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The Gestation of Cross-Cultural Music Research and the Birth of Ethnomusicology

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The Gestation of Cross-Cultural Music Research and the Birth of Ethnomusicology THE GESTATION OF CROSS-CULTURAL MUSIC RESEARCH AND THE BIRTH OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY P. G. TONER other disciplines, the development of eth- INTRODUCTION nomusicology has been closely tied to technological changes such as the inven- This article examines the development of tion of the phonograph. There are, then, cross-cultural music research, from its unique and distinctive lessons to be earliest days in the collection, notation and learned by historicizing cross-cultural analysis of "primitive music" and "folk music research. In this article, I will at- songs" to the first annual meeting of the tempt to take stock of these lessons, and Society for Ethnomusicology in 1956. The to consider the impact this field of research gestation period was long, and the birth, has had on cross-cultural research more like all births, was largely unheralded and broadly. I will also consider in some detail was most significant to the immediate how the development of ethnomusicology family. Now that ethnomusicology is en- has influenced Australian Aboriginal eth- tering middle age, its true significance can nography, specifically in northeast perhaps be better appreciated. Arnhem Land, and the early development The history of cross-cultural music re- of Australian Aboriginal studies. search parallels the history of cross-cultur- This article will also consider the place al research more generally, with some in- of two pioneering ethnomusicologists who teresting and significant differences. As were concerned with the study of Australi- in anthropology, the evolutionist perspect- an Aboriginal music, and whose research ive of early ethnomusicology gave way to represents the end-point of the trajectory functionalism and then to more interpret- to be described below. The American eth- ive approaches, but it has been suggested nomusicologist Richard Waterman was not that the discipline has dragged its feet the first to make field recordings of Abori- theoretically and theoretical change has ginal music in Arnhem Land, nor was he been slow.1 Ethnomusicology has been the first to analyze recordings of Aborigin- influenced throughout its history by its al music. He was, however, the first eth- two parent disciplines, anthropology and nomusicologist to conduct long-term, musicology,2 a process that has at times primary research in the region, and to been harmonious and, at other times, like make a substantial number of field record- a custody battle. And, more than many ings. Waterman was a student of Melville Herskovits, who was himself a student of 85 Humanities Research Vol XIV. No. 1. 2007 Franz Boas, and so Waterman is firmly an music who began their research on that placed within the anthropological branch topic during the same formative period, of ethnomusicology. The Australian eth- each representing fairly clearly one of the nomusicologist Alice Moyle probably did two orientations which are still with us more in her distinguished career for the today Ð although I will demonstrate that discipline's development in Australia than their complex research paths cannot be any other scholar. She was a prolific re- characterized in a simplistic way. In this cordist, although her periods in the field article I want to examine the intellectual were relatively brief. Moyle began her trajectory that led to that formative period, studies of Aboriginal music under Donald to examine an unusual and lengthy period Peart, the first professor of music at the of gestation which led to this peculiar and University of Sydney, and her research hybrid birth. reveals a firm grounding in the musicolo- gical branch of ethnomusicology. EXPLORERS AND These two scholars began their research PHILOSOPHERS on Australian Aboriginal music in the early- to-mid 1950s, roughly coinciding Attention to music in situations of cross- with the formation in the U.S. of the Soci- cultural contact occurred very early in the ety for Ethnomusicology. In late 1952 the record of European exploration. The music scholars David McAllester, Alan Calvinist missionary Jean de Léry visited Merriam, Willard Rhodes and Charles Brazil for 10 months in 1557-58, and his Seeger met to discuss how to facilitate book History of a journey made into the land communication between scholars with of Brazil, otherwise called America, first common interests; in 1953 they sent out a published in 1578, includes numerous de- letter to 66 people to solicit interest, which scriptions of musical performance, as well as music notations in the third edition of 10 people signed (including Waterman). 5 The first Ethno-Musicology Newsletter ap- 1585 Ð surely among the first studies of peared later that year. The first annual non-Western music. Léry describes native meeting of the Society occurred in Brazilian instruments, dancing that accom- 3 panied musical performances, and the September 1956. For the purposes of this 6 article, I take the foundation of this society singing style of the "savages", and his account was incorporated into Montaigne's as formally marking the birth of the discip- 7 line known as ªethnomusicologyº, even 1580 essay "Des cannibales". though the academic study of non-West- Another early work to consider non- ern musics is much older.4 Western music was Charles de Rochefort's So what do we have? We have the The history of the Caribby-Islands. Trans- formation of a scholarly society from a lated in 1666 by the Englishman John number of diverse origins, whose member- Davies of Kidwelly, de Rochefort's book ship is roughly split between anthropolo- includes a number of passages relating to gists and musicologists with a common the music of the Caribbean, including the interest in non-Western and/or folk mu- following: sics. And we have two scholars of Australi- 86 The Gestation of Cross-Cultural Music Research To divert themselves they also by which the happiness of a Hot- make several Musical Instruments, tentot was to be tried, he would if they may be so called, on which be found among the most miser- they make a kind of harmony: able of all human beings.9 Among others they have certain Although amusing when examined retro- Tabours or Drums made of hollow spectively, passing references to music do Trees, over which they put a skin not make an important contribution to the only at one end¼To this may be development of ethnomusicology as a field added a kind of Organ which they of study, any more than old maps with make of Gourds, upon which they "there be monsters here" attributed to place a cord made of the string of unknown regions made an important a reed which they call Pite; and contribution to the development of geo- this chord being touch'd makes a graphy. These passages merely give us a sound which they think delight- taste of the European mindset which was ful. The concerts of divers other present as the colonizing powers expanded Savages are no better than theirs, their grasp around the world. and no less immusical to their ears who understand Musick. In the One early thinker, however, does stand morning, as soon as they are up, out as having delineated at a very early they commonly play on the Flute stage some of the key orientations that or Pipe; of which Instrument they would come to define the field of eth- have several sorts, as well polish'd nomusicology, and that was Rousseau in and as handsom as ours, and some his A Complete Dictionary of Music of 1779. of those made of the bones of their The ethnomusicologist Anthony Seeger Enemies: And many among them has interpreted Rousseau's work as ad- can play with as much grace as can dressing some of the same questions that well be imagin'd for Savages.8 have occupied those working in the field ever since. One of these issues is that the John Barrow's 1806 tome An account of transcription of musical sounds is a means travels into the interior of Southern Africa to understand the physical laws of music; in 1797 and 1798 includes the following as Seeger writes, "musical transcriptions passage: reveal certain similar sound processes 10 It has frequently been observed governed by laws of acoustics", and he that a savage who dances and sings points out that careful transcription has must be happy. With him these been a characteristic feature of most eth- operations can only be the effects nomusicological studies. Rousseau's study of pleasurable sensations floating itself included transcriptions of Chinese, in his mind: in a civilized state, Persian, Native Canadian and Swiss 11 they are arts acquired by study, songs. followed by fashion, and practised A second pervasive ethnomusicological at appointed times, without having issue identified by Seeger in Rousseau's any reference to the passions. If work is his emphasis on the cultural inter- dancing and singing were the tests pretation of music, exemplified by a cer- 87 Humanities Research Vol XIV. No. 1. 2007 tain Swiss air which provoked such a ¼is measured properly by the ra- strong reaction among Swiss troops that tio of the smaller pitch number to it was banned, although Rousseau states the larger, or by the fraction that the transcription itself reveals no formed by dividing the larger by musical structures which could be respons- the smaller. When these ratios are ible.12 known for each successive pair of In other words, Rousseau identified in notes, the scale itself is known, for his eighteenth-century writing the two means then exist for tuning the whole scale when one of its notes dominant orientations of ethnomusicology, 14 a discipline that did not begin to take form is given. for another century: the first geared As Jaap Kunst explains in a discussion of around careful transcription and musical Ellis' paper, an octave is represented by a analysis as the basis for understanding the 2:1 ratio, a perfect fifth by a 3:2 ratio, and music of the Other; and the second geared a perfect fourth by a 4:3 ratio.
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