Martin Clayton

The Cultural Study of Music : A Critical Introduction

What is the relationship between music and culture? The first edition of The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction explored this question with groundbreaking rigor and breadth. Now this second edition refines that original analysis while examining the ways the field has developed in the years since the book’s initial publication. Including contributions from scholars of music, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and psychology, this anthology provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of music and culture. It includes both pioneering theoretical essays and exhaustively researched case studies on particular issues in world musics. For the second edition, the original essays have been revised and nine new chapters have been added, covering themes such as race, religion, geography, technology, and the politics of music. With an even broader scope and a larger roster of world-renowned contributors, The Cultural Study of Music is certain to remain a canonical text in the field of cultural musicology.

The Social and Personal Functions of Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Musics functions appear to range from the individual (music can affect the way we feel and the way we manage our lives) – to the social (it can facilitate the coordination of large numbers of people and help to forge a sense of group identity). This article argues that musical behaviour also covers a vast middle ground in which relationships between self and other or between the individual and the collective are played out. This chapter surveys some of the extant literature on musics functions – referring to literature from ethnomusicology to anthropology, musicology, psychology, and sociology, and discussing a wide variety of musical contexts from around the world – and develops an argument emphasizing musics role in the management of relationships between self and other.

Observing entrainment in music performance: Video-based observational analysis of Indian musicians’ tanpura playing and beat marking

Abstract Entrainment has been suggested as an important phenomenon underlying aspects of musical behaviour, and is attracting increasing attention in music psychology (see e.g. Large and Jones, 1999; Large, 2000), and in ethnomusicology (Clayton, Sager and Will, 2005). Approaches to its study in ethnomusicology must address a significant methodological problem: how to study entrainment phenomena in an ecologically valid manner, and to integrate this process into a programme of ethnographic research. Video recordings contain important data regarding the physical movements of participants in musical events (as well as their audible results), and through the application of observational analysis software these recordings can form the basis of studies of entrainment between different quasi- periodic musical processes as manifested in movement patterns. For the present study a short video clip of an Indian raga performance was selected (taken from a performance of Shree Rag by the singer Veena Sahasrabuddhe). Observational analysis was carried out using The Observer Video-Pro software, configured to record the plucking of tanpura strings and performers’ beat markers (hand or finger taps). Time series data thus generated were analysed using calculations of phase relationships, revealing several instances of both self- and interpersonal entrainment (the stated intention of the performers is, on the contrary, that the tanpura rhythms should each proceed independently). Entrainment between these behaviours points to a complex, but unintended form of emergent order. This unexpected result demonstrates the usefulness of this method in revealing otherwise unnoticed phenomena in musical performance, and raises important questions for future research.

Time, Gesture and Attention in a Khyal Performance

North Indian rāg performance, especially as practised in intimate and informal settings, is often distinguished by a lively interaction involving both musicians and listeners, mediated by gestures and vocal interjections. Performers gesture to each other, to the audience, and expressively with the music, and audiences become part of that process. The premise of this study is that observing the behaviour of audience members, as well as that of performers, should provide a valuable window onto the ways in which rāg performance is experienced by all of its participants. The main questions I aim to elucidate in this paper are: What does observable behaviour tell us about the way people experience the metrical and formal structures of a rāg performance? When and how do listeners become involved in the performance gesturally and/or verbally? I shall address these and related questions through an analysis of a khyāl performance by Vijay Koparkar recorded in Mumbai in 2005. Detailed analysis of this performance indicates that these questions can indeed be answered using observational methods, and also suggests other important issues that may not have done been raised had this approach not been adopted.

What is Entrainment? Definition and applications in musical research

Entrainment theory describes the process of interaction between independent rhythmical processes. This paper defines entrainment in this general sense, then briefly explores its significance for human behaviour, and for music- making in particular. The final section outlines a research method suitable for studies of entrainment in inter-personal coordination, and with reference to published studies suggests that the study of musical entrainment can be a source of rich insight also for the study of human social interactions and their meanings.

FREE RHYTHM: ETHNOMUSICOLOGY AND THE STUDY OF MUSIC WITHOUT METRE

Like many other rhythmic terms, ‘free rhythm’ is widely enough used to be recognized as part of the vocabulary of musicology, without ever having been convincingly studied or even denned. In general, this term and its various synonyms refer to music without metrical organization. ‘Free rhythm’ is an important musical phenomenon which has been largely neglected by the field of ethnomusicology. This paper discusses the deeper theoretical and methodological problems underlying this neglect.

Inter-group entrainment in Afro-Brazilian Congado ritual

This paper investigates the phenomenon of entrainment between independent groups of musicians in the context of Afro-Brazilian Congado performance. Based on audiovisual recordings made during a festival in May 2006, we present analyses of four different occasions during which two different groups play different music in close proximity to each other. The results indicate the occurrence of (a) entrainment in phase, (b) entrainment out of phase, and (c) no entrainment. These results are discussed in the particular ethnographic context, as well as with reference to existing literature on entrainment and interpersonal coordination. Submitted 2010 November 26; accepted 2011 March 25.

Gestures in performance

We experience and understand the world, including music, through body movement–when we hear something, we are able to make sense of it by relating it to our body movements, or form an image in our minds of body movements. Musical Gestures is a collection of essays that explore the relationship between sound and movement. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to the fundamental issues of this subject, drawing on ideas, theories and methods from disciplines such as musicology, music perception, human movement science, cognitive psychology, and computer science.

Testing a Computational Model of Rhythm Perception Using Polyrhythmic Stimuli

Abstract Neural resonance theory (E.W. Large & J.F. Kolen. 1994. Resonance and the perception of musical meter. Connection Science, 6, 177--208) suggests that the perception of rhythm arises as a result of auditory neural populations responding to the structure of the incoming auditory stimulus. Here, we examine the extent to which the responses of a computational model of neural resonance relate to the range of tapping behaviours associated with human polyrhythm perception. The principal findings of the tests suggest that: (a) the model is able to mirror all the different modes of human tapping behaviour, for reasonably justified settings and (b) the non-linear resonance feature of the model has clear advantages over linear oscillator models in addressing human tapping behaviours related to polyrhythm perception.

Introduction: Towards a theory of musical meaning (in India and elsewhere)

This article introduces a special issue of the British Journal of Ethnomusicology on “music and meaning”. It does so by offering some thoughts on “meaning” in the context of north Indian rāga music and by sketching the outline of an approach to musical meaning influenced by perspectives from ethnomusicology, psychological anthropology, cognitive science and cultural studies. The article proposes that all music is necessarily meaningful insofar as it offers to the perceiving subject possibilities for action and imagination, and that meaning is wholly dependent neither on semiosis nor on the apprehension of formal or structural relationships.1