served as the opening act for a U.S. tour by the punk/new wave group the Clash. A white band from England playing new wave music with strong reggae and rhythm and blues influences, the Clash recognized the families of resemb­lance that tied their music to that of Los Lobos and sought to give the Chicano band greater commercial exposure. Subsequently, a Los Angeles Anglo band steeped in rhythm and blues and rockabilly - the Blasters -arranged to have Los Lobos open live shows for them. Conrad Lozano of Los Lobos acknowledged his group's debt to the Blasters in a 1 984 interview when he told a reporter that "Musically it gave us someone to look at and reinforced our commitment to our style. We met them and had

328

C R U I S I N G A R O U N D T H E H I S T O R I C A L B L O C

a lot i n common. We became friends and they liked our music so much that they had us open some gigs for them. That really allowed many more people to see and hear US."13

Anglo saxophone player Steve Berlin left the Blasters to join Los Lobos, a transition that seemed logical to him because of his own commitment to juxtaposing multiple musical realities. Born in Philadelphia and nurtured on the city's rhythm and blues music, Berlin introduced Los Lobos to some old rhythm and blues songs, while they taught him to play their traditional polkas and con·idos. Describing the families of resemblance connecting him to the other members of Los Lobos and to other artists on Los Angeles's Slash Records label, Berlin observes that "A lot of us have similar record collections, and a shared appreciation for certain people like Hank Williams and George Jones. The Del Fuegos' heroes are the Blasters' heroes and they're our heroes too. If you went to everybody's house, there would be the same bunch of records they consider important.""

When similar record collections enable Steve Berlin, a white musician influenced by black rhythm and blues, to join a Chicano rock band on the basis of a mutual respect for country and western singers Hank Williams and George Jones, we seem to have gone a long way toward a world in which "all that is solid melts into air." Cultures appear interchangeable and works of art seem divorced from real historical experience. But the fusions that characterize Chicano rock-and-roll music reflect more than the confu­sions and ambiguities of postmodern society. Their definitive contours come from the conscious choices made by organic intellectuals attempting to address the anguish of invisibility by bringing their own cultural traditions into the mainstream of mass popular culture. Mexican-American musicians could stick to Chicano musical forms like ranchera and cumbia musics and find recognition and reward within their own community. Or they could master Anglo styles and be assimilated into the mainstream without anyone being aware of their Chicano identity. But Los Angeles Chicano rock­and-roll artists have selected another path. They have tried to straddle the line between the two cultures, creating a fusion music that resonates with the chaos and costs of cultural collision. Their choices arbitrate particularly complex tensions emanating from ethnicity and oppression for Chicanos, while holding open to other groups a vision of fusing a common culture based on families of resemblance and similarities of emotion and experience.

As members of an aggrieved community, and as artists involved in the generation and circulation of ideas reflecting the needs of that community, Mexican-American rock musicians from Los Angeles have functioned as what Antonio Gramsci referred to as "organic intellectuals."" Gramsci felt that dominant social groups wielded power as much through ideological hegemony as through physical force, and he charged that traditional intellectuals reinforced social hierarchies by serving as "experts in legitima­tion."" But Gramsci pointed out that subordinated groups had their own

329

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

intellectuals who tried to pose a "counter-hegemony" by presenting images subversive of existing power relations. The elite attempted to "manage con­sent" by making domination appear to reflect the consent of the governed, while organic intellectuals tried to build a "historical bloc" - a coalition of oppositional groups united around counter-hegemonic ideas. The efforts by Chicano rock musicians in Los Angeles to enter the mainstream by link­ing up with other oppositional cultures reflect their struggle to assemble a "historical bloc" capable of challenging the ideological hegemony of Anglo cultural domination. [n that struggle, they found that their primary weapons included bifocality, juxtaposition of multiple realities, intertextuality, inter­referentiality, and comparison through families of resemblance.

Chicano musicians had to assume a bifocal perspective as a matter of self-respect. The dominant culture already imposed an identity on them. Regardless of their personal characteristics, Anglo stereotypes about Chicanos and their culture influenced the ways in which Mexican-Americans were received outside of the barrio, and they had to be aware of the limits imposed upon them by that cultural domination. But simply to accept the stereotypes would necessitate denying one's own vision. Prevented from defining them­selves because of pervasive discrimination and prejudice, but unwilling to leave the work of definition to others, they adopted a bifocal perspective that acknowledged but did not accept the majority culture's images of Chicanos. They sought outside recognition and success, but on their own terms.

Bifocality defined the very first successful Los Angeles Chicano rock-and­roll hit record of the late 1940s, the Don Tosti Band's "Pachuco Boogie." Band member Raul Diaz remembers what it was like before that record, how Mexican-American musicians like himself often had to wear sombreros and tropical outfits to get work playing music during intermissions at motion picture theaters. "We wanted to play Chicano music, not come on like some clowns," Diaz recalls, "but at the time the scene was dominated by people like Desi Amaz and Xavier Cugat and the music was really bland."" The Don Tosti Band changed that situation when "Pachuco Boogie" sold more than two million copies. Rejecting the Desi Amaz-Xavier Cugat stereo­type of Hispanic culture, "Pachuco Boogie" turned to another image - the pachuco subculture of East Los Angeles. During World War J l , Los Angeles newspapers incited public hatred against Mexican teenage gang members who wore zoot suits and ducktail haircuts. Blaming them for a nonexistent "crime wave," the press helped instigate the "Zoot Suit Riots" of 1943 in which U.S. military personnel roamed through the streets of East Los Angeles attacking Mexican teenagers. Pachucos had been considered an unsavory element by respectable Chicanos before the riots, but afterward the attacks made the youths seem like protectors of the community and appro­priate symbols of Chicano marginality to many others ." "Pachuco Boogie" employed calo (the street slang used by pachucos) lyrics and Afro-American rhythms and vocal mannerisms to create a cultural composite that enjoyed

330

C R U I S I N G A R O U N D T H E H I STO R I C A L B L O C

success both inside and outside of the Mexican-American community. Some Spanish language radio stations refused to play the song because they thought it vulgar, and Anglo and Afro-American listeners may very well have retained negative opinions about pachucos despite the song's commercial success. But by flaunting and celebrating an image used to belittle the community, "Pachuco Boogie" took away the sting of outside stereotypes and imposed a bifocal perspective on what had previously been visible in only one form.

In the 1 950s, a Chicano from the San Fernando Valley suburb of Pacoima changed his name from Richard Valenzuela to Ritchie Valens, and became one of the most important rock-and-roll artists in the country. Bifocality guided Valens's efforts: his hit records included "La Bamba," a traditional wedding huapango from Vera Cruz sung in a rock style, and "Come On, Let's Go," an English language rock-and-roll song delivered by Valens in the style of Mexican fiesta music. Valens's popularity constituted a bifocality of its own, as community members felt themselves more "visible" because of his ability to achieve commercial reward and recognition. "We all had our heroes in the barrio," explains Chicano musician Rudy Salas, "but when they were able to get acceptance out of the barrio, that was the ultimate."" That acceptance meant that Los Angeles rock-and-roll musicians had a legitimate role to play in the creation of American popular culture. Just as their own Frankie "Cannibal" Garcia idolized the Detroit rhythm and blues singer Smokey Robinson, and Thee Midniters thought of themselves as the "Latino Beatles," young people from other cultures might look to Valens, Garcia, and other barrio artists as role models. The hegmony of mass mediated popular culture threatened to obliterate Mexican identity in Los Angeles as Paz correctly observed, but organic intellectuals within the community responded with a creative bifocality that inserted their culture into mass public discourse.

Yet however much they might participate in mass popular culture, Chicano rock musicians could not be completely assimilated. Frankie "Cannibal" Garcia feels that his group's identity as Chicanos prevented them from attaining greater success after their record of "Land of A Thousand Dances" reached the top forty in 1 965. Garcia claims that

They didn't know how to market us, for one. There were basically only black or white groups in the early I 960s, not even many mixed groups. The people didn't even know what we were half of the time; a lot of people thought we were Hawaiian or something. And with the name Cannibal and the Headhunters, most people just assumed we'd be black.'"

Whether the audience knew what they were or not, Cannibal and the Head­hunters found that they could not forget who they were. Remembering a tour through the southern states with the Rolling Stones, Garcia relates

33 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

I t was a shock to us to go somewhere and see restrooms that would say "white only" or "black only." I'd say "Where do lI'e go? We would get kicked out of restaurants, no Latins allowed. There was a big billboard in Jacksonville, Florida that said "No niggers, no spics, no Mexicans allowed." I wrote home and said "You know what, Mom? There's this big marquee that says they don't like us here. ,,2 1

Rudy Salas of the band Tierra found in the early 1980s that radio station programmers refused to play more than one song a week by Chicano artists and that he had to organize his own rock-and-roll shows in East Los Angeles in order to give Chicano bands public exposure. He told a reporter 1I1 1982:

We have to have our own shows. I'm not saying that we should ignore what's happening outside in the pop and rock scene. I'm just saying that we have to be realistic and recognize that the pop and rock scene isn't that open to people from our community. It's a bad scene for our bands. For every one that gets to first base, there are so many that aren't even in the ballpark. Things are really bad now from the standpoint of pop shows. How many pop shows take the Latino community into account?22

Denied anything more than sporadic exposure to a mass popular audience and rooted in a community with few economic resources, Chicano rock­and-roll musicians in Los Angeles have neither been assimilated into the mainstream of American popular culture, nor have they separated themselves from it. Instead, they engage in an uneasy dialogue with that culture, cultivating their bifocality as a means of expressing and arbitrating their real social marginality. Life in the barrio allows no other perspective - an art too easily assimilated into the mainstream would not be credible given the real social alienations of the community, but a separatist art would not do justice to the collective struggle for recognition and inclusion into the reward structure of American society.

In similar fashion, juxtaposition of multiple realities in the multi-ethnic industrial and post-industrial city encourages cultural expressions that juxtapose multiple realities. One of the first successful rock-and-roll songs by a Los Angeles Mexican-American artist illustrates the dynamic that brings multiple realities into Chicano life and art. In 1 956, Julian Herrera recorded "Lonely, Lonely Nights," and the song's subsequent commercial success made it a model for other Chicano singers. On the surface it seemed to combine Afro-American rhythm and blues "do-wop" harmonies and the ballad structures of Mexican music. But beneath the surface other influences helped shape the song. Johnny Otis, who co-wrote and produced the song,

332

C R U I S I N G A R O U N D T H E H I S T O R I C A L B L O C

came to Los Angeles to play the drums in black jazz ensembles, and thought of himself as black. But Otis was a Greek-American who had grown up in a black neighborhood in Berkeley, California and was, in his words, "black by persuasion."" In addition, Julian Herrera had been raised by a Chicano family in East Lost Angeles, but he was born a Hungarian Jew and adopted as an infant. So when Chicano rock-and-roll singers proudly imitated Julian Herrera's record, they were copying the singing of a Jew who thought he was Mexican in a song co-written by a Greek who thought he was black. And "Lonely, Lonely Nights" was hardly an exception. Ritchie Valens's first band included two Chicanos, two blacks, and one Japanese-American. One of Valens's favorite songs was "Framed" - a song he learned from the hit record by a black Los Angeles group, the Robins. "Framed" utilized the storytelling traditions, speech patterns, and talking blues form of Afro­American culture, but it was written by two young whites, Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber."

The juxtaposition of multiple realities in Chicano life allowed for the juxtaposition of mUltiple realities in Mexican-American music. In a culture that drew sharp lines among black, white, and brown musics and audiences, Chicano rock-and-roll artists worked to break down barriers. To a commer­cial marketing structure that imposed rigid categories on rock, popular, folk, and ethnic musics, they offered songs that fit no simple description. The dominant culture - and its popular culture industry - often treated ethnicity as a discrete and finite entity, but Chicano musicians treated it as plastic and open-ended. For them ethnicity seemed as much a dynamic construct as an inherited fact, as much a strategic response to the present as an immutable series of practices and beliefs derived from the past. Consequently, they brought a sense of play and whimsy to the art of brico/age. Ritchie Valens experimented with a Bo Diddley style rhythm and a blues bass line beneath the Latin guitar standard "La Malenguefi," while Los Lobos brought the Nor/eno accordion and guitarron into use as rock-and� roll instruments.25

The same forces that lead Los Angeles Chicano rock-and-roll musicians to roll back the boundaries of ethnic identity and musical forms compel them to incorporate ideas from non-musical sources into their work. As organic intellectuals chronicling the cultural life of their community, they draw upon street slang, car customizing, clothing styles, and wall murals for inspiration and ideas as well as upon more traditional cultural creations such as literature, plays, and poems. Their work is intertextual, constantly in dialogue with other forms of cultural expression and most fully appreciated when located in context with them.

The commercially successful Chicano band Tierra got its start in the early 1 970s as the favorite band of the low rider subculture in Los Angeles. As anthropologist Brenda Bright demonstrates in her fine work on Mexican­American car customizers, low riders are themselves masters of postmodern

333

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

cultural manipulation. They juxtapose seemingly inappropriate realities (fast cars designed to go slowly, "improvements" that flaunt their impracticality - like chandeliers instead of inside lights) to create a bifocal perspective (they are made to bc watched, but only after adjustments that make ironic and playful commentary on prevailing standards of automotive design) that is itself intertextual (cars named after songs or incidents in Mexican history, designs with zoot suited pachueos on them). Low rider "happenings" incor­pOl'ate clements of popular fashion, dance, and music in a community ritual celebrating the utility and beauty of cars that the dominant culture would deem impractical and tastelessly garish. Tierra incorporated that sense of intertextuality into its music, using descriptions of barrio life and fragments of past barrio musics and dances in playful ways, singing about zoot suits and jitterbug dances of the 1 940s. Similarly, Thee Midniters wrote and recorded "Whittier Boulevard" to celebrate the culture of car customizers and cruisers along East Los Angeles's main thoroughfare in the 1 960s, while Ruben Guevara's "c/s" - written for his group Con Safos in 1 982 - explores the distinctive graffiti of the barrio in the context of the historical mistreat­ment of Chicanos in California .'6

A conscious inter-referentiality accompanies the pervasive inter-textuality of Los Angeles Chicano rock-and-roll music. Even though they seek success in commercial popular culture, these musicians employ references to individual and collective history in the manner of folk artists. Mexican-American rock-and-roll artists acknowledge their roots; Ritchie Valens hit the best­seller charts with "La Bamba," a song he learned from his family when he was five, and Los Lobos won a Grammy Award for folk music with their faithful rendition of "Anselma," a one hundred-year-old Mexican song. But they also tie their musical past to a social and political history. "I grew up listening to the folk groups and balladeers," explains Ruben Guevara when asked about the origins of his music. But he plays little traditional folk and ballad music; instead he adapts the music of today to the sense of collective history characteristic of the folk artists of yesterday. Guevara founded Zyanya Records in 1982 (named after the Mexican-Indian word meaning "always") to provide an outlet for Chicano musicians and a forum for talking to young people in his community. "The younger Chicanos who did not experi­ence the Chicano movement of the 60s and 70s lost a cultural awareness and through this music I would like to make them aware of social issues," Guevara insists. Groups on the label, Con Safos, Los Perros, and Califas use overtly political lyrics and a self-conscious ethnic nationalism to address the problems of contemporary barrio life. But even those groups that shun direct political or historical references in their lyrics still evoke the past through references to pachucos, cholos, zoot suits, or community heroes like Ritchie Valens." Chicano/punk musician (as well as mural painter and poet) Willie Herron sees the fate of barrio musicians directly wrapped up in the fate of the barrio itself. Asked by a reporter why Chicano rock-and-roll

334

C R U I S I N G A R O U N D T H E H I S T O R I C A L B L O C

musicians from Los Angeles failed to achieve consistent commercial accept­ance, Herron replied that "We had setbacks all along - the death of Ritchie Valens in '59 being one of the biggest. In the 70s the reasons became more political - the Chicano moratorium (an anti-war demonstration that ended in a police riot), the death of Ruben Salazar (a newspaper columnist killed by police officers during the Chicano Moratorium) - many of the people in the Hispanic community just dropped out.""

The blending together of cultural and political history and the internal references employed by Chicano rock-and-roll musicians echo the stance taken by other artists within the community. John Valdez, an artist who grew up in the Estrada Courts Housing Project in East Los Angeles gained critical recognition in the 1 980s for paintings that foregrounded pachucos and other barrio symbols. "I like to show the Pachuco image," he relates, "even if some Chicanos who are trying to assimilate think they left this in the past. It's still something that is very much with us." For Valdez, pachuco imagery retains meaning because it displays "the beauty of a people we have been told are not beautiful."" Similar tensions inform the writing of Mary Helen Ponce from East Los Angeles. In one of her short stories she recalls a childhood in which "We really lived in two worlds. The secure barrio that comforted and accepted us, and the 'other,' the institutions such as the school that were out to acculturate us, sanitize us, Americanize us, and de-lice us at least once a year. . . . "30 In that story Ponce describes her feelings of solidarity with a classmate found to have lice in her hair because Ponce resented the smug sense of superiority that enabled Anglo school officials to make Chicano children feel ashamed of their homes. The same bifocality that makes Ponce want to describe the world as divided in two and that makes her take the side of the despised ethnic minority makes rock musician Willie Herron say that he formed his group Los IIIegals "to talk about the experience of being a ch% , a low rider, of being in gangs, all of it."" The same stubborn inter-referentiality that makes John Valdez celebrate the pachuco, compels Con Safos's Ruben Guevara to explain the song "c/s" by proclaiming "The present day Pachuco refuses to die.""

Inter-referentiality, inter-textuality, juxtaposition of multiple realities, and bifocality characterize the music of Chicano rock-and-roll musicians from Los Angeles, and explain much of its internal significance to the Mexican-American community. Yet this music was not intended solely as an internal form of expression. Its very identity as a part of mass popular culture, its uneasy dialogue between the Anglo and Chicano worlds, and its complicated system of codings and references express a desire to reach out to others to form a historical bloc capable of posing a counter-hegemony to the domination of today. One of the singular successes of this music has been its ability to build that alliance, to touch members of other groups on the strength of its families of resemblance to the alienations and opprcssions of people outside the barrio.

335

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

I n Los Angeles, Anglo rock-and-roll musicians Frank Zappa and Captain Beefbeart included references to pachucos in their 1970s albums, and Zappa came up with the idea for a band called Ruben and the Jets who would embody the pure spirit of rock-and-roll. Remembering his own initiation into rock music in the 1950s at concerts at EI Monte Legion Stadium and other East Los Angeles venues, Zappa felt that Ruben and the Jets should be Chicanos. He persuaded Ruben Guevara to form an actual group called Ruben and the Jets during a backstage conversation after Zappa had attended Guevara's cultural nationalist play "Who Are the People?" Guevara's recollection of that meeting testifies to the power of families of resemblance; he recalled that he and Zappa "rapped from Bo Diddley to Beethoven. We found that we had the same musical roots."" Of course neither Zappa nor Guevara could actually trace their roots to Bo Diddley or Beethoven, but the commodity culture of the post modern world made them feel that they were on common ground because they both had the same feelings and interpretations of those two musicians.

Families of resemblance also brought together suburban Los Angeles punk and new wave audiences and artists with rock bands from East Los Angeles in the last 1970s and early 1 980s. Chicano bands including the Brat, Odd Squad, and the Plugz blended the urgency and emotionalism of 1950s rock and roll (the Plugz even recorded a version of Ritchie Valens's "La Bamba") with lyrics speaking to the alienations and frustrations of contemporary youth. Relatively affluent suburban teenagers could identify with the music of a band like Los I1legals that spoke of the experiences of cholos, not because they really knew what it was like to be a cholo, but because the real historical alienations of the Chicano community gave its artists a well developed vocabulary for talking about alienation and oppression. Neither the punk rock musicians nor their audiences were actually cholos in the literal sense of the word, but the subjective act of identification with cholismo creates a family of resemblance - a mutual desire to draw upon real historical experiences to proclaim distance from the dominant culture and its values.

The commercial popularity of Los Lobos in the 1 980s provides only the latest example of the capacity of Los Angeles Chicano rock-and-roll musi­cians to form a historical bloc with other groups based on families of resemb­lance. Los Lobos proudly affirm their cultural heritage, but reject separatism. They insist on being accepted as "legitimate contributors to contemporary music" without having to deny their ethnic identity. Aware of the ways in which they might be perceived as a novelty by a mass audience, they attempt to use their marginality to find families of resemblance capable of connecting them to other groups. Drummer Louis Perez explains the group's philosophy by talking about the title song of the 1 984 album "How Will the Wolf Survive?" Perez remembers that he read a National Geographic article about wolves as an endangered species and that he compared their plight to that of people that he knew. As he describes writing the song,

336

C R U I S I N G A R O U N D T H E H I ST O R I C A L B L O C

I t started out being about the wolf and the next verse turned into a message of hope for the middle class. And the last verse is about how bands all over the country are trying to preserve something close to the heart of America. So yeah, it's about whether or not Los Lobos will survive. Not only us . . . . "

Perez's song lyrics talk about a wolf "running scared now forced to hide in a land where he once stood with pride" - a clear reference to the Chicano people and to Los Lobos (in Spanish, "the wolves") themselves. He predicts that the hunted creature will somehow find its way in the morning light and concludes with a verse that pays tribute to the "young hearts and minds" in bands across the nation whose "songs of passion" keep alive the chance for the wolf to survive. For Perez, the world of rock-and-roll music is not a place that obliterates local cultures by rendering them invisible; rather it is an arena where diverse groups find common ground while still acknowledg­ing important differences. The pre-figurative counter-hegemony fashioned by Los Lobos has indeed won the allegiance of musicians from other marginalized cultures. Their songs have been recorded by country and western star Waylon Jennings as well as by polka artist Frankie Yankovic. The Cajun accordian player and singer Jo-EI Sonnier views Los Lobos as artists whose cultural struggles parallel his own. Sonnier explains,

"I've sold myself as French, as R&B, as country, and as rock. But I want to do it all if I can; I think we could open doors for this music. Look at what Los Lobos has done for ethnic music, and they got signed without really changing. It can't just be that all people want is Madonna and punk music!

All I ever wanted to do is bring my music and my culture to the people. I have a message about the preservation of it. I feel like if I let my culture die, I die with it.""

Sonnier's complicated strategy of using the plasticity of popular music as a means of preserving his ethnic culture reflects the efforts to build a historical bloc by Chicano musicians like Los Lobos, and his direct reference to them reveals a self-conscious understanding of the families of resemblance that they nurture and cultivate.

With their bifocality, juxtaposition of multiple realities, intertextuality, inter-referentiality, and families of resemblance, Chicano rock-and-roll musi­cians from Los Angeles have explored all the main axes of postmodern art. Jean-Fran90is Lyotard has celebrated this "postmodern condition" as a logical and healthy response to the totalitarian imperatives of technology and capital. Lyotard and other "postmodernists" see the proliferation of marginal subcultures and the confusing display of remnants from past eras in contemporary culture as a break with oppressive "master narratives,"

337

M U S I C A N D SO C I A B I L I T Y

These "master narratives" are charged with imposing a false order and unity on the polyphony and pluralism of social life. To postmodernists, impro­vised cultural forms and free-floating signs and symbols appropriated out of context can open up a world of play and desire previously constrained by the tryanny of master narratives.36

Scholars uneasy about the open-ended implications of some postmodernist theory nonetheless concede its central point - that contemporary society entails a fragmentation and decentering that radically alters the nature and function of cultural creation and reception. Fredric Jameson attempts to steer Lyotard's discussion toward a re-emphasis on the importance of history and historical consciousness, arguing that a world-view with no sense of the past or expectation for the future only degenerates into schizo­phrenia, trapping individuals within the bonds of their own immediate sense perceptions. Jameson maintains that the emancipatory possibilities in contemporary cultural forms come from a "political unconscious" - from "buried" master narratives that carry on the historical traditions of opposi­tions sedimented within the experience and memory of aggrieved populations. In a similar vein, Jlirgen Habermas argues that the plasticity of contemporary culture reveals a "legitimation crisis" brought on by the failure of capitalism to fulfill the promises of enlightenment and revolutionary traditions. Thus the decentered and fragmented culture of the modern world is not an end in itself for Habermas, but rather an indication of popular desire for an eventual consensus, for a practice that closes the ruptures and disruptions of capitalism ." Marshall Berman shares the sentiment voiced by Jameson and Habermas that modernity is "an incomplete project" rather than a totalit­arian master narrative, and like them he champions the "unity of disunity" by which modern culture represents a collective struggle to feel at home in the world."

What Jameson, Habermas, and Berman champion on the plane of criticism, Mexican-American rock-and-roll musicians have foregrounded in art. The marginality of Chicano rock-and-roll musicians has provided them with a constant source of inspiration and a constant spur toward innova­tion that won the attention of mainstream audiences. But this marginal sensibility in music amounts to more than novelty or personal eccentricity; it holds legitimacy and power as the product of a real historical com­munity's struggle with oppression." The "buried master narratives" in this music - narratives about group identity, oppositional subcultures, and a desire for unity with others - amount to more than a "political unconscious." As Chicano musicians demonstrate in their comments about their work, their music reflects a quite conscious cultural politics that seeks inclusion in the American mainstream by transforming it.

Almost forty years after Octavio Paz's visit to Los Angeles, Mexican­Americans in that city still suffer from the anguish of invisibility. Their numbers have increased, but discrimination and exploitation still leave them

338

C R U I S I N G A R O U N D T H E H I ST O R I C A L B LO C

under-represented and under-rewarded. The expanded reach and scope of the mass media over the past four decades has exacerbated the cultural crisis facing Mexican-Americans; rarely do they see their world presented sympathetically or accurately in the instruments of communication that consistently reinforce and legitimate Anglo cultural hegemony. But the "vague atmosphere" of Mexicanism perceived by Paz persists in the present as well. In community subcultures and styles, in the prefigurative counter­hegemony of organic intellectuals, it continues to inform the struggles of the present with the perceptions and values of the past. Conscious of the fragmentation of the modern world, this constantly changing "Mexican ism" cultivates its own marginality even as it reaches out to other groups by forming families of resemblance. It is not a "buried master narrative," but rather a conscious cultural politics that survives by "floating and hovering," never quite existing and never quite vanishing. Invisibility has its psychic and political costs, but for Chicano musicians in Los Angeles, it also provides the ultimate camouflage for the difficult but necessary work of building a historical bloc.

Notes

Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 1 3 . 2 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zol1l1 (New York: Harcourt, Brace,

and World, 1968). 3 Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts flllo Ail' (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1982). 4 Paz, 1 3 . 5 Berman, 15 . 6 Antonio Gramsci, Selectionsfrol11 the Prison Notebooks, eds. Quintin Hoare and

Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1 97 1 ). 7 The term is from Claude Levi-Strauss. It is used here as a description of the

process of cultural amalgamation, not offered as a universal description of innate human characteristics.

8 Ruben Guevara, "The View from the Sixth Street Bridge: The History of Chicano Rock," in Dave Marsh, cd., Rock and Roll Confidential Report (New York: Pantheon, 1985).

9 For a discussion of the promise and problems of this process see George Lipsitz, "Against the Wind: The Class Composition of Rock and Roll," Knowledge and Society 5 ( 1 984); Reebee Garoralo and Steve Chapple, Rock'" Roll is Here to Pay (Chicago: Nelson and Hall, 1978).

10 Michael M. J. Fischer, "Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Mmemory," in James Clifford and George Marcus, eds., Writing Culture (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1 986).

I I "La Bamba" is a festive wedding song from Vera Cruz, a huapango to be played with variations in meter with each rendition. In the 1 940s it enjoyed popularity in the U.S. as an instrumental selection by many artists, and in the southwest as a jal'oc/to (string band) song by Hermanos Huescas among others.

1 2 Los Angeles Times, 28 December 1982. 13 EI Larry, "Los Lobos," Low Rider, March-April 1984, 34. 14 Rob Tannenbaum, "Los Lobos," Musician 77, March 1985, 19.

339

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

1 5 Antonio Gramsci, Selecliol1sfrom the Prison Notebooks, cds. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1 97 1 ), 9-10.

16 Ibid., 9-10. 17 Los Angeles Times, 1 2 October 1980; Nuestro, November 1979. 17 . 1 8 Mauricio Mazon, Zoot Suit Riots (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1 984); George

Lipsitz, Class and Culture ill Cold War America: A RainbolV al Midnight (South Hadley, Ma.: Bergin and Garvey, 1982), 26-8.

19 Don Snowden, "The Sound of East Los Angeles," Los Angeles Times, 28 October 1984.

20 Ethlie Ann Yare, "Cannibal and the Headhunters," Goldmine. November 1983, 26.

2 1 Ibid., 53. 22 Los Angeles Times, 20 October 1982. 23 Johnny Otis, Lislell to the Lambs (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968). 24 Jim Dawson and Bob Keane, "Ritchie Valens . . . His Life Story," pamphlet

(Rhino Records 1981), 6; Ruben Guevara, "The View from the Sixth Street Bridge: The History of Chicano Rock,"

25 Jim Dawson and Bob Keane, "Ritchie Valens . . . His Life Story." 10. 26 Brenda Bright, "The Meaning of Roles and the Role of Showing: Houston Low

Riders" (Paper delivered at Dept. of Anthropology, Brown Univ., 1984); "Low Riders in Houston" (Paper delivered at College Lecture Series, Mount Holyoke College, 28 April 1986). I am indebted to Bright for calling my attention to the importance of the low rider subculture as well as for her understanding of its connections to postmodernism. See also Luis F. B. Plascencia, "Low Riding in the Southwest: Cultural Symbols in the Mexican Community" (Paper delivered at Center for Mexican-American Studies, Univ. of Texas, Austin, 1 984): Don Snow­den, "The Sounds of East Los Angeles," Los Angeles Times, 28 October 1 984.

27 Don Snowden, "The Sound of East Los Angeles," Los Angeles Times, 28 October 1984; Lindsey Haley-Aleman, "Zyanya," LOlli Rider, March-April 1 984, 24-25.

28 Los Angeles Times, 1 2 October 1980. 29 Victor Valle, "Chicano Art: An Emerging Generation," Los Angeles Times,

7 August 1983. 30 Mary Helen Ponce, "Los Piojos," in 201 - Latino Experience in Literature and

Art (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Latino Writers Workshop, n.d.), 1 6 . 3 1 Los Angeles Times, 9 November 1980: Los Angeles Times, 1 2 October 1980. 32 Los Angelinos - The Eastside Renaissance, liner and jacket notes (Zyanya

Records). 33 Los Angeles Times, 1 2 October 1 980. 34 Rob Tannenbaum, "Los Lobos," Musician 77, March 1985, 19 . 35 Judy Raphael, "Ragin' Cajun: Jo-EI Sonnier's Last Stand," L.A. Weekly, 9-1 5

August 1985, 57. 36 Jean-Fran�ois Lyotard, The Pos/modern Condilions: A Report on Knowledge

(Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1 984), esp. 7 1-82. 37 See Jameson's introduction to The Postmodern Condition: A Report on KnoJII­

ledge, esp. xii; Jiirgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975). 38 Berman, 1 5 . 3 9 For a discussion o f that community's history and its relationship to popular

music see George Lipsitz, "The Land of a Thousand Dances: Rock and Roll, Minorities, and Youth in Postwar America," in Lary May, cd., Promise and Peril: Rethinking Post World War I! America (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, forthcoming).

340

77

A S T Y L E N O B O DY

C A N D E A L W I T H

Politics, style and the post-industrial city in Hip Hop

Tricia Rose

Source: A. Ross and T. Rose (eds) ( 1994) Microphone Fiends. YOlllh Music and YOIi/h Cullllre. N Y and London: ROlltledge, pp. 71-88.

Life on the margins of post-industrial urban America is inscribed in hip hop style, sound, lyrics and thematics.' Emerging from the intersection of lack and desire in the post-industrial city, hip hop manages the painful contra­dictions of social alienation and prophetic imagination. Hip hop is an Afro-diasporic cultural form which attempts to negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutally truncated opportunity and oppression within the cultural imperatives of African-American and Caribbean history, identity and community. It is the tension between the cultural fractures produced by post-industrial oppression and Ihe binding ties of Black cultural expressivity that sets the critical frame for the development of hip hop.'

Worked out on the rusting urban core as a playground, hip hop transforms stray technological parts intended for cultural and industrial trash heaps into sources of pleasure and power. These transformations have become a basis for digital imagination all over the world. Its earliest practitioners came of age at the tail end of the Great Society, in the twilight of America's short-lived federal commitment to black civil rights, and during the predawn of the Reagan-Bush era.' In hip hop, these abandoned parts, people and social institutions were weldcd and then spliced together, not only as sources of survival, but as sources of pleasure.

Hip hop replicates and reimagines the experiences of urban life and symbolically appropriates urban space through sampling, attitude, dance, style and sound effects. Talk of subways, crews and posses, urban noise, eco­nomic stagnation, static and crossed signals leap out of hip hop lyrics,

341

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

sounds and themes. Graffiti artists spray-painted murals and (name) "tags" on trains, trucks and playgrounds, claiming territories and inscribing their otherwise contained identities on public property.' Early breakdancers' elab­orate, technologically inspired, street-corner dances, involving head spins on concrete sidewalks, made the streets theater-friendly, and turned them into makeshift youth centers. The dancers' electric, robotic mimicry and identity-transforming characterizations foreshadowed the fluid and shock­ing effect of morphing, a visual effect made famous in Terminator 2. OJs who initiated spontaneous street parties by attaching customized, makeshift turntables and speakers to streetlight electrical sources revised the use of central thoroughfares, made "open-air" community centers in neighborhoods where there were none. Rappers seized and used microphones as if ampli­fication was a life-giving source. Hip hop gives voice to the tensions and contradictions in the public urban landscape during a period of substantial transformation in New York, and attempts to seize the shifting urban terrain, to make it work on behalf of the dispossessed.

Hip hop's attempts to negotiate new economic and technological con­ditions, as well as new patterns of race, class and gender oppression in urban America, by appropriating subway facades, public streets, language, style and sampling technology are only part of the story. Hip hop music and culture also relies on a variety of Afro-Caribbean and Afro-American musical, oral, visual and dance forms and practices in the face of a larger society that rarely recognizes the Afro-diasporic significance of such prac­tices. It is, in fact, the dynamic and often contentious relationship between the two-larger social and political forces and black cultural priorities­that centrally shape and define hip hop.

The tensions and contradictions shaping hip hop culture can confound efforts at interpretation by even the most skilled critics and observers. Some analysts see hip hop as a quintessentially postmodern practice, while others view it as a present-day successor to premodern oral traditions. Some celebrate its critique of consumer capitalism, while others condemn it for its complicity with commercialism. To one enthusiastic group of critics, hip hop combines elements of speech and song, of dance and display, to call into being through performance new identities and subject positions. Yet to another equally vociferous group, hip hop merely displays in phantasma­gorical form the cultural logic of late capitalism. I intend to demonstrate the importance of locating hip hop culture within the context of deindustrialization and to show how hip hop's primary properties of flow, layering and rupture simultaneously refiect and contest the social roles open to urban inner city youth at the end of the twentieth century.

In an attempt to rescue rap from its identity as post-industrial commercial product, and situate it in the history of respected black cultural practices, many historical accounts of rap consider it a direct extension of African­American oral, poetic and protest traditions to which it is clearly and

342

, -

A S T Y L E N O B O D Y C A N D E A L W I T H

substantially indebted. This accounting, which builds important bridges between rap's use of boasting, signifying, preaching and earlier, related, black, oral traditions, produces multiple problematic effects. First, it reconstructs rap music as a singular oral poetic form which appears to have developed autonomously (outside hip hop culture) in the 1970s. Quite to the contrary, rap is one cultural element within the larger social movement of hip hop. Second, it substantially marginalizes the significance of rap as music. Rap's musical elements and its use of music technology are crucial aspects of the use and development of the form, and are absolutely critical to the evolution of hip hop generally. Finally, and most directly important for this discussion, it renders invisible the crucial role of the post-industrial city on the shape and direction of rap and hip hop and makes it difficult to trace the way hip hop revises and extends Afro-diasporic practices using post-industrial urban materials. Hip hop's styles and themes share striking similarities with many past and contiguous Afro-diasporic musical and cultural expressions; these themes and styles, for the most part, are revised and reinterpreted using contemporary cultural and technological elements. Hip hop's central forms-graffiti, breakdancing and rap music-developed, in relation to one another, within Afro-diasporic cultural priorities, and in relation to larger post-industrial social forces and institutions.

What are some of the defining aesthetic and stylistic characteristics of hip hop? What is it about the post-industrial city generally, and the social and political terrain in the 1970s in New York City specifically, that contributes to the emergence and early reception of hip hop? Even as today's rappers revise and redirect rap music, most understand themselves as working out of a tradition of style, attitude and form which has critical and primary roots in New York City in the 1970s. Substantial post-industrial shifts in economic conditions, access to housing, demographics and communication networks were crucial to the formation of the conditions which nurtured the cultural hybrids and sociopolitical tenor of hip hop's lyrics and music.

The urban context

Post-industrial conditions in urban centers across America reflect a complex set of global forces which continue to shape the contemporary urban metropolis. The growth of multinational telecommunications networks, global economic competition, a major technological revolution, the formation of new international divisions of labor, the increasing power of finance relative to production, and new migration patterns from Third World industrializ­ing nations have all contributed to the economic and social restructuring of urban America. These global forces have had direct and sustained impact on urban job opportunity structures, have exacerbated long-standing racial- and gender-based forms of discrimination and have contributed to increasing multinational corporate control of market conditions and national

343

M U S I C A N D SOC I A B I L I T Y

economic health.' Large-scale restructuring of the workplace and job market has had its effect upon most facets of everyday life. [t has placed additional pressures on local, community-based networks of communication, and has whittled down already limited prospects for social mobility.

In the 1970s, cities across the country were gradually losing federal funding for social services, information service corporations were begin­ning to replace industrial factories, and corporate developers were buying up real estate to be converted into lUxury housing, leaving working-class residents with limited affordable housing, a shrinking job market and diminishing social services. The poorest neighborhoods and the least power­ful groups were the least protected and had the smallest safety nets. By the 1 980s, the privileged elites displayed unabashed greed as their strategies to reclaim and rebuild downtown business and tourist zones with municipal and federal subsidies exacerbated the already widening gap between classes and races.

Given New York's status as hub city for international capital and information services, it is not surprising that these larger structural changes and their effects were quickly and intensely felt in New York ' As John Mollenkopf notes, "during the 1 970s, the U.S. system of cities crossed a watershed. New York led other old, industrial metropolitan areas into popu­lation and employment decline.'" The federal funds that might have offset this process had been diminishing throughout the 1 970s. In 1975, President Ford's unequivocal veto to requests for a federal bail out to prevent New York from filing for bankruptcy made New York a national symbol for the fate of older cities under his administration. The New York Daily News legendary headline, "Ford to New York: Drop Dead," captured the sub­stance and temperament of Ford's veto and sent a sharp message to cities around the country ' Virtually bankrupt and in a critical state of disrepair, New York City and State administrators finally negotiated a federal loan, albeit one which accompanied an elaborate package of service cuts and carried harsh repayment terms. These dramatic social service cuts were felt most severely in New York's poorest areas and were part of a larger trend in unequal wealth distribution and were accompanied by a housing crisis which continued well into the 1 980s. Between 1 978 and 1986, the people in the bottom twenty percent of the income scale experienced an absolute decline in income while the top twenty percent experienced most of the economic growth. Blacks and H ispanics disproportionately occupied this bottom fifth. During this same period, thirty percent of New York's Hispanic households (for Puerto Ricans it is forty percent) and twenty five percent of black households lived at or below the poverty line. Since this period, low-income housing has continued to disappear, and blacks and Hispanics are still much more likely to live in overcrowded, dilapidated and seriously undermaintained spaces ' It is not surprising that these serious trends have contributed to New York's large and chronically homeless population.

344

A S T Y L E N O B O D Y C A N D E A L W I T H

[ n addition to housing problems, New York and many large urban centers faced other major economic and demographic forces which have sustained and exacerbated significant structural inequalities. While urban America has always been socially and economically divided, these divisions have taken on a new dimension. At the same time that racial succession and immigration patterns were reshaping the city's population and labor force, shifts in the occupational structure, away from a high-wage, high-employment economy grounded in manufacturing, trucking, warehousing and wholesale trade, and toward a low-wage, low-employment economy geared toward producer services, generated new forms of inequality. As Daniel Walkowitz suggests, New York has become

sharply divided between an affluent, technocratic, professional, white-collar group managing the financial and commercial life of an international city and an unemployed and underemployed service sector which is substantially black and H ispanic.

Earlier divisions in the city were predominantly ethnic and economic. "New York," according to Mollenkopf, "has been transformed from a relatively well-off, white, blue-collar city into a more economically divided, multi-racial, white-collar city." This "disorganized periphery" of civil ser­vice and manufacturing workers contributes to the consolidation of power among white-collar, professional, corporate managers, creating the massive inequalities in New York."

The commercial imperatives of corporate America have also undermined the process of transmitting and sharing local knowledge in the urban metropolis. Ben Bagdikian's study, The Media Monopoly, reveals that mono­polistic tendencies in commercial enterprises seriously constrain access to a diverse flow of information. For example, urban renewal relocation efforts not only dispersed central-city populations to the suburbs, they also replaced the commerce of the street with the needs of the metropolitan mar­ket. Advertisers geared newspaper articles and television broadcasts toward the purchasing power of suburban buyers-creating a dual "crisis of repre­sentation" in terms of whose lives and images were represented physically in the paper, and whose interests were represented in the corridors of power. I I

These media outlet and advertising shifts have been accompanied by a massive telecommunications revolution in the information processing industry. Once the domain of the government, information processing and communication technology now lie at the heart of corporate America. As a result of govern­ment deregulation in communications via the break up of AT&T in 1 982, communication industries have consolidated and internationalized. Today, telecommunications industries are global data transmittal corporations with significant control over radio, television, cable, telephone, computer and other electronic transmittal systems. Telecommunication expansion coupled

345

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

with corporate consolidation has dismantled local community networks, and has irrevocably changed the means and character of communication." Since the mid-1980s, these expansions and consolidations have been accompanied by a tidal wave of widely available communications products which have revolutionized business and personal communications. Facsimile machines, satellite-networked beepers, cordless phones, electronic mail networks, cable television expansions, VCRs, compact discs, video cameras and games and personal computers have dramatically transformed the speed and character of speech and of written and visual communication.

Post-industrial conditions had a profound effect on black and Hispanic communities. Shrinking federal funds and affordable housing, shifts in the occupational structure away from blue-collar manufacturing and toward corporate and information services, along with frayed local communica­tion patterns, meant that new immigrant populations and the city's poorest residents paid the highest price for deindustrialization and economic restructuring. These communities are more susceptible to slumlords, redevelopers, toxic waste dumps, drug rehabilitation centers, violent crim­inals, mortgage redlining and inadequate city services and transportation. It also meant that the city's ethnic- and working-class-based forms of community aid and support were growing increasingly less effective against these new conditions.

In the case of the South Bronx, which has been frequently dubbed the "home of hip hop culture," these larger post-industrial conditions were exacerbated by disruptions considered an "unexpected side effect" of a larger, politically motivated, "urban renewal" project. In the early 1 970s, this renewal [sic] project involved massive relocations of economically fragile people of color from different areas in New York City into parts of the South Bronx. Subsequent ethnic and racial transition in the South Bronx was not a gradual process that might have allowed already taxed social and cultural institutions to respond self-protectively; instead it was a brutal process of community destruction and relocation executed by municipal officials, under the direction of legendary city planner Robert Moses.

Between the late 1930s and the late 1 960s Moses executed a number of public works projects, highways, parks and housing projects which signi­ficantly reshaped the profile of New York City. In 1959, city, state and federal authorities began the implementation of his planned Cross-Bronx Expressway, which would cut directly through the center of the most heavily populated working-class areas in the Bronx. While he could have modified his route slightly to bypass densely populated working-class ethnic residential communities, he elected a path that required the demolition of hundreds of residential and commercial buildings. I n addition, throughout the 1 960s and early 1 970s, some sixty thousand Bronxites homes were razed. Designating these old blue-collar housing units as "slums," Moses's Title I slum clearance program forced the relocation of 1 70,000 people."

346

A S T Y L E N O B O D Y C A N D E A L W I T H

These "slums" were in fact densely populated stable neighborhoods, comprised mostly of working- and lower-middle-class Jews, but they also contained solid Italian, German, Irish and black neighborhoods. Although the neighborhoods under attack had a substantial Jewish population, black and Puerto Rican residents were disproportionately affected. Thirty­seven percent of the relocated residents were non-white. This, coupled with the subsequent "white flight," devastated kin networks and neighborhood services. Between the late 1 960s and mid-1970s the vacancy rates in the southern section of the Bronx skyrocketed. Some nervous landlords sold their property as quickly as possible, often to professional slumlords, others torched their buildings to collect insurance payments. Both strategies accelerated the flight of white tenants into northern sections of the Bronx and into Westchester. Equally anxious shopkeepers sold their shops and established businesses elsewhere. The city administration, touting Moses's expressway as a sign of progress and modernization, was unwilling to admit the devastation that had occurred. Like many of his public works projects, Moses's Cross-Bronx Expressway supported the interests of the upper classes against the interests of the poor, and intensified the development of the vast economic and social inequalities which characterize contemporary New York. The newly "relocated" black and Hispanic residents in the South Bronx were left with few city resources, fragmented leadership and limited political power.

The disastrous effects of these city policies went relatively unnoticed in the media until 1977, when two critical events fixed New York and the South Bronx as national symbols of ruin and isolation. During the summer of 1 977 an extensive power outage blacked out New York, and hundreds of stores were looted and vandalized. The poorest neighborhoods (the South Bronx, Bedford Stuyvesant, the Brownsville and Crown Heights areas in Brooklyn, the Jamaica area in Queens and Harlem) where most of the looting took place were depicted by the city's media organs as lawless zones where crime is sanctioned, and chaos bubbles just below the surface. The 1 965 blackout, according to the New York Times, was "peaceful by contrast," suggesting that the blackout which took place during America's most racially tumultuous decade was no match for the despair and frustra­tion articulated in the blackout of the summer of 1 977 ." The 1977 blackout and the looting which accompanied it seemed to raise the federal stakes in maintaining urban social order. Three months later, President Carter made his "sobering" historic motorcade visit through the South Bronx, to "survey the devastation of the last five years," and announced an unspecified "com­mitment to cities." (Not to its inhabitants?) In the national imagination, the South Bronx became the primary "symbol of America's woes.""

Following this lead, images of abandoned buildings in the South Bronx became central popular cultural icons. Negative local color in popular film exploited the devastation facing the residents of the South Bronx and used

347

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

their communities as a backdrop for social ruin and barbarism. As Michael Ventura astutely notes, these popular depictions (and, I would add, the news coverage as well) rendered silent the people who struggled with and maintained life under difficult conditions:

In roughly six hours of footage-ForI Apache, Wolf en and Koyaanisqalsi-we haven't been introduced to one soul who actually lives in the South Bronx. We haven't heard one voice speaking its own language. We've merely watched a symbol of ruin: the South Bronx [as) last act before the end of the world."

Depictions of black and Hispanic neighborhoods were drained of life, energy and vitality. The message was loud and clear: to be stuck here was to be lost. And yet, while these visions of loss and futility became defining characteristics, the youngest generation of South Bronx exiles were building creative and aggressive outlets for expression and identification. The new ethnic groups who made the South Bronx their home in the 1970s began building their own cultural networks, which would prove to be resilient and responsive in the age of high technology. North American blacks, Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans and other Caribbean people with roots in other postcolonial contexts reshaped their cultural identities and expressions in a hostile, technologically sophisticated, muitiethnic, urban terrain. While city leaders and the popular press had literally and figuratively condemned the South Bronx neighborhoods and their inhabitants, their youngest black and Hispanic residents answered back.

Hip Hop

Hip Hop culture emerged as source of alternative identity formation and social status for youth in a community whose older local support institutions had been all but demolished along with large sectors of its built environ­ment. Alternative local identities were forged in fashions and language, street names and most importantly, in establishing neighborhood crews or posses. Many hip hop fans, artists, musicians and dancers continue to belong to an elaborate system of crews or posses. The crew, a local source of identity, group affiliation and support system, appears in virtually all rap lyrics and cassette dedications, music video performances and media interviews with artists. Identity in hip hop is deeply rooted in the specific, the local experience and one's attachment to and status in a local group or alternative family. These crews are new kinds of families forged with intercultural bonds which, like the social formation of gangs, provide insulation and support in a complex and unyielding environment and may, in fact, contribute to the community-building networks which serve as the basis for new social movements.

348

A S T Y L E N O B O D Y C A N D E A L W I T H

The post-industrial city, which provided the context for creative devel­opment among hip hop's earliest innovators, shaped their cultural terrain, access to space, materials and education. While graffiti writers' work was significantly aided by advances in spray-paint technology, they used the urban transit system as their canvas. Rappers and DJs disseminated their work by copying it on tape-dubbing equipment and playing it on powerful, portable "ghetto blasters." At a time when budget cuts in school music programs drastically reduced access to traditional forms of instrumentation and composition, inner-city youth increasingly relied on recorded sound. Breakdancers used their bodies to mimic "transformers" and other futuristic robots in symbolic street battles. Early Puerto Rican, Afro-Caribbean and black American hip hop artists transformed obsolete vocational skills from marginal occupations into the raw materials for creativity and resistance. Many of them were "trained" for jobs in fields that were shrinking or that no longer exist. Graffiti writer Futura graduated from a trade school spe­cializing in the printing industry. But since most of the jobs for which he was being trained had already been computerized, he found himself working at McDonald's after graduation. Similarly, African-American OJ Red Alert (who also has family from the Caribbean) reviewed blueprints for a drafting company until computer automation rendered that job obsolete. Jamaican DJ Kool Herc attended Alfred E. Smith auto mechanic trade school while African-American Grand Master Flash learned how to repair electronic equipment at Samuel Gompers vocational high school. (One could say Flash "fixed them alright.") Salt-N-Pepa (both with family roots in the West Indies) worked as phone telemarketing representatives at Sears while considering nursing school. Puerto Rican breakdancer Crazy Legs began breakdancing largely because his single mother could not afford Little League baseball fees." All of these artists found themselves positioned with few resources in marginal economic circumstances, but each of them found ways to become famous as entertainers by appropriating the most advanced technologies and emerging cultural forms. Hip hop artists used the tools of obsolete industrial technology to traverse contemporary crossroads of lack and desire in urban Afro-diasporic communities.

Stylistic continuities were sustained by internal cross-fertilization between rapping, breakdancing and graffiti writing. Some writers, like black American Phase 2, Haitian Jean-Michel Basquiat, Futura and black American Fab Five Freddy produced rap records. Others writers drew murals that celebrated favorite rap songs (for example, Futura's mural, "The Breaks," was a whole car mural that paid homage to Kurtis Blow's rap of the same name). Breakdancers, DJs and rappers wore graffiti-painted jackets and T-shirts. DJ Kool Herc was a graffiti writer and dancer first, before he began playing records. Hip hop events featured breakdancers, rappers and DJs as triple-bill entertainment. Graffiti writers drew murals for OJ's stage platforms, and designed posters and flyers to advertise hip hop events.

349

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Breakdancer Crazy Legs, founding member of the Rock Steady Crew, describes the communal atmosphere between writers, rappers and breakers in the formative years of hip hop:

Summing it up, basically going to a jam back then was (about) watching people drink, (break) dance, compare graffiti art in their black books. These jams were thrown by the (hip hop) DJ . . . i t was about piecing while a jam was going on."

Of course, sharing ideas and styles is not always a peaceful process. H ip hop is very competitive and confrontational; these traits are both resistance to and preparation for a hostile world which denies and denigrates young people of color. Breakdancers often fought other breakdance crews out of jealousy; writers sometimes destroyed murals, and rapper and DJ battles could break out in fights. Hip hop remains a never-ending battle for status, prestige and group adoration which is always in formation, always con­tested and never fully achieved. Competitions among and cross-fertilization between breaking, graffiti writing and rap music was fueled by shared local experiences and social position, and similarities in approaches to sound, motion, communication and style among hip hop's Afro-diasporic communities.

As in many African and Afro-diasporic cultural forms, hip hop's prolific self-naming is a form of reinvention and self-definition." Rappers, DJs, graffiti artists and breakdancers all take on hip hop names and identities which speak to their role, personal characteristics, expertise or "claim to fame." DJ names often fuse technology with mastery and style: DJ Cut Creator, Jazzy Jeff, Spindarella, Terminator X Assault Technician, Wiz and Grand Master Flash. Many rappers have nicknames which suggest street smarts, coolness, power and supremacy: L. L. Cool J (Ladies Love Cool James), Kool Moe Dee, Queen Latifah, Dougie Fresh (and the Get Fresh Crew), D-Nice, Hurricane Gloria, Guru, MC Lyte, EPMD (Erick and Parrish Making Dollars), lee-T, lee Cube, Kid-N-Play, Boss, Eazy-E, King Sun, and Sir Mix-A-Lot. Other names serve as self-mocking tags, or critique society, such as Too Short, The Fat Boys, S I Ws (Security of the First World), The Lench Mob, N. W. A. (Niggas With Attitude) and Special Ed. The hip hop identities for breakdancers like Crazy Legs, Wiggles, Frosty Freeze, Boogaloo Shrimp, and Headspin highlight their status as experts known for special moves. Taking on new names and identities offered "prestige from below" in the face of limited legitimate access to forms of status attainment.

In addition to the centrality of alternative naming, identity and group affiliation, rappers, DJs, graffiti writers and breakdancers claim turf and gain local status by developing new styles. As Hebdige's study on punk illustrates, style can be used as a gesture of refusal, or as a form of oblique

350

, -

A S T Y L E N O B O D Y C A N D E A L W I T H

challenge to structures of domination .'o Hip hop artists use style as a form of identity formation which plays on class distinctions and hierarchies by using commodities to claim the cultural terrain. Clothing and consumption rituals testify to the power of consumption as a means of cultural expression. Hip hop fashion is an especially rich example of this sort of appropriation! critique via style. Exceptionally large, "chunk," gold and diamond jewelry (usually "fake") mocks yet affirms the gold fetish in Western trade; fake Gucci and other designer emblems cut up and patch-stitched to jackets, pants, hats, wallets and sneakers in custom shops, work as a form of sartorial warfare (especially when fake Gucci-covered B-boys and B-girls brush past Fifth Avenue ladies adorned by the "real thing"). Hip hop's late 1980s fashion rage-the large plastic (alarm?) clock worn around the neck over leisure!sweat suits suggested a number of contradictory tensions between work, time and leisure." Early 1990s trends-super-over-sized pants and urban warrior outer apparel, as in "baodies," "snooties," "tims" and "triple fat" goosedown coats, make clear the severity of the urban storms to be weathered and the saturation of disposable goods in the crafting of cultural expressions." As an alternative means of status formation, hip hop style forges local identities for teenagers who understand their limited access to traditional avenues of social status attainment. Fab Five Freddy, an early rapper and graffiti writer, explains the link between style and identity in hip hop and its significance for gaining local status:

You make a new style. That's what life on the street is all about. What's at stake is honor and position on the street. That's what makes it so important, that's what makes it feel so good-that pressure on you to be the best. Or to try to be the best. To develop a new style nobody can deal with B

Styles "nobody can deal with" in graffiti, breaking and rap music not only boost status and elevate black and Hispanic youth identities, they also articulate several shared approaches to sound and motion which are found in the Afro-diaspora. As black filmmaker and cultural critic Arthur Jafa has pointed out, stylistic continuities between breaking, graffiti style, rapping and musical construction seem to center around three concepts: flow, layering and ruptures in line ." In hip hop, visual, physical, musical and lyrical lines are set in motion, broken abruptly with sharp angular breaks, and yet sustain motion and energy through fluidity and flow. In graffiti, long winding, sweeping and curving letters are broken and camouflaged by sudden breaks in line. Sharp, angular, broken letters are written in extreme italics, suggesting forward or backward motion. Letters are double- and triple-shadowed in such a way as to illustrate energy forces radiating from the center-suggesting circular motion-and yet the scripted words move horizontally.

35 1

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

Breakdancing moves highlight flow, layering and ruptures i n line. Popping and locking are moves in which the joints are snapped abruptly into angular positions. And yet, these snapping movements take place in one joint after the previous one-creating a semiliquid effect which moves the energy toward the fingertip or toe. In fact, two dancers may pass the popping energy force back and forth between each other via finger-to-finger contact, setting off a new wave. In this pattern, the line is both a series of angular breaks, and yet sustains energy and motion through flow. Breakers double each others' moves, like line-shadowing or layering in graffiti, inter­twine their bodies into elaborate shapes, transforming the body into a new entity (like camouflage in graffiti's wild style) and then, one body part at a time, revert to a relaxed state. Abrupt, fractured, yet graceful footwork leaves the eye one step behind the motion, creating a time-lapse effect which not only mimics graffiti's use of line-shadowing, but also creates spatial links between the moves which gives the foot series flow and fluidity."

The music and vocal rapping in rap music also privileges flow, layering and ruptures in line. Rappers speak of flow explicitly in lyrics, referring to an ability to move easily and powerfully through complex lyrics, as well as to the flow in the music " The flow and motion of the initial bass or drum line in rap music is abruptly ruptured by scratching (a process which highlights as it breaks the flow of the base rhythm), or the rhythmic flow is interrupted by other musical passages. Rappers stutter and alternatively race through passages, always moving within the beat or in response to it, often using the music as a partner in rhyme. These verbal moves highlight lyrical flow and points of rupture. Rappers layer meaning by using the same word to signify a variety of actions and objects; they call out to the DJ to "lay down a beat," which it is expected will be interrupted, ruptured. DJs layer sounds literally one on top of the other, creating a dialogue between sampled sounds and words.

What is the significance of flow, layering and rupture as demonstrated on the body and in hip hop's lyrical, musical and visual works? Interpreting these concepts theoretically, it can be argued that they create and sustain rhythmic motion, continuity and circularity via flow; accumulate, reinforce and embellish this continuity through layering; and manage threats to these narratives by building in ruptures which highlight the continuity as it momentarily challenges it. These effects at the level of style and aesthetics suggest affirmative ways in which profound social dislocation and rupture can be managed and perhaps contested in the cultural arena. Let us imagine these hip hop principles as a blueprint for social resistance and affirmation: create sustaining narratives, accumulate them, layer, embellish and transform them. But also be prepared for rupture, find pleasure in it, in fact, plan on social rupture. When these ruptures occur, use them in creative ways which will prepare you for a future in which survival will demand a sudden shift in ground tactics.

352

A S T Y L E N O B O D Y C A N D E A L W I T H

While accumulation, flow, circularity and planned ruptures exist across a wide range of Afro-diasporic cultural forms, they do not take place outside capitalist commercial constraints. Hip hop's explicit focus on consumption has frequently been mischaracterized as a movement into the commodity market (hip hop is no longer "authentically" black if it is for sale). Instead, hip hop's moment(s) of "incorporation" are a shift in the already existing relationship hip hop has always had to the commodity system. For example, the hip hop DJ frequently produces, amplifies and revises already recorded sounds, rappers prefer high-end microphones, and both invest serious dollars for the speakers that can produce the phattest beats. Graffiti murals, breakdancing moves and rap lyrics often appropriate and sometimes critique verbal and visual elements and physical movements from popular commercial culture, especially television, comic books and karate movies. I f anything, black style through hip hop has contributed to the continued blackening of mainstream popular culture. The contexts for creation in hip hop were never fully outside or in opposition to commodities; they involved struggles over public space and access to commodified materials, equipment and products. It is a common misperception among hip hop artists and cultural critics that during the early days, hip hop was motivated by pleasure rather than profit, as if the two were incompatible. And it would be naive to think that breakdancers, rappers, DJs and writers were never interested in monetary compensation for their work. The problem was not that they were uniformly uninterested in profit, rather, many of the earliest practitioners were unaware that they could profit from their pleasure. Once this link was made, hip hop artists began marketing themselves wholeheartedly. Just as graffiti writers hitched a ride on the subways and used its power to dis­tribute their tags, rappers "hijacked" the market for their own purposes, riding the currents that are already out there, not just for wealth but for empowerment. During the late 1 970s and early 1980s, the market for hip hop was still based inside New York's black and Hispanic communities. So while there is an element of truth to this common perception, what is more important about the shift in hip hop's orientation is not its movement from precommodity to commodity, but the shift in control over the scope and direction of the profit-making process, out of the hands of local black and Hispanic entrepreneurs and into the hands of larger, white-owned, multina­tional businesses. And, most importantly, while black cultural imperatives are obviously deeply affected by commodification, these imperatives are not in direct opposition to the market, nor are they "irrelevant" to the shape of market-produced goods and practices.

Hebdige's work on the British punk movement identifies this shift as the moment of incorporation or recuperation by dominant culture, and perceives it to be a critical element in the dynamics of the struggle over the meaning(s) of popular expression. "The process of recuperation," Hebdige argues, "takes two characteristic forms . . . one of conversion of subcultural

353

l

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

signs (dress, music and so on) into mass-produced objects and the 'labelling' and redefinition of deviant behavior by dominant groups-the police, media and judiciary." Hebdige astutely points out, however, that com­munication in a subordinate cultural form, even prior to the point of recuperation, usually takes place via commodities, "even if the meanings attached to those commodities are purposefully distorted or overthrown." And so, he concludes, " it is very difficult to sustain any absolute distinction between commercial exploitation on the one hand and creativity/originality on the other. ,,27

Hebdige's observations regarding the process of incorporation and the tension between commercial exploitation and creativity as articulated in British punk are quite relevant to hip hop. And hip hop has always been articulated via commodities and engaged in the revision of meanings attached to them. Conversely, hip hop signs and meanings are converted and behaviors relabeled by dominant institutions. Graffiti, rap and breakdancing are fundamentally transformed as they move into new relations with dominant cultural institutions." In 1 994, rap music is one of the most heavily traded popular commodities in the market, and yet it still defies total corporate control over the music, its local use and incorporation at the level of stable or exposed meanings.

These transformations and hybrids reflect the initial spirit of rap and hip hop as an experimental and collective space where contemporary issues and ancestral forces are worked through simultaneously. Hybrids in rap's subject matter, not unlike its use of musical collage and the influx of new, regional and ethnic styles, have not yet displaced the three points of stylistic continuity to which I referred earlier: approaches to flow, ruptures in line and layering can still be found in the vast majority of rap's lyrical and music construction. The same is true of the critiques of the post-industrial urban America context and the cultural and social conditions which it has produced. Today, the South Bronx and South Central Los Angeles are poorer and more economically marginalized than they were ten years ago.

Hip hop emerges from complex cultural exchanges and larger social and political conditions of disillusionment and alienation. Graffiti and rap were especially aggressive public displays of counterpresence and voice. Each asserted the right to write29-to inscribe one's identity on an environment which seemed Teflon-resistant to its young people of color; an environment which made legitimate avenues for material and social participation inaccessible. In this context, hip hop produced a number of double effects. First, themes in rap and graffiti articulated free play and unchecked public displays, and yet the settings for these expressions always suggested existing confinement.30 Second, like the consciousness-raising sessions in the early stages of the women's rights movement and Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1 970s, hip hop produced internal and external dialogues which

354

A S T Y L E N O B O D Y C A N D E A L W I T H

affirmed the experiences and identities of the participants, and at the same time offered critiqucs of larger society which were directed to both the hip hop community and society in general.

Out of a broader discursive climate in which the perspectives and experiences of younger Hispanic, Afro-Caribbeans and African-Americans had been provided little social space, hip hop developed as part of a cross­cultural communication network. Trains carried graffiti tags through the five boroughs; flyers posted in black and Hispanic neighborhoods brought teenagers from all over New York to parks and clubs in the Bronx and eventually to events throughout the Metropolitan area. And characteristic of communication in the age of high-tech telecommunications, stories with cultural and narrative resonance continued to spread at a rapid pace. It was not long before similarly marginalized black and Hispanic communities in other cities picked up on the tenor and energy in New York hip hop. Boom boxes in Roxbury and Compton blasted copies of hip hop mix tapes made on high-speed, portable, dubbing equipment by cousins from Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. The explosion of local and national cable program­ming of music videos spread hip hop dance steps, clothing and slang across the country faster than brushfire. Within a decade, Los Angeles County (espe­cially Compton), Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Newark and Trenton, Roxbury and Philadelphia have developed local hip hop scenes which link (among other things) various regional post-industrial urban experiences of alienation, unemployment, police harassment and social and economic isolation to their local and specific experience via hip hop's language, style and attitude." Regional and, increasingly, national dif­ferences and syndications in hip hop have been solidifying and will continue to do so. In some cases these differences are established by references to local streets and events, neighborhoods and leisure activities, preferences for dance steps, clothing, musical samples and vocal accents. At the same time, cross-regional syndicates of rappers, writers and dancers fortify hip hop's communal vocabulary. In every region, hip hop articulates a sense of entitlement, and takes pleasure in aggressive insubordination. Like Chicago and Mississippi blues, these emerging, regional, hip hop identities affirm the specificity and local character of cultural forms as well as the larger stylistic forces that define hip hop and Afro-diasporic cultures.

Developing a style nobody can deal with-a style that cannot be easily understood or erased, a style that has the reflexivity to create counterdominant narratives against a mobile and shifting enemy-may be one of the most effective ways to fortify communities of resistance and simultaneously reserve the right to communal pleasure. With few economic assets and abundant cultural and aesthetic resources, Afro-diasporic youth have designated the street as the arena for competition and style as the prestige-awarding event. In the post-industrial urban context of dwindling low-income housing, a trickle of meaningless jobs for young people, mounting

355

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

police brutality and increasingly demonic depictions o f young inner-city residents, hip hop style is black urban renewal.

Notes

This essay is excerpted from Black Noise: Rap Music and Black CU/lure in COllfem­porary America (Wesleyan Press, 1 994).

I have adopted Mollenkopf's and Castell's use of the term post-industrial as a means of characterizing the economic restructuring that has taken place in urban America over the past twenty-five years. By defining the contemporary period in urban economies as post-industrial, Mollenkopf and Castells are not suggesting that manufacturing output has disappeared, nor arc they adopting Daniel Bell's formulation that "knowledge has somehow replaced capital as the organizing principle of the economy." Rather M ollenkopf and Castells claim that their use of post-industrial "captures a crucial aspect of how large cities are being transformed: employment has shifted massively away from manufactur­ing toward corporate, public and nonprofit services; occupations have similarly shifted from manual worker to managers, professionals, secretaries and service workers." John Mollenkopf and Manuel Castells, cds., Dual City: Restructuring New York (New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1991), p. 6. Similarly, these new post-industrial realities, entailing the rapid movement of capital, images and populations across the globe, have also been referred to as "post-Fordism" and "flexible accumulation." See David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988). For an elaboration of Bell's initial use of the term, see Daniel Bell, The Coming oj Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books. 1973).

2 My arguments regarding Afro-diasporic cultural formations in hip hop are relevant to African-American culture as well as Afro-diasporic cultures in the English- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean, each of which has prominent and significant, African-derived, cultural elements. While rap music, particularly early rap, is dominated by English-speaking blacks, graffiti and breakdancing were heavily shaped and practiced by Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and other Spanish­speaking Caribbean communities which have substantial Afro-diasporic elements. (The emergence of Chicano rappers took place in the late t 980s in Los Angeles.) Consequently. my references to Spanish-speaking Caribbean communities should in no way be considered inconsistent with my larger Afro-diasporic claims. Substantial work has illuminated the continued significance of African cultural elements on cultural production in both Spanish- and English-speaking nations in the Caribbean. For examples, see Herbert S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York: Oxford Press, 1 986); Ivan G. Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus (New York: Random House, 1976) and Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit (New York: Random House, 1983).

3 See Allen J. Matusow, The Unravelling oj America: A History of Liberalism in 'he 1960., (New York: Harper and Row, 1 984).

4 In hip hop, the train serves both as means of inter-neighborhood communication and a source of creative inspiration. Big Daddy Kane says that he writes his best lyrics on the subway or train on the way to producer Marly Marl's house. See Barry Michael Cooper, "Raw Like Sushi," Spin (March, 1 988), p. 28. Sim­ilarly, Chuck D claims that he loves to drive; that he would have been a driver if his rapping career had not worked out. See Robert Christgau and Greg Tate,

356

A S T Y L E N O B O D Y C A N D E A L W I T H

"Chuck D All Over the Map," Village Voice, Rock 1/ Roll Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 3 (Fall 1991) .

5 See John H. Mollenkopf, The Contested City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press, 1983), especially pp. 1 2-46 for a discussion of larger twentieth century transfonna­tions in U.S. cities throughout the 1 970s and into the early I 980s. See, also, John Mollenkopf and Manuel Castells, eds., Dual City: Restructuring New York (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1991); Michael Peter Smith and Joe R. Feagin, cds., The Capitalist Cily: Global Restructuring and Community Politics (London: Basil Blackwell, 1987); Michael Peter Smith, cd., Cities in Transforma­tion: Class, Capital and the Stale (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1 984); and Saskia Sasscn, The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Sllldy ill Internatiollal Investment and Labor Flow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

6 I am not suggesting that New York is typical of a II urban areas, nor that regional differences are insignificant. However, the broad transformations under discus­sion here have been fel t in all major U.S. cities, particularly New York and Los Angeles-hip hop's second major hub city-and critically frame the transitions that, in part, contributed to hip hop's emergence. In the mid-1 980s very similar post-industrial changes in job opportunities and social services in the Watts and Compton areas of Los Angeles became the impetus for Los Angeles' gangsta rappers. As Robin Kelley notes: "The generation who came of age in the 1 980s, under the Reagan and Bush era, were products of devastating structural changes in the urban economy that date back at least to the late 1 960s. While the city as a whole experienced unprecedented growth, the communities of Watts and Compton faced increased economic displacement, factory closures, and an unpre­cedented deepening of poverty . . . . Developers and city and county government helped the process along by infusing massive capital into suburbanization while simultaneously cutting back expenditures for parks, recreation, and affordable housing in inner city communities." Robin D. G. Kelley, "Kickin' Reality, Kickin' Ballistics" forthcoming in Eric Perkins, cd., Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music ami HII) Hop Culture (Philadelphia: Temple, 1 994). See, also, Mike Davis, City oj Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles (London: Verso, t 989).

7 Mollenkopf, COl/tested City, p. 2 1 3. 8 Frank Van Riper, "Ford to New York: Drop Dead," New York Daily NelliS

(October 30, 1975), p. I . 9 Philip Weitzman. '''Worlds Apart': Housing Race/Ethnicity and Income in

New York City," Community Service Society of New York (CSS), 1989. See, also, Terry J. Rosenberg, "Poverty ill New York City: 1980-1985" (CSS), 1987; Robert Neuwirth "Housing After Koch" Village Voice 7 (November 7, 1 989) pp. 22-24.

10 Daniel Walkowitz "New York: A Tale of Two Cities" in Richard M Bernard ed., SlIowbelt Cities: Metropolital1 Politics ill the Northeast and Midwest Since World War If (Bloomington: Indiana Press, 1 990); Mollenkopf and Castells, cds., Dual City p. 9. See, also, parts 2 and 3 Dual City, which deal specifically and in greater detail with the forces of transformation, gender and the new occupational strata.

I I Ben Bagdigian, The Media MOl/opoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1 987). Despite trends towards the centralization of news and media sources, and the fact that larger corporate media outfits have proven unable to serve diverse ethnic and racial groups, a recent study on New York's media structure in the 1 980s suggests that a wide range of alternative media sources serve New York's ethnic communities. However, the study also shows that black New Yorkers have been less successful in sustaining alternative media channels. See Mitchell Moss and Sarah Ludwig, "The Structure of the Media," in Dual City, pp. 245-265.

357

M U S I C A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y

1 2 See Tom Forester, High-Tech Society (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1988) and Herbert Schiller, Culture. Inc. : The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression (New York: Oxford Press, 1989).

13 Similar strategies for urban renewal via "slum clearance" demolition took place in a number of major metropolises in the late 1 9605 and 1 970s. See Mollenkopf, Contested City, especially eh. 4, which describes similar processes in Boston and San Francisco.

1 4 Robert D. McFadden, "Power Failure Blacks Out New York; Thousands Trapped in Subways; Looters and Vandals Hit Some Areas," New York Times (July 14, 1 977) p. A 1. col. 5; Lawrence Van Gelder, "State Troopers Sent Into City as Crime R ises," New York Times (July 14, 1977) p. A I , col. I; Charlayne Hunter­Gault, "When Poverty is Part of Life, Looting is Not Condemned," New York Til'nes (July I S, 1977) p. A4, col. 3; Selwyn Raab, "Ravage Continues Far Into Day; Gunfire and Bottles Beset Police," Nell' York Times (July 1 5, 1977) p. A I , col. I ; Editorial, "Social Overload," New York Times (July 22, 1977) p . A22.

I S Lee Dembart, "Carter Takes 'Sobering' Trip to South Bronx," New York Times (October 6, 1977) p. A I , col. 2, B 1 8, col. I ; Richard Severo, "Bronx a Symbol of America's Woes," Nell' York Times (October 6, 1977) p. B 1 8, col. I; Joseph P. Fried, "The South Bronx USA: What Carter Saw in New York City is a Symbol of Complex Social Forces on a Nationwide Scale," New York Times, (October 7, 1977) p. A22, col. I .

1 6 Michael Ventura, Shadow Dancing in the USA (Los Angeles: 1. P . Tarcher Press, 1986) p. 1 86. Other popular films from the late 1 970s and early 1 980s which followed suit included 1990: The Bronx Warriors and Escape From New York. This construction of the dangerous ghetto is central to Tom Wolfe's 1989 best-seller and the subsequent film Bonfire of tile Vanities. In it, the South Bronx is constructed as an abandoned, lawless territory from the perspective of sub­stantially more privileged, White outsiders.

17 Rose interviews with all artists named except Futura, whose printing trade school experience was cited in Steve Hager, Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Break­dancing, Rap Music, and Graffiti (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984), p. 24. These artist interviews were conducted for my book on rap music, entitled Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Wesleyan Press, 1 994).

1 8 Rose interview with Crazy Legs, November 1 99 1 . "Piecing" means drawing a mural or masterpiece.

1 9 See Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. Gates's suggestion that naming be "drawn upon as a meta­phor for black intertextuality" is especially useful in hip hop, where naming and intertextuality are critical strategies for creative production. See pp. 55, 87.

20 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1 979). See, especially, pp. 1 7-19, 84-89.

2 1 For an interesting discussion of time, the clock and nationalism in hip hop, see Jeffrey L. Decker's article in this collection.

22 Hoodies are hooded jackets or shirts, sllooties are skull caps and tims are short for Timberland brand boots.

23 Nelson George, et aI., eds., Fresh: Hip Hop Don't Stop (New York: Random House, 1 985) p. I l l .

24 While I had isolated some general points of aesthetic continuity between hip hop's forms, I did not identify these three crucial organizing terms. I am grateful to Arthur Jafa, black filmmaker and cultural critic, who shared and discussed the logic of these defining characteristics with me in conversation. He is not, of course, responsible for any inadequacies in my use of them here.

358

A S T Y L E N O B O D Y C A N D E A L W I T H

25 For a brilliant example of these moves among recent hip hop dances, see "Reckin' Shop In Brooklyn" directed by Diane Martel (Epoch Films, 1992). Thanks to Arthur Jafa for bringing this documentary film to my attention.

26 Some examples of explicit attention to flow are exhibited in Queen Latifah's Ladies First: "Some think that we can't flow, stereotypes they go to go"; in Big Daddy Kane's Raw: "Intro 1 start to go, my rhymes will flow so"; in Digital Underground's SOIlS of the P: "Release your mind and let your instincts flow, release your mind and let the funk flow." Later, they refer to themselves as the "sons of the flow."

27 Hebdige, Subculture pp. 94-95. 28 Published in 1979, Subculture: The Meaning of Style concludes at the point of

dominant British culture's initial attempts at incorporating punk. 29 See Duncan Smith, "The Truth of Graffiti" Art & Text 17, pp. 84-90. 30 For example, Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks" ( 1 980) was both about the seeming

inevitability and hardships of unemployment and mOllnting financial debt, and the sheer pleasure of "breaking it up and down," of dancing and breaking free of social and psychological constrictions. Regardless of subject matter, elaborate graffiti tags on train facades always suggested that the power and presence of the image was possible only if the writer had escaped capture.

3 1 See Bob Mack, "Hip-Hop Map of America" Spin (June, 1990).

359

I N D EX

abhinaya I 1 38 Abolition movement I 65 Absolute Beginners II 237 acid rock II 329 Acuff, R. 1II 88, 89-92, 93 administrative identities I 230 Adorno, T. W. II 1 47-8, I SS, 1 6 1 ;

III 56, 1 36, 1 4 1-2; IV 197, 299 advertisements see commercials advertising: chicha IV 242 Advertising Standards Authority II 262 Aeolian grunge II 356 Aeolian pendulum: rock recordings

I 357-60 aesthetics IV 14-15, 32-46 Africa: music and dance IV 20 African exchange IV 20 African music III 103 African rhythm III 103-1 3; invention

of HI 108-10; notation for III 1 1 0; politics of notating III 1 10-12; resisting III 105-8

African-American music I 8; III 58, 401

African-American popular music ] 9 African-American songs III 58 Afrikaner nationalists IV 144 Afro-American culture I 80 Afro-American music I 74-6; influence

of 1II 147; repetition in III 142 Afro-American symphony I 86-9 Afrocentric approach I 90 age: influence on musical pathways

IV 66 Aikawa, N . II 74 air guitar I 408; I I 1 12 airplay: world music I I 67 Allen, R. C. I 406-8

alternative rock IV 88-9; culture of IV 87-90

Althusser, L. I 1 9 Altman, R . I I 228, 232-3 Altmont III 294, 298-9 amateur: definition I 228-9 Amateur Chamber Music Players

(ACMP) I 234; directory I 236, 237, 240

amateur musicians: social networks 1 227-44

amateur orchestras: heterogeneity I 239 amateur scene: North America I 241 America: alternative-music culture

IV 90; copyright law II 90 American Anthropologist II 80 American culture: influence of ]11 402 American Indians II 80-1 American music II 1 1 8 American National Academy of

Recording Arts and Sciences I I 66 American Organist ] 1 55

361

American pop: voices in III 232-44 Ames, R . III 1 97-8 Analysillg Musical Multimedia (Cook)

1 394 Andean: children of migrants IV 231-43 Andean migrants IV 23 1 -43 Andean music IV 233 Anderson, L. I 258 Anderson, P. IV 295 androgyny II 357-9 Angel, J . IV 224 Anglo-American music I 3 1 7 Anglo-American pop/rock 11 4 1 8, 4 1 9 anthropological studies: music IV 34 anti-antiessentialism: soul music

IV 193-7

t N D E X

anli-musicology I I 1 32 Appadurai, A. I 307 appreciation racket III 50 Argentina: rock I I 421-2 Armstrong, L. III 262 art: commercialism n 7-23; as

interaction III 352-3; record industry II 7-23

art music: Western European I I 64 artist and repertoire: backgrounds

I I 35-7; contribution II 3 1 ; contribution of marketing I I 3 1 -2; ideology of creativity II 32-4; relationship I I 30-7

artistic directors: role II 1 34 artistic music III 349 artistic personality III 43 Arts Council III 268; Northern Ireland

IV I I I ; subsidies IV 25 Asian settlers: Britain IV 1 86 Astaire, F. I 409 Atkins, C. I I I 96 Attali, J. LI 27; IV 299, 307, 3 1 0,

3 1 7-18 audience: authentic II 4 1 7; dance

musician I 2 1 3-26; mass I I 229; target II 374

audiences: cult II 228 Audio Home Taping Act II 97 audio sampling II 1 74 Austin Chronicle I I 208 Australia: artistic life IV 19; York

Festival IV 1 9 Australian National Library I 1 78 authenticity IV 35; and sexuality IV 1 9 1 ;

stylistic III 44 authorship I I 175-7 avant-garde: concept of IV 3 1 2 avant-garde music I I 1 1 7 avant-garde pop I V 3 1 4 awards: annual I V 36

Babe, R. II 204 bachata: Dominican IV 209-29; early

lyric of IV 2 1 2; women in IV 225 background listening I 385 background music III 49; classical

music as III 50; qualities of III 49 Bad Moon Rising (Creedence

Clearwater Rcvival) I 3 1 7 Badela, M . I V 1 53 Bailey, P. I 8

Bala, F. I 1 34 Ball, E. III 267 ballad: Broadside I 52; English I 6 1 ;

forms I 147; high-etass III 6 1 ; popular I 57; primitive I 50; Robin Hood I 53; Roxburghe I 52; true I 60; true popular I 47

Balough, T. IV 2 1 Bananarama I I 1 58 Bandera IV 253-4 bands: religious background HI 266;

Salvation Army III 267; support for III 266

bandwaggon jumpers II 1 5 banjo I 86 Baraka, A. I 9 barbershop connection: harmony

III 360-5 Barreto, M. J r. III 30 Barthes, R. II 234; III 162; IV 3 1 0,

3 1 8 Bass Player I 257 bassists: styles of I I I 1 26-9 Baudrillard, J . IV 199, 306 Bay ton, M. I 10 BBC II 107-9 Beach Boys I I 362; I I I 327-8 Beam It software II 94 beat III 393 beat waves: Britain lJ 402 Beatles 1 399-401 ; III 27, 158, 1 59, 28 1 ;

IV 288, 289 Bebey, F. II 73, 74 Becker, A. IV 1 4 1 Becker, H . I 1 0 ; I I 1 1 6 Becker, J. IV 1 4 1 Beethoven, L . III 37 behaviour: rules of I I I 13 , 25 Behavior (Pet Shop Boys) II 1 59 Benin I 76 Benjamin, W. II 1 60, 1 75 Berger, J. I I 3 1 5-1 6 Berland, J. I 403; I V 81 Berlin, l . : early songs of I I I 55-63 Berliner, E. I \09 Berne Convention Implementation Act

( 1 988) II 90 Bcrry, C. II 305 Betamax case II 96 Belt y Boo II 164 Bijelo Dugme II 423 Billboard I 126; II 66; IV 36

362

I N D E X

Billboard Publications I 256 Bindi, U. III 30 Bing Crosby III 239 biographical songs III 233 Bjornberg, A. I 10 black: South Africa IV 1 48-55 black boltom stomp I 84, 90 black church III 1 52 black communities: origins of IV 1 85 black cultural forms: postslave IV 1 84 black culture II 304 black dance I 76, 287; rhythms I 85 black dialect I I I 59 black minstrel shows I 66 black music I 76, 8 1 , 287; ethnicity

IV 1 8 2-203 black out: New York IV 347 black political culture: identity in IV 183 black power III 82 black resistance IV 1 83 black rockers II 404 Black Sea Musicians IV 1 06-7; West of

Ireland IV 1 0 1- 1 5 black songs III 1 96 black subordination IV 183 black teenagers IV 202-3 black works of art IV 197 Blacking, J. III 122; IV 20, \02-3 blackness II 298, 305-6, 308 Blackwood, J. I I I 258 Bley, P. I I I 123 Bille Peter I 393 blues I 7 1-2; HI 195; 1 960s revival

III 67; lyrical world of III 1 96; lyrics I I I 371 ; reconstructing the III 65-82; revival III 75

blues singers I 69; women I 7 1 BMW commercials I I 265 Bob the Builder I 393 Bolan, M. I 395-6 Bon Jovi, J. II 356 Bosnia: MTV II 241-51 Boston Traveler I 296 Bourdieu, P. I 35; I I 4, 28; IV 127, 147 bourgeois solo song I I I 140 Bowen, C. D. I 237 Bowie, D. I 397; I I 156, 358 Bradley, O. III 96 brass bands I I I 264-78; players IV 64-5;

relationship with local life I I I 277 breakdancing IV 352 Brecht, B. II 23 1-2

Bregovic, G. II 423 Breitkopf & Hartel: publishing house of

III 38 Breytenbach: Kerneels IV 1 47-8 Briggshill Silver Prize Band III 272 Brinson, P. I 325 Britain: Asian settlers IV 1 86; beat

waves II 402; commercials II 259; music hall I 1 5

British education system II 36 Brilish Poets I 44 British racism IV 185, 1 88 British record industry II 24-41 broadside ballad I 45 Brown, J. II 1 1 2; IV 1 52 Brown, M. I I \ I I Brown, N. O. IJI 1 32-3 Browning, B. I 322 Burial Mlisic (Scnufo) I 346 Burke, P. IV 75 Burnham, H. IV 83 Burning Question (Parker) II 405 Buscaglione, F. III 29-30 Bush, K. II 1 6 1 Buthelezi, A. I V 275 Butlan, I . III 103 Butler, J. I 272-3, 334

cabaret: public I 288 cabaret dancers I 293 cablc television II 1 20 Cafe de I'Opera I 291 Cage, J. IV 295 Calion, M. II 124 Camus, A. III 351 Canada: alternative-music culture

IV 90; radio II 1 93 Canadian Broadcasting Company

(CBC) II 195 Canadian Music Trade I 249, 257 Canadian Musician I 257 Canadian Radio Networks (CRN)

II 202 canned music I 186; II 283 Canot, R. I 100-1 Calltacronache 111 3 1 cantautore III 3 1 , 32, 34 canzone III 29; genres of I I I 1 9-28;

system of III 1 8-28 canzone d'"utore III 20-2, 23-4, 25-6,

27, 28, 3 1 , 32, 34; development of III 28-35; diffusion of III 3 1

363

I N D E X

capitalism I I 9, 366 capitalist commodity II 338 Carco, F. III 214 Carey, J. T . I I I 350 Carosone, R. III 29-30 Carson, T. II 332, 336 Carsone and Buscaglione: records III 30 Carter, J. IV 347 case law III 3 1 1 Casio I 25 1 Castle House I 292 Castle, V. I 290 Caught: Can We Get A Witness (Public

Enemy) II 180-1 ceili dance IV 1 67 celebrity doubles: uses of III 3 1 8 Celebrity Rights Act (1 985) I I I 3 1 7 Celentano, A. H I 3 1 Celine Music I I 73 Chalas, M. IV 2 1 5 chamber music I 232, 236-7 Chambers, l. IV 304 championship final III 275-7 Chanan, M. I I 68 changing world: music industry IV 79 channelized violence: music industrial

economy II 69 chanson: French III 2 1 3 chanteuses realistes: genre I I I 2 1 3-28 clw/'ango IV 237 Charters, S. B. III 72-5, 79-80 Chequamegon Symphonette I 239 Chernoff, J. M. III 399, 401 Chervona RUla Festival IV 250-1 ,

260-1 Chester, A. III 139 Chevlier, M. III 2 1 9 chicha IV 232; advertising IV 242;

music IV 266; recordings IV 241; song texts IV 237-8

children-television-music I 393 children's song III 22, 29; collation of

III 26 children's television J 391-4 1 1 China: rock I I 425 choral singing: moral consequences of

IV 23 Christian hymnody IV 268 Christianity I 70 Christophensen, S. II 43-6 church: black III 1 52; political visions

of IV 251

Citroen II 257, 263-4 civil rights III 82 Clark, O. III 293 Clark, P. IV 285-92 Clash II 1 5 class distinctions 1 1 375 class influence in musical pathways

IV 63-4 classical composers III 45 classical cultural heritage I 377 classical jazz I 170; III 4 1 classical music I 376; I I 3 8 1 ; III 36-52,

37, 40-8; as background music III 50; hereditary patterns in IV 60; history III 37-40; India I 1 37; performance Aexibility in III 62; phenomenon of nl 48; as popular music III 36-52; snob appeal of III 5 1 ; Western III 52

classical musicians: amateur I 227; professional I 23 1 ; repertory of 111 41

classical repertory HI 39; Western III 39

Clearmountain, B. II 1 59 Clegg, J. IV 272-3 Clifford, J. 111 7 1 ; IV 1 0 1 -2 Clinton, B. II 250 Clockwork Orange II 108 Clooney, R. II 299 clubbers' social lives I 326 clubbing: dancing crowds I 325-39;

nowMness I 338 clubmen and identities III 265-9 CNN I I 247 Cobb, J. I I I 189 cock rock III 284, 303; definition

III 286 codal competence HI 17-18 codes: prosemic III 24 codification: awareness of III 1 6-1 7;

conditions of III 15-16 Cole, H . III 49 Coleman, M. IV 7 1-2 collaboration as musical process

IV 129-31 collective variative: song III 140 Collins, R. K. L. II 1 85 colonial experience: effects of IV 27-8 Columbia records II 278 commercial culture industry II 275 commercial manipulation II I I I commercial music I 3

364

I N D E X

commercial musician I 214, 2 1 9 commercial radio II 196, 205 commercialism: record industry II 7-23 commercials: music and meaning

I I 253-68 commodities: exchangeMvalue III 333 communication music II 254 community: imagined II 4 1 5; musical

1 26 1 ; Ul 14-18; IV 50 competition: morality of III 274 composition: pop music II 29; process

of IV 129-31 Computer Music Journal I 258 Computers & Software I 245 conceptual language: dancing I 322 concert hall I 382 concert hall versions ] 388 concert music II 257 concertmaster I 233 concurrent spacings: dancing I 329 Connolly, R. III 256 conservatories III 39 consumer demand II 53 consumption and production J] 123-44 Contemporary Keyboard I 250 contestmen III 272-5 contests III 272; music for III 273 conversation: rules of III 25 Cook, M. I 334 Cook, N. I 394; IJ 3 Coombe, R. II 183 Coon, C. II 1 10 cooptation II 3 1 4 Coplan, D. I V 1 32-3 copyright II 90-1, 1 19, 169, 275-7;

infringement I 105; taxes III 27; USA 11 90; III 3 1 3

Copyright Act ( 1 976) II 9 1 copyright protection IJ 170, 1 7 1 copyrights and royalties III 28 Costello, E. III 207 Country Bll/es (Charters) III 67-9 country music III 93; IV 1 19; dialect

of III 87-99; hardcore III 87-99; soft-shell III 87-99

country singers I 69 Courlander, H . I 74, 75; III 75-7 courtship: drama of III 1 74-82;

expressed in song IV 209; lyrical drama of III 207; in popular songs III 1 73-83

cover records II 291

Cowan, J. K. IV 9 1 -2 Cowell, S. I 24 Cracke/jack I 393 Crash (Human League) II 1 57 Crawford, J. I 165 Crazy Legs IV 350 creativity: marketing II 34-5 crooning II 107 Crosby, B. II 300; III 235, 236, 238,

240, 241, 242, 244 Cry Baby II 237 Crysell, A. IV 9 1 Cubbitt, S . I 106 cult audiences I I 228 cultural barriers IV 1 3 cultural boundaries IV 1 4 cultural complexity: contemporary

11 4 1 3 cultural fusion IV 327 cultural genres II 399 cultural hegemony: musical

performance IV 1 5-18 cultural heritage: classical I 377 cultural homogeneity II 69 cultural imperialism II 69, 412 Cultural Industries Quarter (Sheffield)

11 50 cultural industry: flexibility II 43 cultural jamming II 150-1 , 1 6 1 cultural nationalism I V 1 92-3 cultural phenomenon: music industry

II 53 cultural politics IV · 1 5 cultural practices I V 85 cultural production II 1 69-88 cultural separation II 62 cultural spaces IV 86 cultural specificity: music I 345 cultural studies II 406 cultural tradition: words and labels

IV 1 4 culture IV 296; analysis of popular

III 350-3; commodification of IV 325; ethnic minority IV 326; globalization II 4 1 3; learned II 377; local II 4 1 5; mass III 1 90-3; musical I 202; production of U 3; study of IV 302; Ukrainian IV 252

cumbia andilla IV 232, 242; background and style IV 235-7; groups IV 240

cumbia rhythm IV 237 cyberpunk II 150

365

( N D E X

Dahlen, P. ( 3 1 7 Dahlgren, E . II 404 Dahlhaus, C. III 56 Damia III 227 dance: black ( 287; female identity

( 286; freedom ( 291 ; peculiar invisibility I 323; sexual display I 323; urbanite I 286; Victorian ( 288

dance clubs (V 9 1 dance craze: pre�World War I I 285-98 dance floors ( 327, 330-2 dance music II 162; IV 94, 95; Britain

(V 96; culture of (V 90-7, 93 dance musician I 2 1 3-26; audience

( 2 1 3-26 Dance and Social Fantasy (McRobbie)

II 2 1 9 dancers: exhibition I 288 dances: figure ( 286; set ( 286 dancing: body techniques ( 334;

boundaries I 330-2; conceptual language I 322; concurrent spacings I 329; education I 334; emotional spacings I 335-7; group collusion ( 327; meanings ( 325; physicality [ 327; practices I 324; regionalisations ( 330-2, 335; spacings ( 326-8; temporality I 337-8; territorialisations ( 330

dancing crowds ( 321-5; clubbing I 325-39

Danish pub music ( 302-20 dansant ( 289 DallSke Folkeviser (Grundtvig) ( 46 Darby, W. S. ( 1 4 1 Dart, T . III 43 Davis, J. (V 1 3 1 Davis, M. ( V 192 de Certeau, M. (V 86, 197 de Gregori, F. III 34 de Momigny, J. J. ( 375, 379 De toi (Lenonnan) II 1 38 death: attitudes I 363; European music

tradition I 349-5 1 ; universal music I 345-67; universal phenomenon ( 345

death and music: West Africa [ 348-9 death music stereotypes ( 357-63 death rituals [ 347 decade: death of III 299 deconcentration III 340-1

Deep Forest II 71-2 Deep Purple II 38 1 DeLuxe performances I 160 DeLuxe shows ( 1 60 democratization: new technologies

II 147-67 demek: Turkey (V 105 Derrida, J. III 57 Dery, M. II 1 50 dialectics: textural III 139 Dido and Aeneas (Purcell) ( 349 Dido's Lament (PUl'cell) ( 349 difference: inscription I I 325-8 digital audio recording III 3 1 5 digital millennium I I 87 Digital Millennium Copyright Act

( 1998) II 92 digital sampling II 1 69-88 digital watermark II 99 DiMaggio, P. II 1 1 6 Dire Straits II 382 Dirty Dancing II 23 1 ; syntax II 234 disc jockeys II I I ; disco II 1 1 8 disco: disc jockeys I I 1 1 8 discographies: use of III 70-1 discourse: vicarious HI 1 82-3 discursive repetition III 1 39 discursive techniques III 152 dissonance: concept of IV 3 1 2 Dissoumba (Massongo) ( 346 Distinclion (Bourdieu) II 1 1 7 Dixieland ( 7 1 Do Poslmodern Genres Exist? (Cohen)

II 229 Dobro III 92 Dokken, D. II 352 domestic revitalization IV 1 50-1 Dominican bachata (V 209-29 Dominican Republic: romantic music

(V 210 Dominick, J. R. I I 203 Don Juan I 1 85 Doors ( 400; III 300 Dorland, M. (V 83 Dorsey, T. II 300 DOlVn Beat ( 250, 254 DOJIIl1loIVn IV 287-9, 290 Dramatic Mirror I 295 Dr. Dre II 96 drug scene: involvement with III 290 drummers: styles of III 125-9 Duarte, I . (V 21 1

366

I N D E X

Dllde looks like a lady (Aerosmith) II 362

Dunne, F. P. ( 285 Duran, B. (V 223-4 Durant, A. ( 103, 107; (V 299, 307,

3 1 7- 1 8 Dylan, B . II 108, 1 1 3, 120, 290; III 200

early music III 36, 40-8 Easthope, A. III 286 Eco, U. III 25 economical and juridical rules III 14,

27-8 Edison Home Phonograph ( 109 Edison, T. A. ( 10 1-5, 109-12, 1 56-7 education: dancing I 334; music IV 7-29;

world music (V 30 education system: Britain II 36 ego-functioning m 163 Ehrenreich, B. n 349 Ein deLl/sclles Requiem (Brahms) I 350 Eisler, H. III 193; (V 308 EI pueblo Imido (Ortega) ( 361-2 electric guitar: femininity I 272; women

( 270-8 1 electro-acoustic mirror III 232-44 electronic cottage I 263 Electronic Musician I 245 electronic musicians I 265 electronic technologies III 3 1 5 Eleclronoles I 266 elision of metric units I 3 1 0 elitism ( V 194 Elsmere Music II 173 embodied meanings m 1 1 8-19 EM( ( 1 1 8; 1 1 48, 98 emigrants IV 180 emigration: Ireland (V 168-9, 174-80;

(rish dance music (V 1 69-74 Emotion and Meaning in Music (Meyer)

III 1 1 8 emotional spacings: dancing [ 335-7 Empire and Communications (Innis)

II 200 Enchallted Toyshop ( 40 I engendered feeling III 1 1 9 English and Scottish Popular Ballads

(Child) ( 43 equation: act of II 133-7; principle

II 1 37 Erenberg, L. ( 1 0 Eros: the life instincts III 164

essentialism II 141 Esu: symbolism I 77 ethnic discrimination I 2 1 6 ethnic music I I 64 ethnicity IV 333; black music

(V 1 82-203; cultures (V 326 ethnomusicology II 63, 64, 65, 8 1 ;

III 78; ( V 16-17, 207-80 Etzkorn, P. III 187 European music tradition: death

( 349-5 1 European romanticism IV 1 92-3 Eurovision Song Contest II 248 Evans, B . III 122 Ellerywol1lclII I 169 evolution: folk III 77, 78 Ewe tribe music III 108-12 exotic music II 64 expert identities I 230 expressionist: views of III 1 1 8 extensional forms III 1 39

Fab Five Freddy (V 351 Fabbri, F. III 57 Fabulous Phonograph (Gellatt) ( 97 Factory Records (Manchester) II 50 fade-out III 153 Fairey Aviation II I 276 Faithfull, M. III 288 Fall oj a Nation (Dixon) ( 1 58 Fall oj a Natioll (Herbert) ( 178 Fame II 238 fans II 327 fanzines I 247 Farren, M. II 339 fashion: influence of IV 9 Fear oj a Black Planet (Public Enemy)

II 150 Federal Communications Commission

(FCC) II 278 feeling: engendered III 1 1 9 Feld, S. II 2; (V 137, 141 female authorship: construction

II 2 1 0; form II 208-24; music video II 208-24

female identity: modern dance I 286 female inequality II 2 1 4 female pop singers III 204 female rock musicians II 209 female sexuality (V 2 1 8 female tribalness I I 2 1 8 female voice: pop role o f III 204

367

I N D E X

femininity: discourse II 220; electric guitar I 272

Fernandez, J. W. IV 279 festivals IV 19-20 fetish-character in music III 325-49 Feuer, J. " 3 fiddlers: Irish-American Sligo IV 172 file sharing " 98 Fillmore, J . C. " 80 film: presentations I 1 58-62; semantic

musicals " 238; sound I 1 85-7; teen II 229

film and music: sychronization I 1 66-70 filter flow model: record industry II 25 financial costs IV 63 Fisher, M. M. J. IV 327-8 Fiske, J. " 344 fixation '" 3 1 9-20 Flashdance (Cara) I 359; " 228 flexibility: concept II 42 Flippo, C. I 247 folk artists: traditional TIl 67 folk evolution '" 77, 78 folk music I 8, 9; " 78 folk realism '" 195 folk songs '" 194 folklore: science of IV 1 7 folksingers '" 66 Foote, I . 1 291 Footloose " 236 Ford, H . n 43, 287 form: female authorship IJ 208-24 formal and technical rules '" 10-1 1 formalist: views of III 1 1 8 format radio " 194 formats " 193-205 Foucault, M. II 179, 180; IV 1 93-4 found sound " 1 1 9 Four Old Plays I 44 Frankie Goes to Hollywood II I I I freedom of the microphone law III 3 1 4 F reenet " 87 French chanson III 2 1 3 Freud, S . '" 1 63, 1 64 Frith, S. I 3 1 8, 326, 337, 338; " 2, 55,

1 77, 1 84, 3 1 2 Fuller, P . '" 1 6 1 Fuller, R. '" 206 Funeral March ol lhe Revolutionaries

(Ikonnikov) I 350 funeral music: alienation I 356;

comparisons I 353-7

Funeral Music (Sim Reap Orchestra) I 346

funerals (Ghanaian) I 353 futurology I 259

Gaelic League IV 1 66; cultural aims IV I I I

Gaisberg, F. W. I 134-8 Gant, C. " 305 Garbarek, J. " 82 Garcia, F. IV 331 Garnham, N. II 42-3 Garon, P. III 1 96-7 Gates, H. L. I 73, 77, 78, 79, 80 Gay Metal Society " 350 gender II 1 6 1 ; identity " 365; images

" 343-68; inequalities II 208; influence on musical pathways IV 65-6; love and sexuality IV 209-29; music magazines I 263; musical roles IV 66; politics " 222; race I 325

gender constructions: heavy metal 11 346

generic evolution: films II 230-9 generic rules III 9 genre: chanteuses realistes III 21 3-28;

code of m I6-17; defining III 58; definition of III 7-9; flexibility of III 57-8; musical theory of III 7-35; performers role in III 62; rules of III 12, 1 6

genre analysis III 205 genre formation III 62 genre and music III 55-7 genre in ragtime songs III 62 genres of music II 1 8 George, Y . III 220, 227, 228 Gershwin, I . III 20 I Giles, J. IV 127 Gillett, C. " 283 Gilroy, P. IV 196 Gleason, J. '" 259 Glissant, E. IV 1 84 global communication II 407 global culture industry 11 4 1 7 globalisation I I 45; cultural logics

II 427; of vernacular forms IV 203 Gnutella II 87 Goffman, E. I 33 1 , 333, 336 Golden Age II 408 Goldman, A. III 256 Goodwin, A. " 2, 55, 160, 249

368

I N D E X

Gorbman, C . II 265 Gordon, P. " 366 gospel-blues: melody and vocal style

III 365 Gould, J. III 256 GPI Publications I 256 Graceland Mansion HI 262 Grace/and (Simon) IV 1 36, 266, 278;

aesthetic distancing IV 147; cover versions IV 1 36; international exposure IV 149; language IV 134-5; liberation movement IV 1 53; non­collaboration IV 135-7; opposition IV 1 52; production of IV 1 3 1-7; refinement IV 144; reform IV 145; semantic content of IV 136; social collaboration IV 1 37; stylistic integration IV 132; support IV 149-52; world tour IV 1 3 1

graffiti I V 351-2, 354-5 Grainger, P. IV 15, 1 6- 1 7, 2 1 , 30 Grammolonny Mir I 1 1 3 Grammy Awards " 66; IV 142 gramophone J 97, 1 30-53; marketing in

India I 1 39-47; records I 98 Gramsci, A. IV 329 Granada Television I 397 Grand Ole Opry III 87 Grand Upright Music II 1 73 Graphophone I 102 gratification: immediate 10 1 32 Grauman, S. I 175 Greenwood, P. " 5 1 Greer, G. III 1 9 1 Gregorian chant III 39 Griffith, D. W. I 1 79-82 Grimethorpe Colliery III 276 groove: mapping the III 391-4 Groovy Train (The Farm) II 164 Grossberg, L. " 248, 3 1 3 Grosvenor Square: demonstration on

III 293 group: concept of IV 55-6 group collusion: dancing I 327 group improvisation III 1 22-3 groups: cumbia anclina IV 240 Guardian " 241 Guccini, F. III 32 Guitar Player I 250 Guitar School I 271 guitar shops: male terrain r 274 guitarists: trade magazines I 271

Habermas, J . IV 338 Hair,�pray II 237 Halbwachs, M. I 1 99-201, 209 Halk music ensemble (Turkey) IV 108 Hall, J. III 303 Hall, R. III 1 86; IV 1 72 Hall, S. " 42 Hammond Organ II 1 08 Hanna, J. L. I 323, 326 Haralambos, M. III 1 89 hard rock [] 380 Harker, D. I 8; II 30; III 1 9 1 , 192, 194 harmonic language: of melodic style

III 359 harmonic reduction I 3 10-12 harmonic syntax III 1 58 harmony: barbershop connection

III 360-5 Haskell, F. IV 3 1 1 Hatch, T. IV 286, 288 Hay, G. D. III 88 Hayakawa, S. I . III 192 Headbangers' Ball: MTV " 347, 349 Hear'Say I 399 Heath, T. " 107 heavy metal: androgyny II 344, 361-8;

exscription " 348-5 1 ; features II 354; female audience II 348; female fans II 353; gender constructions " 346; gender politics II 345

Hebdige, D. " 2 1 0, 359; IV 303, 353-4 Hello Mary-Lou (Nelson) I 3 1 0 Hell's Angels III 295 Henderson, D. IV 1 89 Hendrix, J . I I 163; IV 1 89-91 Hennion, A. " 26-7, 27, 1 1 7, 1 25,

1 38-9, 195 Herzfeld, M . IV 273 Hesmondhalgh, D. II I Hetherington, K. I 330 Heyward, J. " 221 high culture " 346 high-class ballad III 6 1 Highly Respectable Singer (Roberts)

1 29 hillbilly HI 25 1-2; boogie genre " 300 hip hop " 1 1 8, 1 6 1 ; III 385-403;

IV 20 1 ; artists IV 349; culture IV 342; identities IV 350; politics in style IV 341-56; urban context IV 343

Hirsch, P. II 25, 53, 1 3 1 ; III 202

369

I N D E X

historical phenomenology IV 302 history: classical music III 37-40 hits II 21 HMV I 142, 1 52; II 82 Hoare, I. III 1 98, 200 Hodier, A. III 123-4, 128 Hoggart, R. III 190, 192 Holiday, B. II 1 1 3; III 207, 235, 236,

238, 240, 241 Hollywood II 426; IU 377-82 Hollywood film musical II 2 Hollywood Genres (Schatz) II 230 Hollywood musical II 228 holy dance I 74 Homans, G. I 239, 240 Homburg, R. III 3 1 3 home: fantasies of I V 266-81 Home & Studio Recording I 245 homelands IV 274 homosexuals I I 407 Honeymoon II] 1 77 honky tonk IV 1 1 9-25; revival in

IV 123 honky tonk angel IV 1 20 Honky Tonk Woman: return of

III 298-303 Hopkins, J. III 255, 258-9, 262 Horne, H . I 3 1 8 Horton, D. III 207; IV 40 Hotchner, A. E. III 285, 287 Hountondji, P. III 1 06 house music n 403; IV 95 HOllse of the Rising Sun (Animals) I 309 Hudson, B. II 2 1 5 Huffstutler, P. J . I I 96 Hughes, R. III 288 Humphries, P. IV 267 Huskinsson, Y. IV 275 Huxley, A. III 326 hybrid musics I I 68 hygge I 306-7, 3 1 4

I Asked Johnny Jones: So I KnoJII Now! (Lloyd) I 30

I Can't Get No SatijfaClion (Rolling Stones) III 284

idlsuperego conflict I I 399 identity: and clubmen III 265-9;

musical I 230-1; piracy of III 3 10-20; pleasure of IV 38

ideological and social rules III 13, 26 IFD disease III 192-3

I'll Be Seeing YOII (Fain & Kahal) III 235, 240-1 , 242

imagery and rhythm III 1 04 immigration in Lima IV 233 impersonation III 3 1 8, 320 improvisation 1 85; group III 122-3 improvisations: Indian music I 1 50 improvised music IV 3 1 3 India: classical music 1 1 37; first

recordings ] 133; improvisations [ 1 50; music recordings I 132; performance I 148

Indian musicians I 1 5 1 Indian mythology I 145 Indian recordings: musical form

I 147-51 industrial conglomeration ] 256 industrialization of music II 1 77 infinite set 111 137 instant listening II 94 instrument manufacturers I 250 instrumental identities I 230 instruments: vintage I 260 intellectual property II 9 1 , 170, 1 82-4;

III 3 1 8, 3 1 9 interchangeable cultures I V 329 intercultural histories I I 69 International Association for the Study

of Popular Music (IASPM) I 1-7 International Federation of Phonogram

and Videogram Producers (IFPI) I 1 26

international licensing II 48 internationalization: drive for IV 1 5 1-2 internet music II 87-101 interpellation I 1 9 Ireland: Black Sea M usicians I V 1 0 1- 1 5;

emigration IV 1 68-9; emigration and music IV 174-80

I rish American recording IV 1 7 1 Irish dance music IV 1 64-5, 166;

emigration IV 169-74 Irish music: migration IV 1 64-80;

national culture IV 166 Irish-American Sligo: fiddlers IV 1 72 isicathamiya IV 267; choreography

IV 279; history IV 266-80; performance IV 279; performers IV 280

Island n 30 Israel: rock II 424 Ivasiuk, V. IV 249

370

I N D E X

Jackson, M . I V 195 Jagger, M. III 279-305; bi-sexuality of

III 289; early descriptions of IU 280; sexual ambiguity of III 301

Jakobson, R . III 12 Jamcs, C. III 205-6 James, L. I 24 Jameson, F. III 57, 1 36 Jaszi, P. II 1 84 jazz 1 7 1 , 214; HI 123-33, 332; age

III 148; amateur III 345; classical 1 1 70; III 4 1 ; fan I 2 1 9; musician 1 214; players I 209

Jazz Composers' Orchestra Association (JCOA) IV 3 1 5

jazz criticism: tension i n III 199 jazzman I 21 5-16, 2 1 9 Jeffries, S . I 394-5, 397, 402 Jenson, J . III 296-7 jitterbugs III 343-4 Johnson, R. II 301 ; III 72-3 jokes: Kerry IV 1 1 3; Laz IV 1 1 3 Jolson, A. III 255 Jones, A. M. III 103, 1 08-9, I I I , 1 1 2,

1 29 Jones, Q. IV 200, 202 Jones, S. II 1 76, 177 jouissance III 163, 1 65, 166 Journal of American Folklore 1I 80 journalists II 7 Joy Division n 333 Jubilee singers IV 1 89-91 juridical and economical rules III 14,

27-8

Kallberg, J. III 56 kathak I 138 KaZaA II 87 Keenan, T. I 404 Keil, C. III 72, 1 95; IV 1 26 Keisker, M. III 253 Kent State University III 299 Kerman, J. IV 300-1 Kerneels: Breytenbach IV 147-8 Kerry jokes IV 1 1 3 Keyboard I 250, 254, 261 Keyes, C. III 386 kinetoscope I 105 King, C. I I 234 King Star Brothers IV 276 Kingslake, B. III 104-5 Kiparksi, P. III 140

Kirkpatrick, J. III 44 Kivy, P. II 267 Kleiner, A. I 1 55 Konrad, R. II 89 Kraftwerk II 381 Krehbiel, H . E. I 75 Kretzschmar, H. II 253 Kristeva, J. III 1 37 Kuti, F. IV 1 52

labels: music III 37 laboratory-studio II 1 1 9-40 labour: capitalist notion II 1 4 Labour migration I V 1 1 5 Laean, J. III 165; IV 93 Lady Sings the Blues (Holiday) III 239 Laing, D. II1 195, 206; IV 304, 305, 3 1 5 Lambert, C. I V I I Lang, l . III 198-9 Lauper, C. II 209 law II 1 69-88; and regulation II 275-8 Law, R. IV 198 Laz jokes IV 1 1 3 Leach, E. IV 7 1 , 72 lead singer: collusion of IV 1 1 3 lead vocal lines: metrification I 3 1 0 learned culture II 377 Led Zeppelin I 400; II 1 1 5 Lee, E. III 1 90 Lee Hooker, J . III 75 Lee Lewis, J. II 297-8, 301 Leiss, W. I 252

371

leisure I 238-40; mnsic IV 50 Lennon, J. III 27 Les Paul guitar I 259, 278 Lewis, L. I I 3-4 licensing and distribution I I 49 Lie, M . 1I 76, 79 Lightnin' Hopkins III 75 Like a Virgin (Madonna) II 2 1 1 Lima: immigration in IV 233; Peru

IV 231-43 LimeWire II 87 Linda, S. P. IV 27 1 , 273 linkmen III 269 listener III 45; idle I 388 listening: adequate modes I 375-89;

background I 385; regressive III 338-40, 342-9, 345; types I 384

literary inquiry: theory I 77 litigation: music industry II 93-7 Little Mermaid I 402

I N D E X

Lillie Red Rooster (Dixon) III 281 live programming I 406 Lloyd, A. D. III 193-4 Lloyd, B. I 43 local music IV 48-9 Lodge, D. I I I 205 Lolklov-Lannit, L. F. I 1 14 Long Tall Sally (Little Richard) II 1 14 Loog Oldham, A. III 28 1 , 286 Los Angeles IV 324-39 Los Lobos IV 328 Lost ill Music (Smith) I 393 love: sexuality and gender IV 209-29 love songs III 173; IV 39 lover: self as I I I 1 83 Loveshille IV 327 Lucas, B. I I I 77 Lucas Film Corporation IV 3 1 7 Luis Borges, J . III 55-6 lullaby II 70-5 Lulu II 1 9 Lyotard, J.-F. I I 178; I V 337 lyric: content analysis III 1 88 lyric realism I I I 193-201 lyrics I 3 1 5; II 1 32; III 1 86-208, 356;

blues III 371; connotations I 358; interpretation of 111 1 90; meaning of III 357; statistical coding of III 188

McCartney, P. II 94; III 27 McDonald, A. II 48-9 McGuinn, R. II 94-5 MacMahon, T. IV 164 McMunn, G. I 138 McRobbie, A. 1 322, 323; II 2 1 4-19,

367; IV 44, 305, 306 Madonna I I 403 Maffesoli, M. I 338 magazines I 245-67; role I 246 mainstream: domination n 398 Making Music Together (Schutz) I 9 Malbon, B. I 1 0 male empowerment: through language

IV 272 male street gang activity I I 2 1 8 Maim, K . IV 1 50 Manson, C. III 294 Marabout I 346 Marathon IV 286 Marbury, E. I 291-2 Marche jimebre (Chopin) I 350 Marcus, G. II 330; III 3 7 1 , 378-9

market economy: mechanisms II 397-8 market and state II 398 marketing: synthetic ideology of

creativity I I 34-5 Marothy, J. III 144 marriage I 288 Marriage of Figaro (Mozart) II 254,

257, 266 Marsalis, W. IV 1 92 Marshall amps II I 1 6 Martha (von Flotow) I 1 57 Marx, K. II 183 Masakela, H. IV 1 5 1 masculinity; constructions of I I 343;

heavy metal II 343-68 masochistic songs III 238 mass art II 336 mass audience II 229 mass communication II 147 mass culture III 190-3; IV 302 Massey, D. II 201 maternal melodrama song III 225 Mauss, M. I 333 Mead, G. H. I 198 meaning: of music I 5 media: use of music II 2 media-ization II 1 50 mediocre music I 3 1 8-19 Mellers, W. IV 43 melodic style: harmonic language of

I I I 359 Melody Maker II 8, 1 1 0 melody and vocal style III 365 mcmory: collective I 200 Mercer, K . IV 195 Mercury I I 30 Metallica II 95, 96 metrification: lead vocal lines I 3 1 0 Metronome I 1 73 melteur en scene: musical equivalcnt

I I I 206 Mexican culture IV 324 Meyer, C. I 264 Meyer, L. III 1 1 9, 1 20-2, 1 24, 1 29,

1 3 1-2 microgroove records I 1 24 Microsoft II 1 00 Middle of the Road (MOR) I I 197 middle-class public I 33 Middleton, R. I 97-8 Midler, B. III 3 1 0-20 Midnight Chao-Chao III 57, 59

372

I N D E X

Mitige, B . I V 86 migrants: first generation IV 234 migration: Labour IV 1 1 5 migration and Irish music IV 164-80 Miller, K. IV 168 Mills, M. M. I 1 74 Milton Keynes IV 5 1 , 58, 62, 63, 7 1 ,

74 minor key I 350-1 minstrels I 64; black I 66; white I 65 misrecognition: principle II 376 MIT Press I 258 Mitchell, J. I 270-1 Mix Publications I 256 mobile privatisation I 102 Modern Dancing I 29 1 , 293 modern music culture IV 293-3 1 8 modernity IV 283-359 Modugno, D. III 29 Moe, O. I 87 Mojo I 270 Mollenkopf, J . I V 344 monad set I II 1 37-8 Moodie, D. IV 274 Mooney, H. F. III 1 87-8 Moonlight SOllata (Beethoven) I 204,

206 Moore, S. III 254 moral communities IV 56 Moran, B. IV 165, 1 7 5 Morpheus I I 87 Motherwell, W. I 49 Motion Picture Experts Group

(MPEG) I I 99 Moulin Rouge III 2 1 8 movie directors I 1 75 movie theaters I 1 62-3 Mozart, W. A. I I I ; I I 256 Mozart's Last Requiem (Gaumont)

I 156 MP3 I I 87- 1 0 1 Mrs. Slocombe's Pussy (Jeffries) I 393 MTV II 56, 209, 2 1 1 , 228, 235; awards

II 403; Bosnia I I 24 1-5 1 ; cultural phenomenon I I 242; Europe I I 244; unplugged recordings II 76

Mulroe, M . IV 1 75 multicultural education: state patronage

of IV 26-7 multicultural society IV 29; concept of

IV 27 multimusical IV 30

Mulvey, L. II 347-8 Murray, A. I 82, 83 Murray, C. S. IV 1 9 1 musematic repetition III 139 musematic techniques III 152 Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)

I 1 55, 1 8 1 music: African III 103; African­

American III 58, 401; anthropological studies IV 34; artistic III 349; change in the function of IU 333; comparisons in III 107; degeneration of III 326; early III 36; Ewe tribe I I I 1 08-12; hereditary emphasis in IV 59; and identity IV 1-3; labels of III 37; listening to IV 307; new III 36; out of context IV 101-2; own meaning in IV 1 0; parlor I I I 373; a s part o f social life IV 18-21; possession of IV 4 1 ; processual I I I 130-1; sociability of IV I ; social functions IV 38; teleological III 1 1 8; understanding through performance IV 7-15

music and change (Ukraine) IV 249-63 music classes I I 384 music clubs I 348-9 music computers IV 3 1 7 music criticism I V 1 9 1 music education I V 7-29 music festival: Chervona Ruta IV 260-1 music and film: sychronization I 1 66-70 music formats II 193-205 music and genre III 55-7 music globalization I I 62 music hall I 8; Britain I 15;

commercialized production I 26; double entendre I 27; industry I 15; innuendo I 27; patter I 1 8; repertoire 1 22; song I 1 6

music industry II 66; changing world IV 79; cultural phenomenon I I 53; flexibility II 42-59; litigation II 93-7; piracy II 95, 97-9; policing actions II 98; post-Fordism II 42-59; recording I 104-5; theft II 97-9

music magazines: advertising I 250, 25 1 ; circulation figures I 248, 255; female involvement I 262; gender ( 263; readers' community ( 262; sharing knowledge I 264; specialization I 248, 253

373

I N D E X

music making: local IV 52 music mall I 15-35 music markets II 56 music minority IV 37 music press I 246; II 1 0 music producers n 1 30 music and sexuality IV 44 music and society IV 36-8 Music Technology I 245 music trafficking IV 135 music video: female authorship

II 208-24 Music for 0 Wake (Ba-Benzele) I 346 music-appreciation courses III 50 music-hall II 407 music-making II 384 musical arrangement III 335 musical associations IV 45 musical chronology: absence I 399 musical codes III I I musical communication I 201 musical community III 14-18 musical composition I V 1 1 musical consumption II 147 musical copyright society III 2 1 9 musical cross-fertilization I V 88 musical fetishism III 33 1 , 332 musical films II 228 musical form: Indian recordings

I 147-5 1 musical genres: theory of III 7-35 musical groups: anonymity within

IV 53 musical hermeneutics II 253 musical identities I 230-1, 242;

antecedent I 227 musical instrument: voice as III 232 Musical Instrument Digital Interface

(MIDI) II 149, 1 5 1 , 1 52, 1 54 musical instruments I 259; feminine

I 272; gender I 273; masculine I 272; women I 271

musical intuition: trust in IV 1 2 musical language I 384 musical notation I 201 musical pathways IV 63-4; entering

IV 6 1 ; family basis of IV 61-2 musical performance: cultural

hegemony IV 15-18 musical process: collaboration as

IV 129-31 musical production II 147

musical selection: process I 166 musical syntax III 137-41 musical systems III 8 musical taste: coalitions IV 97; decline

of III 325; genealogy I 400 musical transculture II 4 1 3 musical universals I 365 musical value IV 36 musical-instrument industries I 104 musician: Black Sea IV 1 06-7;

grass roots IV 75; interactional characteristics I 228, 234-8; morphological characteristics I 228, 232-4; network I 242; physical barriers I 223; professional IV 50; salary I 221 ; self-segregation I 222; social networks I 227-44

musicians' magazines I 245-67 Musicians' Union II 108; IV 307 musicianship: women I 280 muzak III 49 My Old Kentucky Home (Fleischer)

I 1 57 mythscape: routes I 314-16

Napoleon (Glance) I 1 55 Napster II 87, 95, 96, 99 Nashville: music industry of IV 1 2 1 Nashville Sound 1II 96 National Broadcasting Company

(NBC) II 173 National Endowment for the Arts

(NEA) III 65 nationalism: South Africa IV 138-44 nationalism on stage IV 249-63 nationality: adoption of IV 258 Nationwide II 244 native melodies I I 7 1 Neapolitan song III 29 Negro: culture I 7 1 ; dance I 66;

minstrel companies I 66; music I 63, 66; theater I 64

Negus, K. II I Neighbours I 399 Nelson, P. 1II 200 Nelson, W. 1II 96 nco-nerd ism: Sweden 1 3 1 8 neD-traditionalists III 89 network radio II 293 new dances: black sources I 29 new music II 332; 1II 36, 40-8, 47 New Musical Express II 8

374

I ND E X

new technologies: democratization n 1 47-67; rationalization II 147-67

new wave II 33 1 ; rock II 340 New York IV 345 New York Daily Mirror I 1 76 New York Review I 293 New York Times I 1 0 1 , 298; II 67 Newman, R. III 355-83 Nigeria I 76 Ninth Symphony (Beethoven) II 1 09 Nketia, K. III 105 No Electronic Theft Act II 92 Northern Europe: funerals I 355 Northern Ireland: Arts Council IV I I I Norwegian Press Council II 79 nostalgic music IV 40 nuclear family I 355 nursery rhymes I 396

Oakey, P. n 162 Oliver, P. III 7 1-7 O'Neill, F. IV 1 70-1 , 175 ontology of music I I 376 opera I 382, 387; singer I 158 oral tradition II 76, 8 1 Orbison, R . n 1 7 1 orchestra: amateur I 23 1 ; community

I 240; institutional I 238 orchestral identities I 230 orchestral programming III 38 organic intellectuals IV 330 Origin Jazz Library III 69 Ormandy, E. I 175 Orpheus n 343 Osoria, S. IV 220 outsourcing II 5 1-4 overtures 1 1 7 1-2

Palacios, J. II 4 1 2 Palmer, R. II 298, 30 1 ; 1II 193 Palmer, T. 1II 256 Pan Africanist Congress IV 1 53 Pantomimes Lwnineuses (Reynaud)

I 1 78 Paranoid (Black Sabbath) II 350 Pareles, J. II 67, 150 parental interest: importance of IV 59 Paris 1II 2 1 3, 2 1 5 Park, R. E . III 353 Parker, T. III 261-2, 263 parlor music III 373; evocation of style

III 372

Parsifal (Wagner) I 1 57 part-interchangeability I I 148 patent law II 277 pathways: musical IV 56, 57, 58 pathways in urban living IV 48-76 patriarchal power II 209 Paz, O. IV 324 Peatman, J. G. III 1 87 Peel, J. II 49 Peelaer!, G. III 289 Peer Gylll (Grieg) I 350 penis: emphasis on III 279 penis-worship UI 303 Pennies from Heaven (Potter) II 107,

23 1-3 People Weekly I I 221 Peralta, B . IV 2 19-20 Perez, L. IV 336-7 performance 1II 249-323; act of IV 7;

identity I 230, 233; rights III 3 1 3 performers: classical 111 42-3; early

music 1II 42-3; roles of III 41 Performing Artists Network (PAN)

1 249 periodicals: music I 247 personality: artistic III 43 personality radio II 288 Peru IV 231-43 Peruvian music IV 233 Peterson, R. A. II 287 Peterson, T. I 246 phallic power II 361 Philharmonic Society 1lI 38 Phillips, S. III 25 1 , 252-4 Philosophies of Music History (Allen)

IV 302 Phiri, R. IV 149 phonograms I 3 1 6 phonograph I 97-107 Piar, E. HI 2 1 3, 2 1 6, 220, 221, 222, 226,

227 pianists: classical I 232 piano I 103 Piccarella, J. II 332 Pinetop's Boogie- Woogie (Smith) II 300 pipe organ I 1 66 piracy: music industry II 95, 97-9 Pitzonka, B. I 400 plaisir 1lI 162, 1 66 players: borrowing III 274 pleasure: music I 4; sensory III 342 poetry of pop III 203-6

375

I N D E X

Poelry of Rock (Goldstein) III 199 poetry and songs III 2 1 7 Poggioli, R . I V 3 1 1 policing actions: music industry II 98 policing of popular music II 88 political orientations IV 156 political song III 22; amateur status

III 22 politics of comfort III 46 Pollen, A. II 57 Polydor II 30 PolyGram I I 30 polyrhythms III 400 polythetical structure I 206 Ponce, M. H. IV 335 pop: authenticity I I 108-13; avant­

garde IV 3 1 4; consumption II 148; festivals IV 9; poetry of I I I 203-6

pop culture III 353; products of III 352 pop genres: classification of IV 44;

different IV 39 pop histories I 246 pop idols II 402 pop music: value of IV 42 pop production II 148 pop rock field II 394-6 pop song III 22 pop technology I I 1 1 5 popular culturc IV 37, 33 1 ; analysis of

III 350-3 popular instruments II 385 popular music: communities and

scenes in IV 79-99; logic of change IV 79-99; nationalist functions of IV 39; non�vocal IV 43; repetition in III 136-67, 1 4 1-61 ; value of iV 32-5

popular music making IV 7-29 popular songs: courtship in III 1 73-83 popularity: new kinds of III 48-52 Porter, A. III 46 post-bestial stage I 65 post-Fordism: music industry II 42-59 post modern musical I I 235 poslmodern pastiche: routes I 3 1 6 poslmodern rapprochement I V 3 I 3 postmodernism IV 321 , 324-39 post modernity IV 283-359 POIverpliff Girls I 408 prairie pandiatonicisl11 III 377-82 Presley, E. II 109-10, 1 14-15, 274,

284, 329; III 1 9 1 , 251-63; voice of III 260-1

press: popular music II 7 Pressing, 1. III 1 1 2 Prelly Womall (Orbison) II 1 7 1-2 Price, R. IV 123 primitive music II 64 Private Dancer (Turner) II 2 1 3 processuaJ music III 1 30-1 producers II 1 35; networks II 45 product image: record industry II 25-6 production and consumption II 123-44 production of culture II 273; record

industry II 25-6 production of music II 1 77 professional musicians IV 50, 1 14 professional-ama teur-pu blic (P-A -P)

system I 229 programming: orchestral III 38 promotion by: radio III 30 promotional culture I 259 propaganda: nature of III 340 prostitution I 30; III 223-4 protagonists III 60 Proust, M. III 207 Prudential II 260, 262 psychology I 5 pub musicians I 303 public enemy: music of III 385 publishing I 104 punk II 330, 3 3 1 , 382-3; IV 88-9, 304;

defiant amateurism II 210; sexual politics IV 305

punk rock II 1 1 0 Pygmy Lullaby (Garbarek) II 77 pygmy pop II 75-6

Qualen, 1. I I 1 1 9 Quebec: recording industry IV 8 1 Queen Eleanor's Confession I 59

race I 70 race and gender: relations I 325 race records III 254 racial authenticity IV 1 85; politics of

IV 1 9 1-3 racial emancipation IV 187 racial group: self-identity IV 185 racism: British IV 1 85, 188 radio II 12, 120; Canada II 193; careers

II 288; commercial II 196, 205; promotion by III 30; secondary medium II 193-5

radio broadcasting II 280

376

I N D E X

radio disc jockeys II I I radio ham III 344 radio listeners III 344 radio market II 1 99 radio networks U 276 radio space II 1 93-205, 202-5 radio stations I I 28 1 , 285-6 radio text II 1 94 ragtime I 63, 69, 7 1 ; Tin Pan Alley

1 287 ragtime songs: genre in HI 62 R<1hygge I 306-8 rai 11 424 Rainey, G. I 68 Ramsey, K. I 322 rap 11 1 6 1 ; 111 385; IV 342; intertextuality

II 1 80-5; ruptures IV 353 rap music II 169-88, 1 8 1 ; social

meanings of III 386 rapping: mapping the HI 394-9 Rasmusson, L. II 374 Rathbone, G. IV 128, 146 rational consumer theory II 54 rave parties II 401 realism III 196; lyric III 193-20 I RealNetwork II 100 recoding studios: externalization II 52 Record II 212 record: movement o f II 10-12; sales

charts IV 36 record business: careers I I 289 record companies II 47-50 record industry I 1 08-29; art II 7-23;

Britain II 24-4 1 ; commercialism II 7-23; filter flow model I I 25; product image 11 25-6; production of culture II 25-6; theories II 25-8

record industry personnel II 24, 27, 28

Record Mirror II 8 record piracy II 1 70 record sales I 1 1 6-19 recorded music IV 7-8 recorded music business I 98, 99 recording: music industry I 104-5 recording devices I 253 Recording Industry Association of

America (RIAA) I 125 recording industry personnel II 39-40 recording musicians I 265 recording professionals II 1 3 1 recording techniques I I 1 14-15

recordings: chic/w IV 241 ; importance of IV 1 73

records: race III 254 Redhead, S. I 3 1 7 Reeves, H . I V 2 1 reform: meaning and value I V 145 reggae II 1 1 8 regional identity I V 1 14 regional music industries II 50 regionalisations: dancing I 330-2 regrcssion of listening III 325-49 rehearsal III 265 Rei Momo (Byrnc) II 65 religion: solace of IV 120 religious fundamentalism IV 188 repetition III 397-8; Afro�American

music I I I 142; as commercial manipulation 111 1 6 1 ; discursive III 1 39; effects of I I I 1 61-7; examples of III 142-61 ; musematic III 1 39; musical syntax III 137-41; phrase structure III 144; popular music III 136-67, 141-61 ; sequence III 144-6

Republic (Plato) III 327 review writers II I I revivalists I II 65-6, 67 Reynolds, S. IV 88-9 rhythm III 1 57; African III 103-13;

centrality IV 294; character IV 294; conceptions of III 109; West African words for III 1 08-9

rhythm and imagery III 104 Rhythm Music: Global Sounds and Ideas

II 67 rhythm section: allack III 1 24-5 rhythm and sensibility I I I 399 rhythmic grooves I 309-10 rhythm'n'blues: white II 1 1 0 Rich, A. II 209 Richard, C. I 398-9 Richards, C. I 402-3 Richards, K. III 280, 298-9 Ricks, C. III 205 Riesenfeld, H. I 166, 1 66-74, 167;

selection procedure I 1 67; synchronization procedure I 167

Riesensenfeld, 1-1. I 1 6 1 Riesman, D. III 201-2 riff III 153, 1 54, 1 55, 157, 1 58 Riles (Lie) II 77 ritual: music I 354

377

I N D E X

Rivers, 1 . III 263 Robbins, l. II 338 Roberts, A. I 27 Roche, F. IV 1 70 rock II 293, 4 1 3; III 206; alternative

IV 88-9; Anglo-American II 4 1 9; Argentina II 421-2; authenticity II 395; IV 44; China II 425; communities II 398-400; contemporary identity II 4 1 5; death of II 402, 407; cmergence II 275; ethnic II 423; female role modes I 277; future II 393; genre II 402; hard II 380; hybridity II 422; ideology II 3; imitation II 4 1 9-22; institutions II 396-8; local II 425; losing grip IV 82; markets II 396-8; metamorphoses II 408; musical aspects II 394; new wave II 340; paradox II I ; psychic aspects II 394; Russia II 420; social aspects II 394, 399; social authenticity II 400; styles II 398-400; symbolic capital II 373-9 1 ; technology II 396-8; transformation II 400; transformations II 396; use values II 400-1; women 1 274

rock I 960s: recycling of III 2 1 3 rock aesthetics I I 4 1 4- 1 8, 4 1 6- 1 8, 4 1 8;

world music II 4 1 2-30 rock bands II 1 1 2 rock criticism IV 35 rock education II 398 rock genres II 376 rock guitarists I 276 rock ideology II 406 rock intervention Jl 1 1 6 rock journalists II I rock music I 1-5, 358; II I , 1 3, 20, 1 1 8,

373; advent II 273-94; aesthetic criteria II 20; crisis of IV 8 1 ; impact 1 255

rock musicians II 403; female II 209 rock mythology II 304 rock opera II 1 56 rock pop field II 394-6 rock recordings: Aeolian pendulum

I 357, 357-60 rock and roll II 1 5, 1 8; III 68; IV 1 2 1 ,

328; cultural politics I I 3 1 1 ; culture II 337; death of II 338-40; diversity II 325; empowerment II 3 1 1-4 1 ; fan

II 3 1 3; feminist critiques II 324; history II 335; meaning II 297; mythology II 237-309; politics II 320; post-war context II 3 1 4; power II 3 1 1 , 3 1 8-2 1 ; resistance II 3 1 8; visionary II 326; work II 321-5

Rock Video (Shore) II 221 rock-star quality IV 35 Rocking Around the Clock (Kaplan)

II 346 rockumentary I 303; II 246 Rockwell, 1. I I 1 14 Rodriguez, M . IV 225, 226 Roland I 25 1 Rolling Stone I 246-7; II 1 0 Rolling Stone Magazine: The

Uncensored History (Draper) I 247 Rolling Stones II 1 10; III 70; early

career III 279; early success III 280; private lives III 285

romantic music (Dominican Republic) IV 2 1 0

Romanticism I I 1 19 Romeo et Julielle (Berlioz) I 350 Rorogwela II 70-1 Rose, T. 1lJ 403 Rosolato, G. III 1 63, 166 Roszak, T. III 296 Rothapfel, S. L. I 175 Roult, E. II 286 Rowe, D. III 281 royalties and copyrights III 28 Royce, A. P. I 336 Roza, L. II 1 07 Rukh (Ukraine) IV 250, 252, 257, 261 rules: behavior III 1 3; behaviour

III 24-6; economical and juridical III 27-8; formal and technical III 1 0-1 1 , 20-3; generic III 9; ideological and social III 1 3; juridical and economical III 14; semiotic III 1 1- 13 , 23-4; social and ideological III 26

Run DMC II 162 Russia: rock II 420 russification of music II 420 Rycroft, D. III 106

S Club 7 I 393 Saheb, B. I 1 35 Said, E. IV 80

378

I N D E X

salary: musician I 221 Salas, R. IV 332 Salvation Army: bands III 267 Sam Hall (Ross) I 1 7 sampler I I 1 50, 160 sampling II 1 82; digital audio II 169 Samson, 1. III 56 San Remo: Festival of III 21 Santos, T . I V 222-3 Sargeant Peppel' (Beatles) II 1 1 5, 1 5 1 Sartre, 1 . I 1 58 satanism: emphasis on III 290 Saturday Night Club I 233 Sawyer, 1. I 293 scene: notion of IV 84 Schauffter, R. H. I 227 schlager (Sweden) I 3 1 8 Schuller, G . I 85 Scooby 000 I 393 scores: compiled I 1 77; original I 1 77,

1 87 Scott Fitzgerald, F. I 285 Scour II 87 Second Industrial Divide (Piore & Sabel)

11 43 Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI)

II 99 Sedaka, N. III 3 1 self as lover III 183 self-teaching: mode of IV 60 semantic system I 1 97 semiotic rules III 1 1- 1 3 sensory pleasure III 342 seq uence III 147 sex: changing images of III 1 88;

packaging and selling of IV 222-5 Sex Pistols II 1 5, 330 sexism: replication through heavy metal

II 364 sexual aggression: language II 308 sexual desire: resistance to IV 2 1 7 sexual exploitation 111 1 9 1 sexual socialization I 3 1 sexuality I 23, 24; I I 308; HI 164;

and authenticiLy IV 1 9 1 ; flaunting of III 304; love and gender IV 209-29; and music IV 44; representation of IV 1 87; restraint I 286

Shanks, B. IV 84 shantytown bars: music in IV 21 1 Shapiro, D. II 52 Shepherd, 1. IV 127

show song III 29 Showalter, E. III 30 I showmen II 287 Shuenyane, M. IV 1 5 1-2 Sign of the Times IV 287-8 silent films I 1 55-88; music I 1 56-7 Simon, P. IV 1 26-58 Sinatra, F. II 1 14; III 255, 259 Singer's Penny Magazine I 26 singing songs: learning language I 396 Sisulu, W. IV 1 52-3 Skansen I 302 Skover, D. M. II 185 slang: occupational II 225 Sligo IV 1 7 1 ; fiddlers IV 1 79 Slippery When WeI (Bon 10vi) II 354 Siobin, M. I 307 Small, C. III 403 Smash Hits HI 203 Smith, A. IV 260 Smith, B. III 1 97 Smith, G. I 394-5, 396 Smith, P. III 34 Smoky Mountain Boys III 90-2 soap opera I 407; theme tunes I 399 social behaviorism I 198 Social History (Hauser) II 1 1 7 social and ideological rules III 13, 26 social networks: amateur musicians

I 227-44 social structure I 238-40 society: multicultural IV 29; musicality

of IV I sociology II 140-1 , 142-3; III 205;

IV 33, 46; art II 1 1 6- 1 9; creation II 1 1 6; music I 197; II 378; popular music III 205; IV 33, 46

Soldiers of the Cross I 1 78 sonata I 203 song: bourgeois solo III 140-1;

children's III 29; collective variative III 140; courtship expressed in IV 209; maternal melodrama III 225; Neapolitan III 29; show III 29; the suggestive III 60; traditional III 29

song language: functions of III 182 song texts: chicha IV 237-8 song words: analysis of III 203 songs: African-American III 58;

biographical III 233; 'coon' III 58; love III 1 73; and poetry III 2 1 7; suggestive III 62

379

Sonnier, J. IV 337 Sony II 96, 98 soukous II 422 soul music: anti-antiessentialism

IV 193-7 soul songs III 198 sound: author II 1 12 Sound EJJects (Frith) II 46 sound engineer I I 108 sound film I 1 87 sound-recordings I 103 sound-structures III 1 63 Sounds II 8 South Africa: black IV 1 48-55;

music IV 266; musicians 11 65; national party IV 273; nationalism IV 1 38-44; radio broadcasting IV 274; urban Black IV 126; white IV 1 38-48, 144

Soweto uprising IV 273 spacings: dancing I 326-8 Spector, P. II 3 1 9 Spence, P. I 48 Springsteen, B. II 334, 382 square I 2 1 7 squareness 1 2 1 8 state and market II 398 Stax II 283 Stebbin, R. I 1 0 Stefani, G . I 309; I I I 8 Steve Allen SholV II 307 Stevens, W. III 8 1 Stith Bennett, H . I 250 Stock, Aitken and Waterman II 1 58 Stockfelt, O. I 10-1 1 Storper, M. I I 43-6 Storr, A. I 322, 337 Story oj the Grand Ole Opry (Hay)

I I I 88 Stratocaster guitar I 259 Stratton, J. II 1 , 32-4, 35; IV 1 03 Strauss, L. I 234 Straw, W. II 54, 56 string players I 232. structural dualisms III 140 Stuckey, S. I 73, 75, 80 studies: popular music I 1 style: evocation of I I I 372 style magazines II 37 style-periods III 4 1 subculture: bachelor ] 32 suggestivc songs III 60, 62

I N D E X

Sun Record Company III 25 I supply and demand I I 1 4 1 Sussi & Leo I 303-20 Susskind, D. II 3 1 9 Suttles, G . I 239 Swartley, A. II 2 1 0 Sweden: funerals I 355; neo-nerdism

I 3 1 8; youth I I 379; youth culture I I 373-9

swing I 79; III 1 23, 124, 1 28 Sylva, B. III 227 symphony I 382; Afro-American

1 86-9 Symphony Number 40 (Mozart) I 375-6,

378 symphony orchestra musicians I 232 syntax: concept of I I I 1 1 9 synth music I I 380 systems: musical I I I 8 systems of articulation IV 79-99

Talbot, C. IV 128 talent pool I I 55 tango I 294 Tax, M. IV 1 8-1 9 taxes: copyright I I I 27 Taylor, J. II 234; III 195 tea dances I 286 technical and formal rules I I I 10-1 1 technological chance: pace II 108 technological determinism II 148 technology: music I 3 technophobia: women I 274 teen film I I 229 teen musicals II 230, 23 1 , 237, 239 teen pop I I 1 1 0 teenagers: black IV 202-3 teenpic musicals II 235 teen pics II 229 teleological music UJ 1 1 8 Telelubbies I 393, 40 I television I I 195, 279; children's

1 391-4 1 1 ; experience 1 404; imagery II 209; music I 394; singers and III 25; truthfulness I 398

temporality: dancing I 337-8 tent revivalists IV 120 territorialisations: dancing I 330-2 textural dialectics III 1 39 Thanatos: the death instincts III 164 The Last Time (Rolling Stones) III 282 theater musicians I 1 73

380

• -

•

I N D E X

theater organs I 1 63-6 Theberge, P. II 1 52, 1 53, 1 57 theft: music industry I I 97-9 theme tunes: soap opera I 399 Theweleit, K. II 350 ThieJ oj Bagdad I 1 82-5 third world music I I 64 third world musicians 1 I 1 20 Thomas, J. IV 140-1 , 146-7 Thomson, V. III 50 Thornton, S. I 246 Thrift, N . I 323 timbre: ingredient of style IV 8 time: pluridimensionality I 208; social

organisation of IV 70-3 Time Unit Box System (TUBS) III 1 10 Time Warner II 98 Tin Pan Alley: music II 298; ragtime

I 287; sexuality II 299; singers II 302; songs III 241 ; values of 1II 1 87

Tobin, F. IV 168 Tommy (The Who) IJ 1 56 Toop, D. II 1 1 8-19 Top Cal I 395, 397 Top Forty II 292, 293 Top oj the Pops I 398 Tosches, N. II 306-7 Total Guitar I 271 Town and Country I 296 trade magazines: guitarists I 271 trademark protection II I 3 1 0 tradition: Zulu I V 1 34-5 traditional song III 29 trafficking: music IV 135 transcription III 1 10 transnational television I I 243 T.Rex I 397 tribal music II 64 trombone I 86 Trondman, M. II 4 tropes I 84; musical I 83 Trouser Press II 338-9 Tucker, B. In 390-1 Turkey: dernek IV 105; folkmusic in

IV 1 04-5; Halk music ensemble IV 108

Turkish music: modal structure IV 1 1 2 Turner, I . II 2 1 3 Turner, T. II 2 1 1 , 212 Turner, V. IV 259 Tlveenies I 393

Ukraine: action of independence IV 256-7; culture IV 252, 254; imagined communities IV 253; music and change IV 249-63; population nationality IV 257

Ukrainian nationalist song festival IV 249

Unlleard Melodies (Gorbman) I I 265-6 United States of America (USA) see

African�American music; America universal language I 345; bourgeois

myth I 265 universal music: death I 345-67 Universal Music Group II 89 universities: role of I I I 40 unplugged recordings: MTV II 76 unwritten music: recordings of IV 7 urban folk revival I I I 66 urban living: pathways in IV 48-76 urlatori (shouters) III 3 1 Uses oj Literature (Hoggart) I I I 190

Vagabonds III 87-8 Valens, R. IV 335 value: discussion of III 3 1 6; musical

IV 36 Van Pragg, J. II I 1 24 Venda children: music�making of

IV 24 Ventura, A. IV 227-8 verbal discontinuity IIJ 359 verbal language IV 9 vernacular forms: globalization of

IV 203 Vertigo II 30 vicarious discourse I I I 1 82-3 victimization I I 352 Victorian dance I 288 video II 198 video text II 2 14 Vignolle, J . I I 26-7, 47 Villanueva, R. II 4 1 2 Vining, I . I 1 65

38 1

violence II 3 5 1 Virgin II 48 Visible World (Garbarek) II 75 visual understanding: music I 397 vitaphone I 186 vocabulary: impoverishment of I I I 23 vocal rapping IV 352 vocal style and melody II I 365 voice III 232; use of IV 43

I N D E X

voices in American pop III 232-44 Volksballade I 46 Volvo II 263

Walker's commercial II 263-4 Walkman II 1 57 Walkowitz, D. IV 345 Wallis, R. IV 1 50 waltz I 286; rorms I 293 War Child II 251 warfare: songs and dances of IV 269 Warner Brothers Records I I 173 Warner Communications I I 1 1 7 Wa us, C. III 280 Way Dowll East I 179-81 wayno music IV 237 Weber, M. I 198, 208; II 147-8, 1 52-7,

155, 287 Weinstein, D. I 276 Welcome to 0,,1' City (Street) I 287-8 Wernick, A. I 259 West, C. III 399, 403 West-Africa: death and music I 348-9 Western European art music II 64 What Price Glory I 167 whistle I 227 Whitburn, J. II 291 white rockabilly II 304 white slavery I 296 white South Mrica IV 138-48, 144 Who all1 I? IV 290, 291 Whole Lalla Shakin' Gain' On (Lee

Lewis) II 297-309 Wickes, E. M. III 62 Williams, H. IV 1 2 1 Williams, M . I 86 Williams, R. I 97, 10 I ; II 148-9 Wilson, J. I 16; II 1 1 4 Wired 11 89 Wizard of Oz II 359 women: in bacha/a IV 225; electric

guitar I 270-8 1 ; migrants IV 2 1 0; Illusical instruments I 27 1 ; musicians I 279; II 120; physical reslraints

I 296; psychological restraints I 296; rock bands I 274-8; technophobia I 274; vocalists I 270

Wonder, S. II 382 words and labels: cultural tradition

IV 1 4 work o r authorship III 3 1 1 work and leisure I I 2 1 9 work songs I I I 75 working class listeners III 275 Working Men's Clubs III 268 works or art: black IV 197 World Intellectual Property

Organization (WI PO) II 92 world music II 62-83, 400, 422;

airplay II 67; authenticity I I 68; education IV 30; events IV 103; genealogy II 63; phenomenon IV 1 02; rock aesthetics II 4 1 2-30; schools IV 2 1-30

World War I ( 1 9 1 4-1 8) I 1 1 0-15; II 1 1 3

World War I I ( 1939-45) I 1 1 9-29, 234 worlds: concept or IV 55 Wrench, N. IV 1 39 Wyman, B. III 280

Yamaha I 251 Yearbook for Traditional Music (Zemp)

II 75, 78 York Festival: Australia IV 1 9 Young I relanders I V 166 youth: defined by music IV 41; petit

bourgeois I 32 youth culture II 335, 337; modern

I I 395; Sweden II 373-9; see also black teenagers; teenagers

youth market II 242

Zemp, H. I I 72-3 Ziehe, T. I I 374 Zulu: ethnic and cultural identity

382

IV 280; migrants IV 268; tradition IV 1 34-5