Stephen Cottrell

Ethnomusicology and the Music Industries: An Overview

This paper functions as an introduction to the present volume as a whole, and charts the relationship between ethnomusicology and the music industries, particularly record companies, over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It considers the changing relationship between these two sometimes antagonistic parties, and how this has informed or influenced other relationships with those musicians around the globe whose ‘world music’1 (broadly construed) each has engaged with for its own purposes. It also considers how the stance of ethnomusicologists towards record companies has changed, as the discipline itself has evolved over the past ca. 120 years. Finally, it asks whether ethnomusicology can itself be considered a music industry.

Music, Time, and Dance in Orchestral Performance: The Conductor as Shaman

This paper explores the relationship between music, time, and movement in those Western art music rituals within which orchestral performance occurs. It begins by reviewing some of the literature on the symphonic performance event itself, particularly the work of Christopher Small, who has written about this at length. It goes on to consider the nature of the conductor’s gestures within these events, and argues that these can be construed as a form of dancing, and that the functional ambiguity of these gestures serves only to enhance their symbolic significance; their greater importance, in fact, is in connection with the creation of another world of time. Finally, the paper compares the work and gestures of conductors with shamanistic practice in other cultures, both in terms of the conductor’s role within the concert hall and as a result of the images of them presented to us in various media.

Big Data for Musicology

Digital music libraries and collections are growing quickly and are increasingly made available for research. We argue that the use of large data collections will enable a better understanding of music performance and music in general, which will benefit areas such as music search and recommendation, music archiving and indexing, music production and education. However, to achieve these goals it is necessary to develop new musicological research methods, to create and adapt the necessary technological infrastructure, and to find ways of working with legal limitations. Most of the necessary basic technologies exist, but they need to be brought together and applied to musicology. We aim to address these challenges in the Digital Music Lab project, and we feel that with suitable methods and technology Big Music Data can provide new opportunities to musicology.

The Impact of Ethnomusicology

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, School of Music, University College Cork Broadcasting Bailiúchán Bhairbre: on the potential of radio to impact on recordings and on ethnomusicological research Bailiúchán Bhairbre is a twelve-part radio series that was first broadcast from November 2006 to February 2007 on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, and that has been available since for online listening (http://www.rte.ie/rnag/bailiuchanbhairbre.html). Created by the speaker, in collaboration with veteran broadcaster Máirtín Jaimsie Ó Flaithbheartaigh, the series introduces the eponymous private collection of reel-to-reel recordings created by Bairbre Quinn (1935-1987) to an Irish-speaking listenership. This paper considers the multifaceted impact of the series. The series has effectively revived a collection of recordings that lay dormant for decades. It continues to introduce these recordings to a new generation of listeners, in Bairbre’s native Aran Islands and beyond, and to highlight the historical and cultural significance of Bailiúchán Bhairbre, which captures in music the cultural clashes of a period of great change in Ireland. It also helps to counteract the historical marginalisation of the music of Aran. This paper observes how the life of these recordings has been transformed by radio. It traces the creation, dormancy, rediscovery and reappraisal of Bailiúchán Bhairbre, and examines the decision taken by the speaker, with the approval of the Quinn family, to broadcast a selection of the recordings on RnaG, a station that represents an unorthodox medium in that it functions both as a community radio station and as a national broadcaster. Addressing the impact of the series – at times positive, at times negative – on the speaker’s research, this paper ultimately makes a case for using radio as a tool for researching Irish traditional music. It presents the findings of one methodology, and suggests that other scholars of Irish traditional music – or, indeed, of other genres of music – might create their own methodologies that take advantage of the unique and visceral nature of the experience of listening to recordings. Ruth Davis, Cambridge and Yale Universities The political impact of traditional music archives in Israel and Palestine: A historical perspective Recent studies (Beckles Willson, Brinner) have explored ways in which musical collaborations between Israeli Jews and Israeli and Palestinian Arabs have been used in attempts to foster understanding and promote peace. Such initiatives are generally associated with the post-Oslo era since the early 1990s. Yet the use of music as a means to promote intercultural understanding has a far longer legacy in the region, where it was originally associated with ethnomusicological research. When the comparative musicologist Robert Lachmann arrived in Jerusalem in the mid-1930s to create an Oriental Music Archive in the newly founded Hebrew University he insisted on recording the music of all the religious and ethnic groups, without discrimination; thus, he believed, his work ‘could be made to contribute towards aims beyond its immediate scope towards a better understanding between Jews and Arabs’. Similarly, in his proposal to collaborate with the BBC Overseas Service in the broadcasting of traditional music Lachmann insisted that the thrust of his interest was political rather than scholarly. Following the partition of Palestine in 1948 Lachmann’s eclectic vision was adapted to accommodate the new political realities of Israeli statehood by the Israel national sound archive, founded in 1964. By contrast, the Traditional Music and Song project, launched in Ramallah, West Bank, in 1994, aimed to promote a distinctly Arab identity for a people aspiring towards national autonomy and statehood. Taking Lachmann’s Oriental Music Archive as a starting point my paper will consider interactions between scholarly and socio-political ideologies and interests in the work of traditional music archives in Israel and Palestine from the 1930s to the present day. Alexander Knapp, School of Oriental and African Studies, London The Power Motive in Oral History: What can the Researcher Learn from being the Informant? In this paper, it is my intention to look at aspects of human nature as reflected in fieldwork activities. I shall be asking questions (from a primarily psycho-philosophical perspective) regarding, inter alia, definitions of power, the dynamic of the researcher-informant relationship and its mutual impact upon those indirectly as well as directly involved, the significance of temperament and conditioning, and issues of political correctness and incorrectness past and present. Special reference will be made to some of the more controversial directives on interview and questionnaire procedures offered by two pioneers of mid-late twentieth-century ethnomusicology: Bruno Nettl and David McAllester. The commentary shifts, in conclusion, to a personal experience of role-reversal: how it feels to be on the other side of the microphone... Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, Independent Scholar ‘Applied Scholarship v/s Supposed Scholarly Distance’: is there only one option mate? This paper will examine the notion of impact and how it overlaps with disciplinary considerations in applied ethnomusicology and advocacy in the context of Indigenous Australia. I will specifically refer to my applied research undertaken with the Indigenous Lutheran Australian community of Hopevale Northern Queensland, where I worked as a choral facilitator for one year. The paper will argue that according to ethical guidelines pertaining to research undertaken alongside Indigenous Australians, it is mandatory that research aims to achieve a positive impact. Merely considering the option of remaining neutral in the name of scholarship is viewed as being politically incorrect by many scholars in the Australian field. The reasons for this lie in the historically problematical role that anthropology (and ethnomusicology) played in providing the colonial government with ‘evidence’ which supported the oppression of Indigenous Australians. This oppression, historical and current, is still wreaking havoc in Aboriginal communities and therefore cannot go unnoticed by any competent scholar when examining music in its context. I will also argue, however, that although applied researchers should aim to have a positive impact through their work, it is not impossible to demonstrate that the performance of the same musical material which they are dealing with can have a negative impact on people’s lives. Using my own research as an example, I shall show that choral and hymn singing are able to have a positive effect on the constructs of Indigenous Australian identities, but that historical missionary records from the same Indigenous Australian community, demonstrate the opposite to be true. This historical analysis helps to ‘balance’ the applied partiality required in the Indigenous Australian context which often boarders on, or is synonymous with, advocacy. Tom Wagner, Royal Holloway, London Un-‘sound’ Methods? Successes, Failures, and Close-calls at a Pentecostal Megachurch. The current fashion in Ethnomusicology for issues surrounding the “impact” of research, at least as articulated at recent BFE events, appears to be tied to the new REF’s “impact assessment”. According to the REF website, the REF seeks to identify research that “makes a major contribution to economic prosperity, national wellbeing and the expansion and dissemination of knowledge” (http://www.hefce.ac.uk/research/ref/). This seems to privilege studies that have immediately apparent macro-effects. To demonstrate the wide-ranging applicability of our studies, though, we would do well to remember that communities are composed of individuals. A project that benefits some individuals or sub-sets may unintentionally harm others. This paper presents a case study based on research in a Pentecostal “megachurch” in London. The goal was to identify ways in which members of the church used music to “grow” in their faith (i.e., strengthen their Christian identities). The methodology involved interviews with collaborators, who kept diaries in which they reflected on their uses of music. A request to collaborate with a group of new converts was rejected by the church leaders over concerns that the methodology might negatively affect those without a “firm” understanding of their “Christian identities”. It was thought that the self-questioning might lead to a loss of faith. However, methodology was approved for use with participants deemed to be “mature” in their faith. Follow-up interviews revealed that the conscious reflexivity encouraged by the project had helped this group grow in their faith. Both these findings and the concerns about the former group (although only speculative) are consistent with the literature on thought reform (e.g., Lifton 1961, Taylor 2004). Without prior awareness of individual differences within the church, the project could have harmed some participants. This serves as a reminder that, as ethical researchers, we cannot loose sight of the micro-impacts of our work.

Performing Civility: International Competitions in Classical Music. By Lisa McCormick

Performing Civility takes its place among a burgeoning collection of ethnographically grounded studies of Western classical music institutions. Other examples would include Henry Kingsbury’s ethnography of an American music conservatoire, Music, Talent and Performance (Philadelphia, 1988), Georgina Born’s assessment of Boulez’s IRCAM in Rationalizing Culture (Berkeley, 1995), and Claudio E. Benzecry’s investigation of opera fanatics at the Colo¤ n Opera House in Buenos Aires,The Opera Fanatic: Ethnography of an Obsession (Chicago, 2011). This is distinguished company, and Lisa McCormick’s volume, which focuses on ‘International Competitions in Classical Music’, is a worthy addition. These ethnographic approaches toWestern classical music and its practice seem to antagonize a small number of musicologists, who continue to argue for the primacy of the musical text and decry sociological or anthropological approaches that fail to put the musical sounds and structures at the centre of the methodology. McCormick’s work would certainly irk them further, since it contains no textual analysis. But the rest of us can enjoy a compelling and insightful volume that illuminates a hitherto unexplored part of the classical music landscape. The ‘civility’ of the title is not meant to suggest (of course) that such competitions provide opportunities for genteel exchanges between participants. Indeed, behaviours of performers, jurors, and audience members appear on occasion to be less than rarefied. Rather, McCormick draws on Jeffrey Alexander (The Civil Sphere (Oxford, 2006)) to define civility as ‘the cultural codes, integrative patterns and institutional procedures that characterize a community based on universalistic solidarity’ (p. 5). It is the rule-bound nature of music competitions, the regulations that pertain to them, and the various organizations that sustain them (notably the World Federation of International Music Competitions [WFIMC]) that McCormick sees as providing an analogy with civil institutions elsewhere and the aspiration to ‘transparency, fairness and openness [that] are championed in the civil sphere’ (p. 6). But music and civility are uncomfortable bedfellows. They are ‘fundamentally incommensurable social spheres’ (p. 6) which are ‘ultimately irreconcilable’ (p. 81). One may be forgiven for wondering why they are therefore juxtaposed. McCormick argues that it is the boundaries between them that she seeks to examine, to provide greater insights into the competitions that are her main focus (p. 6). For this reader, however, the relationship between music competitions and civility is perhaps less illuminating than some of the other issues considered along the way, such as gender politics, the projection of national and self identities, the construction of prestige economies, or the function of ritualizing practices. But no matter. The richness of the ethnography, and the insights and interpretations that are drawn from it, make the book an absorbing read. In part this is because, although competitions are widespread, they provoke significant disenchantment. They are plagued by controversy and rumours of corruption.They require investment of time and resources by performers who know that they have only a slim chance of winning. And there is very little evidence that competition success translates into a glittering career in the world beyond. As McCormick puts it, ‘to say that competitions are an unloved institution in the classical music world would be putting it mildly’ (p. 166), and much of her analysis is concerned with trying to explain why this is so. After setting out in chapter 1 the historical background to modern competitions, we begin to get a flavour of the national identity politics that they sometimes engender. The Soviet domination of the inaugural 1937 Ysay« e Competition led to dark mutterings of state complicity (a historical resonance that modern athletes would surely enjoy). Several cycles of the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition were similarly infused with tensions arising from the competition between Russian and Polish pianists, for understandable historical reasons. The politicizing of such competitions is of course evident elsewhere, particularly in relation to the Eurovision Song Contest, which consistently reinforces the point