Timothy Rice

Time, Place, and Metaphor in Musical Experience and Ethnography

Selon lA., les cadres conceptuels de lethnomusicologie contemporaine necessitent detre repenses afin de rendre compte de lexperience musicale dans un monde complexe, mobile et dynamique. Il tente de repondre a la question generale de savoir comment des individus ou des petits groupes dindividus font lexperience de la musique dans la modernite, dans la vie moderne, dans le systeme mondial moderne. A cet effet, il propose un modele dun espace tridimensionnel de lexperience musicale qui doit permettre une ethnographie musicale centree sur le sujet. Il suggere que le decentrement de la culture (ou de la societe) vers le sujet comme lieu de la pratique et de lexperience musicale peut fournir une approche pour repondre aux interrogations sur la musique que suscite la rencontre avec le monde moderne. Les trois dimensions de lespace imaginaire, ideal de ce modele sont le temps, la localite, et la metaphore. Afin dillustrer son propos, lA. presente trois recits schematiques a propos de ses recherches sur la musique traditionnelle en Bulgarie.

Toward the Remodeling of Ethnomusicology

thnomusicology, like any academic field, is constantly being created and recreated through the research, writing and teaching of its practitioners. Direct action in the form of new data, interpretations, theories, and methods effectively defines the field. Modeling a discipline, on the other hand, requires a step back from direct engagement in research to ask the descriptive question, what are we doing?, and the prescriptive question, what ought we to be doing? The answer will surely depend on the intellectual and social matrix of the modeler (Blum 1975 and C. Seeger 1977) and the effectiveness of the model will depend either on the extent to which it captures simply and elegantly the current work being done in the field or provides a kind of moral imperative for future action. Probably the best example of an effective model in the recent history of ethnomusicology is Merriams model proposed in 1964 in the Anthropology of Music. His simple model . . . involves study on three analytic levels-conceptualization about music, behavior in relation to music, and music sound itself (p. 32). The model is essentially circular in form (see fig. 1) with concept affecting behavior which produces the sound product. And he continues, . .. There is a constant feedback from the product to the concepts about music, and this is what accounts both for change and stability in a music system (p. 33). This model was seminal in the history of ethnomusicology and to that date was the most forceful and cogent statement of anthropological concerns with respect to music. The model defined ethnomusicology as the study of music in culture and that view-even as modified to music as culture and the relationship between music and culture--has remained one of the core concepts in the discipline ever since. We can of course argue about the extent of its influence during the last twenty years, but there can be no doubt that it continues to be influential. It is still frequently cited to contextualize particular research problems (for example, Yung 1984 and Sawa 1983), Bruno Nettl (1983) called it definitive, not just of the study of music but apparently of music itself, and it provided the basic model for the recent collaborative textbook, Worlds of Music (Titon 1984). If that books authors, coming from a very wide range of backgrounds, could agree on this model, then the continuing extent of its influence is clear-at least as an overall image or model of the field.

Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples

1. The Music-Culture as a World of Music. 2. North America/Native America. 3. Africa/Ewe, Mande, Dagbamba, Shona, BaAka. 4. North America/Black America. 5. Europe/Central and Southeastern Regions. 6. India/South India. 7. Asia/Indonesia. 8. East Asia/China, Taiwan, Singapore, Oversees Chinese. 9. Latin America/Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru. 10. Music of the Arab World. 11. Discovering and Documenting a World of Music.