336 JRME2000,VOLUME48, NUMBER4, PAGES336-359

The distinguished music scholar John Blacking (1928-1990) made the study of
music in culture and the nature of musical thought and behaviorhis lifelong quest.
Although an anthropologistby training and an ethnomusicologistin his academic
output, he produced a vast quantity of publications on the nature of musicality and
musical developmentin the Venda children of northern Transvaal, South Africa.
Thereare multiplepurposes of this research,starting with a profileof the professional
careerofJohn Blacking, from his musical beginnings in England to his South African
odysseyoffieldwork and teaching of music as a social and culturalforce, and final-
ly to his teaching and scholarlycontributionsas an academicpowerhouseand artic-
ulate advocate for the education of children in and through music in the United
Kingdom, the United States, and internationally.An examinationfollows to gauge
the extent ofJohn Blacking'sfieldwork and theoreticalviews relevant to music, edu-
cation, and culture, with particular attention to Blacking's approachto the study of
children as a distinctive musical culture and the nature of their musicality, the cen-
tral role of physical movementand dance as integratedwithin the musical experience,
and the developmentof world musics in educational programs.

Patricia Shehan Campbell, Universityof Washington

How Musical We Are:

John Blacking on Music,
Education, and Cultural
Understanding
John Blacking's quest for the understanding of music in culture-
and music as culture-was a global journey that lasted his lifetime
long His work for the cause of puzzling out the nature of musical
thought and behavior emanated from his central fieldwork among
the Venda of South Africa.1 His interdisciplinary approach bridged
a variety of fields and subjects, including cultural anthropology, eth-
nomusicology, linguistics, psychology, semiotics, and sociology. His

The author would like to express her appreciation to Sir Frank Callaway and Judy
Thonell of the University of Western Australia, Perth, for their support and assistance
during the course of this research. A note of thanks goes also to the American Orff-
Schulwerk Association for their generous funding of the final stage of this project.
Patricia Shehan Campbell is professor of music in the School of Music, University of
Washington, Box 353450, Seattle, Washington, 98195-3450. E-mail: pcamp@u.wash-
ington.edu. Copyright ? 2000 by MENC-The National Association for Music
Education.
 JRME 337

.-

John Blacking about 1965.

ment.of Hisethnochoreology
study (the study of culture-specific~~~~~..

movens
hebod if dnc ad a pysca rsposetomuic O

views on music and its transmission among the young, and on a uni-
versalist approach to the study of the world's musical cultures,
encompassed features
essnc,ntroolgy
for
he
transforming
f ane)andmuics
music education
nexriabe
(and edu-
on
cation through music) in schools and communities and in academic
and applied studies at the university level. His reputation was as "a
leader in academic scholarship and pure research," and he was char-
acterized by his "boundless energy" and his revolutionary stances rel-
evant to music and the manner in which it is transmitted and
acquired.2
While British by birth and an anthropologist by training, Blacking
held theoretical views that are relevant to music educators in various
American and international settings, particularly on matters con-
cerning the understanding of children's music, their learning
processes, and the nature and nurture of musicality in their develop-
ment. His study of ethnochoreology (the study of culture-specific
movments of the body in dance and as physical response to music; in
essence, the anthropology of dance) and music's inextricable con-
nection to dance further substantiates those pedagogical approaches
that feature movement and physical response as central to the devel-
338 CAMPBELL

opment of musical understanding. His advocacy of the study of the

world's cultures was meant for the purpose of knowing the phenom-
enon of music more broadly, but also as a means of knowing by com-
parison one's first musical culture better. Yet there has been minimal
acknowledgment of Blacking's views by music educators in the United
States or in other countries, even though he is one of very few ethno-
musicologists to devote serious attention to education.3 Indeed,
some of the issues that most concern the profession may be better
understood through a thorough review of his contributions.
The intent of this article is to explore the extent ofJohn Blacking's
work as relevant to music, musical education, and cultural under-
standing through music. A comprehensive study of Blacking's contri-
butions is beyond the scope of this paper and will require definitive
research into the multiple facets of his work. This initial review will
pay tribute to Blacking's accomplishments as a musician, scholar, and
teacher and will then extend to a discussion of his contributions to
issues that most relate to the practices of music teachers, including
(a) his position on children's musical culture among the Venda and
his view of music as an emblem of the young as a distinct cultural
group of its own, (b) his analysis of the "musicality complex," includ-
ing the social and cognitive developmental processes of music learn-
ing, (c) his views on the role of physical movement and dance as it
relates to the musical experience, and (d) his all-encompassing and
global view of music. This biographic profile of Blacking will serve the
purpose of validating his views on the enumerated issues by providing
an understanding of their basis in his training and experience.
Blacking's approach to these issues may seem initially to be ethno-
musicological in nature, but the implications of his ideas for music
education philosophy and practice are noteworthy, reinforcing long-
established tenets and at times revealing fresh perspectives on issues
widely held as significant within the profession.
MUSICALBEGINNINGS

From the time of John Blacking's birth in Guildford, Surrey,

England in 1928, music was a constant presence in his life.4 His
father was an ecclesiastical architect and elder in the Anglican
church, as well as an accomplished keyboard player. Blacking was
enrolled in the Salisbury Cathedral Choir School at the age of five,
where he was instructed daily in the English choral and organ tradi-
tions. He played piano and virginal and was enrolled at thirteen in
the Sherborne School, a traditional English boarding school that
emphasized musical studies along with science and the liberal arts.
There he studied harmony, counterpoint, composition, and piano
and played organ in the school chapel. He established the Sherborne
Music Club in 1943 and played the Mozart Coronation Concerto,
K. 537, at the club's first concert. Blacking was drawn to other sub-
jects, too: a prize-winning student of Latin and Greek, he pursued
advanced studies in classics and Roman history, became editor of the
 JRME 339

school magazine, and was involved in tennis, rugby, boxing, and gym-
nastics as well as acting in the school drama productions. Blacking's
earliest musical pursuits were thus prompted by familial encourage-
ment and developed through the provisions of a rich curricular pro-
gram, key components in the making of musical excellence.
Because of Britain's military involvement in the Far East at the
close of World War II, most young men graduating from school
joined the national service before moving into professional careers.
John Blacking was no exception, and in 1947 he was commissioned
as a second lieutenant at the age of nineteen in His Majesty's
Coldstream Guards and assigned to Malaya (now Malaysia). He
became fascinated with the music of the Malay and Orang Asli (abo-
riginal peoples). With passion and verve, he studied the country and
its customs, learned Malay language, and sought out opportunities to
hear the music of the Malayan peoples. Thus began Blacking's first
experience with musics of "the other," beyond the realm of Western
Europe.
During a brief period (1949-50) as a social worker in London's
East Endjust following his Malayan military experience, Blacking was
left disillusioned by the "patch-up" rather than transformative
approach to poverty, ignorance, and intolerance-a concern that was
to surface later in his lectures and addresses to teachers. He entered
King's College, Cambridge, and studied social anthropology under
the guidance of noted scholar Meyer Fortes. Given Blacking's enthu-
siasm for giving numerous piano recitals and performing frequently
in the College's Drama Club, Fortes advised him to combine his stud-
ies in archaeology and social anthropology with music. Just prior to
his final year of study at Cambridge, he spent three months studying
musical ethnology (the term used before the development of "eth-
nomusicology" as a field of study) with Andre Schaeffner at the
Musee de l'Homme in Paris.
Following graduation in 1953, he accepted a civilian position as
adviser on aboriginal affairs in Malaysia. When charged with the
movement of aborigines from their forest homes, which were viewed
by the British as targets for pro-Communist activity, Blacking protest-
ed the action on the basis that the aborigines' resettlement in urban
areas would make them susceptible to deadly European diseases. He
was dismissed from the service for his unwillingness to abide by the
action, but went on to write letters furiously to newspapers in
Singapore and London and to Members of Parliament in Britain. He
stayed on in the region, teaching in a secondary school in Singapore,
composing theatre music, playing piano recitals, engaging in broad-
casting, and preparing an article on the music of the Malayan abo-
riginal peoples.5 His outrage over the injustice of the downtrodden,
the impoverished, and those made to feel inferior through dominant
colonial rule became a theme for his work as an emerging scholar,
social activist, and teacher.
Blacking moved briefly again to Paris, this time to pursue the seri-
ous study of piano with Suzanne Guebel, and then returned to the
340 CAMPBELL

family home in Salisbury to practice in hopes of preparing for a con-

cert career. But his financial affairs were abysmal, and so, when his
mentor Meyer Fortes was able to arrange for Blacking a position as
musicologist with Hugh Tracey, a pioneering collector of music at the
International Library of African Music in South Africa, Blacking post-
poned his plans for a piano career and set sail for Cape Town. There,
under the tutelage of Tracey, a long-time collector of the music and
lore of the peoples in southern and eastern Africa, he would tran-
scribe, analyze, and comment on the tape recordings that Tracey had
made, while continuing to do what he regarded as his "real work-
practicing the piano and performing."6 Little did Blacking know then
how transformed he would become by the music of a people-and of
their children-so far removed from his beloved art of the piano.

SOUTH AFRICAN ODYSSEY

For the next fifteen years, from 1954 through 1969, John Blacking
lived in South Africa. He recorded music and learned fieldwork tech-
niques from Tracey in Kwazulu Natal province, South Africa, and in
Mozambique. Under the auspices of a British government grant,
Blacking sought out a situation in which he could have an extended
period of time to study the musical culture of the Venda people of
northern Transvaal, South Africa. Rather than the typical process
among musicologists and folklorists to arrange brief visits to collect
songs and other data, Blacking wished to carry out long-term field-
work. He was paving the way for a new brand of research among
musical scholars and may have been the first scholar to complete an
extended "anthropology of music," making a detailed study of music
in one area as a professional anthropologist and participant in the
music-making experiences of a community.7 More than thirty years
later, Blacking reflected on his choice of both the subject and
method of his research:

I wanted to become deeply involved in a society, to participate in musical activ-

ities over a long period of time. I wanted to learn the Luvenda language,
research kinship, political structures, rituals and economic life, just as an
anthropologist. I also wanted to study music with far greater intensity than
would any anthropologist. Until the 1950s, the only people who had had such a
degree of involvement with a single musical tradition were Bela Bartok, Jaap
Kunst, and a few others. And they had had involvement largely because they
happened to be living in the area for a long time. ... None of my predecessors
had approached their study of music as professional anthropologists.8

Blacking spent twenty-two months in Sibasa and Tshakhuma in

Vendaland under the sponsorship of the International Library of
African Music, the National Council for Social Research of the
Republic of South Africa, and a Horiman scholarship from the
Royal Anthropological Institute in London.9
In 1956, the Venda people numbered 275,000, and most of them
lived in the Vendaland Reserves or on European-owned farms in and
around the Zoutpansberg Mountains of Northern Transvaal.
 JRME 341

Originally hunters and gatherers, they had adopted a more settled

economy in homesteads scattered over the hills and mountains.
When, in an earlier excursion, Blacking recognized the importance
of music in the social and political processes of both the Venda rul-
ing class and the commoners, Blacking brought his wife and family
to Sibasa for the cultural immersion experience he sought.
It soon became apparent to Blacking that one way to understand
the music of the Venda was through a study of children, their songs,
and the musical processes in which they engaged. He surveyed and
recorded the musical styles of the Venda at large, classified them by
function and song-type, analyzed their pitch and rhythm material,
described their instruments, and noted their textual and textural
components. He engaged schoolchildren in an essay contest early
on, awarding prizes to them for their descriptions of the music of
their families. He became intrigued with the unique way in which
children conceptualized music and, within the first two months of his
field research, decided that the most direct way for learning the
music of the Venda "was to enter Venda society like a Venda child. I
would learn children's music," he mused, "with children, corrected
by children"10 Through systematic study, he would be able to under-
stand Venda children's music and grow as they did to an under-
standing of the music of Venda adults. Blacking's study of the musi-
cal development and enculturation (the natural process of becoming
musical through the influences of one's environment) of children
continued to draw him throughout his scholarly life.
The Venda confirmed what Blacking had suspected, that despite
the imported European influences on adult musical styles, the chil-
dren's songs remained mostly unaffected by the hymns of Lutheran
missionaries who had settled in the Vendalands in the late nine-
teenth century. He focused his study on children's songs as an inte-
gral and critical component of the Venda musical tradition.
Blacking's interest in the development of musicality was a life-long
pursuit, and this led him also to the study of children. His observa-
tions revealed that the majority of the Venda children and adults
were competent singers and dancers, and that many of them played
instruments proficiently. As he explained, "I wanted to find out to
what extent this resulted from cultural factors and whether Venda
society was conducive to the early development of musical ability."11
In his fieldwork and subsequent analysis, he moved beyond musico-
logical analysis that looked only at intervallic frequency and relation-
ships to an exploration of the cultural context of children's songs,
their function, and the ways in which children transmitted and
acquired them.
Blacking was appointed as lecturer in Social Anthropology at the
University of the Witwatersrand in Johannsberg, South Africa, in
1959. There he delivered lectures on ritual and moral systems, eco-
nomic anthropology, and African political and social organizations.
The glaring omission of music from his lectures in that post was bal-
anced by his musical activity as founder and conductor of the uni-
342 CAMPBELL

versity choir, by the compositions and arrangements he wrote based

on African principles and folk melodies, and by occasional public
concerts at the piano.12 His early anthropological publications in
exploration of kinship, folklore, and the social development of a
young Venda girl13 gave way to those of a more ethnomusicological
analysis.14 Some of his most significant works emerged from this peri-
od of the 1960s, including four papers on Venda initiation rites in
African Studies and his classic (although underrated at the time) study
of Venda children's songs.15
In 1969, Blacking was arrested for his anti-apartheid activities. He
had broken the rules at Witwatersrand University that forbade peo-
ple of different "races" in the same workplace, by arranging for musi-
cians of African, Indian, and Chinese backgrounds to perform and
co-lecture with him in his courses. Blacking offered subversive lec-
tures on race, ethnicity, and justification for the anti-apartheid move-
ment to student groups on campus and to organizations in the
Johannesburg community, and he defended the appointment of a
nonwhite lecturer in social anthropology at Cape Town.
The authorities were compiling a thick dossier on Blacking's activ-
ities, and when he became romantically involved with an Indian med-
ical student, Zureena Desai, the police charged them with violating
the Immorality Act that prohibited romantic involvements between
people of different "races."l16Their case was much publicized inter-
nationally, but they were given suspended sentences due to public
opinion nationwide in support of them. In a foreshadowing of the
stance he later held on the study of all the world's musics, Blacking
supported during his South African years, both professionally and
personally, the realization of egalitarian principles in practice.
OUT OF AFRICA

Blacking left South Africa for the new chair position in anthropol-
ogy at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Thus began
his teaching career outside Africa and his considerable involvement
in ethnomusicology and education in the United Kingdom, the
United States, and in other world locales for the next two decades.
Just following his appointment to Queen's University, Blacking was
invited to give the prestigious John Danz lectures at the University of
Washington, following such distinguished scholars as Nobel prize-
winning biologist Francis Crick. The rhetorical lectures for nonspe-
cialists on the subject of musicality were published in 1973 as How
Musical Is Man ? and when the University of Washington Press almost
immediately sold its entire print run in 1976, Faber and Faber of
London published a second paperback edition. Blacking's universal-
ist argument in the book, that the human potential for musical
expression is suppressed by the Western elitist view of musicality, was
further enhanced as he brought to constant attention the general
participation by Venda children and adults in the music of rites, rit-
uals, and social occasions. The book was accessible for readers
 JRME 343

beyond the field of ethnomusicology (and anthropology and musi-

cology as well) so that despite its sometimes sketchy evidence, broad
statements, and occasional conflicting presentation of some of the
ideas expressed, it was widely acclaimed and eventually translated
into numerous languages, among them Greek, Italian, French,
Serbo-Croatian, and Japanese.l7 Its relevance for teachers of music
at multiple levels and contexts is unquestionable, in that Blacking
begs the issue of the human potential for musical engagement across
vastly diverse cultures and circumstances.
Blacking is credited with having established the first graduate pro-
gram in ethnomusicology in Europe, and Queen's University contin-
ued through his professional life to be the major European center
for the study of ethnomusicology. Over the next two decades, he had
been invited as a distinguished lecturer in nineteen countries, and he
accepted visiting professorships for periods of several months each at
the University of Edinburgh (as Munro Lecturer, 1974), the Univer-
sity of Pittsburgh (as Andrew Mellon Professor, 1980), the University
of Western Australia, Perth (1983), and the University of Califor-
nia-Berkeley (as Ernest Bloch Professor, 1986). His influences on the
shaping of ethnomusicological thought were furthered during his
professional service as president of the Society for Ethnomusicology
in the United States in 1981-83, as an executive board member of
the International Folk Music Council (1974-78 and 1987-1990), and
as an active member of the International Musicological Society.
Blacking wrote continuously for a broad variety of publications,
including Ethnomusicology, The World of Music, Popular Music, Dance
Studies, The Arts in Higher Education, The [London] Times Educational
Supplement, the International Music Education Yearbook, Cambridge
Anthropology, WorldDevelopment,Journal of ComparativeFamily Studies,
and the WorldAssociation of Christian ChurchesJournal. He edited two
books, The Anthropologyof the Body and The PerformingArts, and com-
pleted a fourth book on the ethnomusicology of Percy Grainger.18 In
these later works, Blacking revisited, expanded, and gave further
illustration and instructional application to his views on music as a
cross-cultural channel of human expression.
John Blacking died in his sixty-second year, after a three-year bat-
tle with cancer, inJanuary 1990. Bruno Nettl observed that "one had
the feeling that his last year or two of life produced much that
promised to change and expand the directions of his approaches."19
Blacking's energy continued through those final years to flow into
major articles, book chapters, and addresses. He wrote in his journal
of projects in progress, including three volumes on Venda
Compositions and Musical Styles for Cambridge University Press that
would "be the first extensive social anthropological study of a soci-
ety's musical system" and that would "provide an analysis of an 'alter-
native' system of music education."20 He was also planning a book
on ethnomusicological fieldwork methods requested by the British
Association of Social Anthropologists and a book based on his 1986
Bloch lectures at the University of California-Berkeley that he had
344 CAMPBELL

tentatively titled Music in the Making: Problemsin theAnalysis of Musical

Thought. Compelling to him as well was the promise of time for musi-
cal performance and for working on compositions on African musi-
cal themes and structures.21 Yet despite his inability to fulfill all of
his promises to himself and to the academic and musical worlds in
which he thrived, Blacking had already vitally influenced the devel-
opment of a field of musical study, and his contributions to the
thought and practice of music education are only now beginning to
be recognized.

JOHN BLACKING'SRELEVANCETO MUSIC EDUCATION

Blacking's professional life threads a provocative set of concepts

relevant to the thought and practice of music education. Beyond the
subtle interest teachers may have in the education and training of a
music scholar and performer, there are also the many ways in which
an academic figure manifests his teaching expertise. Students and
colleagues alike referred to Blacking as a "gifted lecturer," one who
spoke discursively and enjoyed telling spellbound classes of under-
graduate students fieldwork stories of his own and of Malinowski and
Levi-Strauss. His taped lectures reveal an enthusiasm for his subject
through a wide range of pitch and rhythmic variations and dynamic
contrasts, as well as a brilliance of questioning technique reminiscent
of the best practitioners of the Socratic method. Blacking required
that his students dispute what he would say, lest they remain compla-
cent and unable to think through and forge alternative solutions to
a problem. The words and behaviors of his own children often
became evidence for his theories of humanity's inherent musicality
and creativity, and "whole lectures on cognition and socialization"
were occasionally built around them.22
As an advocate of music and the arts in schools, Blacking delivered
addresses to national and regional gatherings of teachers and school
administrators throughout the United Kingdom and in other coun-
tries. The content of these unpublished addresses to teachers, par-
ticularly in the 1980s, holds the substance of strong philosophical
foundations for the presence and purpose of music in education,
with three themes consistently resurfacing: (a) the vital aim of devel-
oping the musical capabilities of all (rather than some select group
of) children, (b) the uniquely "transcendental" or transformative
properties of music, including its aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual
qualities, that thus justify its imperative as a curricular subject, and
(c) the critical need for music teachers to direct their efforts toward
musical-artistic rather than nonmusical (social or political, including
multicultural) ends.23 In the United States, he was a principal par-
ticipant in the 1984 MENC-sponsored Wesleyan Symposium on
Perspectives of Social Anthropology in the Teaching and Learning of
Music, and he spoke to a large audience of American studio and
classroom teachers in a major address on children's cognitive and
affective development at the 1987 Denver conference on the Biology
 JRME 345

of Music-Making. His presentations there-and his notes in the mar-

gins of his conference programs and in his journals of the time-
show a scholarly curiosity and continuing search for knowledge of
culture-specific processes of musical learning and development, as
well as knowledge of cross-cultural principles.24
Blacking traced his long interest in music education to his con-
cerns for the biological foundations of music, based upon his early
observations of young Venda children, referring to his interest as "a
kind of applied ethnomusicology." He argued:

If human beings were innately musical, and if in some societies these innate
capacities are nurtured in early childhood, it has alwaysseemed to me that we
must do more in modem industrial societies to place artistic experience and
musical practice at the center of education.25

He maintained that the connection between ethnomusicology and

education could be considerable and that ethnomusicological field
observations of musical behaviors in various cultural settings would
no doubt supply clear evidence of musical abilities that naturally
emerge in children's enculturation and nonformal training. He
viewed this connection as based far beyond the provision of songs
and "music materials" for school music classes, choirs, and instru-
mental ensembles, and his ethnomusicological research illustrated
the wide distribution of musical intelligence as a human trait that is
only realized in the West through education.

CHTmIIREN'SMUSICAL CULTURE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF

MUSICALITY

Blacking's description of children's musical culture is perhaps the

most complete and technical analysis to date, and it formed the basis
of his theoretical writings of musicality and musical development.
Unlike Mantle Hood, Alan Lomax, Alan P. Merriam, and other eth-
nomusicologists of his time, Blacking centered his attention first and
foremost on children rather than on adults. He collected their songs
and compared the frequency of their musical intervals, but went
beyond these more traditional musicological techniques to an
anthropological exploration of the cultural background in which the
songs were created. He studied their musical, textual, and function-
al components in the context of Venda culture, for as he reasoned,
"It is in this context only that their essential meaning is to be
found."26 In Venda Children's Songs, he presented transcriptions and
texts of fifty-six songs, "play dances," "amusements," and the Venda
national dance, tshikona, in which young people engage on impor-
tant occasions (such as the initiation and installation of a chief).27 In
his descriptions of the songs, Blacking continued to be struck by the
clear differentiation of the pre-European nature of children's songs
from those of adults' missionary-influenced melodies. This was cer-
tain evidence of children as a separate, stable, and intact musical
entity, representing a cultural unit within Venda society that was dis-
346 CAMPBELL

tinguished from adults by age and circumstance.

The Venda children whom Blacking studied were competent musi-
cians who sang, danced, and played at least one musical instrument
(often flute, musical bow, or mbira), all without formal in-school
musical training. As he observed even the youngest children and
their mothers, it became clear to him that musical ability emerged
through the process of their socialization with their mothers, other
adults, and children. Among Blacking's observations (which thus
grounded his theoretical discussions of musicality) were the follow-
ing: (a) infants, who spent a great deal of time strapped to the backs
of their mothers, heard songs and felt rhythms as their mothers sang,
danced, and played singing games in many social contexts; (b) after
feeding, infants were invariably treated to face-to-face interaction as
their mothers sang to them and "danced" them up and down; (c)
when infants started banging on some object, adults did not auto-
matically quiet them but instead often provided a complementary
second rhythm that tended to convert the infants' spontaneous
rhythms into polyrhythmic, intentional musical action; (d) when two
children moved and sounded rhythms together, they frequently
made two patterns rather than a unison (an exercise of individuality
in community); and (e) as children grew, they participated increas-
ingly in the community's dancing and music-making, encouraged by
adults who were well aware of the part that such experiences would
play in teaching children how to think, act, feel, and relate to oth-
ers.28 As Blacking explained it, Venda adults regarded it their duty to
ascertain that all children are encouraged, guided, and taught the
musical tools, techniques, and repertoire of the Venda, beginning in
infancy and extending through their childhoods.
Blacking's lasting concern was that, in the Western European con-
text, musicality was wrongly defined and assessed as a property with-
in the realm of very few children and adults. In How Musical Is Man?
he called into question the tests of musicality created by psychologists
of music as ethnocentric in nature and noted that "'my' society
claims that only a limited number of people are musical."29 He
raised the issue of an exclusive view of musicality as it is known in
Western systems that train young musicians and then evaluate them:
"Must the majority (of children) be made 'unmusical' so that a few
may become more 'musical'?"30 He argued that musical ability may
be genetically inherited, but in the same way as the biological poten-
tialities necessary for speech; that is, to Blacking, musical ability is
specific to all normal humans and is part of their general biogram-
mar. He maintained that this view would explain how some people
can assimilate the rules of musical systems without notation or formal
instruction and can generate novel patterns of sound even during
early childhood.31 If a society like the Venda-or a society some-
where in the West-can accept music as a valued expressive channel,
then a child's effort through the tutelage of a teacher can make
much of the widespread human capacities to listen, perform, and
create.
 JRME 347

One of the most perplexing of Blacking's observations of the

Venda was the manner in which the children were able to learn com-
plex music "out of sequence." Instead of learning their repertoire of
songs in a sequence from easy to difficult, very young children often
learned five- and six-tone songs before some of the two- and three-
tone songs. He found, for example, that the Venda song "Ndo bva na
tshidongo" ("I walked out with a small dish of meat") was universally
popular among the Venda in spite of its linguistic and musical diffi-
culties, and it was one of the first songs that children learned because
"it is heard more often than other simpler songs."32 He compared
the Venda way of song acquisition to the sequence suggested by Carl
Orff in his Musikfilr Kinder, and he found striking differences due to
cultural factors.33 Venda children, he reasoned, have many opportu-
nities to hear the complex music as they engage with older children
and adults in a variety of societal functions, and they acquire sophis-
ticated melodies and rhythms through their early immersion in the
full musical spectrum of Venda society. In contrast, Bavarian children
whom Orff studied were likely to have been raised in a protected
nursery culture where they heard only the simplest two-tone and
three-tone chants deemed by adults as musically appropriate for
them.34 Blacking explained the music transmission process of the
Venda children as "holistic" and "autogenic," fully integrated in chil-
dren's play and social interactions in their early stages of develop-
ment.35 As illustration of this holistic avenue of musical encultura-
tion, Blacking marvelled at the many occasions in which Venda chil-
dren sat close by adult drummers to watch and listen in on the music-
making process (and thus to be learning it through their immersion
in it).
One might look to Blacking's own childhood, to those of the nine
children of his two marriages, and to those of the Venda children
whom he came to know during his fieldwork in determining the
essence of his emphasis on children. He was raised in a musical home
immersed in Anglo-Catholic church traditions, and in his letters to
family he often referred to the importance of his early encounters
with this spiritual music as that which could be experienced physi-
cally and emotionally as it was heard, played, or sung. He held music
as something deeper and more visceral than did typical Western
scholars. His impressions of music as a distinctive means of human
expression were reinforced through his observations of Venda chil-
dren, whose capacities to sing, play, and move in rhythmically respon-
sive ways seemed to be as natural to them as the abilities to walk and
talk.36

ON PHYSICAL MOVEMENT AND DANCE

Blacking was drawn to questions of the intermingling of physical

movement and dance in performance and in the fully integrated
responses of performers and music listeners. Few of the children's
songs of his collection were without reference to some sort of ges-
348 CAMPBELL

ture, movement, or dance step, including counting songs that

required the singers to touch their own or others' fingers, clapping
songs, foot-stamping songs, songs of chase inside or around a circle
or within a designated area, songs that begged for pantomime behav-
iors to personify particular characters, and straightforward dance
movements alone in freestyle, with partners, and in circles. In fact,
the basic meter and rhythmic phrases of a song were often most
clearly manifested through children's movement as they sang.
Descriptions of the tshikona (Venda national dance), and also the
tishigombela(dance for unmarried girls) and the domba (women's ini-
tiation dance), are replete with intricate details as to the physical for-
mation of members of the dancing troupe, their bodily postures, and
the intricate patterns of their feet, hands, and torsos. The very
essence of Venda music was intimately linked with the eurhythmic
movement of its musicians, for as Blacking noted, "Venda music is
founded not on melody, but on a rhythmical stirring of the whole
body of which singing is but one extension."37
In his discussions of Venda music and music-learning processes,
Blacking repeatedly brought attention to "the deep involvement of
the body" and "the constant relationship of music to dance" as means
of reinforcing the concepts and techniques of musical perfor-
mance-and of structures contained within music. He saw dance and
music, together, as a means of testing theories about the thinking,
expressive, and physical self, and the relationship of the self to oth-
ers. To him, the sensuous, bodily experience of music was both an
end and a means to an end. Music's most deeply felt, all-enveloping
experience (and thus the ultimate goal for which performers should
strive) was a consequence of thoughtful and well-rehearsed perfor-
mance that involves both brain and body. When performers could be
involved in performances of musical styles that encompassed music
and dance, they would then be led in the fullest possible ways to learn
how to think and act, how to feel, and how to relate to others.38
The anthropology of dance became an important facet of
Blacking's ethnomusicology program at Queen's University. He
encouraged his students, and John Bailey in particular (who already
held a doctorate in experimental psychology for work on human
movement and sensorimotor coordination), to pursue research on
the relationship between movement and musical structures. He
wrote to Bailey: "I am sure that your experience as a musician, as
indeed mine as a pianist, will have indicated to you the very close
relationship which exists between 'dancing' with the body and pro-
ducing musical sounds as a result of this activity."39 Blacking's inter-
est in the social, cultural, and kinesic contexts of musical skills could
be traced to his analysis of the motoric schema necessary in the per-
formance of Nsenga kalimba music.40 Blacking and Bailey joined
hands in a major project funded by the Social Science Research
Council that examined the impact of social and cultural factors in
shaping the organization of motor technique in the performance of
lutes and fiddles. Bailey began doing his fieldwork in Afghanistan on
 JRME 349

dutar and rubab, and Blacking was his constant guide through the
remarks he made in his letters to Bailey of the research method and
techniques he used in filming the hand and finger movements of
musicians. Together, Bailey and Blacking were successful in defining
a more scientific basis for their earlier intuitions regarding the way
that spatial arrangements on an instrument connected melodic struc-
ture and human movement patterns.
With his declared interests in ethnochoreology, Blacking was invit-
ed to serve on the Dance Board of the British Council for National
Academic Awards. He collaborated on several writing projects with
dancers and dance scholars, and he lectured frequently on dance as
cultural expression. In the early 1980s, Blacking produced a series of
six thirty-minute videotapes called Dancing, through which he
intended to demonstrate the variety yet cross-cultural similarities of
dance forms (from Irish dance competitions in Belfast, to southern
African marimba dances, to London disco dances).41
As in the case of music, Blacking was drawn to the dance because
of his interest in the biological foundations of musicality, and he
admitted to contemplating "the non-verbal possibilities of the early,
pre-modern human cultures of homo erectus."42 He assessed the role
of physical movement in a musical world, noting that the act of per-
formance was "a test of one of the fundamental truths of life: all mat-
ter is a manifestation of spirit; in the process of playing, the process
of allowing your body to submit to the musical act, you experience a
fellow-being with other humans and the world of nature."43

ON WORLD MUSICS IN EDUCATION

A central figure in the movement to include world musics in the

education of students in public schools and university programs,
Blacking articulated both a rationale and the particular content of
curricular studies in music. He had immersed himself in Bach,
Chopin, and Mozart during his training as a pianist, but freely admit-
ted that it was the Venda who first broke down his own musical prej-
udices. He found that through his research he had not only gained
an understanding of Venda music but that his immersion into their
musical culture had led "to a deeper understanding of 'my own'
music."44 His careful analyses brought him clarity of musical struc-
tures outside of his first culture, and he returned to his first music
more fully informed of the logic of human musical expressions.
Blacking was convinced that the study of a variety of the world's
musics could lead to a fuller understanding of "music as music" and
that performers and listeners alike "carry the cognitive equipment to
transcend cultural boundaries" with regard to musical expressions
that help them to understand music and to "resonate (with it) at the
common level of humanity."45 He maintained that cultural and con-
textual information was superfluous to understanding music as
music, and that even the extensive anthropological study of the con-
text of a musical work as he had done with the Venda would not lead
350 CAMPBELL

to an insider's perception of it. That would not be the point anyway,

he argued, as even individuals within cultures have different habits of
processing music. Blacking shared his personal pursuit of musical
understanding, that "if I want to understand and appreciate music,
my best course is to get on with listening to it and performing it."46
The essential aim in a musical experience, he maintained, is in find-
ing a personal syntax and a personal meaning, whether it matches
that of the performers and creators or not. He insisted that music is
not a universal language and that its message is purely personal and
in the domain of the performer who individually recreates it and the
listener who processes and attaches personal meaning to it. In one of
his most convincing statements on this view, Blacking argues:

Of course music is not a universal language ... but the experience of ethnomu-
sicologists ...suggest that the cultural barriers are somewhat illusory.... The flex-
ibility and adaptability of music as a symbol system are such that there are as
many variations of interpretation and understanding amongst Englishmen,
Africans, and Indians, as there are between them."47

According to Blacking, "All the best of the world's musics" are

open territory for teachers to infuse within their classes and ensem-
ble experiences.48 He viewed the European tradition as an important
component of a music program and thought that the heritage of
members of historically older and newer layers of a national culture
should be honored through their curricular inclusion. But he also
advised looking to the expressions of those from world regions that
were not specifically involved in the shaping of a national culture, for
reasons of their own musical integrity. In his oft-cited closing to How
Musical Is Man ?Blacking seemed to select examples of music he con-
sidered significant (and perhaps those he might view as among "the
best"):

In a world such as ours, in this world of cruelty and exploitation in which the
tawdry and the mediocre are proliferated endlessly for the sake of financial
profit, it is necessary to understand why a madrigal by Gesualdo or a Bach
Passion, a sitar melody from India or a song from Africa, Berg's Wozzeckor
Britten's WarRequiem,a Balinese gamelan or a Cantonese opera, or a symphony
by Mozart, Beethoven, or Mahler, may be profoundly necessary for human sur-
vival.49

Few of his philosophical positions were more passionate than the

one he held on the use of "multicultural" and "ethnic" in reference
to the aims of world musics in education.50 He detested these terms
and viewed them as patronizing and even harmful, and he saw mul-
ticultural practices as potentially tokenistic or reinforcing of tribal
boundaries. He claimed that those who conceived of and taught
music according to multicultural aims were in fact moving in the
direction of separate and unequal treatment of minorities, and he
warned that "music education should not be used to emphasize cul-
ture, because as soon as that happens there arise arguments about
cultural hegemony, as well as false notions of what culture is."51 He
 JRME 351

acknowledged that such teaching might seem to be well-intentioned

and motivated by a liberal tradition that "seeks to ensure that the
state take positive action to protect and promote the heritage and
well-being of all its citizens," but he also knew from experience that
such rhetoric was too uncomfortably similar to those of the white
South Africans who in the 1950s segregated Bantu education as part
of its policy of apartheid. Instead of multicultural aims, where a
nation's cultures are determinants of human thought and behavior
(and the curriculum content of its schools), Blacking recommended
the treatment of cultures within school neighborhoods and national-
ly as "floating resources" of songs and musical styles that are taught,
learned, and richly experienced because of their inherent value. For
British educators in particular whose mission had long been musical
exploration and experience, Blacking encouraged them to create a
national unity by means of this mission while also bringing in a great
variety of musical expressions to stimulate students and lead them to
their goals.
Blacking's last book, A Common-SenseViewofAll Music, was based on
his public lectures on ethnomusicological topics at the University of
Western Australia and was launched from a synopsis of composer
Percy Grainger's radio programs for Australian Broadcasting
Corporation in 1934. Blacking wrote of issues that were of educa-
tional relevance, including his interpretation of Grainger's views of
the complexity of unwritten traditional and folk music, the individu-
ality and creative imagination of traditional performing musicians,
and the incidence of particular types of melodies, rhythms, and poly-
phonic textures in the world's musics. In the last chapter, Blacking
came to rest upon the surest means of developing the musical con-
sciousness of young people, through the provision by teachers of a
global view of the musical conventions that individual composers and
performers have used. However, he warned that such an aim
"requires an act of faith in the power of musical symbols. Such an
enterprise will never succeed if it is multicultural; it must be multi-
musical. It can only be successful when people are touched by the
aesthetic force of music and can transcend its social and cultural ana-
logues."52
SUMMARYOF BLACKING'SSIGNIFICANCE

In the years since his death, Blacking's work has managed to elude
the scrutiny of American music educators, even though philosophi-
cal positions and policies that have emerged at the millennium raise
issues that he had earlier confronted in his experience as an anthro-
pologist (and ethnomusicologist), a performing musician, and a
teacher. Ethnomusicologists see Blacking's contributions to their
scholarly domain as many-splendored, including his attempt to dis-
credit the purely musicological in the study of a musical culture, his
emphasis on music for its own significance, his development of eth-
nomusicological research to include fieldwork, his reasoned denials
352 CAMPBELL

of a genetic musical ability but belief that musicality can be nurtured

within a culture, his interest in the connection of music and lan-
guage, and his continuous writings on music and dance as central to
life.
Ethnomusicologists are sometimes critical of Blacking's constant
return to his Venda research, although it seems fair to acknowledge
that one of the strengths of his later work is that he was able to shift
from descriptive and analytical writing about the Venda to a rich syn-
thesis and fuller interpretation of this work as applied to a vast array
of issues concerning music. Blacking acknowledged that his data "will
always remain a slice of music history,"53 but to each interpretation
of his research he brought a deeper meaning that only a senior
scholar who has matured can unveil-meaning that may have
escaped the scholar at a younger and less experienced stage.
For most music educators, there is the prolific output of Blacking's
published works yet to be digested for the light they may shed on
issues of formal and informal musical learning, children's innate
musical nature, the physicality of musicianship, and curricular con-
tent that is broadly constructed. To be sure, there are synchronic dif-
ferences in a comparison of such radically different cultural contexts
as those of the Venda and American children; with two generations
between Blacking's initial Venda research of the 1950s and the con-
temporary scene, there are diachronic differences as well. This
should come as no surprise, however, as all scholars are products of
their own time and experience. Because Blacking began his profes-
sional life not long after World War II, he was influenced by the post-
war (and also Britain's postcolonial) movement in search of a uni-
versal, transcultural view of people. Thus, his vision of music may be
rooted in a desire to transcend cultural boundaries and to under-
stand music for its cross-cultural similarities rather than for its dis-
tinctions (which might tend toward some hegemonic valuing of one
style over another). His belief in the innate musicality of all people
was likewise anchored in this view of pan-human traits, a postcolonial
reaction to the inequities and injustices of centuries of British domi-
nation of peoples across the globe. He lived in two worlds, a
Cambridge-educated scholar who spent the richest research period
of his life in the villages of rural South Africa. His sometimes contra-
dictory statements reflect the dichotomy of his experiences of those
living in the wealthy portions of the developed world as opposed to
the poorest of the developing nations. He struggled with his diver-
gent roles as a classically trained pianist and a fieldworker and with
the continuing appeal of the keyboard and choral music of his youth
and the Venda music to which he had been drawn in his adulthood.
Blacking was a champion of indigenous music and musicians and
the rights of indigenous peoples. He was a rebel in a time of great
activism (in the 1950s and 1960s), at the edge of a wave of leftist
thought that, while akin to the standard liberal discourse on today's
university campuses, may yet be powerful fuel for curricular change
 JRME 353

in the more conservative system of public schooling. While striving

for more musically balanced programs in schools, teachers several
generations from now may find motivation and guidance for their
curricular reform through a study of Blacking's works.
Blacking's research among the Venda was a validation of children
as musical beings whose inherited biological predispositions to make
music emerge early and are far more sophisticated than was once
believed to be. Blacking entered Venda culture as a child, growing to
understand Venda music through his lengthy period of fieldwork
and lifetime of interpretation. He gave his attention to children's
musical enculturation and puzzled out both the musical structures
and the essential sociocultural meaning of their songs as reflective of
the values of Venda society that surrounded and enveloped them. His
fieldwork lends support to the efforts of early childhood music edu-
cators who are puzzling out ways to draw from children's family musi-
cal experiences in developing a relevant program for their education
in and through music, and who also seek ways to enrich children's
home experiences through parent-child educational sessions and the
selection of musical repertoire that can be sung, played, and listened
to with family members. Blacking's observations of children's
propensity for learning complex music holistically is notable, too, as
it challenges the concept of "the infallible sequence," the single pre-
scribed instructional process that should somehow be expected to fit
all children regardless of how musically varied their families and
communities may be.
Blacking's scholarly efforts underscored the extent to which music
perception and cognition (and most certainly musical performance)
are linked to physical movement and dance, which is reason enough
for a systematic study of his publications, particularly by those whose
interests lie in the realms of experimental psychology or cognitive
ethnomusicology. Indeed, there is also richly relevant material to
assimilate on the relationship of movement to music learning for
those proponents of the Dalcroze, Kodaly, and Orff pedagogies. Just
as Blacking ascertained through his observations of Venda children
the critical importance of the mind-body relationship in musical per-
formance (and ultimately musical understanding), the practice of
Emile Jaques-Dalcroze's eurhythmics provides teachers with the
means for the development of student musicianship by integrating
the ear, the brain, and the body. Likewise, the interrelationship of
music with movement was as key to Blacking's empirical work and
subsequent recommendations as it is integral to the realization of the
principles of the Orff approach. The belief of Kodaly educators in
the simultaneous performance of folk song and folk dance is still
another practical realization of Blacking's observations and theoreti-
cal discussions. Blacking underscored the cross-cultural nature of
music as a physical experience, which thus further reinforces the nat-
ural infusion of movement and dance in the musical education of
children regardless of the instructional approach taken.
As for Blacking's global views of music in the curriculum, his mul-
354 CAMPBELL

timusical mission is worthy of contemplation for how it may be bal-

anced alongside the widely embraced goal (particularly in the
United States) of multicultural understanding through music. A
teacher's choice of music repertoire for school classes and ensembles
is likely to be a combination of several factors, including the musical
integrity of the song or piece, the music-educational needs of the stu-
dents, and the sociocultural composite of the school and surround-
ing community. Even when teachers set their sights on meeting mul-
timusical goals, it is a common practice to select music on the basis
of its ability to represent the ethnicities that comprise the communi-
ty more than for its musical integrity alone. Blacking warned against
cultural representation through music, and his ideal of "music for
music's sake" parallels the multicultural principle of content integra-
tion, the illustration of key musical concepts and skills through a
wide and varied repertoire (regardless of whether or not local ethnic
cultures of students are represented). Yet, Blacking did not live the
life of a school music teacher pressed by community forces and local
and national efforts to "multiculturalize" the curriculum in myriad
ways, or he might have been more understanding of the dilemma
confronted by teachers to pay tribute to the cultural diversity of a
school population through musical selections that are particularly
meaningful to the groups that make up that population.
Along with the selection of repertoire, Blacking advised teachers
on matters of instructional approach when he made a passionate
plea for the decontextualization of music. He labored to draw
thoughtful educators at all levels to a consideration of the uniquely
expressive qualities of music as personally, musically, and culturally
meaningful. Perhaps recontextualization is more to the point of edu-
cational practice, however, such that any music not originally intend-
ed for performance in schools will develop new meaning when
brought from the concert hall, the bush, or the choir loft of a church
to the classroom. The substance of Blacking's point is provocative,
however: that music is deciphered and made meaningful through
individual and collective cultural interpretation. Teachers can hope
to shape meaning-making through the provision of information on
the music's structures, functions, values, and contexts, beyond which
each student must find his or her own personal way to an under-
standing and appreciation of it.
John Blacking believed that "ethnomusicology has the power to
create a revolution in the world of music and music education," par-
ticularly if new ways of analyzing music for its cultural meaning and
social symbols (as well as its sonic properties) are embraced.54 That
revolution remains yet an untapped area of potential riches, one that
will require further study of ethnomusicology as conceived by
Blacking and as adopted by music educators in the midst of working
with musical children.
 JRME 355

NOTES

1. Throughout most of his 80 published works, Blacking maintained his posi-

tion on the pan-human nature of music, frequently reminding his readers
that musical universals "will be found by analyzing the ways in which peo-
ple make musical sense of their worlds in different historical and cultural
contexts and inferring from them the nature of universally inherited
musical intelligence." John Blacking, "Transcultural Communication and
the Biological Foundations of Music," La Musica ComeLinguaggio Univer-
sale (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1990), 188.

2. Bruno Nettl, forward to Music, Culture, and Experience:SelectedPapers ofJohn

Blacking, ed. Reginald Byron (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995), vii.

3. No mention is made of Blacking or his work in Michael Mark and Charles

L. Gary, A History of American Music Education (New York: Schirmer Books,
1992), nor have there been published articles in American or interna-
tional journals and magazines that deal explicitly with the extent of
Blacking's work relevant to music teaching and learning.

4. This biographical sketch is pieced together from reminiscences by John

Blacking in letters to family and friends (found in archival work by the
author among the Special Collections: the Blacking papers housed at the
University of Western Australia), Reginald Byron's essay on "The
Ethnomusicology of John Blacking" (in Music, Culture, and Experience:
SelectedPapers ofJohn Blacking, ed. Byron, op. cit.), and Keith Howard, "John
Blacking: An Interview," Ethnomusicology(Winter 1991), 55-76.

5. This article was published by Blacking as "Musical Instruments of the

Malayan Aborigines," Federation Museums Journal (Autumn/Winter
1954-55), 35-52.

6. Howard, 58.

7. Essays in Shadows in the Field, ed. Gregory Barz and Timothy Cooley (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996), particularly those by Tim Rice
("Toward a Mediation of Field Methods and Field Experience in
Ethnomusicology," 101-120) and Jeff Todd Titon ("Knowing Fieldwork,"
87-100) indicate that participant-observation processes are, by the early
1990s, the sine qua non of ethnomusicological field research.

8. Howard, 60. Anthropological method has recently been applied by music

educators. See Rita Klinger, "Matters of Compromise: An Ethnographic
Study of Culture-Bearers in Elementary Music Education" (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Washington, 1996).
9. John Blacking, Venda Children's Songs: An Ethnomusicological Analysis
(University of Chicago Press, 1995) which was originally published by
Witwatersrand University Press in 1967.

10. John Blacking to Alan Merriam, 22 May 1961, Special Collections: The
Blacking Papers, University of Western Australia, Perth.
356 CAMPBELL

11. John Blacking's journal, 7 October 1957, Special Collections:The Blacking

Papers, University of Western Australia, Perth.

12. During his research period in the Vendaland, Blacking practiced on out-
of-tune mission pianos and a piano he acquired to replace them. The
Venda who participated in European-style choral music competitions took
note of his musical proficiency and invited him frequently to serve as
judge of their performances of British, Dutch, German, and Scandinavian
sacred compositions.

13. Notable pre-ethnomusicological papers included Blacking's "Fictitious

Kinship amongst Girls of the Venda of the Northern Transvaal," Man 59,
(1959): 155-58, "The Social Value of Venda Riddles," African Studies 20,
(1961): 1-21, "Some Social Effects of Migrant Labour on Rural Africans,"
Black Sash (1974): 35-49, and Black Background: The Childhood of a South
African Girl (London and New York: Abelard Schuman, 1964).

14. Blacking's view of music in culture can be distinguished from that of Alan
Merriam's. Despite their long correspondence and professional relation-
ship beginning in 1960, Blacking continued to uphold a musical perspec-
tive and viewed music as a symbol of people's thoughts and behaviors. See
Blacking, "Comment on A. P. Merriam, 'The Anthropology of Music,"'
CurrentAnthropology(1966): 218.

15. The four papers appeared in four consecutive volumes of African studies
in 1969, all under the general title "Songs, Dances, Mimes, and Symbolism
of Venda Girls' Initiation Schools"; see African Studies (1969). Venda
Children'sSongs: An EthnomusicologicalAnalysis appeared two years earlier,
and appears to be the basis for the four articles.

16. Blacking divorced his first wife, Elizabeth Gebers, a South African white
woman, and married Zureena Desai, with whom he raised a second fami-
ly of four daughters in Belfast, Ireland. The Blacking archive at the
University of Western Australia contains numerous poignant correspon-
dences between him and the four surviving children of five from his first
marriage, who remain in South Africa today.

17. John Blacking, How Musical is Man? (Seattle: University of Washington

Press, 1973); How Musical is Man? (London: Faber & Faber Ltd, 1976); Le
Sens Musical (Paris: Les editions de minuit, 1980); Comoe Musicale L'uomo?
(Milano: Edizioni Uncopli, 1986); IEkfrasi tis Anthropinis (Athens: Nefeli,
1986).

18. The Anthropologyof the Body (ASA Monographs 15), ed. John Blacking
(London: Academic Press, 1977); The PerformingArts:Music and Dance, ed.
John Blacking andJoann Keali'inohomoku (The Hague: Mouton, 1979);
John Blacking, A Commonsense View of All Music: Reflections on Percy
Grainger'sContributionto Ethnomusicologyand Music Education (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987). This last book follows Black
Background,How Musical is Man?, and VendaChildren'sSongs.
19. Nettl, vii.

20. From Blacking's unpublished proposal for Cambridge University Press,

 JRME 357

ca. 1989, Special Collections: The Blacking Papers, University of Western

Australia, Perth. The "alternative system" of music education to which he
refers is based on his observations of music in the socialization and encul-
turation of the Venda.

21. Keith Howard, interview by author, notes, Serpa, Portugal, 5 December

1999.

22. Byron, 27. Corroborated by correspondences from Blacking to students,

1978-1989, Special Collections: the Blacking Papers, University of Western
Australia, Perth.

23.John Blacking, "Ethnomusicology and Music Education" (paper present-

ed at a regional meeting of music teachers, Manchester, UK, ca. 1984).

24. These materials are held in Special Collections: the Blacking Papers,
University of Western Australia, Perth. Margin notes also include his crit-
ical commentaries of the presentational and "teaching" deliveries of his
colleagues.

25. Howard, 72.

26. Blacking, Venda Children'sSongs: An EthnomusicologicalAnalysis, 6.

27. Ibid, 26.

28. Blacking,John, "Versus gradus novos ad Parnassum musicum: Exemplum

Africanum," Becoming Human throughMusic: The WesleyanSymposiumon the
Perspectivesof Social Anthropologyin the Teaching and Learning of Music, ed.
David McAllester (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1985): 43-52.

29. Blacking, How Musical is Man?, 8.

30. Ibid.

31. Blacking, Venda Children's Songs: An Ethnomusicological Analysis, 1967/

1995, 29. See also John Blacking, "The Biology of Music-Making,"
Ethnomusicology: An Introduction, ed. Helen Myers (New York: Norton,
1992), 301-334.

32. Blacking, Venda Children'sSongs: An EthnomusicologicalAnalysis, 29.

33. Ibid, 29.

34. Recent studies of Western children's musical enculturation and informal

learning have shown their musical language to be sophisticated. See
Patricia Shehan Campbell, Songs in Their Heads: Music and Its Meaning in
Children's Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Kyra Gaunt,
"The Games Black Girls Play: Music, Body, and 'Soul"' (Ph.D. diss,
University of Michigan, 1997); Kathryn M. Marsh, "Variation and
Transmission Processes in Children's Singing Games in an Australian
Playground" (Ph.D. diss, University of Sydney, 1998); and Cecilia Riddell,
"Traditional Singing Games of Elementary School Children in Los
Angeles" (Ph.D. diss, University of California, Los Angeles, 1990).
358 CAMPBELL

35. Blacking, "Versus gradus novos ad Parnassum musicum: Exemplum

Africanum," 45-46.

36.This interpretation by Reginald Byron (1995, 19-20) is substantiated in a

study of Blacking's taped interviews, journal entries, and collected corre-
spondence in Special Collections:The Blacking Papers, University of Western
Australia, Perth.

37. Blacking, VendaChildren'sSongs: An EthnomusicologicalAnalysis, 155-165.

38. Blacking, A Common-SenseViewof All Music, 46.

39. John Bailey, John Blacking: Dialogue with the Ancestors(The John Blacking
Memorial Lecture, European Seminar in Ethnomusicology, Geneva,
Switzerland, 1991).

40. John Blacking, "Patterns of Nsenga Kalimba Music," African Music

(Spring 1959): 26-43.

41. The six thirty-minute television programs produced by Ulster Television

Ltd., Belfast, were in their final form an embarrassment to Blacking, so
that he bought the rights to guarantee that it would not be aired.

42. Howard, 72.

43. Ibid, 69.

44. Blacking, How Musical Is Man?, x.

45. Blacking, A Common-SenseViewof All Music, 126.

46. Ibid, 127.

47. Blacking, A Common-SenseViewof All Music, 129.

48. Blacking, 1985, "Ethnomusicology and Music Education" (paper pre-

sented at a regional meeting of music teachers, Manchester, UK, ca.
1984), 1.

49. Blacking, How Musical is Man?, 116

50. Multiculturalism has been variously defined by James Banks ("Multicul-

tural Education: Historical Development, Dimensions, and Practice,"
Handbook of Research in Multicultural Education. New York: Macmillan
Publishers, 1995), 3-19, and by Christine Sleeter and Carl Grant in
Making Choicesfor Multicultural Education: Five Approachesto Race, Class, and
Gender (Columbus, OH: Merrill, 1988). Blacking preferred an emphasis
on music for music's sake, rather than a "socialist music education policy"
that would emphasize musical education for the sake of "fostering partic-
ular national or cultural identities," as argued in "Ethnomusicology and
Music Education," ca. 1984, p. 1. Were Blacking to have been familiar with
Banks's five dimensions of multicultural education, however, he would
have found agreement with the dimension of content integration (the use
of examples from a variety of cultures to illustrate key concepts), which
 JRME 359

coincides with his perspective on bringing the world's musics into the cur-
riculum.

51.John Blacking, "A False Trail for the Arts? Multicultural Music Education
and the Denial of Individual Creativity," The Aesthetic in Education, ed.
Malcolm Ross (Oxford, UK Pergamon Press 1985), 27.

52. Blacking, A Common-SenseView of All Music, 149.

53. Howard, 70.

54. Blacking, How Musical Is Man?, 4.

Submitted November 30, 1999; accepted September 13, 2000.