HAND IN HAND INTO THE UNKNOWN: The Potential of Experimental Intercultural Collaboration in Music in Africa LUKAS LIGETI A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music Composition 9 December 2019 FINAL SUBMISSION: 1 June 2020 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is my own unaided work. It is submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music Composition at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted before for any other degree or examination in any other university, and no section has been previously presented or published. LUKAS LIGETI 9 December 2019 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my wife, Ilke Alexander, and my mother, Dr. Vera Ligeti, for their moral and intellectual support. I thank all of the musicians mentioned in this thesis – my collaborators across political, geographical, and cultural boundaries; without them, this work would not have been possible. And I thank Prof. Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph, my supervisor, for her patience, advice, and support. I also thank Nikki Richard for her help with formatting, as well as Prof. Grant Olwage and Prof. Brett Pyper for their help in navigating the bureaucratic obstacles that occasionally presented themselves. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration i Acknowledgements ii Table of Contents iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: Personal Background and Early Interactions with African Music 4 1.1: Personal Background 4 1.2: Initial Creative Responses 6 CHAPTER 2: Theoretical Background 18 2.1 Arriving in Africa: Thoughts on Creative Cross-Pollination between Cultures 18 2.2 Towards a Definition of Experimental Intercultural Collaboration 27 CHAPTER 3: Beta Foly 45 3.1 Introduction 45 3.2 History and Evolution of the Group 50 3.2.1 February 1994 50 3.2.2 March 1994-August 1996 64 3.2.3 September-October 1996 68 3.2.4 November 1996-December 1999 71 3.3 Analysis of Selected Pieces 75 3.3.1 Adjamé 220 75 3.3.2 Village dans 8 pays 90 3.3.3 Le chant de tout le monde 105 3.3.4 Further Examples 122 iv CHAPTER 4: Burkina Electric 129 4.1 Introduction 129 4.2 History and Evolution of the Group 134 4.3 Analysis of Selected Pieces 144 4.3.1 Ligdi 144 4.3.2 Mdolé 152 4.3.3 Keleguiya 156 CHAPTER 5: Compositions for Ensembles 166 5.1 Incandescence 166 5.2 Suite for Burkina Electric and Orchestra 172 CHAPTER 6: Reception and Reactions 181 6.1 Press 181 6.2 Group Members 190 CHAPTER 7: Reflections on Cultural and Social Implications 202 7.1 Locating Myself in the Intercultural Discourse: A Musician’s Reaction to a Musicological Article 202 7.2 Further Considerations 212 CONCLUSION 221 BIBLIOGRAPHY 223 Discography 229 Web Resources 230 Newspaper Articles 231 Further References 233 v APPENDIX 236 vi vii INTRODUCTION In this thesis, I describe and analyze the significance of African music traditions for my work as a composer and improvising musician, focusing on my collaborative work in West Africa. I commenced my work in Africa at a workshop in 1994 and initially had no plan to develop an ongoing relationship with musicians on the continent. But, as I will recount, an ensemble literally founded itself and I have continued working with African musicians ever since in a variety of projects and contexts. The accumulation of my experiences as an experimental musician conducting intercultural work has led to an approach I refer to as ‘experimental intercultural collaboration’. While providing an exact definition or methodology of this approach is not a straightforward task because many aspects and factors can only be considered on a case-by-case basis in creative endeavors, I will attempt to convey some notion of why and how I have developed this approach and some of the artistic results it can lead to. In Chapter 1, I provide background information on my personal and professional development and the role African music has played therein. I describe some of my earliest reactions to African music, predating my practical involvement with African musicians, in which some of my creative practices and inquiries already began to crystallize. In Chapter 2, I provide theoretical background and context for this research and attempt to arrive at a definition of my approach by reflecting on the meanings of the three component words of its name. Chapters 3 and 4 comprise the heart of this research report. Here I tell the stories of my two key intercultural projects, Beta Foly (based in Côte d’Ivoire) and Burkina Electric (based in Burkina Faso), and provide in-depth analyses of several pieces by each group. I describe the collaborative nature of our work, recount some of our joint experiments with various cultural concepts and performance practices and retrace the musical and social processes that led to the multifaceted and unconventional music of these two groups. 1 In the much briefer Chapter 5, I describe my scored composition based on African concepts, using two recent, very different compositions as case studies on how my contact with African musicians has influenced the way I compose. Chapter 6 presents press reactions to Beta Foly and Burkina Electric in a reflection on what kind of impact this work has had on the participants in this creative process (amongst which I include myself), but also on the ‘outside world’. Interviews I made with my collaborators reveal interesting background information from the viewpoints of these musicians. In Chapter 7, I return to some of the broader theoretical considerations introduced in Chapter 2, this time to arrive at and describe personal positions based on which I engage in intercultural work; many of these positions are, in fact, a result of my intercultural experiences. The Appendix contains links to videos of concerts that will be helpful to refer to while reading this thesis and the portfolio of scores. Overall, my objective in this research is not to develop a theory or generalizable approach for intercultural collaboration. Perhaps it is even the exact opposite, because by arguing (as I will) that a person’s individual mind is ultimately of greater significance than their cultural identity, I also imply that there is no one-size-fits-all in artistic collaboration. Instead, my objective is to give insights into my thought processes when creating intercultural work, both for my own benefit and for that of others who might perhaps be interested in undertaking such experiments in the future. Finally, I note the dearth of musicological and sociological literature on intercultural work in music, particularly such intercultural work that focuses on artistic originality rather than political agendas, relief work, and other objectives that can be absolutely laudable, but where the music is subservient to that agenda. I hope that my report, written from the perspective of a musician engaging in experimental exchanges, and therefore from the inside out as opposed to the 2 musicologist’s view from the outside in, will provide valuable insights into how intercultural musical creativity can develop and what this might mean for music and society. On a technical note, I have italicized not only titles of books or musical works but also words that are not commonly used in the English language. However, once a word has been mentioned in italics several times, I consider it a part of the established vocabulary of this thesis and revert to normal font in the interest of more fluid reading. 3 CHAPTER 1 Personal Background and Early Interactions with African Music Since this research is based in no small part on knowledge gained through my own work as a musician and intercultural collaborator, some information about my personal and musical background will provide useful context. 1.1: Personal Background Given my personal history, I come to experimental intercultural work rather naturally. I come from a Hungarian-Jewish family from both parents’ sides; as ‘assimilated Jews’, my ancestors adopted many of the cultural values of the majority religion and/or ethnicity amongst which they lived, but not without a feeling of difference, sadly reinforced by the anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust. After having survived the horrors of Nazism and World War II, my parents were forced to endure a bleak, perilous life under Stalinism. They escaped to Austria in 1956 and settled in Vienna, where I was born – geographically close to Hungary, but very distinct from it in language and many facets of culture. At home, I grew up like an immigrant whose parents were doing their best to facilitate my integration into my supposed home country. But just as I was about to begin school, my father received an invitation to teach in California; I therefore went to a public elementary school in the U.S., and when we returned to Europe, I opted to stay in the American educational system and attended American international schools until completing high school. My environment at school was free-spirited and cosmopolitan; my classmates came from all over the world (Africa, however, was somewhat under-represented) and there was no strong pressure to adapt to any prevailing culture. Given my home and school environments, it is not surprising that I am more of a ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ than a tribesperson; I have no feeling of belonging to a strictly defined place or culture and feel rather more like a perpetual expatriate from a non-existent country. 4 Upon graduating, I decided to pursue music, having had very little prior training in that field in spite of, or perhaps because of (I myself am not exactly sure), my father’s1 work and success as a composer.