W&M ScholarWorks Arts & Sciences Articles Arts and Sciences Spring 2015 On Flogging the Dead Horse, Again: Historicity, Genealogy, and Objectivity in Richard Waterman's Approach to Music Michael Iyanaga William & Mary Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/aspubs Part of the Ethnomusicology Commons, and the Latin American Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Iyanaga, Michael, On Flogging the Dead Horse, Again: Historicity, Genealogy, and Objectivity in Richard Waterman's Approach to Music (2015). Ethnomusicology, 59(2). https://scholarworks.wm.edu/aspubs/1884 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts and Sciences at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Articles by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. On Flogging the Dead Horse, Again: Historicity, Genealogy, and Objectivity in Richard Waterman's Approach to Music Author(s): Michael Iyanaga Source: Ethnomusicology , Vol. 59, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2015), pp. 173-201 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/ethnomusicology.59.2.0173 REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/ethnomusicology.59.2.0173?seq=1&cid=pdf- reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Illinois Press and Society for Ethnomusicology are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethnomusicology This content downloaded from 128.239.99.140 on Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:04:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Vol. 59, No. 2 Ethnomusicology Spring/Summer 2015 On Flogging the Dead Horse, Again: Historicity, Genealogy, and Objectivity in Richard Waterman’s Approach to Music Michael Iyanaga / The College of William and Mary Abstract. In a critical appraisal and expansion of the historical methodology championed by ethnomusicologist and anthropologist Richard Waterman, this essay reconsiders the historicity of musical performance and demonstrates ways in which treating ethnography genealogically may serve as a means of doing what Thomas Solomon calls “postcolonial music history.” This essay is broadly divided into three parts: a review of Waterman’s work, a theoretical revamping and an abbreviated case study taken from my own research on Catholic patron saint rituals in Bahia, Brazil. Resumo. Através da avaliação e ampliação críticas da metodologia histórica difundida pelo etnomusicólogo e antropólogo Richard Waterman, este trabalho reconsidera a historicidade da performance musical e busca demonstrar como o tratar genealógico da etnografia pode servir para a construção daquilo que Thomas Solomon chama de “história pós-colonial da música.” O presente tra- balho é divido em três partes: a apresentação da obra de Waterman, a reformu- lação teórica desta e um abreviado estudo de caso oriundo de minha pesquisa sobre os rituais realizados para os santos católicos padroeiros na Bahia (Brasil). n 1963 Richard Waterman published an article in Ethnomusicology entitled I“On Flogging a Dead Horse: Lessons Learned from the Africanisms Contro- versy.” It was a concise reflection on twenty years of arguing that African musical style survived in the New World by way of musical “Africanisms.” According to Waterman, the article’s “inelegant title” referred to his “initial feeling of distaste” in having to revisit the topic (R. Waterman 1963:83). The “horse” in the article’s © 2015 by the Society for Ethnomusicology This content downloaded from 128.239.99.140 on Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:04:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ETM 59_2 text.indd 173 4/3/15 11:34 AM 174 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 2015 title was a metaphor for the controversy over whether or not African history and social patterns remained in African-American New World cultures. Some scholars, including Waterman and his colleagues, believed African cultural forms continued to thrive in the Americas while others argued that African Americans had been stripped entirely of any African heritage (see Palmié 2013). As the title of his 1963 article indicates, Waterman felt the controversy was not only dead but that it had been won by his side. So why flog this horse again, more than half a century later? Simply put, I believe Waterman’s horse is, to borrow Lévi-Strauss’s well-known interpretation of totemism, “good to think” (Lévi-Strauss 1963:89). In his work on the African Diaspora, Waterman argued that contemporary African-American musical performances were living proof—“survivals”—of West African cultural heritage even if the performers did not themselves recog- nize the legacy they bore. Waterman “flogged the horse,” so to speak, primarily by drawing historical conclusions from analyses of the musical present. Although this approach was replete with epistemological and methodological flaws, it nevertheless offers insights regarding the historicity of musical performance and thus helps lay the groundwork for a genealogical approach that foregrounds ethnography as a methodological step in what ethnomusicologist Thomas Solo- mon calls “postcolonial music history” (2012:225). Still, the present essay should not be read as a methodological roadmap. And irrespective of what might be gleaned from its title, this essay also offers little commentary on the “horse” itself (that is, the Africanisms controversy), which, if indeed dead by 1963, was shortly thereafter resuscitated and has been repeatedly “mounted” (as it were) ever since (e.g., Lovejoy 1997; Palmié 2013; Parés 2005). Instead, my goal is to reread and critique Waterman’s work while also expanding his approach, to address how his understanding of historical objectivity might pertain to contemporary ethnomusicology, particularly as our discipline grows increasingly interested in “historical ethnomusicology” (e.g., McCollum and Hebert 2014).1 Finally, although I conclude the essay by offering an abbreviated case study taken from my own research on Catholic patron saint rituals in Bahia, Brazil,2 the bulk of this text is a critical analysis—rather than a practical application—of Waterman’s work. Richard Alan Waterman (1914–1971): Some Biographical Notes In 1943, Richard Alan Waterman (see Figure 1, below) received a PhD in an- thropology from Northwestern University, where he later went on to teach and help establish, in 1944, the Laboratory of Comparative Musicology, of which he also served as director. Over the course of his three-decade career, Waterman published on the musical (and non-musical) aspects of culture in a great number of geographical areas, ranging from North and South America to Africa, Asia, This content downloaded from 128.239.99.140 on Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:04:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ETM 59_2 text.indd 174 4/3/15 11:34 AM Iyanaga: On Flogging the Dead Horse, Again 175 Figure 1: Richard Waterman at the University of South Florida, 1971. Photo, courtesy of Chris- topher Waterman. and Australia.3 No doubt his most meaningful legacy, however, remains his work on musical “Africanisms,” and specifically African rhythm, in New World “Negro music” (R. Waterman 1943, 1948, 1952, 1963). As was customary for ethnomusicologists of his generation, Waterman did not write in-depth ethnographic accounts about the music he studied. Rather, his most significant publications about New World musics were comparative “laboratory” studies based primarily on data from secondary sources, sound recordings, and his own experience as a musician (R. Waterman 1948, 1952).4 This is not to suggest that Waterman conducted no fieldwork in the Americas (see Figure 2, below), but several weeks making field recordings in Puerto Rico (1946) and Cuba (1946 and 1948) coupled with some time spent studying jazz and gospel music in US cities (Merriam and Gillis 1973:85), hardly constituted the kind of extensive fieldwork needed for a deep ethnographic study, even by the less demanding standards of the period.5 Waterman certainly pioneered a method of systematically and compre- hensively studying Africanisms in American musics, but he was not the first This content downloaded from 128.239.99.140 on Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:04:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ETM 59_2 text.indd 175 4/3/15 11:34 AM 176 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 2015 Figure 2: Richard Waterman with Berta Montero in Havana, c. 1948. The Spanish- language headline above the photograph reads, “They study the African influence in Cuban music.” Photo of unknown newspaper clipping, courtesy of Christopher Waterman. to take an interest in the subject. An important early study was Erich M. von Hornbostel’s (1926) “American Negro Songs.”6 In his article, the Austrian com- parative musicologist argued that African and African-American musics were rhythmically, melodically, and harmonically distinct, sharing only a common “way” of singing.7 Believing the connection to be much more profound, Water- man devoted a large portion of his dissertation’s literature review to a painstaking This content downloaded from 128.239.99.140 on Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:04:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ETM 59_2 text.indd 176 4/3/15 11:34 AM Iyanaga: On Flogging the Dead Horse, Again 177 deconstruction of each aspect of Hornbostel’s argument, while also leveling cri- tiques against other scholars who, Waterman felt, did little more than reproduce Hornbostel’s erroneous interpretations.