Introduction
Review: Towards A Humanizing Ethnomusicology
David Bower
Kenneth A. Gourlay's thinking in his article "Towards A Humanizing Ethnomusicology" came to me as a breath of fresh air. It is through this article that light is shed upon Gourlay's article of four years prior, "Towards a Reassessment of the Ethnomusicologists Role in Research." Gourlay's ideas in both articles challenge not only the field of ethnomusicology, but all of modern music scholarship to discern a framework within which meaning can be assigned to the scholarly pursuits to which academics devote entire lifetimes. Quite different from the "scientific-reductionist-empiricist-objective approach," a humanizing ethnomusicology stresses the "active, positive, reciprocal, creative aspects of an ethnomusicological dialectic." In this essay I will discuss several of the points in Gourlay's article "Toward a Reassessment of the Ethnomusicologists Role in Research" in light of Gourlay 1982, Keil 1982 and Turino 1990.
Gourlay's later ideas in his 1982 article, "Toward a Humanizing Ethnomusicology," touch on an issue integral not just to ethnomusicology, but to the future of the human race. Gourlay's rephrasal of Stanley Diamond's sentence captures the essence of what follows in his article,
"Ethnomusicology is the study of persons in crises by persons in crises."
As Gourlay states, the aim of a humanizing ethnomusicology is to turn persons into men and women and thus eliminate crises. Understanding the humanist side of Gourlay is very important to understanding his approach to research in his 1978 article. The approach Gourlay proposes is of an ethnomusicologist who, instead of resembling a superhumanly objective and omniscient figure, is integral to the ethnomusicological field study through the human and sometimes subjective qualities of the individual. Gourlay looks to Seeger, Chase, Herndon, Fogelson, Blum and Wachsmann for the development of his model. The article is structured into three major divisions: "The Missing Ethnomusicologist", "The Return of the Ethnomusicologist", and "Aspects of a Dialectical Approach."
Structure of the Article
Gourlay opens his essay with attention to the constraints imposed upon the field worker ranging from personal (deafness, lack of perfect pitch) to situational (economics, lack of research funds), to universal limitations. He uses this third category, universal limitations, as a springboard into the main body of the article in which he examines the ideologies which each ethnomusicologist carries into the field and which influence concepts held about the aims and methods of the discipline.
Gourlay makes a very important point about the role of the ethnomusicologist as being held above "science." He states:
It is not "science" which "begins with observation and experimentation," etc. but the scientist; not "ethnomusicology" which "aims to approximate the methods of the scientist," but the ethnomusicologist .
Given the complexities of field research within cultures, the understanding of which is often beyond the scope of understanding of our Western scholars, Gourlay's point is an important one. A single larger framework, or abstract model, put forth by Merriam and others, often does not anticipate nor meet the needs of the unexpected found by the field worker. It is indeed the ethnomusicologist who must meet the challenges of the field and not a constraining single set of rules we would call the science of ethnomusicology. Rather, an openness to a variety of approaches and innovations would seem indicated on the part of the ethnomusicologist in field work. Indeed Gourlay cites Goldmann's starting point for research in the human sciences which is the assumption that man cannot be eliminated and must be included in any theory for it to produce genuinely scientific results.
There are some rather important issues raised here, including that of whether methodologies from other sciences should be imported to ethnomusicology based on their high rate of success. I think that it is essential to realize first of all, that when considering a field that involves human social and behavioral elements at many different levels, it is not possible to classify elements of a study in the same way that a chemist can predict the way two elements will react when combined. Secondly, music is an art form, not a predictable science. Although the intentions of ethnomusicology are to study music in a cultural context, and therefore are more "scientific" in nature than historical musicology which makes certain aesthetic assessments of what is to be preserved and studied, ethnomusicology is not a hard science, but a human science and therefore cannot conform to rules, which outside of their intended context, become extraneous.
In the third and final section of his article, Gourlay addresses aspects of a dialectical approach. He begins this with a delineation of three parts of the ethnomusicological process, now modified in recognition of the ethnomusicologist as non-eliminable: A Preparatory Period, The Research Process, and The Presentation Process. A summation of his general idea in this section is seen in the following;
The crux of the matter, however, is that while, in constructing this model, "I" as the ethnomusicologist, must remain outside it, in operating the model, "I" must both enter it and retain my independence in order to see if it works.
This portion of Gourlay's paper proposes some answers to some very important ethnomusicological issues. As ethnomusicologists there seems to be a problem in discovering questions not asked because the learning process we have known precludes their formation. As an example Gourlay cites the phenomenon of praise-singing in West Africa. The scholar with the pre-conceived notion of music as "art" may be offended by the strong reliance of this music on monetary rewards and may be likely to not pursue further study. This is a good example of how our socialization can get in the way of ethnomusicological study.
The Humanizing Approach: Culture in Context
Thomas Turino presents an example of the necessity of understanding culture in a context with his article "Structure, Context, and Strategy in Musical Ethnography." He sheds light on one of the central concerns in the social sciences during the 1980's-- that of coming to grips with the dialectic between social determinations (thought of a structures) and the practice of individuals which make up the structures and are determined by them. Turino's work in the rural Aymara district of Conima in Southern Peru helps to shed light on Gourlay's approach to defining the role of the ethnomusicologist. He states that the elicitation of systems of rules from native informants leads to the construction of an artificial account since, if it is not part of the people's normal discourse, the abstracted rule set must be created in doubly atypical verbalizations with an outsider who is often already implicated within relations of asymmetrical power. Turino cites Bourieu on this:
Native theories are dangerous not so much because they lead research toward illusory explanations as because they bring quite superfluous reinforcement to the intellectualist tendency inherent in the objectivist approach to practices.
This point is very important to the success of the results of field work in ethnomusicology. How easy it is to formulate conclusions based on the account of a native informant, and indeed this is a prime source for data. Collecting data is different from establishing conclusions, however, and remembering that the native informant may be called upon to use terminology outside of his or her everyday usage is an essential element to successful field data.
Gourlay's stance represents a mind-set far ahead of that in current academic circles of today. His attempts at humanizing ethnomusicology are exemplified in the following excerpt:
This concept of ethnomusicology as a non-critical, non-evaluative (performers' evaluation of their own music is permissible only as part of the "data"), is itself based on a value-judgment to exclude values, and arises historically from a combination of the constraints imposed on ethnomusicologists by musicological, anthropological or linguistic training; music is regarded as patterned sound, as an aspect of behavior, and as a means of communication (or all three in varying proportions), research into which, since its concern is with how things are done rather than with what is done, aims to be "scientific" and to express itself in the "language of science."
Charles Kiel, in his article, "Applied Ethnomusicology and a Rebirth of Music from the Spirit of Tragedy," explores applied ethnomusicology as a unifying factor in finding ways to bring song, dance, poetry, and human rites together. He opens his article:
Trusting my colleague Gourlay to address the broader theoretical questions about ethnomusicology's future, I would like to focus on a needed third area in ethnomusicology beyond research/writing/teaching and the more recently evolved performance-group orientation. I call this third area "applied" because it suggests that our work can make a difference, that it can intersect both the world outside and the university in more challenging and constructive ways.
This idea that ethnomusicology or musicology can make a difference is, I think, quite unusual in the field. If our scholarly efforts are to ever make a difference, it will probably be by people like Keil, Turino and Gourlay. Keil, in particular is to be credited with his efforts to teach students to "reclaim their sociable musical nature" by his use of Afro bell beats, clave rhythms etc. He cites:
Sometimes it seems a bit unfair to be earning a university salary for teaching what some might call a kindergarten rhythm band.
On the contrary. How better to get in touch with what ethnomusicology is setting out to study, than by experiencing the musics and instruments first hand. As a graduate student who must also double as grammar school teacher in the parochial school attached to the church where I direct the music (indeed, I do teach a kindergarten rhythm band), I can only hope to one day offer to college students a way of experiencing not only the hands on experience of which Kiel speaks, but also and understanding that there are greater concerns than those attended to by most musicologists. Keil's idea of reworking that fertile ground where the classics and anthropology of classics meet, seems to me integral to the business of assigning any sort of meaning to what we do as scholars.
The conclusion of my review of Gourlay 1982 is that his human approach to the role of the ethnomusicologist lends itself to not only a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter, but to a broader understanding of where ethnomusicology can fit into a humanizing of our society as a whole.
*****
Were the usual semester time restraints not imparted upon this work, additional exploration into Bourdieu and De Certeau's ideas would illuminate many of these issues far more than I have been able to do here. Particularly Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory and Practice (1977) in which the basic process of socialization , the habitus, is explored.
Bibliography
Goldmann., L. The Human Sciences and Philosophy. London: Jonathan Cape, 1969.
Gourlay, Kenneth A. "Towards a Humanizing Ethnomusicology." Ethnomusicology 26
(1982): 411-420.
Gourlay Kenneth A. "Toward a Reassessment of the Ethnomusicologist's Role in
Research." Ethnomusicology 22 (1978): 1-36.
Keil, Charles. "Applied Ethnomusicology and the Rebirth of Music from the Spirit of
Tragedy." Ethnomusicology 26, (1982): 407-411.
Turino, Thomas. "Structure, Context, and Strategy in Musical Ethnography."
Ethnomusicology, 34 (1990): 399-412.