Western Music and Its Others Western Music and Its Others Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music EDITED BY Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London All musical examples in this book are transcriptions by the authors of the individual chapters, unless otherwise stated in the chapters. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2000 by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Western music and its others : difference, representation, and appropriation in music / edited by Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-520-22083-8 (cloth : alk. paper)—isbn 0-520--22084-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Music—20th century—Social aspects. I. Born, Georgina. II. Hesmondhalgh, David. ml3795.w45 2000 781.6—dc21 00-029871 Manufactured in the United States of America 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 10987654321 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). 8 For Clara and Theo (GB) and Rosa and Joe (DH) And in loving memory of George Mully (1925–1999) CONTENTS acknowledgments /ix Introduction: On Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music /1 I. Postcolonial Analysis and Music Studies David Hesmondhalgh and Georgina Born / 3 II. Musical Modernism, Postmodernism, and Others Georgina Born / 12 III. Othering, Hybridity, and Fusion in Transnational Popular Musics David Hesmondhalgh and Georgina Born / 21 IV. Music and the Representation/Articulation of Sociocultural Identities Georgina Born / 31 V. Techniques of the Musical Imaginary Georgina Born / 37 1. Musical Belongings: Western Music and Its Low-Other Richard Middleton / 59 2. Race, Orientalism, and Distinction in the Wake of the “Yellow Peril” Jann Pasler / 86 3. Bartók, the Gypsies, and Hybridity in Music Julie Brown / 119 4. Modernism, Deception, and Musical Others: Los Angeles circa 1940 Peter Franklin / 143 5. Experimental Oriental: New Music and Other Others John Corbett / 163 6. Composing the Cantorate: Westernizing Europe’s Other Within Philip V. Bohlman / 187 viii CONTENTS 7. East, West, and Arabesk Martin Stokes / 213 8. Scoring the Indian: Music in the Liberal Western Claudia Gorbman / 234 9. The Poetics and Politics of Pygmy Pop Steven Feld / 254 10. International Times: Fusions, Exoticism, and Antiracism in Electronic Dance Music David Hesmondhalgh / 280 11. The Discourse of World Music Simon Frith / 305 contributors / 323 index / 327 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book has had a long genesis. The initial ideas came from two direc- tions: from thoughts Georgina Born developed while writing a Ph.D. and an earlier book on music; and from a timely conference, called “The Debt to ‘Other’ Musics,” held in July 1990 jointly by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland with the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. We would like to thank Jonathan Benthall, Michael Chanan and Judith Squires for organizing the conference which, as far as we know, was the first ever held on these themes; and Ragnar Farr and Helena Reckitt of the ICA for their early help in developing a book project following the conference. Our authors have had to exercise enormous patience, since obstacle af- ter obstacle arose to delay progress toward publication, always for unavoid- able human and professional reasons. We want to express our heartfelt thanks to all the contributors for sticking with it, as well as for their creative and se- rious engagement with the book’s themes. We hope they find the end prod- uct worth all the waiting. We thank also those who gave feedback on aspects of the manuscript. They include John Butt, Aaron Fox, Ralph P. Locke, Do- minic Moran, Ato Quayson, Michael Stewart, Will Straw, Daniel Thompson, and three anonymous reviewers. Needless to say, they are not responsible for any errors or misjudgments that remain. Thanks too to Jan Spauschus Johnson at the University of California Press for all her hard work; Evan Camfield for his extremely skillful copyediting; and Lynne Withey for shep- herding the project. I want to thank Dave Hesmondhalgh for coming on board and helping to shape this book so well; his contributions have been essential for its com- ix x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS pletion. I was fortunate to be the Senior Research Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge in 1997–98, for which I am grateful to the Provost, Professor Pat Bateson, and the Fellows of the College. Between 1996 and 1998 I also held the Visiting Professorship at the Institute of Musicology of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, for which I thank my friend and colleague Steen Neilsen. Both situations provided me with the mental space in which my work on this book was brought to fruition. The ideas have been presented over the years in seminars for the University of London Intercollegiate Anthropology sem- inar, Magdalen College, Oxford, the Queen’s University, Belfast, and at the departments of Music or Anthropology of the University of Ottawa, the Uni- versity of Rochester, New York University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. My thinking in this area was stimulated by the teaching of Mike Gilsenan, to whom I remain grateful, and very early on, Richard Middleton kindly gave me useful criticisms. The interest of my colleagues Philip Bohlman, Jonathan Burston, Steve Feld, Simon Frith, Antoine Hennion, George Lewis, Ralph P. Locke, Colin MacCabe, George Marcus, Martin Stokes, Marilyn Strathern, and Janet Wolff has provided me with the confidence to pursue these concerns, and— even though some of them may not admire this effort—I offer my gratitude. For his support, for refusing to limit life to academia, and for his wonderful dancing, I thank my partner Andrew Barry—whose musical tastes are way ahead of mine. On a very different note, just twenty-four hours after I com- pleted work on this manuscript I was woken to the awful news that my beloved stepfather, George Mully, had died suddenly and unexpectedly. My pleasure in this book is thus tied inextricably with a sense of loss. George lived ac- cording to strong progressive convictions and was exceptionally talented, as a father and an artist (opera and theater director, filmmaker, writer, trans- lator). As a child, I watched him produce and direct chamber opera and the- ater, and it left me with a lifelong interest in analyzing authorship and cul- tural production. This book, which Dave and I intended to dedicate to our children, is now dedicated also to his memory. Georgina Born Many people provided me with practical and emotional assistance during the period in which this book was being prepared. I would like to thank the following groups of friends in particular: colleagues and students at Gold- smiths College and at Coventry University; various members of the Inter- national Association for the Study of Popular Music for providing times and places in which musical culture can be discussed seriously and enjoyably; and the Accrington-Amsterdam posse for wonderful holidays away and for revi- talization closer to home. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi Thanks also to the following friends and colleagues for comments on and conversations about this book and/or about my chapter in it: Les Back, Bill Brewer, Patrick Costello, Nick Couldry, Kev Grant, Dai Griffiths, Arun Kund- nani, Lorraine Leu, Caspar Melville, Richard Middleton, Jim Osborne, Kate Osborne, Sara Salih, Nilly Sarkar, Simon Underwood, and Tim Ward. Jim Osborne was a good friend, a music lover and nonacademic intellectual who saw academic work as a resource, not a threat. I shall miss him enormously and my chapter in this book is dedicated to his memory. My special thanks to: Georgie Born for inviting me to participate in this project and for her generous, detailed comments on much of my work; Pete Playdon for help in preparing the manuscript; Teresa Gowan, Dave Swann, Steve Swann, and Graham Caveny for understanding, in various ways, how strange it is to have come from there and to get to here; and Jonathan Burston and Jason Toynbee for acts of rescue and intellectual stimulation inside the workplace and out. Most of all, thanks to Mum and Dad for everything they have done for me over the years; to Ernie and Cathy Steward; to Julie Hes- mondhalgh, who is a star; to Rosa Hesmondhalgh, who will be one, I think; and to Helen Steward, who is just incredible. Finally, welcome to Joe, who was born just in time—a few days before this manuscript was dispatched to the publishers. David Hesmondhalgh Introduction: On Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh The music of Asia and India is to be admired because it has reached a stage of perfec- tion, and it is this stage of perfection that interests me. But otherwise the music is dead. pierre boulez The least interesting form of influence, to my mind, is that of imitating the sound of some non-Western music. Instead of imitation, the influences of non-Western mu- sical structures on the thinking of a Western composer is likely to produce something genuinely new. steve reich I got interested in world music as a failed drummer; I was able to look for fresher rhythms. It just seemed fresh, wonderful, more live and spiritual than most pop. peter gabriel The study of world musics moved out of what would nowadays be called an Orien- talist stance only in the 1960s. Till then, few people seriously questioned the notion that beyond the Western classical tradition there were three kinds of music to be stud- ied: Oriental, folk, and primitive. “Oriental” of course referred to those Asian “high cultures” that had long-term, accessible internal histories and that could be “compared” with similar European systems.