CULTURAL COLLISION AND THE EMERGENCE OF NEW MUSICAL TRADITIONS A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS WILLIE HUGHES B.A. 2000 School of Communications Dublin City University I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of Master’s Degree is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed ID No? ^ l o o 7 f Dated 7-Q <*'Q BACKGROUND AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The roots of this research stretch back to the early eighties when, as a recording artist with an American record company, I began working in the area of music technology, and in particular with the use of computers. While working in this field I became aware that a sector of musicians, producers and sound engineers were trying to find new ways to express their music. They were trying to find new forms, new ways of structuring their work. To this end they were experimenting with technology, and in particular with computer technology. On the other side of the coin I was beginning to meet classically trained musicians who were also experimenting with music technology but were approaching it from a more ‘art music’ angle. I began to notice while in conversation with one or other of these groups that each would refer to the same technical process (e.g. replaying a recording in a studio) but would use different language to describe the process. The commercial musician would refer to the ‘P.A.’ or ‘monitors’, while the classical musician would refer to the “sound diffusion system”, or similarly, the R&R musician might say he was “adding effects to a track” while the classical musician would say he was “processing the signal”. I noticed something else that struck me as unusual. The classical tradition, in particular third level educational establishments which had more often than not been unsympathetic or even hostile toward commercial music, were softening their tone towards commercial musicians. A number of these establishments, towards the end of the eighties and more intensely in the early nineties, began to look towards music technology courses as a way of securing employment for their graduates, e g working as sound engineers in commercial studios, writing film scores or producing This was, of course, the traditional field of commercial musicians who had the infrastructure in place These educational establishments became enthusiastic about talking to experienced commercial musicians I became involved in some such discussions and through these discussions coupled with my own experience, I began to form the opinion that some sort of coming together was inevitable between the two music technology branches of each tradition that could lead eventually to a new type or style of music All this both excited and intellectually challenged me to question more deeply in order to come to some sort of understanding of what might be involved in this process It was at this point that I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Dr Bill Dorris and his work on cultural collision As this work involved a synthesis of research from many fields, I gradually found myself reading about everything from postmodernism to paradigm shifts to Piaget and Howard Gardner, from group dynamics to Pierre Bourdieu In the process through many long and intensive discussions, over probably too many months, I gradually took on board Bill's ideas regarding not only cultural collision, but also the creativity of, for example, Alfred Hitchcock, and Charlie Parker He claims it went both ways, citing flagellation songs and diatonic tonality and Windmill Lane, Monteverdi and MIDI systems At any rate in the process we eventually developed and articulated Bill's cultural collision framework to address all five of the musical traditions involved in this thesis Now, many writes and rewrites, many discussions and re-discussions later, this thesis is the result Along the way Dr Donncha O'Maidin offered much critical advice and was especially helpful in drawing my attention to the current research literature on computer music I should also like to thank the following musicians for their contributions Rhona Clarke, Donncha Dennehy, David Downes, Roger Doyle, Larry Dunne, Ronan Guilfoyle, Jonty Harrison, Gerry Hendrick, Donal Hurley, Matt Kelleghan, Paul Kerrane, Maura McDonnell, Dave McLoughlm, Marie Moore, Dave Murphy, Robert Murtagh, Alan Neill, Seamus O'Brien, Andy O ’Callaghan, Jim Rogers, Simon Trezise and James Wilson i ABSTRACT This thesis studies the role of cultural collisions (intensive and sustained contact between two previously separate cultural groupings) in the emergence of new musical traditions Five musical traditions are studied jazz, classical, R&R, Electro­ acoustic, and Technology-R&R The thesis focuses on several aspects of cultural collisions These include 1) the role of socio/political/economic forces in the dominant culture triggering the collision, 2) the collision causing musicians to encounter new instruments and types of music and, in an extended process of experimentation, modify their ways of playing and thinking about music, 3) the pivotal role of young, low power, musicians finding themselves m a different world from the older generations and seeing music as a vehicle for expressing these differences, resulting in the new music having the ‘spirit’ (reflection of backgrounds, values, aspirations, and conflicts) of the subordinate cultural grouping, 4) the socio/political/economic role of the dominant cultural grouping (especially the young emerging generation within it) resulting in the new music having the ‘form’ (musical technology and meaning structures) of the dominant cultural grouping, and 5) the wide-spread rejection of the new music by established opinion leaders as being evidence of the emergence of a new musical tradition CONTENTS Chapter 1 Cultural Collision and the Emergence of New Musical Traditions: Theoretical Background 1 Chapter 2 The Jazz Tradition 26 Chapter 3 The Classical Tradition 5 7 Chapter 4 The R&R Tradition 83 Chapter 5 Digital Music - New Traditions in Music? 107 Chapter 6 Discussion 195 Appendix 1 Illustrations 238 Appendix 2 Interviews 242 Appendix 3 Footnotes 246 Bibliography 253 CHAPTER 1 CULTURAL COLLISION AND THE EMERGENCE OF NEW MUSICAL TRADITIONS THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1 The theoretical background to this thesis comes from an uncompleted manuscript (Dorris 1990) which was written for related, but different, purposes, that is to analyse the cultural and institutional developments which are prerequisite to the emergence of works of ‘genius’, for example those of Charlie Parker or Josquin des Prez (fn. 1). The present thesis aims to systematically test a core aspect of this earlier work, i.e. the role that cultural collision plays in the development of new musical traditions. The basic theoretical arguments will be presented in this chapter, with a representative sample of relevant literature cited for each argument. In subsequent chapters this analysis will be applied to five different musical traditions. Three of these have existed for decades, even centuries, [jazz (ch. 2), classical (ch. 3), and R&R (ch. 4)], while the fourth (Electro-acoustic) and fifth (Technology-R&R) it will be argued are currently in the process of formation (ch. 5). The first three traditions will be analysed via the use of existing literature. The fourth and fifth, argued to be in the process of formation, will be studied using both existing literature and interviews with musical practitioners. The rationale and methodology for doing this will be presented at the beginning of this analysis (ch. 5). THE ROLE OF CULTURAL COLLISION IN THE EMERGENCE OF NEW MUSICAL TRADITIONS: THEORY 1. A musical tradition is a particular approach to defining, learning, creating, and performing music; an approach which is widely recognised within a society and actively promoted by a significant portion of its members. It is characterised by variations from other 2 musical traditions along several dimensions, i.e. ideology, form/structure, technology, and social organisation. Each tradition also has a history of evolution from its origins (the focus of the present thesis) through various phases of elaboration and development. The above definition can be illustrated by comparing music of the European classical tradition with traditional African music,on the four dimensions In terms of ideology (i e what is the purpose of music'? what constitutes 'good' music?) classical music is typically thought of as an ‘art-form’, an expression of man’s fullest potential, of 'essential truth', perhaps even, as Ruth Gipps would have it, of “God (as) a limitless contrapuntal mind” (in Shepherd 59-62) Traditional African music, by contrast, functions to “affirm” the “oneness” of the person with the community Music is “woven as thickly through (the African’s) life as a rose vine through a trellis” It serves as "a social glue”, a “way for him to act out many of his feelings for his tribe, his family, the people around him” (Collier, 1984, 7-8) With regard to form/structure (i e how pitch, rhythm, timbre, and language are used) the classical tradition is extremely complex melodically, with numerous variations of form and structure (e g , phrase structure, augmentation/diminution, contrast of key, coda, texture, harmony, counterpoint, rondo, minuet, sonata, overture, symphony, etc) Traditional African music, on the other hand,