Semiotics, Habitus and Music in the Transmission of Tibetan Culture in Toronto
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SEMIOTICS, HABITUS AND MUSIC IN THE TRANSMISSION OF TIBETAN CULTURE IN TORONTO A MASTER‘S THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY OF THE CENTER FOR GRADUATE AND CONTINUING STUDIES LIBERTY UNIVERSITY BY JOHN ROBERTSON IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF ARTS IN ETHNOMUSICOLOGY AUGUST 11, 2011 Copyright © 2011 by John Robertson ii CONTENTS FIGURES......................................................................................................................................................iv ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION..... ............................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.....................................................................................................24 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY...............................................................................................................36 CHAPTER 4: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS AND THE TIBETAN CULTURAL DILEMMA......48 CHAPTER 5: TIBETANNESS THROUGH MUSIC.................................................................................63 CHAPTER 6: LEARNING AND PERFORMING TIBETANNESS........................................................120 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................144 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................................................151 iii FIGURES 1. The three triads of the semiotic process..........................................................................................18 2. The relationship between the sign, object and interpretant.............................................................19 3. Diehl‘s Geographic Mandala..........................................................................................................55 4. Diehl‘s Musical Mandala................................................................................................................56 5. Cultural elements potentially correlated through modern Tibetan music.......................................67 6. Cultural elements potentially correlated through traditional Tibetan music...................................71 7. How music interprets as signs of Tibetanness..............................................................................117 iv ABSTRACT This ethnographic study explores the role of music in cultural transmission in the Tibetan community of Toronto, Canada. Beginning with an integration of Peircian semiotics, Bourdieu‘s habitus and musical semiosis, I then identify certain non-Tibetan cultural elements being encountered by those in the Toronto community which are potentially creating cognitive structures foreign to those which have their generative principles in pre-exile Tibetan past, and the ways in which Tibetans are transmitting (to varying degrees) cognitive schemata which identify these non-Tibetan elements and protect against their appropriation. After exploring elements which are not Tibetan, I turn to those which are: a unified narrative of Tibetan history, an attachment to the physical land of Tibet, community, language, Tibetan Buddhism, family life and traditional music. It is argued that these Tibetan elements together constitute the conceptual core of Tibetan culture, perceived requisite for the entirety of authentic Tibetan cultural transmission to take place. Each element is examined as a representation of Tibetan culture, with the process of musical semiosis shown to correlate all elements into a conceptual whole. Following this, the study looks at the transmission and appropriation of Tibetan music in a Tibetan student performing arts troupe. I argue that as students attend music lessons, they are in the process embodying the cultural structures of Tibet past. With the correlations produced through musical semiosis, every lesson (for the students) and every performance (for the audience) has the potential to create and reinforce Tibetan structures, and fuse together any and all of the core Tibetan cultural elements in deeply personal ways. When the same performances are framed in the Tibetan Community Cultural Centre, a space permeated by Tibetan stimuli operationalizing all five senses, they provide a mirror in which the Tibetan community might see their cultural preservation efforts reflected; and when the performance agrees with the communal sense of naturalness felt through the habitus, when the performance is deemed authentic, it provides the community tangible evidence that their preservation goals have been achieved. v Chapter 1 Introduction Tibet, the Land of Snows, has long been a place of mystery to researchers, explorers and armchair adventurers, yet data regarding Tibetan music and community life outside the Asian diaspora is sparse. Toronto, one of the largest of these communities, has in the last five years seen a major increase in musical participation and performance, and while this has been recognized by the Canadian media (in public addresses by Canadian politicians at Tibetan events, in newspapers1 and on television2), it has thus far gone unnoticed in the literature. With data collected through interviews and observations in the Tibetan community in Toronto regarding the process of music learning, this study offers an otherwise non-existent view of Tibetan musical life. Further, as no previous studies exist on the transmission of culture in Toronto, the following offers a unique perspective on both cultural transmission and music‘s role in that process, observed through an integration of Pierre Bourdieu‘s habitus and Charles Saunders Peirce‘s theories on semiotics. By identifying specific cultural elements the Tibetan community considers requisite for cultural survival in exile, this study elucidates the prominent role music might play as the older generation attempts to fulfill the cultural preservation mandate and pass their culture on to the next generation in its conceptually purest form. Until recently such a study in Toronto would have been impossible, and indeed before the second half of the nineteenth century any study of Tibetan culture proved an arduous and dangerous journey, one rarely set upon. For this reason, prior to the country‘s ―peaceful liberation‖ in 1959 Tibet was largely unknown and inaccessible, conjuring up images in much of the Western world of an other-worldly 1 Leslie Scrivener, ―Tibetan Musician Finds a Home in Toronto,‖ The Toronto Star, October 26, 2010. http://www.thestar.com/news/world/dalailama/article/880914--tibetan-musician-finds-a-home-in-toronto (accessed July 23, 2011). 2 A documentary on the Tibetan community in Toronto with a large segment devoted to the performing arts was produced by Rogers OMNI Television , called ―Rogers Coverage of Tibetan Community‖ accessible at: http://article.wn.com/view/2006/12/12/Rogers_OMNI_Television_Launches_Path_to_Enlightenment_New_13/ (accessed August 10, 2010). 1 Shangri-La. Since the time of China‘s occupation, the mass exodus from Tibet and the ensuing media attention, the unknown has become visible. Tibetans as a people have become highly politicized, and many academics and sympathizers have logged countless hours and written hundreds of books on Tibet‘s cultures and traditions. The majority of sociologists have been concerned with religio-cultural traditions; some have focused more on the arts. Most studies among Western academics have been conducted in Tibetan communities living in India and Nepal, with limited research occurring in ethnic Tibet (the Tibetan Autonomous Region [TAR] and the surrounding Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan). Despite the apparently broad geographic scope of the research, the vast majority has been focused on Dharamsala in North India, capital of the Tibetan exiles, seat of power of the Tibetan Government in Exile, and home of their spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It is in Dharamsala where ―Tibet is ‗recreated‘ in India,‖3 even seen by some as ―a temporary home preserving a historical culture in its pure form.‖4 As Axel Kristian Strom indicates, ―there has been very little attempt to look at the interactive dynamics of the Tibetans‘ emergent culture in their new homes‖ and ―Tibet and Tibetans have escaped the serious attention of scholars interested in the comparative social and humanistic study of diasporas and exile.‖5 Keila Diehl, whose research for Echoes from Dharamsala was conducted in the diasporic capital, is among the many Tibetan-minded researchers6 calling for research in the smaller Tibetan communities in India and Nepal.7 I would further suggest that, as the Tibetan diaspora now 3 Axel Kristian Strom, ―Between Tibet and the West: On Traditionality, Modernity and the Development of Monastic Institutions in the Tibetan Diaspora‖ (Proceedings of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995): 35. 4 Dibyesh Anand, ―A guide to little Lhasa: the role of symbolic geography of Dharamsala in constituting Tibetan diasporic identity,‖ in Tibet, Self and the Tibetan Diaspora:Voices of Difference ed. C Klieger (E J Brill, Leiden,(2002): 13. 5 Strom, 2. 6 Frank J. Korom, ―Introduction: Place, Space and Identity: The Cultural, Economic and Aesthetic Politics of Tibetan Diaspora‖