Ethno-Composition Concepts

September 20, 2024 by JolinJiang Notes

Allegoresis

“Jeff Titon (1988), … refers to as “allegoresis” – the interpretation of life events in terms of broad cultural patterns, belief systems, or community values. This process of allegoresis allows individual memory, through public performance, to become a means of articulating shared beliefs, values, and meanings in the remembered events of everyday life.”

Ruskin, J. D., & Rice, T. (2012). The Individual in Musical Ethnography. Ethnomusicology, 56(2), 299–327. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.56.2.0299

Titon, Jeff Todd. 1988. Powerhouse for God: Speech, Chant, and Song in an Appalachian Baptist Church. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Composers & Innovators Studied by Ethnomusicologists

“As in historical musicology, ethnomusicologists tend to view innovators as agents who move the history of a style down the temporal road… When ethnomusicologists do treat innovators, they tend to look not at lives and works, but rather at the unusually effective or creative ways in which these musicians responded to their changing social and historical circumstances.”

Ruskin, J. D., & Rice, T. (2012). The Individual in Musical Ethnography. Ethnomusicology, 56(2), 299–327. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.56.2.0299

Culture

Ortner, Sherry B. 1984. “Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 26(1):126–66

——. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Exigencies

meaning: an urgent demand or need of

Example: “the practical exigencies of fieldwork”

Hagiography

Much of what I had read in Chinese showed signs of hagiography. Biographical writing in China, especially in the premodern period, was concerned with “the recording of exemplary lives” (Moloughney 1992:1), “essentially commemorative, born from a desire to provide a record of the deceased’s achievements and personality for his surviving descendants, relatives, associates” (Twitchett 1976:186). Assessing a life or improving upon it in ways that give the subject the halo of a saint is also found in Western biographies. As Samuel Johnson reminds us, “in lapidary inscriptions, a man is not upon oath” (Howell 1995:6). The focus here is not to examine biographical writing in traditional China or the many changes in writing biographies since the early twentieth century, but to provide a sketch of Yang Yinliu’s life, looking at the many roles he inhabited in the context of the intellectual and social traditions of his time.

Howell, P. A. 1995. “One Hundred Years After: Reassessing Lives from The New Dictionary of National Biography.” Voices (Quarterly Journal of the National Library of Australia) 5(3):6.

Peter Micic. Gathering a Nation’s Music: A Life of Yang Yinliu. pp.91-116 from Rees, H. (2009). Lives in Chinese music. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Moloughney, Brian. 1992. “Biographical History to Historical Biography: A Transformation in Chinese History Writing.” East Asian History 4:1–30.

Individual and Communities

On one hand, the name of the discipline [ethnomusicology], whose roots include the Greek word for nation, race, or tribe (ethnos), suggests that it will focus on the study of groups of people, not on individuals. In fact, ethnomusicologists have tended to follow the path implied by the discipline’s name by studying

the role, meaning, and practice of music within social groups and communities defined by geography (the music of Japan),
ethnic or kinship group (African American music),
institutions (music in the national conservatory of Uzbekistan), or
genre-affinity groups (performers and fans of flamenco).

These communities are assumed to share social behaviors and cultural concepts with respect to music, and the object is to understand how musical performance, composition, creativity, and musical works themselves are expressions of and contribute to these shared behaviors and concepts; music, in other words, is viewed as part of a social and cultural system.

On the other hand, at least four factors pull ethnomusicologists toward the study of individual musicians.

First, when conducting fieldwork, they work with and rely on individual musicians who are sometimes—but not always—among the most exceptional individuals in a given musical community.
Second, as communities under the pressures of globalization and political instability fragment and “deterritorialize,” as Arjun Appardurai (1990, 1991) put it, ethnomusicologists have been drawn to the study of individual musicians who are trying to make sense of collapsing worlds, create new individual identities, and knit themselves into emerging or newly encountered social formations.
Third, ethnomusicologists belong to a subculture that values the exceptional and valorizes individual achievement.
Fourth, interventions in theory and method over the last quarter century have led ethnomusicologists to highlight individual agency and difference, and acknowledge their own roles in the musical communities they study.

Ruskin, J. D., & Rice, T. (2012). The Individual in Musical Ethnography. Ethnomusicology, 56(2), 299–327. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.56.2.0299

Interculturality

“interculturality”… currently… refers to the relations that exist within society between diverse majority and minority constellations that are defined in terms not only of culture but also of ethnicity, language, religious denomination, and/or nationality…

in some societies interculturality is used with reference to migration-induced diversity, whereas in other societies the same notion is applied to indigenous–settler interactions.

In broad terms, interculturality is defined and classified in anthropological and social science literature according to three different but complementary semantical axes:

(1) the distinction between interculturality as a descriptive rather than as a prescriptive concept;

(2) the underlying, implicit assumption of a static versus a dynamic notion of culture; and

(3) the rather functionalist application of the concept of interculturality for analyzing the status quo of a given society versus its critical and emancipatory application for identifying inherent conflicts and sources of societal transformations.

Dietz, G. (2018). Interculturality. In The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology (pp. 1–19). Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1629

Musical Ethnography

“For this study we define … musical ethnography as … that (1) asks and answers questions about the meaning and function of music in culture and society, and (2) is based on fieldwork as an indispensable research method. (Of course, … may also include other methods such as extensive musical analysis and the use of historical sources.)”

Ruskin, J. D., & Rice, T. (2012). The Individual in Musical Ethnography. Ethnomusicology, 56(2), 299–327. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.56.2.0299

Polyvocality

The use of multiple voices as a narrative mode within a text, typically in order to encourage diverse readings rather than to promote a preferred reading.

“The fourth narrative technique used in individual-centered musical ethnography is “polyvocality” (Clifford and Marcus 1986:15). A well-worn idea in anthropological literary criticism, we define it for our purposes as a strategy for incorporating multiple voices into a narrative. It is distinguishable from biography and dialogue in that voices may not be anchored to particular life histories nor presented in the context of specific conversations or interviews. The emphasis is on individual voice, experience, knowledge, and worldview, any of which may or may not contain biographical information. Polyvocality in its realist form incorporates these multiple voices into an overarching monologic narrative (Monson 1996; Averill 1997). Mark Slobin (1989), in his ethnography of the American Jewish cantorate, chooses this strategy thoughtfully. He writes that he was interested in a “bottom-up” approach, a presentation of the “story” of the hazzanim as a “counterpoint of overlapping, sometimes dissonant voices” (ibid.:xi). He approaches the book as a “sourcebook”—an oral history of sorts that allows readers room to hear his informants voices, “enter their world,” and form their own interpretations (ibid.:xii). He chose not to contextualize or identify the voices beyond general characteristics (e.g., male, female), because he felt that, in the absence of clearly defined patterns of relationships, it would confuse rather than clarify matters to provide biographical details on all of the speakers, and be too cumbersome to do so with such a large sample.

If realist polyvocality is a strategy for incorporating multiple voices into an otherwise monologic narrative, surrealist polyvocality treats the play and po- lyphony of voices as constitutive of the narrative itself.3 This type of experimental technique is rather rare in musical ethnography (see, for example, Herbst 1997 and Myers 1998). Edward Herbst’s Voices in Bali (1997) is one of the few books using this strategy, and he explicitly rationalizes the use of layered dialogue as an effective way of capturing the author’s research process. The originality of his approach lies in its explicit attention to shifts in voice and perspective, the “ongoing continuum between inner experience and outer forms” (ibid.:xx), often marked in the narrative by changes in textual formatting and layout. What is important for Herbst is not only the incorporation of a variety of voices, but also a reflexive attention to shifts in the ethnographer’s own voice or perspective. The ethnographer, too, speaks with multiple voices—the scholarly voice, the experiential voice, and the conversational voice, among others.”

Ruskin, J. D., & Rice, T. (2012). The Individual in Musical Ethnography. Ethnomusicology, 56(2), 299–327. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.56.2.0299

Structure of Feeling

“Williams first used this concept to characterize the lived experience of the quality of life at a particular time and place. It is, he argued, “as firm and definite as ‘structure’ suggests, yet it operates in the most delicate and least tangible part of our activities.” Later he describes structures of feeling as “social experiences in solution.” Thus a “structure of feeling” is the culture of a particular historical moment, though in developing the concept, Williams wished to avoid idealist notions of a “spirit of the age.” It suggests a common set of perceptions and values shared by a particular generation, and is most clearly articulated in particular and artistic forms and conventions. Each generation lives and produces its own”structure of feeling,” and while particular groups might express this most forcibly, it extends unevenly through the culture as a whole.”

Taylor, Jenny Bourne. “Structure of feeling.” Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory. 2nd ed., edited by Michael Payne and Jessica Rae Barbera, Blackwell Publishing Inc., 2010, p. 670. Available at: https://epdf.tips/a-dictionary-of-cultural-and-critical-theory-second-edition. html

“… an imaginative process whereby individual artists articulate their own experiences as a finely balanced assessment of the real and ideal, of “social reality and social aspiration” (p.316)

Ruskin, J. D., & Rice, T. (2012). The Individual in Musical Ethnography. Ethnomusicology, 56(2), 299–327. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.56.2.0299

Rich Intercultural Music Engagement (RIME)

rich intercultural music engagement (RIME) as a form of intercultural music engagement that includes an embodied, performative component, designed to provide a deeper experience than mere listening, and that results in a nuanced, embodied experience of the culture. RIME brings participants inside another culture, as opposed to observing a cultural practice at “a distance” or at a tokenistic level more akin to music listening rather than embodied music engagement.

Li, M. G., Olsen, K. N., Davidson, J. W., & Thompson, W. F. (2023). Rich Intercultural Music Engagement Enhances Cultural Understanding: The Impact of Learning a Musical Instrument Outside of One’s Lived Experience. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(3), 1919-. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20031919

Texts and Performances

“… the deep study of texts and performances can reveal the personal aspects of cultural forms, as well as the inclination of individual artists to present their experience in social terms.” (p.315)

Ruskin, J. D., & Rice, T. (2012). The Individual in Musical Ethnography. Ethnomusicology, 56(2), 299–327. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.56.2.0299

***

“I use the word “xxx” in as neutral a sense as possible – that is, as [definition]. In doing so, I avoid taking a position on any of the many philosophical debates about the nature of xxx and its relationship to a world, although the authors of some of the studies I cite may do so either implicitly or explicitly.”

Ruskin, J. D., & Rice, T. (2012). The Individual in Musical Ethnography. Ethnomusicology, 56(2), 299–327. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.56.2.0299

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