What are our approaches to analyzing such a diverse repertoire?
This project aims to coordinate the approaches of two musical scholarly disciplines that have often been seen as complementary or even contradictory. Ethnomusicology researches the range of human musical experience in all its diversity, while music theory, as it widens its scope to consider that range, seeks consistent tools and language to characterize the experiences. Ethnomusicologists aspire to faithfully portray musical traditions of many kinds and minimize intervening too much with their own assumptions and beliefs. Meanwhile theorists aim to faithfully describe their own hard-won perceptions and insights, and not presume to speak for others. Our team of researchers from both fields aims for a confluence of these two stances through careful listening to and transcription of recordings, fieldwork, and integration of music-makers’ perspectives and published research. Our project is comparative, not an assertion of any universal practices or principles.
For a dimensional understanding of a music not one’s own, being able to listen as if with the ears of someone within the culture is of great value but this is not always achievable to sufficient depth. This is compellingly the case when circumstances force our hand. We have a century’s worth of field recordings of musics many of which are gone, strongly altered through culture contact, or inaccessible today without creating potentially destructive footprints. But we still seek insight into the distinctive kinds of embodied and participatory experiences they offer, to the extent recordings can teach us. Aided by enhanced transcription tools and theories of cognition we strive to find constructive workarounds for direct encounters with the musicians that lead to interesting —if always provisional—insights.
Yet we continually interrogate the ethics of our positions. There is always the question of who but the music makers themselves has the authority to hold forth, write, and teach about music. Concerned voices of musicians and listeners of all stripes discussing the musics of the world are already in the mix on the internet and other media, and academic researchers join the chorus. All kinds of people are listening to all kinds of music from all over, all the time, so what special responsibilities do academics have to the communities whose music they write and teach about, as well as to their students and colleagues? The question is a thread running through the thinking behind our work. One wishes to do no harm, but academia is said to be a powerful perch capable of shaping beliefs and ideas, in some cases muting, and in other cases beneficially promoting, the views and perspectives of different kinds of people. The risks of misrepresentation or disrespect are always there and so, therefore, is the need to proceed carefully and mindfully. It is not a problem that can be resolved—only perpetually renegotiated. [Michael Tenzer]