EM Article
2, May 1994
A Review and Application of the
book The Western Impact on World
Music: Change, Adaptation and
Survival (New York: Schirmer
Books, 1985 by Bruno Nettl).
Todd Saurman
Music is so woven into the fabric of culture that it not only
symbolizes extra musical aspects of a given culture but it also may
symbolize, through change, the interaction and relationship with
other cultures. Bruno Nettl gives a clear presentation of the
complexities of the impact of Western music on world music while
at the same time introducing concepts to help us better understand
the situation. An extensive bibliography is also provided in the
book.
Theoretical considerations are discussed in the first five and
the final three chapters but the remaining thirty-two chapters are
condensed ethnographic vignettes that accentuate the diversity of
music-related responses which other cultures have had to the West
over the last one hundred years. Indeed, diversity is the theme of
this book.
If this essay [book] has a message, it must
surely be that the coming of Western music,
rather than bringing about the homogenization
of world music, has actually helped to make the
twentieth century a period of great musical
diversity. [xiv]
Nettl (xiv).clarifies this statement by admitting that while his
view is optimistic he does not approve of the colonization,
conquest, and exploitation of Third World peoples by Europeans
and North Americans... It should be made clear at this point that
this book focuses more on dominant cultures such as the people of
Iran, South India, Japan, and China than it does on minorities of
oral tradition, with the exception of the American Indians. A
person interested in indigenous minority groups might speculate
that if the more dominant cultures have been as strongly impacted
by Western culture as this book suggests, then surely one cannot be
so optimistic about the outcome of the dominated groups.
Nettl, too, is quick to update the reader regarding the
relatively recent Western ideas that (1) much contact between
cultures had occurred long before the industrial revolution and that
(2) it is more helpful to examine the process of change than to
examine a culture as if it were static.
While Nettl presents a very complex picture of music and the
issue of culture change, he also admits that the picture is vastly
more complex. In an effort to pull all components of the picture of
music and culture change into one coherent whole, I have devised
two figures. Each figure takes the ideas and concepts presented in
the book and brings them together into one place. In the next
section, I will explain each figure and present suggestions for the
use of each figure in our work.
EM News, Vol. 3, No.
Cultural Components of Music
Figure 1 (entitled Cultural Components of Music) attempts
to show that music is much more than a system of sounds. In fact,
it is Western culture that uniquely separates the sound of music
from other aspects of culture. This phenomenon itself can be seen
in the figure under Conceptualization/Motivation as
dependence of music on other domains. The fact that there are
extracultural aspects of music should not be new to most of us, but
in looking at culture change it is essential that we take into
consideration as many of these aspects as possible.
In Figure 1 I have also noted components that Nettl claims to
be central to Western music as perceived by non-Western cultures.
Labels that appear in bold are related to concepts that stood out to
me as I read the book. I have included some components that I do
not remember being directly referred to by Nettl. I am sure that
each of us might organize such a figure differently, including
components that I may have missed. I would be interested in
receiving your comments and suggestions in this regard. My hope
is that this figure would remind us to ask questions such as:
What are peoples attitudes toward innovation and
change?
How is knowledge transmitted from generation to
generation?
Do people see their music as having international
validity?
How does the culture categorize different music
systems?
How is scholarship viewed?
How is electronic technology used, if it is used?
When comparing two or more cultures in contact I would
suggest making separate figures for each culture including only
those components that are relevant. Obviously a series of figures
would be necessary for each culture to capture the historical
progression. As cultures go through changes it would be expected
that certain components would appear and disappear, affecting
each other. For example, improvisation may disappear as notation
becomes prominent, thus causing a shift to precision being more
valued. Other factors would also become apparent from a
historical comparison which I have displayed in the second figure.
Influential and Resultant Factors in Culture Contact and
Change
Figure 2 is entitled Influential and Resultant Factors in
Culture Contact and Change. There is definitely some overlap
between the two figures in that certain cultural components of
music influence the results of contact and factors that influence
change could be considered cultural components of music. As
influenced by Nettl I have extracted the core factors that seem to
most determine the process of culture change and I have put them
in this second figure. The general question of Who? was my
addition. The remaining questions were strongly emphasized by
Nettl. I think of this figure as a computer in which one would feed
in, at the top, all of the relevant cultural components of music from
the cultures in contact.
In looking at a particular culture, the computer asks, Who are
we talking about? and What is their status? People are not the
same in every culture. Consequently, their responses to contact
with other cultures are not all the same. Throughout the vignettes
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in the book, one can see the influence of economic, political,
educational, social, religious, and/or musical status as an essential
element in examining culture change. There are also questions of
young or old, urban or rural, male or female, insider or outsider,
and the degree of influence each person or group has in a particular
situation.
At the same time that the computer asks who we are talking
about and what cultural components of music are involved, it
needs to be asking what components are seen as central within the
donor culture and what components are perceived to be central in
the receptor culture. A related question would be, What is the
attitude of the person(s) in question toward their own culture in
comparison to their attitude toward the receptor culture? I
honestly could not think of a way to include attitude in the figure,
but it also was not directly emphasized by Nettl. I will come back
to this point in the concluding remarks.
Next the computer needs to ask which of the central
components are compatible or incompatible. Actually the answer
to this question will probably not be apparent to an outsider and
thus each of the two cultures may interpret compatibility
differently. It might be easier to see what the people perceive as
compatible after examining the response. In the theoretical
chapters Nettl compares and integrates classifications of responses
from Wachsmann, Blacking, Merriam, Kartomi, Shiloah and
Cohen, and his own earlier writings.
There are several illustrations of responses where central
components are shown to be compatible. The change of accepting
radio, amplification, recording concert format, and Western style
scholarship can actually provide stability for the system of sound.
Such cases are seen in illustrations of South India and the
American Indians.
A response of consolidation of music systems is said by Nettl
to be found among various Plains Indians. However, it should not
be assumed that all Plains Indians share a common music system
even to this day.
A syncretism of music systems is reported to exist between
African and Western music. While this coelescence is evident on
both sides we should not assume that it is true of all African music
systems anymore than we can say that all Westerners accept
African beats as compatible with Western music.
When central components are incompatible, there is a wide
spectrum of responses illustrated by Nettl. There is virtual
abandonment of ethnic music among Australian Aboriginal urban
migrants. There is a form of artificial preservation in Japan. In the
Japanese illustration music is kept as artifact and the actual process
of composition in a particular style may be lost. There is an
exaggeration of one or more components of music as seen in the
importance of vocal timbre of the American Indians.
Conclusions
I have over simplified here what Nettle already admits is his
oversimplification and so I would highly recommend not just
seeing the movie but also reading the book. Nettl makes his
point well that the impact of Western culture has not diminished
the diversity that can be found but the harsh realities of culture
change, especially among indigenous minority groups, temper the
optimism that comes from discovering greater diversity. Even
Nettls concluding remark reflects his own tempered view of other
cultures response to Western influence:
...each [culture] has tried, sometimes at great
cost, to retain some significant degree of musical
identity; and...each has found ways to symbolize, in
its music, the positive, negative, and ambiguous
aspects of its relationship to European-derived
lifeways and values. [165]
In reading Nettls book I had a real sense that he was trying to
communicate the importance of the relationship between
individuals in different cultures. The element of relationship
becomes filtered out in my figures but should by no means be
forgotten. It is, after all, the nature of the relationship that helps
form the attitudes that people in a given culture have about
themselves and others. Consider the following illustration from
this book:
William Shakespear, an Arapaho Indian living for
the first seven decades of this century on the Wind River
Reservation in Wyoming, spent his early and middle
years learning much of the culture of his people. This
included some very old traditional ceremonial songs but,
to a larger extent, the recently developed songs of the
pan-Indian Movement that one would hear at powwows.
His main religious involvement was in the Peyote cult of
recent vintage, whose distinctive songs he learned by the
dozen and also composed. In 1950, he was sought out to
serve as a professional consultant by a midwestern
university holding a summer-long institute in linguistics
and needing his help in research on the Arapaho
language. There he also met a student of
ethnomusicology who asked him to sing all of the songs
he knew, and to tell what he could of his musical culture.
He made important contributions to the understanding of
the Arapaho language, patiently dictated texts, and
helped develop methods for their analysis and for the
explication of the musical culture. But in doing this he
also came to realize that there was much about his own
culture that he did not know, and he began to read the
accounts of anthropologists such as A.L. Kroeber who
had worked with his people around the turn of the
twentieth century. He became an enthusiastic scholar in
the Western sense, taking books out of the library and
making interlibrary loan requests. He returned home to
Wyoming a changed person. He made a project of
teaching his people the traditional culture, as he knew it
and was able to learn it from books and older people. He
taught songs, and in various ways revived what had been
considered lost, and for this he became revered among
his people. Shakespear used the tools of Western
scholarship and the white Americans interest in
Arapaho culture to foster revival of older tribal tradition
among his people. Indeed, it was the white mans
interest that made him go back beyond pan-Indian songs
and Peyote ceremonies to seek them out. [pp 108-109]
In all we do, we should never forget that our lives are linked
with those of the people with whom we live and work. We can
learn from people as much as they can learn from us. Let us
remember this as we do the task appointed us.
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