“[A] Swedish group using an Australian instrument to produce a 70s/90s sounding song while Japanese bikers wear a ridiculously excessive 50s biker style and 80s break dance.
This, my friends, is the future. Give it a hundred years and pretty much everything’s gonna be made by pulling bits and pieces from different times & places and mashing it together to see what happens.”
Alternative vs. Mainstream: Hip Hop in America
The origins of rapping itself can be widely debated. Some trace it back to West African girots who delivered rhythmic spoken word stories over drum beats. Blues and “jazz poetry” that were synonymous slavery (‘work songs’) are also thought to have played a part in the evolution of Hip Hop.
Still today, Hip Hop remains very much a cut and paste genre that maintains its existence by taking elements from a diverse range of musical styles. One of hip hops most popular stars, Kanye West is heavily reliant on the use of samples from the motown and soul era as shown in many of his productions including the hits ‘Gold Digger’ and ‘Slow Jamz’ which sample Luther Vandross and Ray Charles. Within the 1970’s disco and funk, thrived in areas of New York, particularly within the Bronx and Harlem which were areas of economic and racial unrest amongst black communities. Block parties in and around the large housing projects gave DJ’s the chance to show their skills amongst the community with the use of breaking (extending instrumentals by having duplicate copies of the same record on different decks) and scratching. In order to excite or ‘hype’ the crowd, the DJ’s would then use a technique called toasting whereby pre-written or improvised rhymes or chants would be sung down the microphone. The combination of toasting, a technique used in Jamaica well before the 1970’s, and extended instrumentals are the essential ingredients that would give birth to Hip Hop.
Sugar Hill Gang- Rapper Delight (1979)
LL Cool J – Rock the Bells (1985)
As you can see from these two early Hip Hop tracks they are both tinged with other musical genres namely Funk (Rappers Delight) and Rock (Rock the Bells). The instrumentation is also minimalist which focuses the listener on the lyrics of the song.
Aside from the instrumentals, lyrics (and the delivery of them) became something that would rapidly change Hip Hop music as a whole. Throughout its origins, the lyrical content of Hip Hop songs were fun-loving and simplistic. Taunts and boasts were common which matched the competitiveness of the street genre and many songs of the time showed an astute awareness of the socio-political conditions of the time. Artists such as Slick Rick, Gangstarr and Public Enemy emerged from the East coast. Tracks by such artists were notable for their heavy use of samples spanning a wide range of musical genres and their lyrics were renowned for promoting Afrocentricity and self-consciousness. To many though, this was countered with the rise of west-coast ‘gangster rap’ in the early 1990’s by the likes of Snoop Dogg and Niggaz With Attitude (NWA). Misogynistic and violent lyrics came to the forefront along with a more funk influenced production labelled G-funk. The Wu-tang clan, a diverse group of eight producers and rappers from New York were massively influential on the East coast. Each member had their own unique style and flow different from anything heard before. The content of their songs, was vastly dependant on who’s song it was. The RZA for example would be known for speaking about philosophical and spiritual issues as opposed to Raekwon who pioneered the phrase ‘mafioso rap’ with his stories of crime and drug dealing. RZA, the groups main producer was a great influence in terms of Hip Hop production as he was known for his obscure use of kung fu samples and method of ‘chopping.’ His samples would range from the Jackson 5 to Japanese pipe music, leading him today to being a successful music composer in the world cinema, working with the likes of Quinton Tarentino.
After the death of the key figureheads of the East and Westcoast movment (Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G) in the 1990’s, gangster rap continued but with a mixed reception. Subject matter was growing old and sales of Hip Hop music was rapidly declining leaving many artists to lose their record deals or as underground heads would call it ‘selling out’ to the pop world. It was hard for many rap fans to make the transition from music talking about every day street life to that which talks about 50 Cent’s metaphorical ‘Candy Shop’ and ‘Getting Low’ but the masses embraced it and Hip Hop music (if it can now be strictly define by such a term) is now an everyday in clubs and on the radio. This has caused a backlash from artists who claim that such commercialised songs are against the ‘true’ values of Hip Hop as music for people to relate to. New York rapper Jadakiss released a track ‘Checkmate’ to smear rapper 50 Cents credentials by criticising his lyrics and subject matter by posing the question “you aint got shot again so what’s your second album about?” Controversy also arose in 2005 when rap trio Little Brother from North Carolina had their video for ‘Lovin it’ banned from BET (Black Entertainment Television) as their track was considered ‘too intelligent’ for the BET audience. The video itself was a satirical swipe at marketable rap. Debates have been continued as to whether Hip Hop has been dumbed down with songs by ‘self-conscious’ receiving little to no airplay. Such an issue has also taken root in the UK Hip Hop scene with many rappers claiming that the more marketable side of rap is full of lies that send out a negative message to its listeners. Altough the growth of the internet has caused the decline in record sales within the Hip Hop genre, due to piracy, it has also given a voice to new experimental artists to get their music heard.
“Here’s truth about life and the things I’m dealing with//Black folks saying that I’m too intelligent//And white folks saying I’m a little too niggerish//It got me in a strange predicament//I wish black embarrassment TV would choose more wisely….”
“Rappers like me don’t always break through// because we dedicate tunes to somethin’ you can relate to//”
The key issue i wanted to raise in this piece is the rapidly evolving state of Hip Hop as a whole and its struggle to really find what it wants to be. Hip Hop is in a constant battle to search for a meaning. Many believe it has already died. Nas, a rapper from Queens New York known for his poetic wordplay caused controversy by naming his 2006 album ‘Hip Hop is Dead.’ The question has to be raised as to whether Hip Hop has lost its charm as a revolutionary art of resistance by allowing itself to be sold for large six figure record deals. Whether the future for this genre is more hybrid rapper club anthems or the thoughtful self-conscious music of the past, only time will tell.
Ben Woodhead
World Music: Dubstep
For me and most of my peers, music was an extremely important part of growing up. It helped give us social identity, credence and frankly something to talk about and yet with it being such a huge part of most modern adolescence lives, the music that was popular and well known did not, in most cases, vary from certain formulas. The consumer society that typifies the west makes ones taste in music part of ones cultural identity. If you embrace emotional rock, you’re an emo and thus are expected to wear dark clothing, too much eyeliner and sport a fringe. If you embrace heavy metal you’re expected to be surgically attached to your band hoodie and exchange visits to the hairdressers for visits to the tattoo parlour, and if you’re an indie kid then skinny jeans, cardigans and clear glass heavy rimmed glasses are, again, what is expected of you. This kind of culture in the West, where our music taste will undoubtedly help dictate how we dress, what we say and who we spend time with, it is very difficult to find the opportunity to listen to music from other genres, cultures and countries.
The rise of mainstream dubstep, however, bought the melding of different musical genres to the forefront of the adolescent consciousness, and has allowed adolescents to embrace music and artist from across the globe, simply though accessibility. Transnationally, as music has developed across the world, for those of us born and bred in countries like England and America, it was difficult sometimes to hear works from places like Brazil, Turkey and South Africa, but dubstep labels and even simple online appreciation organisations such as the much acclaimed Generation Bass (http://generationbass.com/) spend there time researching and embracing music that would otherwise receive little or no acclaim in the west. Dubstep, remixing as it does songs or even riffs familiar to most Western adolescent’s ears with themes, ideas and even instruments that are new to them, allows one to come across different forms of music in a modern Western context. Though of course the influences of the east, of Africa and of nearly every country in the world can be found in some Western music if looked for hard enough, never before has there been a forum in which the melting pot between cultures is so blatant, and indeed is heralded as that which defines the genre. This popularity has allowed musicians from other countries to market and promote their music, as finally there is a niche available to them that is both a popular and profitable platform fro m which to showcase their work, Peruvian band Barrio Calavera being a perfect example of this, their mixer Luis ‘Wicho’ Garcia becoming acclaimed on the dubstep scene, and marketing their now freely online available album as a ‘mash up,’ a mixture of dance, reggae, chicha, rock and ska, being another genre which has made a resurgence during the rise of dubstep.
In conclusion, the recent developments in electronic music and rise of dubstep have enabled transnational works to be available on a more mainstream and accessible scale, marking a new stage in the growth of the music business.
Alex Kellas
Music is a timeless medium, one which continuously adapts and evolves in accordance with the ever-changing cultural climates of the world we live in. As humankind has advanced, so has our knowledge of ourselves. As time has progressed we have discovered that we, as people, are a greatly varied and diverse collective. Technology has graced us with the ability to travel the entire world: the earth seems to be a far smaller place than that which it was when civilisation began.
In the modern age, people are mobilised. Generally speaking, our personal concepts of the world have expanded greatly from local to global: no longer are lives considered as strictly within their birth-given context. Our lives can lead us far from where they began, with more fluidity and ease than has ever been previously possible.
People are ultimately the product of their environment. Regardless of where they are or where they will go in their lives, as individuals they will forever carry the personal heritage of where they began, and who they have been. It is in this way that cultures continue to adapt and flourish in an increasingly mobile world. People are vehicles which transport local cultures into a global context during the process of their lives.
Music can be seen as indicative of the major changes in global culture throughout history. All art correlates to its place in history, and can be read as reflective of both the local and global contemporary cultural climates. As people as a collective change and develop, so, too, do their cultures: their art, and namely, their music.
As art, music reflects the changes that the world has undergone in its journey throughout history. Music is a testament to the cultural influences and interactions that we, as humankind, have experienced and achieved through our progression as a race. As people, our increasingly eclectic cultures are our greatest achievement.
On this note, I ask you to consider the following videos. While they focus on typically ‘Western’ styles of music, I feel that the combined differences and similarities between the two pieces exemplify the notion of music as a means of identifying cultural progression and influence in a global context.
Consider the individual interactions, and transplantation of culture that influenced and transformed the origins of this music into that which you see now. People and their movement are responsible for changes in culture. Music is a celebration of history, and our diversity as people.
Music is the sound of history. It eminates the sound of its time, and exemplifies the sound of our own time. It is the sound of the individual, and the sound of the collective. Music is in us, and we are in music.
- Dominic O’Donnell
Suddenly I realized that every Sunday morning I want to feel with a smile on my face. And then I understood that everything has the reason. The city we live, the people we meet, the music we listen. Beirut – an American band, that involves Eastern European music, Balkan folk, Western pop music, that helps to highlight indie – rock culture and the world music.
Beirut
The main member of the band is Zachary Francis Condon. His first performance was in New York in 2006 and was the total disaster. However, after three months the band grew into ten members, who were creating sounds of the world under the Beirut name. Why Beirut? As Zachary says, ‘Beirut is still good analogy for my music. If things go down that are truly horrible, I’ll change the name.’
What is interesting, I see even more symbols of this band while thinking how I was introduced to Beirut. In order to be touched by this band, I had to come all the way from Eastern Europe to Scotland, then to meet a boy from England with American passport and then to start my journey in the latitudes of Beirut.
I guess, the only thing that would be great at the moment, is to go to Nantes on Sunday morning, then to eat lunch In The Mausoleum with Forks and Knives. The route of this journey is right here
“All the world’s a stage , And all the men and women merely players” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It.
The players of Jia Zhang-Ke’s fictional/factual depiction of Beijing, China’s theme park The World are as frightening as they are intriguing. The gap between the genuine and superficial natures of humanity are constantly portrayed throughout the film.
What is fascinating for me whilst watching the development of the film is that the moments in which the performers are back stage or not performing to an audience are the moments myself as a wider audience member (viewing through a screen, rather than in public) questions the nature of these characters within the film.
The chemistry of the characters on stage whilst performing to their audience at the world park is one which seems so “natural”, yet as an audience we are still aware that it is a performance of music and dance.
In the 1952 musical masterpiece “Singin‘ in the Rain”
the stage and media portrayal of Don Lockwood and Lena Lamont a glamorous and romantic one (the cinematic/stage couple) is hugely different from their real life relationship, but as this clip shows Lena does not seem to realize the difference, believing what the fan magazines say that herself and Don are engaged.
The World fits with Durkheim’s (1893) idea of the city as site of exchange and encounter as it seems that The World in itself is a microcosm of “the city” or in this case “the world”, and a very condensed one at that. Yet the cultural exchange in itself feels artificial and premeditated rather than the concept of something natural coming together which Durkheim was suggesting was happening at the turn of the 20th century.
In Zhang-Ke’s 21st century “site of exchange and encounter”, the exchange of culture, (the elaborate stage performances; costumes, music, dancing) seems part of the grand creative illusion of theme park, and the idea of encounter is realized between the audience and the performers, rather than the performers encountering each other.
Yet even though the music and dance is a show and a performance, therefore not what we as an audience associate as our realities, the idea that it can also transcend this primary outlook on it to a higher level is intriguing. So perhaps even though characters within The World blur the lines between what is genuine and what is superficial, what is actuality and what is false maybe that misses the point of the idea of performance for the individual, rather than the wider picture.
The World
In Dancer in the Dark (2000) the lead character Selma (played by Bjork a trans-national performer in her own right) speaks about musicals her favourite past time to her Russian friend Cvalda; “I always leave musicals at the song before the last one, as then they will never end and will go on forever”. Selma’s life within the film is a tragedy where she is eventually executed wrongly, but the way in which she copes with life is through music, dance and performance. Even on the verge of death, her imagination turns hell into happiness through song and dance as shown in the video below.
Shakespeare said “All the world’s a stage”, but the stage in which The World’s performers meet their audience, where Don Lockwood speaks out to his adoring fans whilst trying to mute Lena and where Selma in Dancer in the Dark loses herself in music and dance within minutes of her death, these are the stages which allow artists and performers to lose themselves living on the border of reality and fiction.
Jamie Mattick
“Rhythm is essential to all life and all music. It is nestled in the beat of our hearts; it is the very thing that makes us tap our feet to a catchy tune.” (OneAfricaNow.com – ‘African Music: The Rhythm of Life’)
African music has had a strong influence on music everywhere, not just in terms of rhythm but also melody and harmony. It all started a couple of centuries back with the Atlantic Slave trade which saw many Africans taken from their homes to Europe, Brazil and America. While a dark time for human rights, it was undeniably the golden era of refreshing influences regarding art and African music.
We need only to look at blues, jazz and pop to find the African influence in its rhythm and melody. One example of the influence of African music on western styles is that of blues music. The origin of the blues can be traced back to the blending of African and European music, before taking root in the American South. The basics of this genre were primarily influenced by African-American culture. The use of flatted notes (the 3rd, 5th and especially 7th) comes from the indigenous music of West Africa, and the “call and response” lyrics are from the “field hollers” of the slaves and, later on, the sharecroppers.
Below is a taster of African Blues, accompanied by poignant images of the people of Mali, one of the enslaved communities of Africa. It ties in perfectly with New Orleans blues, and is the foundation of African-American music.
There is an organisation based in Sheffield called Unbeatable Energy, which mainly uses the Djembe, a traditional West African instrument, in drumming sessions that open up opportunities for people from all backgrounds. Its aim is to bring groups together to produce rhythms and beats, complementing each other in their creativity and supporting one another in generating a result that they would not have thought possible, instigating a community spirit through music. The organisation is testament to how the sounds of Africa have spread across to western civilisation and invigorated people’s lives.
Here is a vibrant performance from students who attend the Unbeatable Energy Beginners and Intermediate Courses in African Drumming led by Steve Rivers. You can’t help but be inspired by the passion and energy with which Steve leads the group!
“The medical, psychological and emotional benefit of group drumming has gained global recognition in the last decade with community based organisations taking full advantage of the way it breaks down barriers, builds confidence and aids better communication.”
By integrating the work of musician Lebo M, the score to The Lion King musical tapped into the beautiful, complex rhythms of South African music. The Rough Guide to World Music states: “South Africa is distinguished by the most complex musical history, the greatest profusion of styles and the most intensely developed recording industry anywhere in Africa.” South Africa’s musical history is linked to its national history and the racist system of apartheid, in which black South Africans were confined to small areas, their movements and rights tightly controlled by the white minority. The South African musical styles Mbube (a style of a capella music heard in the song ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’) and Iscathamiya (a four-part call-and-response male choral music style heard in the song ‘One By One’). The musical itself has provided audiences across the globe – over 50 million people, in fact – with a vibrant flavour of the rich African culture through the medium of music.
Below is a glimpse of the show in all its glory being performed in London:
To use a more modern example, bands such as Vampire Weekend, Toubab Krewe and Fool’s Gold are a key illustration of the cross-pollination between African and western musical styles. Artists all over the world have looked to African music for inspiration, which demonstrates the power of African music to transcend both national borders and conventional genres.
Harriet Dew
Sources:
http://www.unbeatable-energy.co.uk/
http://www.oneafricanow.com/Music.html
http://www2.disney.co.uk/musicaltheatre/TheLionKing/abouttheshow/themusic-southafricanmusic.html
Some of the issues involved in ‘Creative Practices in Transnational Urban Contexts’ can be distilled and delineated by looking at one of the 20th century’s most notorious pieces of music: Le sacre du printemps, or The Rite of Spring, by Igor Stravinsky. When premiered The Rite was controversial to say the least, as shown by the following rhyming review:
Who wrote this fiendish Rite of Spring
What right had he to write the thing,
Against our helpless ears to fling
Its crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing?
And then to call it Rite of Spring,
The season when on joyous wing
The birds melodious carols sing
And harmony’s in everything!
He who could write the Rite of Spring,
If I be right, by right should swing!
The Rite is now accepted as part of the canon of classical masterpieces, even making its way into Disney’s Fantasia:
At the time of The Rite’s premiere Stravinsky was a Russian émigré living in Paris. Consequently, Le sacre interestingly illustrates the tension of identity involved in transnational music. The Rite is saturated with the Russian folk-tunes Stravinsky absorbed on summer trips to his uncle’s estate in rural Ustyluch, and from his music tutor, the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. When writing Le sacre Stravinsky steeped himself in Russian material. The piece is a ballet, and Stravinsky took most of the story for The Rite from old Russian pagan rituals. Stravinsky’s paganism was in part a reaction to his upbringing in the Russian Orthodox Church, to which he returned in 1926. However, The Rite was written in Switzerland and premiered in Paris; Stravinsky later became an American citizen, and in 1913 was already a cosmopolitan par excellence. As Alex Ross writes in The Rest is Noise, ‘In later years, Stravinsky […] went to some lengths to conceal his early folkish enthusiasms’ (TRIN 87). Stravinsky didn’t want to be seen as a Russian artist, and only revisited his homeland in 1962, on his 80th birthday. Is The Rite of Spring a Russian or a European work, or both? Was Stravinsky a Russian, a European or an American, or all three? What does this say about national identity in general? My opinion is that nations and national identity are human constructs, and that consequently blurring and fluidity in national identity is natural.
Another issue illustrated by Le sacre is the urban tension between the organic and the synthetic. The Rite is a pagan hymn to spring, full of roars and squelches and bellows, but ‘the urban noises in Stravinsky’s score – sounds like pistons pumping, whistles screeching, crowds stamping – [also] suggest a sophisticated city’ (TRIN 93). Most of us are city-dwellers to some extent, and all of us live in a world profoundly different from that in which the human race originally evolved. The synthetic is a fact of life now; how we negotiate it as individuals is up to us.
The Rite’s disturbing climax, in a production choreographed by Maurice Bejart:
The last issues to be dealt with in this article are political, aesthetical and ethical, and tie in with the socialist flavour of some of the Creative Practices course material. The Rite of Spring would initially only have been heard by the relatively well-off in society, and Stravinsky was himself from an upper-class background. His Russian folk material, however, came from the peasants. What are we to think of inequality like this? It seems to me that it is a political wrong which needs to be righted. This political tension is closely linked to an aesthetical tension: which creative practice shall we value more, Stravinsky’s mind-searing ballet, or the folk-music it was partly derived from? High art or folk art? I believe this question is most satisfactorily answered by subsuming aesthetics into ethics. In her article on this wordpress site, Laura Penny writes: ‘music can help so many different people around the world if only we focus on what is important and forget the rest.’ I say we take up this attitude – let’s base our value judgements only on what is really important and forget the rest. But what is ‘really important’? Helping others and ourselves get by in life, i.e. reducing suffering and increasing happiness. Instead of judging music on aesthetic grounds, we should judge it ethically according to how much it helps. So what of Le sacre and its folksy sources? Because The Rite of Spring is really rather brutal and pitiless I don’t think it ‘helps’ much. If a folk creative practice is more useful to people, then it’s more valuable than Stravinsky’s masterpiece. In other words, the Creative Practices course is right in opposing ‘ivory-tower’ conceptions of art (an opposition helpfully pointed out by Phil Hale in his article ‘Art and Youtube’.)
In conclusion, Le sacre du printemps illustrates the tension between national identities in transnational music, and the tension between the natural and the synthetic in urban culture. It exemplifies the political tension between different sections of society, and the tension between aesthetical and ethical ways of valuing art. ’Focus on what is important and forget the rest’ – words to carry close-pressed to one’s heart.
Bibliography
Ross, Alex, The Rest is Noise (New York: Fourth Estate, 2008)
Dan Absolon.
Many of today’s television adverts are accompanied by what to many is considered ‘world music’, which is to say that the music promoting the airline/automobile/cruise/getaway in question is identified as non-western. However, this music does not belong to an indigenous or traditional practice in a far-off part of the world. It is instead invented entirely by performing musicians and those working for an advertisement company.
Standard indicators of generic ‘world music’ include choruses of children, and a soaring female vocalist singing nonsensical syllables belonging to a language wholly invented for the purpose of shifting the client’s product. On occasion there’ll be a male singer sometimes accompanied by a chorus – never a children’s chorus, but instead other men. Drums are sometimes there as well, and often the sound of some wooden wind instrument, both supposedly lending a more rudimentary or ‘primitive’ sound.
The first ad featuring similar ‘world music’ to receive mainstream recognition was a 1994 promotion for Delta Airlines. The music, by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins, whose previous work spans both rock and classical, proved so popular that it was eventually released as a single. Jenkins’ group, Adiemus, went on to release an album, Songs of Sanctuary, a year later, which topped the classical charts in Britain and went on to sell over 1.5 million copies worldwide.
The success of Adiemus illustrated the business potential of using ‘world music’ in adverts. Companies who look to profit on this initially untapped market, as I’ve already suggested, are usually in the travel and vehicle business. Advertisers look to exploit the growing need for freedom and escape in our society; it’s become fashionable to want to be where you aren’t, and the placeless ambiguity behind such music is instrumental in developing the idea of a world open to everyone. As with Jenkins, their approach is to blend different kinds of music in the broadest possible sense, such as classical or world or new age, in order to emulate, manipulate, and master them.
The result is music that incorporates a vague kind of spirituality or mysticism which takes viewers away from the here and now and toward an exotic elsewhere, which, in keeping with centuries of western perception of other places, is viewed as spiritual, whereas the modern West is not.
All that said, this generic ‘world music’ is empty. The music for these ads is never memorable and makes no sense without the accompanying images, and yet, in the moment, it allows listeners to project their own meanings onto it. The smoothness and affective coolness of the music in these ads is reassuring; if you don’t possess real knowledge of real people making real world music, this musics says that that’s alright. It says that everything is alright. It’s certainly true that none of these tracks emanate from a single tradition, but then, little music does, or ever did.
Matt Fullerton
“World music: Contemporary folk and popular music of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, as distinguished from that of the U.S., the U.K., and, sometimes, W Europe (Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 2010)’
Term ”world music” is widely used both in everyday speech and music industry, but defining it is not unambiguous. Usually it is used in reference to non-Western music traditions or music influenced by these traditions. It is obvious that as a category ”world music” is not very describing as it can be expanded to everything from acoustic guitar music to punk rock as long as it comes from outside the golden sphere of Western civilisation. Interestingly, in some cases the world music is limited to non-Western folk and pop music which suggests that other music genres, such as rock music, transcend this dichotomy by being somehow more international. Or is it that when it comes to rock music, the contrast between western and non-western, industrial and the third world, is eclipsed by the contrast between the city and the countryside?
But on the other hand, it appears too conceptual and somewhat artificial to deal with music on the international level when for many people music constitutes their local identity and sense of place. In her article ’The Liverpool sound”, Sarah Cohen (1994) argues that although rock music is generally depicted as a symbol of modernity in media, ’situated at the forefront of a process of a cultural globalisation (p.130), people actually put a great emphasis on local images and traditions. She uses the example of ”Liverpool sound”, characterization of a local music style in comparison to other British cities, especially Manchester. From her interviews with local musicians the entangled relationship between place, music and identity becomes more concrete: their comments suggest that in a way the place - the city with its own rhythm, sound and landscape - leaves its own imprint into the music. Cohen concludes that both musicians and laymen alike use music to construct particular places through reflecting variations of backgrounds and musical influences. Of my personal experience I must agree: music, or more specifically the ”soundscape” of a place together with the sense of smell, brings the visual landscape into life, connects it with emotion and, fundamentally, establishes the sense of belonging.
The great personal meaning that music can have for people is beautifully illustrated by Bruno Nettl’s (1983) work on the study of ethnomusicology. When we think of music from the perspective of studying different traditions, we are faced by the question of who has the access to esoteric musical knowledge, dividing people into insiders and outsiders. It is worth noticing that this division hardly never conforms to national boundaries, which in some cases were set by Western colonizers, as it is the case with many African countries. Moreover, apart from national boundaries also social status or language connect and divide people and often to a much greater extent than national identity.
This is why I suggest that ”world music” should be addressed in terms of locality and private identity rather than sticking with concepts of transnationalism or national identity because national thinking tends to lead into an understanding of diversity ‘in terms of disorder and loss of identity’ (Robins, 2001:78). However, when one approaches music from different points of view, it leaves one with an impression that people’s relation to music does not conform to the conventional categorization: music may take influences from other times and places but at the same time remain highly personal and local, and instead of acting as an agent of disunity it enriches one’s personal experience of the world.
Anneli Nurminen
Links:
An Interview with Angelique Kidjo
Sources
http://www.yourdictionary.com/dictionary-definitions/
Cohen, S.: ’Identity, place and the Liverpool Sound’ in Stokes, M (ed.). :’Ethnicity, Identity and Music: the musical construction of place’. 1994. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Nettl, B. :’The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-one issues and concepts’. 1983. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Robins, K.: ’Becoming Anybody: Thinking against the nation and through the city’. City vol. 5. no. 1/ 2001.
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