Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Rice Timothy

Author:Rice, Timothy [Rice, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2013-11-27T22:00:00+00:00

Music teaching and learning

John Blacking believed that music was a fundamental attribute of human nature, as important to us as speech and language. He based this claim on his study of the Venda people of South Africa, a supposedly egalitarian society. Among the Venda all people learned to be musical (to sing, to play panpipes, to dance, or to participate through hand-clapping and other gestures) just as they all learned language and all the tasks necessary for subsistence. From this Blacking concluded that economic stratification and specialization of labor in larger societies led to the creation of classes of specialist and professional musicians, and a corresponding de-musicalization of the majority of the population, a loss of capacity caused by capitalist economies, one that diminishes the quality of human existence.

The question, Blacking believed, of who gets to learn music and how widely or narrowly it is distributed in a particular culture is one with important moral implications. Beyond egalitarian societies like the Venda, music is available for everyone to learn where children’s music is an important childhood activity; where it is a required part of initiation into adulthood; or where it is an obligatory feature of adult socializing. In Flathead Indian society in the United States, for example, Merriam found that all men must learn a powerful song during their adolescent “vision quest.” After days of nutritional and sleep deprivation in the wilderness, a spirit, in the form of an animal singing a song, approaches the man. As the animal gets closer, the song becomes clearer to the vision-seeker, who learns it and uses it throughout his life for good luck in many circumstances. Every man must learn and be able to sing such a song to be successful in life, love, and gambling.

In societies where music is available for all to learn, especially all with enough money to pay for music lessons or who are born into the right social circumstances, the observed unequal distribution of skill, ability, and interest in music is often attributed to talent. Euro-American culture provides an archetypal example of this view. If talent is not invoked to explain the unequal distribution of musical skill in a society, it is often attributed to the availability of musical experiences in childhood or a kind of genetic inheritance: “it is in the blood.” Often musical families provide ideal learning contexts for music, and thus they tend to perpetuate themselves and the traditions they embrace. In the United States famous musical families include the Seegers, the Guthries, the Carters, and the Jacksons; the Copper family in England; and the Bachs and Mozarts in Central Europe.

Learning music, especially new songs, is attributed, in some cases, to supernatural contact and dreams. In what seems to be a more widespread practice than among the Flathead, only certain individuals, called in some cases shamans, have the capacity to learn songs from supernatural sources. They become either the sole performers of such powerful music, or they teach others in society the songs they learn in dreams or ritualized moments of contact.

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