“Music Cultures of the World” was a year-long, advanced program in the study of music in cultural context. Taught by Sean Williams, Terry Setter and Evelia Romano, the program focused on ethnomusicological theory and its related study within major areas of the world. Although music has been our primary discipline, we also worked within the fields of literature, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and other areas. In Fall Quarter, the program was shaped as an introduction to the field of ethnomusicology. Initial program discussions included defining and understanding basic concepts such as music and culture, and recognizing the intersections between anthropology and musicology inherent when studying musical practices of the world. From the beginning of the program the faculty emphasized the importance and usefulness of library research, so the students developed some facility with current library research tools such as CD-ROM, periodical indices, Internet, recorded sources, and understanding reference works. In the third week of the program, students and faculty went on a four-day music retreat with artists specializing in the music and dance of Ghana, Brazil, and the Makah nation of the Pacific Northwest. This intensive experience helped to expose students to the difficulties inherent in learning to play new and unfamiliar music with practitioners of a different cultural background. The retreat also supplied some of the “practice” of Evergreen’s emphasis on combined “theory-and-practice” in education.
For the remainder of the quarter, program lectures combined discussions of specific areas of Africa and Latin America with theoretical issues important in the field of ethnomusicology. For example, there were lectures on music and urbanization in Nigeria, music and political resistance in Chile, music and change in Cuba, and musical colonialism in South Africa. One of the faculty members, a specialist in literature, used aspects of Latin American literature to point out some of the important underlying cultural issues involved in studying the music of that continent, such as the impact of Catholicism on indigenous cultures, and the overwhelmingly urban and cosmopolitan character of particular locations within Latin America. Several seminar sessions were devoted exclusively to intensive guided listening to recordings of African and Latin American music, to help students learn in order to articulate what they hear.
Students used The Study of Ethnomusicology (by Bruno Nettl) as their primary theoretical textbook. The books The Forest People (Colin Turnbull), African Rhythm and African Sensibility (by John Miller Chernoff), The Brazilian Sound (by Ricardo Pessanha) and Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman (Marjorie Shostak) were combined with the Latin American novels The Lost Steps (Alejo Carpentier) and Deep Rivers (José María Arguedas) to supplement their understanding of African and Latin American cultures. In addition, the students read selected articles about specific African and Latin American musics. The students also read articles from Peter Manuel’s Popular Music of the Non-Western World in order to gain an understanding of some of the changes that have occurred in African and Latin American cultures through urbanization and the influence of the mass media.
Students were required to keep journals containing class notes, independent library research, program handouts, and weekly musical ethnographic fieldwork. They were also given bibliographic and five page research paper assignments, and were required to present the results of extensive research on a specific aspect of African or Latin American music in a 25-minute oral presentation to the members of their seminars. In Winter Quarter, the emphasis of the program shifted to the music of Asia and the Pacific. The program materials began with a survey of several major Asian religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism.
The faculty followed these discussions with an introduction to the musical culture of India, and the students read the Hindu epic The Mahabharata (Chakravarthi Narasimhan, translator) to provide them with an introduction to one of the most important influences on Asian performing arts. They also attended a performance of “Chitrangada,” featuring the Orissi dance and choreography of Dr. Ratna Roy, a native of India and member of the faculty. In developing their understanding of Indian performing arts culture, the students learned many of the important terms and theoretical aspects of music (concepts such as raga and tala, for example) that were referred to frequently during the rest of the year.
Throughout the quarter, the students read selected articles from the books Musics of Many Cultures (Elizabeth May, editor) and Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Communication (Ellen Koskoff, editor) to supplement the class lectures. We followed our discussion of India by shifting to East Asia, in which the musical cultures of China and Japan were featured by faculty with first-hand experience in those countries. We compared aspects of the performing arts genres of Beijing opera and Japanese kabuki theater, and read The Tale of Genji (Murasaki Shikibu) to deepen the students’ understanding of the Chinese cultural influence on Japan. Evelia Romano, one of the three faculty with the most experience in the Japanese performing arts, gave the students an introduction to kabuki based on her own two years of kabuki study.
After a basic introduction to the religious music of Tibet and the diphonic singing styles of Tuva (Siberia), the emphasis of the program shifted to Southeast Asia. Students read A House In Bali (Colin McPhee) for first-hand information about Balinese music in its pre-war era, and faculty member Sean Williams introduced several major Southeast Asian cultures, including those of Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, and Indonesia. A segment of the program performed for their peers on the Indonesian gamelan ensemble, a set of gongs, xylophones and drums. Along similarly-developed lines, when faculty member Terry Setter lectured about Australian aboriginal music, students were given the opportunity to construct and learn to play the dijeridu, one of the most important aboriginal instruments.
For part of their required work in the program, students spent nearly the entire term selecting, researching and writing a major research paper about a theoretical topic of their choice, within the geographical boundaries of Asia and the Pacific. The students developed initial topics in consultation with the instructors, then wrote drafts which were reviewed by program writing tutors. Aided by supplementary research and the comments of the tutors, students then created second drafts of their papers, which they handed in to faculty. Faculty met with individuals to discuss their drafts, then the students worked with the writing tutors again to create a third and final draft. The intent of this assignment was twofold: to cause the students to undergo the process of extensive revision of their work within a specific time frame, and to allow each student to develop a body of research which would approximate a typical graduate school research paper.
The other major requirement of the students was the completion of a weekly outside research assignment, in which students would explore an aspect of the area or theory under discussion in the lectures. Students did the bulk of this work in the library, and brought the results of their work to seminars, in which they presented their findings to their peers. In doing this assignment, students actually wrote out their findings, but presented their work orally, providing them with the practice of extemporizing in front of their peers based on individual research. The program concluded in Spring with the exploration of Middle Eastern, Spanish, and Celtic music. For the first four weeks, the program materials centered around the Arab (and Arab-influenced), Persian, Turkish and Jewish musical cultures. We began with Persia because of its powerful influences on the cultures of Asia through the importation of musical instruments and musicians, and discussed the ways in which the spread of Islam and the Arabic language led to the development of an “Arab culture” that extends far beyond the boundaries of the Arabian Peninsula. Other important topics included the Ottoman Empire and its role in bringing Islamic-type musical influences to Europe, and the impact of the Inquisition on European Jewish culture, which resulted in the development of Jewish cultural enclaves.
Students continued their readings of selected articles from Musics of Many Cultures and Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Communication and worked hard to develop an understanding of the factors that separate (for example) the Arab musical domain from the Jewish musical domain. For two weeks in the middle of the quarter, Terry Setter presented the students with an in-depth introduction to the rich musical tradition of Spanish flamenco. Students read The Art of Flamenco (Donn Pohren), participated in dance and guitar workshops with visiting artists from the ensemble Carmona Flamenco, and viewed the film “Blood Wedding” (by Carlos Saura). Because of the length of time spent on this subject, students developed a strong grasp of some of the most important concepts about appropriate performance practice and standards of behavior, and were able to debate the issue of “pure” vs. modern or syncretized flamenco. By immersing themselves in this topic, students gained a first-hand understanding of the depth and richness of just one of the many cultures they have experienced second-hand this year. Faculty lectures were completed with an introduction to the Celtic world, focusing on Ireland and Scotland. Among the issues discussed were the conquering of both nations by England, and the influence of political and religious repression on the cultures and their music.
Throughout both winter and spring quarters, guided listening to musical materials became an important feature of the seminars. Part of the program materials over the year included twelve cassette tapes (Africa, Brazil, the Andes, India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Persia/Turkey, the Arab world, Jewish music, Spanish flamenco, and Celtic music), which the students had the option to listen to for personal research use. These cassettes were used during seminars each week with the intent of helping students to learn to articulate what they were hearing, rather than simply developing value judgements based on personal preferences. In addition, outside research was a continuing focus in seminars, as students continued to develop their skills at orally presenting the results of their library research.
The culmination of the program occurred in the final three weeks of spring quarter, during which each student was required to deliver a one hour formal lecture to the program on a topic relating to the Middle East or Europe. Students chose a broad variety of topics, limited only by the restriction of staying away from topics already covered by the faculty or by other student lectures. Students were expected to use the appropriate terminologies as used in the field of ethnomusicology, and to correctly articulate the local terms and theory of their chosen topics. They were also expected to lecture directly, not to read from a prepared text, and to use no more than one quarter of their allotted time for audio or visual examples. The intent of this assignment was (as in winter quarter) to prepare students to present the results of their research in graduate school or other professional settings.