Kay Kaufman Shelemay

The Ethnomusicologist and the Transmission of Tradition

Most ethnomusicological discussions of the transmission of tradition attempt to document and interpret the manner in which music is communicated over time within a particular setting, giving attention to both the interpersonal dynamics and communication technologies of these processes.2 However, I will focus my inquiry neither on the native carriers of tradition nor on the materials these traditions convey. Rather, I propose to take a reflexive turn and to discuss the role of the ethnomusicologist who, while seeking to document the transmission process, becomes a part of it.

Sacred sound : music in religious thought and practice

Whether musics appeal to the senses detracts from or contributes to devotion is an important question for all religious traditions. This interdisciplinary, cross-cultural collection is intended as a first step towards a phenomenology of religious music. Topics range from the mystical strain in Jewish liturgical music to music in the Theravada Buddhist heritage. Contributors include Lois Ibsen al Faruqi, Bruce B. Lawrence, John Ross Carter, and Donna Marie Wulff.

Oral and written transmission in Ethiopian Christian chant

Of all the musical traditions in the world among which fruitful comparisons with medieval European chant might be made, the chant tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church promises to be especially informative. In Ethiopia one can actually witness many of the same processes of oral and written transmission as were or may have been active in medieval Europe. Music and literacy are taught in a single curriculum in ecclesiastical schools. Future singers begin to acquire the repertory by memorising chants that serve both as models for whole melodies and as the sources of the melodic phrases linked to individual notational signs. At a later stage of training each one copies out a complete notated manuscript on parchment using medieval scribal techniques. But these manuscripts are used primarily for study purposes; during liturgical celebrations the chants are performed from memory without books, as seems originally to have been the case also with Gregorian and Byzantine chant. Finally, singers learn to improvise sung liturgical poetry according to a structured system of rules. If one desired to imitate the example of Parry and Lord, who investigated the modern South Slavic epic for possible clues to Homeric poetry, it would be difficult to find a modern culture more similar to the one that spawned Gregorian chant.

Ethiopian Musical Invention in Diaspora: A Tale of Three Musicians

This essay, based on ethnographic interviews and observation, discusses the lives and careers of three prominent Ethiopian musicians from sacred, folkloric, and popular musical domains (Moges Seyoum, Tesfaye Lemma, and Mulatu Astatke, respectively) whose individual initiatives have shaped the musical life of the Ethiopian diaspora during its formative years in the United States. These three careers provide an overview of musical activity within the Ethiopian American diaspora community since its inception and shed light on concepts of creativity as conceived both in the Ethiopian homeland and among the immigrant musicians profiled. The conclusion suggests that the ability of each man to negotiate the transition to diaspora life varied according to the musical domain in which he was engaged, his personal background, and the moment and circumstances of his arrival in the United States. (January 2009)

Leonard Bernstein’s Jewish Boston:Cross-Disciplinary Research in the Classroom

Leonard Bernstein is most often perceived as the quintessential New Yorker—music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969 and composer of Broadway shows that made New York their focus. Yet his grounding in the greater Boston area was powerful. He was born in 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and raised in various Jewish neighborhoods within Boston. The young Leonard went to Boston Latin, a prestigious public prep school, and graduated from Harvard in 1939. This article explores a team research project, made up of Harvard graduate students and undergraduates, which delved into the urban subcultures and post-immigrant experiences that shaped Bernstein’s youth and early adulthood. It considers the synergy between an individual and a community, and it examines the complexities of blending pedagogy with research, analyzing the multilayered methodologies and theoretical strategies that were employed. Given Bernstein’s iconic status, his life and career illuminate a broad range of questions about the nature of music in American society. Fusing the techniques of ethnographic and archival research, our team probed Bernstein’s formative connections to Jewish traditions through his family synagogue (Congregation Mishkan Tefila), the ethnic geography that defined the Boston neighborhoods of his immigrant family, the network of young people involved in Bernstein’s summer theatrical productions in Sharon, Massachusetts, during the 1930s, and the formative role of the city’s musical venues and institutions in shaping Bernstein’s lifelong campaign to collapse traditional distinctions between high and low culture. The classroom most often represents a separate sphere from active research. Yet with the right topic and set of circumstances, the two can enter into a wonderfully productive relationship. This synchronicity certainly was the case with a seminar focused on Leonard Bernstein’s Boston years, which we taught at Harvard University in the spring semester of 2006. It centered on Bernstein’s formative experiences within Boston’s Jewish immigrant community in the decades immediately before World War II. With community-based research as a bedrock principle, we seized the opportunity to study how this now-legendary musician interacted with local musical, religious, and educational communities. Given the length of time since Bernstein’s birth in 1918, any remaining opportunities for ethnographic interviews were rapidly diminishing. From the beginning we were aware that Bernstein’s hydra-headed talents—not just as conductor and composer, but also as teacher, writer, television personality, and overall cultural celebrity—opened a window on considerations that transcend our separate specializations in ethnomusicology and historical musicology, as well as current norms for their practice in the public domain. In other words, this project became an opportunity to put interdisciplinarity into action. As an iconic figure, Bernstein’s life and career provide many potential answers to the widest range of questions about the nature of music in society. They also reveal much about the distinctiveness of individual urban areas and the subcultural