107. Music of the Great Tradition -- 9: Gamelan

In earlier posts I traced an "African signature" along some Out of Africa pathways, illustrating the connections with various audio clips. The "Great Tradition" I have in mind now involves connections that are not so obvious, and in some cases seemingly rather distant.

One tradition that has intrigued me for years in this respect is that of the Indonesian Gamelan, a largely percussion ensemble, most commonly composed of metallophones of various kinds, including gongs, with drums, and also in many cases xylophones, flutes, a string instrument (rebab), and voices. Strongly associated with the pre-Islamic Hindu courts of Java, the gamelan appears to be a hybrid, incorporating musical instruments and practices of various historical periods, and symbolizing various social levels, within a multi-layered ensemble in which each performer has a strictly defined and limited role.

What has for some time most interested me about the various types of gamelan, in both Java and Bali, is the way in which certain aspects of gamelan performance appear, very strangely, to echo certain aspects of Pygmy/Bushmen style. And the more I've been learning about the way Pygmy and Bushmen music is organized, thanks to my readings in the work of Michelle Kisliuk, Nicholas England, Susanne Furniss and Emmanuelle Olivier, the more intrigued I've become.

Here is a somewhat simplified outine of the basic structure of a BaAka Pygmy song, "Mama Angeli," from Kisliuk's book Seize the Dance, p. 83 (I've added some lines above certain notes for reasons I'll explain presently).

And here, for comparison sake, is the score of an excerpt from a Javanese Gamelan piece, from Music Cultures of the Pacific, the Near East and Asia, by William Malm, pp. 28 & 29 of the 1967 edition):

For those of you who enjoy puzzles (and can read music), I'll let you contemplate these two scores for a while to see if you can spot any interesting points of similarity. (To get a better look, click on the images and then click again, to enlarge them to full size.) In my next post, I'll share my own thoughts on the matter.

106. Music of the Great Tradition -- 8

I have only one more item to add to the list -- for now. I'll sneak it in here:

19. Most songs in both traditions are sung to meaningless vocables. Meaningful texts are used, but play a strictly limited role.

The list is remarkable for many reasons. First, because it represents so many striking points of similarity between the musical traditions of peoples living at such great distances from one another, and in all likelihood, as I've argued, separated for tens of thousands of years. Second, because so many of the shared traits are so distinctive: e.g., interlocking "counterpoint"; hocket; yodel; the remarkable ways in which polyphony and heterophony are conflated in both traditions; melodies functioning as unsung mental referents; temporal displacements ("canonic" imitation); the "unification of musical space" through the equivalence of horizontal and vertical intervals, etc. Third -- and this will be my focus for the rest of this series of posts -- certain items in the list read like a menu from which all sorts of other peoples, in completely different parts of the world, have drawn in the development of their own musical styles.

In order to understand the (possible) significance of this last point, we need to back up just a bit to consider the significance of all the evidence suggesting such a great age for "Pygmy/Bushmen" style. As I've argued in my essay, "Echoes of Our Forgotten Ancestors," we have good reason to believe that P/B was the dominant musical style not only of the earliest "modern" humans in Africa, but also the small band of migrants that first ventured "Out of Africa" to become the ancestors of all non-Africans alive today. If this is the case, then P/B must be regarded as the ancestor of all the music we hear in the world of today. And the question we must answer is: what happened during all these many tens of thousands of years that resulted in such a great variety of musical styles today?

I'm not sure I can provide a completely satisfactory answer, but I can say this: when something changes it never changes completely, there are always some aspects that change and others that remain the same. Which means that in many cases we might be able to find some traces of the original, ancestral form, in something that now appears to be "completely different."

For example, since P/B style conflates polyphony and heterophony, and if it is prototypical for all types of music that developed subsequently (as one might expect if one accepts the Out of Africa theory of human evolution), then perhaps certain musical traditions that are now predominantly either polyphonic or heterophonic represent aspects of the original tradition that have survived. Similarly, all the many musical styles of today based on cyclically repeating structures might also have inherited this basic principle from the original source.

We find a great many examples throughout the world of "strophic" structures based on a melody that repeats with different text in each verse. Could this practice be a survival of P/B, based on the importance of item 5 on my list? And what about all the nonsense refrains so important in European and British folk songs? Could they have derived from the nonsense vocables so prevalent in P/B style (see item 19 on my list)?

Now please, before someone has an absolute fit: I'm not saying that this is what actually happened. All I'm saying is that the combination of what I've been arguing with regard to P/B style in itself -- i.e., the possibility of it being of great antiquity -- plus the completely new way of thinking about history mandated by the Out of Africa theory, forces us to consider certain possibilities very seriously that we previously might have felt we could dismiss out of hand. In future posts I'll be considering some of these one at a time and in some detail.

I won't be posting on this blog for a while as I'll be visiting with family over the Thanksgiving holiday, starting EARLY tomorrow morning. Have a happy holiday, everyone -- I'll see you back here soon.

105. Music of the Great Tradition -- 7: The List Completed

16. Polyrhythmically related vocal parts.

17. Polyrhythmic percussive accompaniment, usually but not always, limited to handclapping.

18. The encoding of multipart performances in monophonic melodies and vice-versa, i.e., the encoding of monophonic melodies in multipart performances.

That's all I can think of for now, though I might have more items to add later.

It's important to understand that ALL the many aspects listed pertain to both Pygmy AND Bushmen traditions, making an especially compelling case, as I see it, for common origin. I have recently completed an extensive comparative study based on the research of Susanne Fürniss, Emmanuelle Olivier, Michelle Kisliuk and especially Nicholas England, whose painstaking book-length study of Ju'hoansi Bushmen music is remarkably detailed, thorough and convincing, and am more convinced than ever that the two musical styles are intimately connected and must therefore, in the words of Gilbert Rouget, "stem from a common root."

What most interests me at this point is the way in which so many of the individual characteristics I've listed here would seem to pertain to the music of other traditions, both in and out of Africa. And the question most on my mind is whether or not Pygmy/Bushmen style was 1. the musical tradition carried out of Africa by the original migrant group; and 2. whether certain aspects of this tradition are at the root of so many other musical traditions that developed in the wake of the great "Out of Africa" migration. In other words, was there really a "great tradition" and if so, where are the signs of its influence in the world of today?

104. Music of the Great Tradition -- 6:The List continued

9. Tonal displacement -- pitches in a repeated motive or phrase can be displaced, most usually at the octave, but also at other intervals, such as the fourth and fifth.

10. Temporal displacement -- notes, motives or phrases can be displaced in time, to produce an echo or canonic effect.

11. Repetition -- motives and phrases are frequently repeated, either with or without . . .

12. Variation -- motives and phrases are frequently varied from one rhythmic cycle to the next.

13. Disjunction -- melodic lines tend to be disjunct, often with wide leaps of a seventh, octave or more, an effect usually associated with yodel.

14. "Unification of musical space" -- melodic lines and harmonies are tonally unified in that both employ essentially the same intervals. This is a rather distinctive aspect of Pygmy/Bushmen style, though not unheard of in certain other indigenous traditions. In most types of polyphony, tribal, ethnic, folk and classical alike, melodies tend to be stepwise, i.e., based on intervals of a second, while harmonies are most often in thirds, fourths and/or fifths. (Interestingly, "the unification of musical space" is a phrase coined by Arnold Schoenberg to describe the new approach he was taking when he introduced his "Method of Composing with Twelve Tones," where horizontal and vertical realizations of the tone row are regarded as structurally equivalent.)

15. Continuous Flow -- though the underlying cyclic structure is based on what could be called a melody or phrase, the polyphonic foreground lacks any clear melodic sense of direction, nor are phrases articulated by cadences, as in most other types of music, either tribal, folk or otherwise. Instead there is usually a continuous flow of unarticulated, interwoven motives, to produce the musical equivalent of a "run on sentence." This is another way of saying that, while this music is highly organized, it is without "syntax" in the usual sense of that term.

103. Music of the Great Tradition -- 5: The List

Last time I promised a list of certain points of similarity between the musical traditions of the African Pygmies and Bushmen that seemed particularly significant -- and could lay the groundwork for our exploration of the great tradition that, as I see it, developed from essentially the same type of practice, as observed by the common ancestors of both groups. Here it is:

1. Interlocking or interweaving parts, producing a "contrapuntal" effect.

2. Use of hocket (the interlocking of relatively short motives to produce a single line or texture, with or without a certain amount of overlap).

3. Yodel.

4. Cyclic structure -- most vocalizing in both traditions is based on an underlying, regularly repeating, rhythmic cycle of anywhere from 4 to 16 "beats."

5. Basic melody -- most songs are based on a repeated melody or phrase that serves as a mental referent, even when it isn't being sung.

6. Polyphony -- singing together in harmonically related parts.

7. Heterophony -- the elaboration of a single melody in different versions in two or more parts.

8. The conflation of polyphony and heterophony is an important and highly distinctive feature of both tradtions.

That's all I have time for now. I'll be adding to the list in my next post.

102. Music of the Great Tradition -- 4

I've been doing a lot of research and writing on "Pygmy/Bushmen" style these days, trying to make sense of all the various pieces of evidence and all the theories from a variety of sources. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, two leading researchers in this arena, Susanne Furniss and Emmanuelle Olivier, both students of Simha Arom, have declared that the two traditions, while "acoustically" very close, are in fact "radically opposed" in terms of basic "concept." If this were actually the case, then my "great tradition" would be stopped in its tracks before it could get started. I would simply be on the wrong track. That is of course still possible. But hear me out.

After careful review of their research, both in itself and in comparison with other, equally authoritative sources, such as Nicholas England and Michelle Kisliuk, I remain even more convinced than ever that the two traditions are in fact extraordinarily close, not only "conceptually" but also in just about every other respect one could name. This conclusion is supported in a variety of ways, from careful inspection of the musical transcriptions they offer, to comparison with certain very different examples provided by England and Kisliuk, along with the very different interpretations they have offered.

For example, while Furniss and Olivier have insisted that Bushmen music is based on a strictly linear "mental referent" as opposed to Pygmy music, which is, for them, fundamentally polyphonic in concept, Nicholas England's intensive study of essentially the same tradition led him to a diametrically opposed conclusion: "Bushman music . . . is polyphonic at its very basis." Similarly, my review of Kisliuk's research reveals the Pygmy music she studied to be fully as "linear" as it is "polyphonic."

Nevertheless, Furniss and Olivier are not completely mistaken. As can rather easily be demonstrated, once all the many academic and theoretical cobwebs are removed, the two traditions can be regarded as both polyphonic and heterophonic -- which means that neither can be regarded as either exclusively linear or multi-part at base. And here I must briefly pause to define my terms for those of you who are not music theoreticians. "Polyphonic" music is usually understood as conceived in multiple parts, which when performed together, produce harmonies. By "heterophony" is meant a musical structure where all parts perform a somewhat different version of the same melodic line, with occasional, but not essential, moments when some type of harmonic interval could be present. Certain Pygmy and Bushmen musical practices conflate both possibilities, and in a truly remarkable manner, characteristic not only of their own cultures, but certain others as well, as found in various parts of the world that partake of what I am calling "the great tradition."

Over the years I have noted several very interesting points of similarity between the two styles and, thanks to the work I've been studying lately, by Furniss, Olivier, England and Kisliuk, I have recently become aware of certain others. In my next post, I plan to list as many of these as seem relevant, to provide us with a baseline we can use as a reference as we follow the great tradition down the corridors of history, from then to now.

101. Music of the Great Tradition -- 3

The narrative I'm about to relate is admittedly speculative. However, it is rooted in a premise that, as far as I'm concerned, is rock solid. If you can accept the premise, which will sound fantastic to some, and totally unacceptable to others, but is in fact supported by an impressive body of evidence as well as considerable expert opinion, then all the even more astonishing things that follow will make much more sense than one might otherwise think.

The essentials of my premise have already been discussed at some length on this blog, but I'll go over them briefly now. In Central Africa we have various groups of so-called Pygmies, for example the Mbuti, in the Ituri Forest of the Republic of Congo and the Aka, living in another tropical forest far to the west, in the Central African Republic. In southern Africa, we have various groups of so-called Bushmen, for example the Ju'hoansi, now living in and around the border between Namibia and Botswana.

According to widely accepted (though nevertheless controversial) genetic evidence, all three groups represent some of the most ancient lineages that have yet been identified anywhere in the world. The genetic evidence strongly suggests that the ancestors of both the Pygmies and the Bushmen were once part of a founder band that lived anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Estimates vary, but the two groups are thought by some to have diverged at least 76,000 to over 100,000 years ago. Others have posited a somewhat more recent divergence time, but nevertheless at least tens of thousands of years BP (before the present time).

Despite the fact that the Bushmen and Pygmies are believed to have had no contact with one another for all that time, their very distinctive and intricate musical traditions are remarkably close in a great many ways, as many musicologists have noted. I've already posted several links to their music, but for the benefit of those who may be new to all this, here once again is an example of Aka Pygmy vocalizing: Divining Song. For comparison here is an example from the Ju'hoansi Bushmen: The Eland. Here is another Ju'hoansi example, from the village of Dobe. Compare with this, from the Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest: Elephant Hunting Song.

In several previous posts (especially posts 5-7 and 79-80), I've gone over many of the arguments and evidence that have led me to conclude with a high degree of confidence that the two traditions must stem from a common cultural root, dating from some time prior to their mutual divergence, tens of thousands of years ago. None of this will be new to the regulars reading here.

But for the great majority of ethnomusicologists and anthropologists such a conclusion is nothing less than heresy. (For an extended discussion of the ideological basis for such skepticism, see my posts on the Great Kalahari Debate.) Musical styles and traditions aren't supposed to last anywhere near that long. The general assumption has been that various factors, such as outside influence, creativity, information loss or stylistic "drift" over many generations, would inevitably lead to significant changes over such a long period of time. This is known to be the case with language.

Nevertheless, the musical evidence for the paleolithic origin of what I've called "Pygmy/Bushmen style," coupled with the genetic evidence, is truly overwhelming. Which might tell us something very important about musical traditions -- and culture history -- in general. Because, if the musical practice of the Pygmies and Bushmen of Africa has endured essentially unchanged for tens of thousands of years, then there could be many other musical traditions in other parts of the world that also go back much farther than had previously been supposed. And if we go back far enough, then many of the varied stylistic roots might well converge, to stem from the same root as that of Pygmy/Bushmen style. It is this tradition, going so far back, possibly all the way to the "beginning," that I like to call: "The Great Tradition." I think I can hear it. But I'll let you judge for yourself.

100. Music of the Great Tradition -- 2

If my last post was a bit over-exuberant, it's because I am truly excited about the possibilities opened up by all the revolutionary new research in population genetics and the implications it has for our understanding of human culture and history. Also, because I am so eager to jump start the new era of social science, cultural studies, historiography, anthropology, musicology, etc. I see emerging just over the horizon. (So far things have been much too quiet in all these realms.)

I promise to tone down the hyperbole from now on, however, because I do not want to be perceived as "unprofessional." Actually, while I do have professional credentials, I am not an unqualified admirer of the "professional" attitude, which is why I sometimes seem to be going overboard. I can assure you that any signs I might give that I could actually be some sort of nut case are strictly a hallucination on YOUR part. :-) I am only a harmless composer/poet/artist/musicologist cum philosopher. Artaud was the nut case, not me.

More on the Great Tradition next time, I promise.

99. Music of the Great Tradition

No not THAT tradition.

If you're into classical music you've heard all about the "Great Tradition," starting I suppose with Bach and working its way up through Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Wagner, all the way to Mahler, Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and beyond. That's the European "high culture" Great Tradition and I have to admit, it's a pretty good one. But it can't compare with the Great Tradition I have in mind, the GREAT Great Tradition, starting at the year 000,001 in Africa, then heading east with the great migration out of Africa, circa 80,000 BC, all the way to SE Asia and Melanesia, then veering west to the Caucasus and paleolithic Europe, while at the same time continuing north along the east Asiatic coast to China, Japan, Siberia, and the Americas.

Many nineteenth and twentieth century folkorists had some inkling of an idea of what I'm talking about, conjuring up "old" traditions, mostly in Europe. But their idea of "old" was way too conservative, usually going back no farther than the Middle Ages or possibly "ancient" Greece and Rome. You call THAT "ancient"? Give me a break!

Meanwhile, a whole raft of academics with nothing better to do, decided to go the skeptic route, pooh-poohing all these nutty ideas about "old" traditions. After all, how did we know they were really old, maybe they were new, who could say? Isn't it true that the most natural thing in the world is change? And isn't the most "wonderful" thing about the human spirit its "creativity." (As though they knew anything about creativity - give me a BREAK.) But they were caught with egg on their face when the geneticists hit the fan -- and began working their way systematically through history with some really nifty tools the old academics never dreamed were possible. Many of these old farts still have no idea what hit them and how so many of their most cherished ideas are headed for the toilet. Don't disturb them, they are peacefully asleep in their dogmatic slumber.

As is now becoming apparent, at least to me (but what do I know?), the Great Tradition survived in a great many places, even Europe, for far longer than anyone could have imagined. Amazingly enough, we find traces of the Great Tradition all over Europe even well into the Twentieth Century. But only a very few really knew what to make of them, what they might mean or what they were saying. One of the most interesting, and least known, things about the Great Tradition was the influence it had on that other Great Tradition, the "high art" one and how it has left it's mark on so much of the music we currently regard as "classic" or even modern.

I'll be exploring this tradition in coming posts, so if you're ready for the ride, say tuned.

98. Did the Pygmies Ever Have a Language of Their Own?

Sorry for the sudden change of pace, but a thought occurred to me the other day that won't let me alone. I've been thinking a lot about African pygmy music, as anyone who's been following this blog knows. But now I'm thinking about their language. Their music is certainly special, but their language is also special -- that is, their lack of language, the odd fact that every African pygmy group I know of speaks a language related to that of neighboring Bantu, Sudanic, or Nilotic tribes. It's been assumed that they lost their original language through some process of assimilation with the farming groups they've developed symbiotic relationships with. But this hypothesis runs into a big problem no one seems to have noticed. It is in violation of one of the great principles of science, Occam's Razor, which demands that any scientific model provide the simplest solution that accounts for all the evidence. (This should not be confused with the principle of "parsimony," by the way. Parsimony is one of many possible ways of organizing data, but even the most parsimonious solution, in order to be regarded as valid, must conform nevertheless to Occam's Razor -- i.e, it must still be the simplest solution possible that accounts for all the evidence.)

To assume that each and every pygmy group in various parts of Africa went through the same linguistic "evolution," relinquishing an original language to replace it with that of their neighbors, goes counter to both Occam and common sense, because we would have to assume that in each and every individual and unrelated case more or less the same process occurred.

It's true of course that certain groups in various parts of the world have lost their language when they were conquered and assimilated by more powerful groups. But the pygmies were neither conquered nor assimilated. Though often regarded as vassals, they have apparently always been able to retreat into the forest, where they can practice their own rituals, hunting methods, music, dance, etc. So why not their own original speech?

I find it intriguing that other hunter-gatherer groups didn't lose their original languages in the same way. The Bushmen have their own language, possibly the oldest, as do the Hadza and Sandawe, yet all these groups have also developed symbiotic relations with neighboring farmers and pastoralists.

If the pygmies never had a language of their own, what could that mean? what light might that shed on the question of the origins of both "modern" humans and language?

Most of the evidence appears to point to both pygmies and bushmen as representative, genetically, of our oldest fully human ancestors. Chen et al., in a well known paper, estimated the age of separation of the Biaka pygmies from the founding group to be anwhere from 76,000 to over 100,000 years ago (on the basis of their mtDNA). Let us suppose, then, that the group of "modern" humans destined to be the ancestors of everyone now alive on this planet, spoke some language, say, 120,000 years ago. We would be almost forced to assume that, when the Pygmies diverged from this group, they would have spoken some derivative of that language. But if they did, then we must also assume, following the path of the mighty Occam, that at least some of these pygmy groups would have retained some form of that language -- as did the Bushmen, Hadza, etc.

Let us now go back to 120,000 ya, and make the opposite assumption, that the founding group had not yet developed language. So when the Pgymies diverged from the main group they too would have been without language. Continuing with the same line of thought, we can speculate that language may have been invented after the period when the Pygmies broke off, sometime between 76,000 and 100,000 ya (assuming Chen et al are on the right track). So by the time the other groups, ancestral to the Bushmen, Hadza, etc., diverged, they would have been in possession of language, while the pygmies were not. And at this point we can allow many thousands, indeed tens of thousand of years to pass.

Another clue pointing in the same direction: we have a very rich tradition of symbolic rock art in Africa, dating back at least 40,000 years, which most archaeologists have associated with Bushmen history (though such art is not being produced today). No such art has been, to my knowledge, ever attributed to the ancient pygmies. There is thus, apparently, no real evidence that they were in possession of language during the paleolithic period.

Continuing to speculate, in an equally rigorous Occamian fashion: in order for the above to make sense, the pygmies could not have had language at all until after the Bantu expansion, of 2,000 to 4,000 years ago. If they had developed or borrowed any language prior to that time, that would be the language that at least some of them would now be speaking. It would seem then, that in order for the present pattern to have manifested itself, the first language spoken by any pygmy people must have been a language borrowed from the neighbors with whom they currently interact. Each time a pygmy group encountered Bantu, Sudanic, or Nilotic speaking people, they would have learned what language is from them.

If the above can be taken seriously, it could give us a clue as to when language originated -- i.e., some time between the divergence of the pygmies and the divergence of the Bushmen.

Am I going to hate myself in the morning? We'll just have to wait and see.

97. Is Money the Problem?

In the last installment I briefly described three very different examples of what can happen when dedicated people work together to support vulnerable traditions that are important to them. I could list many more examples, but unfortunately there is not nearly enough of this sort of thing going on and too many important traditions are either dying out or being hopelessly watered down and even degraded. Sure, you can get the media people to accept tribal music from just about anywhere if you slap a rhythm section over it, add a didgeridoo riff and a sitar solo and call it "world beat" or whatever. Or concoct some sort of phony "Celtic" music by slapping a rhythm section over hoked up versions of Gaelic folk songs. That's not what I'm talking about.

It's hard for me to believe people just don't care or that they have really managed to convince themselves that all is hopeless. It is very sadly true that many can no longer tell the difference between the authentic and the phony. And it's no help when solemn, self-righteous voices from the academy continually remind us that "authenticity" itself can be dismissed as some sort of "essentialization," or social construct (it can't). The United Nations has a Commission on Human Rights and has also issued a (imo seriously flawed) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But what about indigenous traditions, what is happening to them?

Sure, there are all sorts of festivals going on in various places and traditional artists can even apply for grants to do their thing. But too many of these festivals and too many of the artists getting grants are forced to water down what they do in order to reach the large audiences required to justify the pitifully small amounts they are able to get -- when lucky.

I'm told all the time that the "young people" are no longer interested in their traditions, that they are regarded as "old hat" and irrelevant. But how about putting some of the older people on television on a regular basis, giving them an opportunity to discuss their traditions and perform their own dances and music in an authentic and respectful setting, produced by media professionals working with a professional budget, to put something together in such a way that it has a real impact. And how about paying the traditional performers for what they do, not just some token payment but something substantial, an amount that reflects their true value to their community and also the world as a whole?

Why do I have the feeling the young people might change their minds in such an environment and suddenly begin to develop more of an interest in their own traditions? Just as young people in western society become motivated to study classical music when they have opportunities to see it performed on television and are impressed by the enormous prestige of certain classical musicians, not to mention their enormous incomes.

Is it unrealistic to expect that comparable efforts and sums of money could be devoted to the support of authentic indigenous (and also ethnic and "folk") traditions? Most people would probably agree that such an idea is totally UNrealistic. But most people nowadays have very little idea of what is going on in the world of the arts generally and the vast sums of money that are being literally thrown at the most prestigious arts institutions and art world stars -- not only artists but curators, museum directors, collectors, administrators, etc.

I recently came across this article in the NY Times, The Patron Gets a Divorce, centered around the Dia Foundation, a story that gives you some idea of the truly obscene amounts of money now being lavished to purchase prestige and panache in the art world of today, dominated by the super-wealthy and the super-manipulative -- those who are now calling the shots and defining what is considered "art" and what is not -- and how much it is worth.

Leonard Riggio is the rich person who made Dia:Beacon possible. A demanding, emotional, self-made man — a Brooklyn cabbie’s son who built Barnes & Noble into the dominant bookseller in America — Riggio was the chairman of
the Dia board during the years Dia:Beacon was being built. He believed in it with every fiber of his being. When Dia needed a piece of art to round out its permanent collection, he bought it. When cost overruns occurred, he covered them. When design decisions arose that entailed additional expenses, Riggio
wrote the check. Of the $50 million it cost to create Dia:Beacon, Riggio gave at least $35 million. The second-biggest donor, the Lannan Foundation, gave $10 million. Ann Tenenbaum, the vice chairman of the board, and her husband Thomas
H. Lee, the Wall Street financier, contributed $2.5 million.

At the time Dia/Beacon was being built with obscene amounts of money taken from profits earned by Barnes and Noble, starting pay at their bookstores was $7 an hour. A friend who had been working there for a few years and had more responsibilities than the beginners was earning more: $8 an hour! Here are some more edifying quotes:

For years, the Guggenheim’s biggest individual patron was Peter B. Lewis, the chairman of the Cleveland-based Progressive Corporation, who donated $77 million to the museum over 11 years. . .

“I think Michael is a person who, among other things, likes to build museums,” he said. “He likes to build, build, build.” This is a notion with which Govan himself takes umbrage — even though part of the reason he took the job in Los Angeles was to take charge of an ambitious three-phase building project; the first phase alone will cost $156 million. . .

On his way out the door, Govan had taken $1.8 million from Dia’s general fund and used it to make a grant to help underwrite an enormous Western land project called “City,” by Michael Heizer, to which both he and Dia had long been committed. (Govan sits on the Heizer Foundation’s board.) ...

For his part, although Riggio walked away from Dia, he remains committed to the art. He now spends some of his money backing Donald Judd’s foundation in Marfa, Tex. ...

I find those last two bits particularly revealing. We now live in a world where superstar artists not only command huge sums but have foundations of their own, complete with boards of directors.

So -- the answer is:
Yes, Virginia, there IS a whole lot of money out there, more than enough to get all sorts of meaningful things accomplished. Once we can find a way to divert all that spending from all the meaningless things greedy, vacuous and vulgar people, manipulated by conniving, shallow, self-imporant people, are being conned into supporting.

96. The Lesson for Today -- Carried Over from Last Week

I see that it's almost a week since my last post. Sorry, but I've been really busy for some time now, with various responsibilities and projects and also people, all of which -- and whom -- are important to me. I was planning on launching a discussion of certain noteworthy and commendable examples of how certain indigenous traditions were successfully protected and promoted, but it seems I don't have the time to do full justice to the full scope of what's at stake here. So I'll have to rest content with some brief mentions.

1. British folk traditions have had a long history of support on many levels and from many notable individuals, from Maud Karpeles, to Ralph Vaughn Williams, Percy Grainger, etc., etc., to Alan Lomax, Peter Kennedy, etc., etc. and most recently Rod Stradling and Fred McCormick, editors of the remarkable online journal, Musical Traditions. All sorts of traditions from all over the world are represented here, but it is the British traditions that get most of the action and rightly so, since both editors are highly committed advocates, determined to see that these extraordinarily powerful and meaningful traditions remain viable, even on the Internet. Have I explained that well? Probably not, so I hope they'll forgive me. My point is that no tradition can survive in the absence of attention and support -- but also that any tradition has a far better chance of survival when even just a small group of dedicated advocates, such as Stradling and McCormick, take the time and make the effort to get the message across regarding what is truly important to them and why it is also important to the rest of us. As indeed it is.

2. I'm thinking of the enormous impact that a single outsider, Colin McPhee, had on the music of Bali. When McPhee arrived on that amazing island during the 30's, its extraordinarily rich musical traditions were in danger of dying out. Thanks to McPhee and also some other dedicated individuals, such as Walter Spies, these traditions were revived -- to the point that today the remarkable gamelan music of both Bali and Java has spread -- in its most authentic forms -- all over the world, enriching the lives of music lovers, and students, everywhere. All it took was the interest and dedication of a few sensitive souls to re-ignite the powerful flame of traditional Indonesian gamelan music, dance, and art.

3. I'm thinking also of a truly Earth-shattering development in the realm of visual arts, where, again, the attention of a few outsiders, intelligent enough and sensitive enough to see the importance of what was dying out before their eyes, has made a world of difference. I'm speaking of the astonishing development, over the last 40 or 50 years, of a truly remarkable and unique "school" of Australian Aboriginal artists, like no artistic school that has ever come before, bar NONE. You might think of me simply as a musician and/or musicologist, but that's not true, I'm a visual artist as well and I've published a fair amount of critical and theoretical work in that area over the last several years. I do think I know what I'm talking about when it comes to visual art. And I must confess that the work of these Australian aboriginal artists has impressed me as NO other art of our time has. The great book to consult on this development is Aboriginal Art, by Wally Caruana. The best internet connection I've found is Nangara, with a dizzying array of truly great art by a remarkably large number of enormously gifted artists on display. Too often one reads of the pressures on artists from all sorts of backgrounds to conform to the accepted styles of either the western past or the "postmodern" present. Here we find artists of great talent and originality, drawing on the indigenous traditions of their forbears with an authenticity evident in every stroke and symbol, yet at the same time powerfully imaginative and original. It CAN be done, ladies and gentlemen, just spend some time at the Nangara website and you'll be convinced.

As a parting shot, I'll leave you with this fantastic description of Balinese dance by the great poet and visionary of the dramatic arts, Antonin Artaud -- if this be "orientalism," he certainly makes the most of it:

"What is in fact curious about all these gestures, these angular and abruptly abandoned attitudes, these syncopated modulations formed at the back of the throat, these musical phrases that break off short, these flights of elytra, these rustlings of branches, these sounds of hollow drums, these robot squeakings, these dances of animated manikins, is this: that through the labyrinth of their gestures, attitudes, and sudden cries, through the gyrations and turns which leave no portion of the stage space unutilized, the sense of a new physical language, based upon signs and no longer upon words, is liberated. These actors with their geometric robes seem to be animated hieroglyphs. It is not just the shape of their robes which, displacing the axis of the human figure, create beside the dress of these warriors in a state of trance and perpetual war a kind of second, symbolic dress and thus inspire an intellectual idea, or which merely connect, by all the intersections of their lines, with all the intersections of perspective in space. No, these spiritual signs have a precise meaning which strikes us only intuitively but with enough violence to make useless any translation into logical discursive langu'age. And for the lovers of realism at all costs, who might find exhausting these perpetual allusions to secret attitudes inaecessible to thought, there remains the eminently realistic play of the double who is terrified by the apparitions from beyond. In this double‑trembling, yelping childishly, these heels striking the ground in cadences that follow the very automatism of the liberated unconscious, this momentary concealment behind his own reality‑there is a description of fear valid in every latitude, an indication that in the human as well as the superhuman the Orientals are more than a match for us in matters of reality."

95. The Lesson For Today -- Continued

I think the most important recommendation I could offer with regard to the whole issue of cultural "equity" (assuming anyone with any degree of influence in such matters is listening) would be that the problems of endangered traditions be afforded at least as much importance as that of endangered animal species. In other words, the issue of cultural ecology should be added to that of environmental ecology as a prime concern of all peoples and all nations, as part of our growing awareness that certain vital aspects of life on this planet, both physical and spiritual (and I do NOT include religion in this formula, thank you), represent urgent concerns that must be addressed if coming generations are to have any sort of meaningful future at all.

Note that we cannot in all good conscience argue similarly on behalf of, say, "endangered peoples." Not because there are no people in the world who are endangered or that there should be no efforts to assist and support them -- on the contrary, this is a hugely important problem that must continually be addressed with the greatest urgency -- but because we find endangered peoples all over the globe, in every country, of every ethnic background, in the countryside, the cities, in factories, farms, mines, slums, ghettos, on the streets, in homeless shelters, etc. The problem of endangered peoples is a vast, worldwide social problem that includes, but cannot be limited to, the effort to support indigenous peoples.

If we want to support indigenous peoples as such, we must emphasize what it is that makes them special and important to humanity as a whole -- i.e., their culture, their traditions. Their "indigeneity" per se, in terms of whatever claims they may have to the prior or inherent ownership of certain lands, properties, etc., however important from a moral and legal standpoint, is not enough to set them apart from any other groups or individuals who might have been unjustly dispossessed and/or displaced in the past, indigenous or not.

I've looked through the recently adopted United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples with mixed feelings. I won't comment on any of this in detail for now, but the sense I get is that there are far too many pronouncements and far too little discussion of all the many problems and pitfalls entailed in almost every article. For one thing, nowhere in the declaration is there any attempt to even define what is meant by "indigenous peoples." Nor is there any attempt to address the extremely complex questions and contradictions that will inevitably arise from many statements -- as in Article 3, for example, where it is declared that "Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination."

Peter Jones is going over the declaration very seriously and in some detail and he certainly has his work cut out for him. I think the essential problem is that the declaration attempts far too much, including a laundry list of often redundant and in many cases unreasonable demands obviously inserted by a wide range of different constituencies, in an attempt to please as many representatives of as many interested parties as possible, with little thought to the potentially divisive and even violent consequences -- in the highly unlikely event that everything in the document will be taken seriously by all the nations that signed it. Realistically, the declaration is likely to have no effect at all, because too many of the issues it addresses, where not hopelessly intractable on their face, are so complex as to be resolvable only in courts of law -- or, God forbid, armed conflicts.

What I'm trying to do here is emphasize the importance of the cultural side of this issue, because, as I see it, the battle for cultural equity on behalf of indigenous traditions is a battle that can be won, an eminently achievable goal. And, moreoever, a battle that can be "fought" peacefully without the need for either weapons or recriminations, which everyone can win and no one would necessarily lose. Whereas the more fundamental, life and death, moral and legal, battles that most concern Peter, as reflected in the well meaning but IMO naive UN declaration, are so complex and so fraught with the potential for violent confrontation, that they may never be fully or even partially resolved by anything more than a series of piecemeal compromises, appropriate to each local situation.

As I see it, efforts like Peter's blog afford a much better opportunity for addressing such issues, since each instance of exploitation, persecution or aggrandizement can be discussed and evaluated on its own merit, within its own parameters and context. In some cases, it might be appropriate to argue for self-determination, in others a simple compromise might offer a better solution. Of course, the UN declaration will be read by many more influential people than Peter's (or my) blog. But if Peter and I persist, we might ultimately reach more people in the long run and maybe change some minds.

Is it naive to assume that anything can be done to effectively and definitively stem the tide of global cultural "pollution"? Isn't it inevitable that native cultures will either vanish, be watered down, or simply assimilated into the mainstream "white"-out? In my next post, I want to discuss some exemplary instances where efforts to protect, promote and develop indigenous traditions have met with real success.

94. The Lesson for Today

The United Nations has recently adopted an important declaration regarding indigenous rights, which Peter Jones is now discussing on his blog. I've gone through this declaration with some care, but before commenting I want to read more of what Peter has to say.

To continue with my "lesson" list from the previous post, I'll summarize the two already presented and then add some more:

1. We need to recognize that indigenous traditions are important for the human race in general, as they are part of a heritage in which we all share. (It should go without saying, by the way, that "our" share in this heritage does not give any single group, nation or business the right to appropriate for its own gain the cultural or intellectual property of any other group.)

2. The protection of indigenous culture need not be an all or nothing proposition. While certain types of change may be inevitable and/or irreversible others are not.

3. Anthropologists and ethnomusicologists tend to cringe at the very thought of "natives" being "trotted out" to perform traditional rituals, dances, etc. for "tourists." Yet we have no problem with all the many tourists flocking into places like New York City or London to partake of characteristically "western" rituals, such as the performance of a play, an opera or a symphony, in which our own "native" artists are "trotted out" for the benefit of anyone with the price of admission. This is yet another example of the double standard I've been discussing. Wherever such performances can enhance the status of indigenous culture, not to mention provide income for indigenous people, they should, as I see it, be encouraged, not disparaged. Anthropologists, ethnomusicologsts and folklorists can make themselves useful by lending their expertise and influence to ensure that such performances are presented in as authentic, meaningful and serious a manner as possible.

4. The worldwide popularity of so many aspects of American culture cannot be dissociated from its role as a global media hub. Yet the importance of the media is rarely considered by those who lament the passing of traditional culture and values. Young people all over the world are profoundly influenced by what's presented to them on radio, television and film (the Internet is a more complex matter that I'll be discussing shortly). If all they see and hear is either western or western influenced, then it's not difficult to understand why they are currently questioning or even belittling their own traditions. The message is all too clear (if mostly subliminal): "This is the voice of the power structure -- if you want to be hip, cool and with it, this is what you must learn to love, this is what you must want to have." Things have gotten so bad in this respect that even when non-western cultures are being depicted, it is usually to patently western style music, usually either rock or classical, with a dollop of occasional bongo drumming to add a bit of "authenticity."

Alan Lomax lobbied hard for an opening of all media to local culture on a regular basis, in the belief that the programming of traditional arts, rituals, crafts, skills and ideas could go a long way toward breaking the global stranglehold of western tastes and values. As a collector, author, broadcaster, record producer, and film documenter, he was well aware of the potential of the various media to alter perspectives and change minds. His own use of the media to spread awareness and appreciation of American traditions had met with enormous success, as is now well understood and appreciated by serious students of folk music, protest music, blues, gospel, country, bluegrass, etc., even rock.

The lesson he learned was the lesson we should all take to heart: when people feel that their traditions are taken seriously by knowledgeable outsiders, they -- and their children -- will take these traditions more seriously as well; when they see and/or hear themselves and their compatriots on the local television, radio, etc., and find themselves turning into local celebrities as a result, the resulting prestige can change everything. On the other hand, when authoritative anthropologists and ethnomusicologists throw up their hands to exclaim that all is hopeless, that "change" is inevitable; when more attention is paid, as is now increasingly common among ethnomusicologists, to the often pathetic efforts of their children to use popular genres such as rock or country music as a catapult to instant fame and fortune; then any hope for the survival of once vital traditions based on centuries of accumulated creativity, imagination, knowledge and wisdom can be forever lost.

5. Not only local but also national media can also make a huge difference, either positive or negative. For a great many years now, public and/or "educational" television has been presenting a long series of always fascinating, but all too often predictable, "nature" programs. The underlying message in almost every case is how "man" is destroying the balance of nature, polluting the wilderness, butchering the wildlife and generally desecrating the planet. While this is indeed a message that we in the developed world should certainly take to heart, the "villains" being portrayed in these documentaries are all too often the local indigenous peoples, whose desperate efforts at survival are typically characterized as "poaching." We hardly ever actually see any of the locals in these shows, but the "insidious" effects of their actions are a constantly recurring theme.

What we hardly ever see on television are programs documenting the lives of the "poachers" who are causing all this grief. And I'm wondering why that is. If PBS and other networks devoted to educational programming would spend more of an effort on the documentation of traditional cultures round the world, so that indigenous people can more often be portrayed in a positive light, in terms of their many impressive acheivements, that could make an enormous difference, for them, their children and our own.

6. With respect to the above situation, one has to wonder why it is that so many animal species are given special status as "endangered," with concomitant efforts at protection, while so many indigenous peoples are literally being tossed to the wolves (of globalization), with hardly a whisper of concern. An especially disturbing example of what can happen when government authorities are convinced by well meaning but naive organizations to passively and unthinkingly follow the wisdom of the day, is the story of what happened to the pygmies of Uganda, kicked out of their own ancestral territories as part of an effort to protect a relatively small group of endangered gorillas.

93. The Double Standard -- continued

Please don't misunderstand. I am not advocating for the maintenance of the status quo in our own society. On the contrary, I firmly believe we in the "west" ought to pay more attention to what our children have to say regarding their education -- and show more respect for their tastes in music, dance, literature, etc. I wouldn't want to toss math, science, Shakespeare, etc. into the dustbin just because the great majority of our children have no interest in them, but I do believe our educational system could be improved if we were willing to listen more carefully to what our children have to say, and take their opinions and feelings more seriously -- at least as seriously as so many of our anthropologists and ethnomusicologists are taking the opinions of indigenous young people with respect to their education and their future.

The point I'm trying to make here is not that one way of dealing with children is necessarily better or more "equitable" than any other, but that there is a double standard at work in our attitude toward our own traditions vs. those of the "Third World." Indigenous traditions are being allowed to fall by the wayside because indigenous young people are perceived as having "lost interest" in them; yet the traditions of the "west" are being preserved, protected, and in fact lavishly promoted regardless of the indifference or even active opposition of the great majority of our own young people -- and in fact our population as a whole.

In the present context, perhaps the most useful tradition to focus on would be western "classical" music. If you were to conduct a poll, you'd probably find that 90% or more of our school children regard it as boring, pointless and irrelevant, a vestigial remnant of the past that has no meaning whatsoever for them. Yet enormous resources are poured into the perpetuation of this tradition in literally every "First World" country. As of February 2006, according to the Wall Street Journal, conductor/pianist Daniel Barenboim was paid almost $2,000,000 by the Chicago Symphony alone (not counting income from guest and solo appearances); Lorin Maazel was paid $1,900,000 by the New York Philharmonic; James Levine was paid roughly the same amount by the Metropolitan Opera Company. According to Playbill, the Philadelphia Orchestra recently reached an agreement with the union whereby "the minimum annual salary for a Philadelphia Orchestra musician . . . is now $119,600." Base salaries for musicians in the nine major US orchestras are at least $94,000 with most well above $100,000.

Again, please do not misunderstand. I am not advocating for the reduction of anyone's salary, especially when so many of our musicians, classical and otherwise, are severely underpaid. Classical music plays an important role in my life, so I am certainly not suggesting that we ought not support it. But it's important to see the double standard at work here. This tradition, like so many others in our society, is supported so strongly because it is valued, and justly so, as a vital part of our culture. Despite the fact that so many in our society have no interest in it, those who do value it, value it so highly that they are willing to expend considerable resources in maintaining it.

Should we be bothered by the fact that, this tradition was originally associated with a "cultural context" involving the rule of kings and queens -- and the snobbish and indeed elitist attitudes and tastes of a privileged aristocracy, aped by an often ruthless and vulgar middle class? As social scientists we certainly do need to take all of that into consideration. Art can never be completely separated from politics. But no tradition of any real vitality and meaning need be bound forever to the cultural context in which it first arose -- and the importance of classical music in the context of modern democracy is a perfect example of that.

What is the lesson here? 1. We need, first of all, to understand and appreciate the value of indigenous traditions, not only to the indigenous people themselves, but to us -- because these traditions pertain to us as well (see my earlier posts). 2. We need to realize that it is not necessary to completely embrace the culture that gave rise to any particular tradition in order to support it -- any more than we embrace the aristocratic culture that gave rise to classical music. Thus it is unreasonable to insist that such traditions must continue to go hand in hand with certain related practices that we might now find abhorrent, such as human (or animal) sacrifice, the circumcision of females (or males), etc. This notion, that all aspects of culture must be regarded as parts of an indissoluble whole, is one of the most destructive (and demonstrably wrong-headed) dogmas of modern anthropology.

To be continued.

92. The Double Standard

In his essay "The Astonished Ethno-Muse" (see post 83), David McAllester registered his sudden awakening to the fact that the younger generation of Navahos had opted for country music and rock in favor of the age-old traditions McAllester himself had gone to such trouble to document and understand. A subsequent visit to Australia demonstrated that more or less the same disconcerting development had occurred among aboriginal youth on that continent. In the years since McAllester's path breaking essay, the refrain has become all too common among academics in all branches of cultural studies: young people today no longer have any interest in the traditions of their forbears, but are, in ever increasing numbers, identifying with the "outcasts" and "rebels" of British-American Pop music.

Consequently, again following McAllester's lead, there has been a call for the "acceptance of change" as a natural and pervasive aspect of all cultures, followed by a veritable avalanche of serious studies devoted to the effects of various genres of popular culture throughout the Third World -- along with a concomitant neglect of older, established traditions whose claims to "age-old" provenance are increasingly being challenged by the same sort of (erroneous) arguments that fueled the "revisionist" position in the Kalahari debate (see post 64 et seq.).

On the intellectual front, there has been a parallel movement, fostered by the supposedly liberatory, anti-hegemonic discourse of "post-modern" thinkers, disturbed by the elitism of "high-culture" modernists (most notably T. W. Adorno, who notoriously placed kitsch and jazz in the same dubious category of degraded art, and campaigned strenuously on behalf of the arch-modernist elitism of his mentor, Arnold Schoenberg). The "new" call (now not so new) has been for a breakdown of the supposedly artificial barrier between "serious" and "popular" culture.

It would be amusing, if it were not at the same time so disturbing, to note the profound double standard at work in all of the above discourses. The alleged preferences of indigenous children and other young people of the "undeveloped" Third World, with respect to their education and orientation toward the past, are being taken very seriously by the academics of a First World which offers its own children exactly no say whatsoever with respect to an educational system steeped in the traditions and values of modern "Western" society.

Are the children of the United States bored with such "outdated" and increasingly "irrelevant" topics as math, science, history, government, Shakespeare, Melville, Poe, Steinbeck, etc.? That certainly would seem to be the case. If their interests are turning, thanks to the profound changes currently taking place in the world around us, to aliens from outer space, computer games, footwear (yes, footwear -- see the previous post), cell phones, iPods, email, chat rooms, Hip-Hop, etc., then, in the spirit of the "new age," the same academics should be lobbying for the incorporation of subjects pertaining to these matters in the curricula of our schools and the phasing out of all the old, "traditional" stuff that no longer means much anymore.

After all, why do you need to learn math if you can do it better on a calculator or computer? Why do math at all in the age of automated checkout and income tax software? Why learn history if you can look up any facts you need over the Internet? Why study Shakespeare, the theater or the novel if it's all available now on cable, Direct TV, DVD, etc.? For that matter, why take the kids out to a fine restaurant when all they really want is whatever "special" is currently being offered by McDonalds, Burger King, Colonel Sanders, etc.? Don't the kids have the right idea? Isn't it elitist to insist on "good" food -- or "fine" wine? If there is no longer any real difference between "high" and "low" in the realm of music and art, then surely there is no real difference between "fine dining" and McDonalds either -- except for the price. So why not save yourself a few bucks, Professor?

As far as music is concerned, one could ask some very similar questions. Why bother anymore with "classical" music, with all its embarrassingly elitist and even undemocratic associations? Didn't classical music develop as part and parcel of the culture of the European aristocracy of centuries past? How could it possibly still be relevant for us today, in the world of American democracy?

The fact remains, however, that we of the "West," regardless of the opinions of our children (who count far more to our tastemakers as consumers than culture mavens), continue to value our own traditions -- educational, culinary, artistic, etc. -- however "outdated" and elitist they may appear to be -- and continue to promote them -- lavishly; while at the same time questioning the value and importance of the traditions of indigenous and other "undeveloped" peoples in the world around us.

91. Brave New World

So, what is to be done with indigenous children? Is it fair to simply permit them to be raised by their families, as indigenes, to be indoctrinated into the value system and traditions of their forbears? Won't they miss out on all the wonderful opportunities afforded by the modern world, for education and specialized training, so they'll have an equal opportunity to play a meaningful role in the highly technical culture of the new global economy? Shouldn't we at the very least give them the opportunity to decide which path to take, without undue interference on the part of their "backward," "primitive" and "superstitious" parents?

Before answering that question, those reading here should think a bit about their own cultural background, and the extent to which they themselves have become independent of their parents, and their own particular "ethnic," "tribal," and/or religious heritage. Many of us had certain opportunities to free ourselves from our ethnic past, and, with very little hesitation, took them. I know I did. So why shouldn't the same opportunities be afforded to all children everywhere, regardless of how impoverished -- or indigenous -- they might be?

This appears to be the thinking behind the latest and greatest scheme of Nicholas Negroponte, "visionary" director of the MIT Media Lab, who wants every child in the "underdeveloped" world to have a laptop computer. You can find the Mission Statement for his "One Laptop Per Child" program here. No one is asking the parents of these children for either their input into this program or their opinion of its worth. They are, of course, too "backward" to understand.

But their children "get it," don't they? Every kid wants a computer, no? After all there are some great games, unlimited opportunities to chat with ones pals, and all sorts of wonderful websites, devoted to such "educational" matters as shoe ads, music downloads and -- well -- shoe ads and music downloads. If the "shoe ads" bit puzzles you, I can understand. It puzzled me as well, when I learned (from the horse's mouth) that the number one Internet target for middle and high school children, at least in Pittsburgh, was websites featuring ads for footwear. Not porn! Not Hip-Hop! Footwear!!! I'm talking boys, by the way, not girls. Boys!

Is "One Computer Per Child" an educational program? or the cleverest global marketing scheme ever devised? Or, better yet (since it includes both in one neat package) the cleverest brainwashing method ever devised? Does it really matter? Because you know and I know that nothing is going to stop this juggernaut from polluting the already fragile cultural environment big-time. Lomax's words seem as relevant now as when he first pecked them, using his inimitable two-finger technique, onto his old-fashioned manual typewriter: "A mismanaged, over‑centralized electronic communica­tion system is imposing a few standardized, mass‑produced and cheapened cultures everywhere."

So, yes, all children everywhere are entitled to an equal opportunity. But an opportunity for what? If Negroponte gets his way and millions of impoverished children are able to access the internet via cheap (by our standards, not theirs) laptops -- and, moreover, by some miracle, large percentages of these children are able, as a result, to actually become "educated" by western standards, and even have the opportunity to go to college, then what percent of these children, do you suppose, will have any sort of chance whatsoever to actually participate in some meaningful way in "the global economy" -- or any economy whatever, besides the same economy of subordination, exploitation, slavery and crime the great majority are already engulfed in? Why not do something to improve that economy first, before attempting to sell them on the phony dream of participation in an elite that already neither needs nor wants more than the smallest percentage of the masses of over educated adults currently on the labor market?

Meanwhile what is to be done? Are the children of indigenous peoples victims of their culture's underdevelopment and backwardness (reinforced by the "romantic" notions of "essentializing" anthropologists), who must at all costs be rescued, by missionary groups, well-meaning charities, nationally sponsored educational programs (ala "Rabbit-Proof Fence"), or pie-in-the-sky "visionaries" such as Negroponte? Or are they victims, rather, of an aggrandizing, hegemonic, greedy, deceptively "egalitarian," but in truth ruthlessly exploitive, global capitalist system; hapless pawns, who must at all costs be rescued by essentializing, romantic anthropologists, so they can be returned to the bosom of their "native" society, to struggle for survival in communities that are, tragically, and far too often: sexist, homophobic, exploitive, alcoholic, drug-addicted, selfish, greedy, impoverished, ill, dysfunctional, dis-spirited, disinherited, displaced, disheartened, doomed to irrelevance in the brave new world of "today."

Pardon the sarcasm, but just thinking about this stuff makes me dizzy with a sense of frustration and hopelessness, warping my brain. Clearly, the issues facing the children of indigenous (and/or "underdeveloped") peoples are indeed some of the most complex issues faced by anyone in the world today. It might surprise you to learn that I have no solutions to offer (aside from the one about improving the economic conditions of impoverished and exploited peoples generally). The situations faced by these children are indeed dire. These are just some of the excruciatingly complex problems that Peter Jones is routinely struggling with on his Indigenous Issues Today blog, and I admire his courage and intelligence in discussing them with such compassion, wisdom, insight, knowledge and fairness. I also offer him my sympathy, because he has a truly daunting task before him.

As for me, all I can do at this point is return to the principal matter at hand in this blog, the issue of cultural survival, which is thankfully, by comparison, far simpler to evaluate -- and rectify.

90. Two Sides to the "Rabbit Proof Fence" -- Or: Every Child's Right to be Educated/Indoctrinated

In the last post, I quoted with approval Peter's characterization of me as "an ethnomusicologist who is interested in all forms of musical heritage; he does not seem to accord more cultural equity to so-called 'traditional' forms of music than hybrid or modern forms." If we understand the word "equity" as "equality" or "justice" then, indeed, I have no problem with the above -- and I'm assuming that's how Peter meant it. All forms of music, including hybrid or modern forms do indeed deserve a hearing. A great many such hybrids, including many examples from the realm of "popular" music, are, for me at least, quite exciting, meaningful and important by any standard. But even those that may not, by my standard or yours, have much significance, may nevertheless have meaning for some group or other and are therefore worthy of our attention and respect.

However! From the viewpoint of "equity" as investment, as a great spiritual treasure stored up for all of us by countless generations of ancestors, creating and painstakingly passing down, from generation to generation, the accumulated art, wisdom and spiritual power of the species, all types of music can not be regarded as of equal value, because it is only among the most traditional peoples that we find the most faithful custodians of this treasure. Here is where the special significance of indigenous music, dance, art, ritual, etc. comes in and this is why it is so important that each such tradition be both protected and encouraged to develop, in its own way, according to its own standards, norms and stylistic constraints.

The real difficulty comes next, however, when we ask ourselves how to go about protecting and encouraging these peoples and their traditions in the face of so many of the pressures brought about by globalization, "development," "modernization," the media onslaught highlighted by Lomax, etc. In other words, what can be done to instill in the younger generation a sense of the importance, both to them and the world at learge, of the traditions they see disintegrating around them? Peter Jones has stated that "Indigenous peoples’ issues are perhaps some of the most complex issues in the human rights arena today." Among the most complex of all these complex issues are the issues centering on indigenous youth.

What role does the dominant society play in the education (or, more cynically, indoctrination) of indigenous children? What role ought it to play? There is a long, painful and sometimes truly disturbing history here. The film Rabbit-Proof Fence tells the heartbreaking story of Australian children of mixed parentage, part aboriginal, part "white," torn from their aborigine mothers to live and be "educated" in "modern" schools, where, thanks to their "white" ancestry, they can be given the dubious advantage of a western-style, "enlightened" education. A larger part of this truly horrendous story, prompted by the best of intentions, can be read in the report, Bringing Them Home, from the Reconciliation and Social Justice Library.

On the opposite side of this "rabbit proof fence," we have the very disturbing and very real stories of childhood labor and even enslavement, with the complicity of "traditions" that too often give parents no choice but to, in effect, sell their children into a life of endless toil and exploitation. Not only children, but women also can be victimized by traditions that operate for the benefit of one group at the expense of all others. "Tradition" in and for itself is clearly no more of an answer than exploitive "modernization." For this reason many have become convinced that "human rights" should include the right of all children to spend their chilhood being educated rather than put to work -- or worse.

But what is education if not a hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) form of indoctrination -- into the mindset, value system and, yes, tradition, of the educators? I recall being horrified some years ago, while sitting beside my ex-wife at her church, at the sight of a choir made up of young African orphans, singing their hearts out for love of a "Jesus" who had clearly won their hearts by way of their stomaches. The missionary group that may well have saved them from all sorts of very real evils, from starvation to soldiering, was extremely proud of what it had done with these young minds and souls. I felt seriously indignant, however, at the idea that anyone, no matter what the reason, would stoop so low as to exploit the plight of these poor victims by taking the opportunity to indoctrinate them with their own creed -- and in effect turn them into brainwashed disciples.

89. Music and Commodification

Peter Jones' latest contribution to our dialogue moves our discussion forward in a meaningful way, but also contains some misunderstandings that I'd like to clear up. Since all this ethnomusicology stuff is new to him, it's understandable that he might get a bit confused as to who is advocating what. The debate is confusing, no question, and I probaby failed to make my position as clear as I could have. Ultimately, as he realizes, all these nuances don't really matter all that much anyhow, since the heart of the issue is not primarily about what (or who) is right and what is wrong, what is "truly authentic" and what isn't, but the nature of the reality we are faced with and how we can deal with it in a manner that respects the importance of "equity," in both senses of the term.

Nevertheless -- to clarify my position with respect to the examples I cited, Rebekah Moore celebrates a type of music that I (not she) would regard as "commodified," and, in a twist of logic that is by no means easy to grasp, seems to be actually arguing for this "commodified," watered-down, amateurish (in my view), "world beat" style as itself an expression of "indigeneity." In other words, far from questioning such music as a compromised, commodified product of Western imperialism (as I might very well do), she is presenting it as a model of how young Saamis are actually asserting their indigenous identity. Similarly, the Ethnomusicology Society's panel on "Global Rock" celebrates the power of rock music to advocate for "marginalized voices" rather than holding it accountable for its complicity with the marginalizing, hegemonic forces of global capitalism.

It's easy to see how Peter could get confused, because this is not the position one might expect from people deeply involved in the study of musical traditions, as one would assume ethnomusicologists to be. There is a long history here, during which as I see it, the field has begun to lose its center, led astray by the same complexities of post-modern pseudo-philosophy that have led so many others astray, precipitating an unfortunate backlash against the whole notion of indigeneity as a hopelessly romantic essentialization of the "underdeveloped" third world and its peoples. (For more on this issue, see my earlier posts on the Kalahari Debate.)

As I hope I made clear in post 86, I have no serious problem with any type of music per se, certainly no problem with hybrid music, not even the most amateurish and/or "commodified," so long as it is valued by some segment of the human race; but also: so long as it makes room for all the other types of music that are also valued. In this sense, Peter is perfectly right in characterizing me as "an ethnomusicologist who is interested in all forms of musical heritage; he does not seem to accord more cultural equity to so-called “traditional” forms of music than hybrid or modern forms." What bothers me, however, as it did Lomax, is the tendency of the commodification process to promote a very narrowly defined and limited musical paradigm at the expense of all other types of musical expression, including the most traditional types associated with certain localized, regional, and/or indigenous cultures.

In his last two paragraphs, Peter makes clear that we are, indeed, in agreement on what is essential. Which returns us both to the issue I left hanging at the end of post 85, the issue of the rights of young people with respect to both the traditions of their elders and the "call" of modernity in the form of global culture. In Peter's words:

The question that remains to be tackled in the next post is how we are to view and understand cultural equity in the contemporary world. How are we to grapple with the fact that “culture” no longer carries its historic meaning of pseudo-objectivity, but rather now refers to something that is diaphanous, ephemeral, non-local?

88. Are Indigenous Cultures Frozen in Time?--Part 2

So, to answer the question as succinctly as possible: no, indigenous cultures are not frozen in time -- at least not any more than "our own." Which means that, in order to protect such cultures, we need not attempt to freeze them in time, because being frozen has nothing to do with what makes them what they are. Notice that I wrote "protect" rather than "preserve."

On the other hand: yes, the music of these cultures is in fact bounded by certain constraints, stylistic and other, that must be respected -- just as the need for strophic forms, regular meters, diatonic melodies, standard chords, rhythm sections, etc., etc., etc. in "our" popular music must be respected. I've tried on several occasions, by the way, to convince students and other young musicians of my acquaintance that they don't really need to have the drums or the bass go on continuously (as in "continuo"); that they can from time to time let one or both drop out; that they don't need to have either guitars or electric basses in their band at all; that they can really just do whatever they like, as long as they find a way to do it in an interesting and convincing manner -- and they look at me as though I'm from Mars, or worse, that I'm trying to convince them to do something "far out," the sort of thing that would mean losing their audience (what audience?) and wrecking their chances for "rock stardom" (right, lots of luck guys). All I'm doing is trying to help you be creative and original, folks. Isn't that what it's all about? Give me a break! (Oops, I forgot: it's really all about being "free," fighting "conformity," bucking "the system," dissing "the man," protesting whatever, and promoting "The Revolution.")

Sorry if I managed to get just a bit carried away, folks. To get back on task: yes, indigenous cultures and their music can be complex, creative and innovative -- within certain boundaries -- just as with us "moderns." Back in the early 20th Century, the Balinese gamelan tradition was shaken by a "completely new" style of performance called "Kebyar," in which the stately pace of the traditional court ensembles was replaced by rapid tempi, stunning virtuosity and a whole "new" sound. If you've ever heard the remarkable composition "Golden Rain," you'll know what I mean. Traditionalists complained, but Kebyar eventually took its place as part of that tradition, to the point that many fans of Balinese music consider it typical of the tradition as a whole. It isn't, but who cares? Its authenticity is based on a continuity with the older tradition that has remained unbroken, despite all the innovations.

I've made a special example of Pygmy and Bushmen style as the survival of a musical tradition that might well be as old as humankind itself. Yet, according to Michelle Kisliuk (in her book Seize the Dance), who spend a considerable amount of time living among and learning from the Aka Pygmies, new music, new dances and new types of music and dance are continually being created among them. She tells the story of how she wanted to learn one such dance and had to track down its originator in a neighboring village -- and pay a fee -- in order to receive the proper instruction. Aka music and dance are by no means ossified, "frozen in time" or in some sort of rut. All aspects of their culture fit into the norms of their tradition, just as ours do. Within those norms, they are just as creative and innovative (probably moreso, actually) as any other indigenous -- or non-indigenous -- people.

87. Are Indigenous Cultures Frozen in Time?

Toward the end of his most recent post, Peter Jones cautions against seeing indigenous cultures as "frozen in time, locked in some romantic fiction that never existed." This is the sort of statement too often used as an argument against any and all attempts to protect, or even acknowledge, indigenous culture. But in this case Peter is simply, and very wisely, presenting it as a concern. It ought to be a concern, as it represents one of the most challenging issues one can confront when trying to understand, and come to terms with, indigeneity and indigenous peoples.

If by "cultural equity" we simply mean "fairness" to various and sundry remote and exotic cultures, each seen as both unique and also set apart, "frozen in time" in a world of its own, then one might feel a responsibility to preserve each of these separate worlds in its own pristine "authenticity." If, however, we see "cultural equity" as something in which we too hold a stake (i.e., equity), as a spiritual investment made by generations of ancestors, going all the way back to the beginnings of our species -- which, if we are to believe the geneticists, does appear to have a common source, and, therefore, a common cultural heritage -- then we cannot separate indigenous peoples off from ourselves in exotic and remote worlds of their own, but must see them as part of a dynamic ongoing process that concerns everyone now alive -- and our descendants after us. This is especially significant in view of the fact that it is the same so-called "indigenes" who have been most concerned, if not obsessed, with both the preservation and cultivation of tradition.

The need to understand and appreciate such interconnections is, I think, the point Peter is making by quoting the song by Jimmy Cliff. Not literally that "we are all one" in any ordinary sense, but that deep down at our core we all connected via our common heritage, both genetic and cultural.

All well and good, one might say, but when we get down to specifics we seem to be confronted with an enormous number of totally different traditions, each appearing to us as something rigid, indeed "'frozen in time," sometimes irrational, often fragile and even brittle, difficult to understand and even more difficult, therefore, to connect with. The problem is indeed immense, and there are many different ways of addressing it.

Lomax saw Cantometrics, Choreometrics and Parlametrics* as tools that could help us understand the many underlying connections between and among all these seemingly isolated islands of culture. By focusing on style, thus emphasizing the medium in which something is expressed, as opposed to the specific message of each individual utterance or tradition, it is indeed much easier to sort all the many types of cultural practice into a relatively small set of families. And what I am now trying to do is extend the Cantometrics approach to explore certain possible ways all these families might inter-relate, both with each other and with "us."

An important lesson to be learned from the Cantometric approach is that even the most dynamic and apparently ever-changing cultures are invariably constrained by underlying stylistic forces of which they may be only dimly aware, forces reminiscent of what political philosophers often refer to as "ideology." The global musical scene of today, in all its complexity, involving all sorts of genres, from classical to jazz, to every variety of "pop," from rock to country to reggae to hip-hop, from New Age to World-Beat, from Nashville to Hollywood to Bollywood, may well be among the most dynamic and bewilderingly complex cultural manifestations in history. When we step back, however, to survey this riot of apparently unrestrained creativity from the broad comparative perspective fostered by Cantometrics, only a very few basic performance models emerge. Basic to just about every popular medium is an array of musical practices combining European melodic and rhythmic models (such as strophic form; a standardized, unvarying metric (usually 4/4); "standard" bass-oriented harmonic progressions based on triads and seventh chords; diatonic melodies; emphasis on chorded, plucked string instruments, etc.) with certain expressive modes characteristic of Sub-Saharan Africa (such as call and response; vocal polyphony; tight rhythmic blend; anticipation of the beat; cross-rhythms and syncopation; continual drumming; pentatonic scale elements (producing so-called "blue notes" when overlaid with diatonic scales); open-throated vocalizing, etc.).

Absolutely fundamental to literally all forms and genres of both jazz and popular music (with the notable exception of Hip-Hop), in literally every variant in every part of the world, is the so-called "rhythm section," combining a bass instrument with at least one chording instrument (piano, guitar, banjo, cymbalom, accordian, etc.), and standard European drum set, playing standard triadic chord progressions in a manner strongly suggestive in many respects of the "continuo" section so important in European music of the "Baroque" period. (Whether or not this particular connection is meaningful or fortuitous is an extremely interesting question I can't pursue here.)

Given such extremely tight constraints, as imposed on just about any form of popular music in the world today, could we characterize our current global musical culture as rigidly circumscribed by tradition and, indeed, "frozen in time"? From the perspective of someone not caught up in the system, but observing from outside, that might certainly appear to be the case.

*Choreometrics is a system, based on the Cantometrics approach, for encoding certain aspects of movement and dance style. Parlametrics is a similarly stylistic approach to the study of speech and spoken interaction.

86. Should Some Cultures Have More "Equity" Than Others?

I'm pleased to see that Peter Jones is continuing our dialogue in his latest blog post: Cultural Equity, Indigenous Peoples, and Homogenization: Part 2. After agreeing that my notion of "cultural equity," as an ancestral "investment" on behalf of all of humanity, makes sense, he wisely inserts a note of caution:

We must be very careful in how we wield the “cultural equity” baton, for we do not want to allow for reverse cultural equity to take place, substituting what is valued now with another thing in some form of post-colonial role reversal. Rather, as Lomax and Victor argue – and I concur – we must simply strive for equal voice, equal rights, equal cultural appreciation and value.

He also wants it understood that he is not "arguing for indigenous peoples’ cultures to be frozen in time, locked in some romantic fiction that never existed."

What's at stake here are two related issues of great importance that have been and continue to be a source of considerable misunderstanding: 1. is the popular music of today, or any other time, to be dismissed as invalid, inauthentic "pollution," to be rooted out and replaced with what is "truly" valid and authentic, in some sort of "cultural cleansing" operation? 2. does the evidence that certain aspects of indigenous culture are rooted in age-old traditions mean that the only way to preserve and protect such traditions is to freeze them in place, like exhibits in a museum showcase?

Many of Lomax's critics have much too quickly jumped to the conclusion that his call for cultural equity, in the face of a "mismanaged, over‑centralized electronic communica­tion system . . . imposing a few standardized, mass‑produced and cheapened cultures everywhere," represents a narrowly purist or even elitist view. Anyone who knows much about Lomax's history will realize how unjust such a characterization is. Unlike so many folklorists and ethnomusicologists of his generation, who focused exclusively on what they perceived as the oldest and purest manifestations of tradition, Lomax was open to a wide range of cultural expressions, both "folk" and popular, both "purely" traditional and hybrid. He loved the traditional music of Africa, Britain and Europe no more than its many hybrid offshoots in the Americas, from the work songs of the Caribbean and the southern prisons to spirituals and gospel, from Santeria to Afro-Cuban and "Latin," from Mississippi Delta Blues to New Orleans Jazz and Cajun, from Rhythm and Blues to Rock 'n Roll, from backwoods ballads to banjo picking to Bluegrass, and beyond.

What bothered him was not the existence of popular or hybrid expressions, but the manner in which certain very limited and yes, in some cases cheapened, popular forms were being promoted to the exclusion of all else, and literally jammed down everyone's throat, whether they liked it or not. What Lomax really objected to, and I fully concur, was not any particular musical genre, format or tradition per se, but the hegemony of a ruthlessly centralized, insensitive and unresponsive, out-of-control global marketing system, hogging the media and indeed the very air we breath, and pushing every alternative means of expression into the background and beyond, into oblivion.

The exemplary case is that of the Italian village where everyone used to gather in the plaza each evening to sing together. One day a television set appears, sitting on a platform in the center of the plaza. Everyone gathers around to sing together along with the music on the television. Over the next few years, more and more television sets appear in individual homes and fewer and fewer people gather at the plaza. Finally everyone is spending the evening at home silently staring at the boob tube and the plaza is empty. A beautiful age-old tradition that had brought everyone together has been destroyed, to be replaced by -- well, that's a whole other story for another day.

To respond specifically, therefore, to Peter's first concern, we must indeed be careful to avoid promoting some sort of colonialism in reverse, a cultural cleansing that would root out whatever might seem inauthentic or unworthy to some self-appointed group of cultural purists. Any type of music has value if there are people who enjoy it and support it -- and that is certainly the case for all forms of popular music, rock, country, punk, disco, rap, even Liberace and Lawrence Welk, whether you or I or anyone else happens to like it or not. What Lomax was calling for was not a return to some ideal past, in which anything he didn't approve of would be eliminated, but simply a system that would promote "equity," in the form of equal air time, equal funding, equal attention, equal respect from journalists, academics etc., on behalf of traditions presently being stifled if not snuffed completely out of existence.

I'll deal with Peter's second, equally important, concern in my next post.

85. Globalization, Cultural Inequity, and Academic Complicity

The promised collaboration is under way! Peter Jones has responded to post 82 on his own Blog, Indigenous Issues Today, mainly with some (quite favorable) comments on the long quote from Alan Lomax, whose ideas he hadn't been aware of before. He notes that all cultures have elements of both weakness and strength, and I concur. I'm sure he'll agree that, nevertheless, certain cultures are without doubt endangered -- regardless of the many strengths they may have and the many gifts they can offer humankind as a whole. He promises another more specific post on cultural equity soon. Meanwhile I'm going to continue ranting and raving on the same topic over here in the hope that he'll want to "stay the course" (in the words of our "beloved" leader) and continue our dialogue.

To continue from where I left off in post 83, I must register my extreme disappointment with the views expressed by a man from whom I’ve learned so much and been so inspired by so many times in the past. First of all, David McAllester, like Michelle Kisliuk and so many others in ethnomusicology now actively proselytizing for “change,” is simply wrong. There is nothing “natural” or “constant” about change. According to noted evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould, “The oldest truth of paleontology proclaimed that the vast majority of species appear fully formed in the fossil record and do not change substantially during the long period of their later existence (average durations for marine invertebrate species may be as high as 5 to 10 million years).” Homo habilis fossils span a period of 500,000 to 750,000 years without significant change in either their physical appearance or their toolkit. The Neanderthal toolkit also remained essentially the same over a period of roughly 250,000 years. (See http://www.ecotao.com/holism/hu_evo_intro.htm, which includes an extensive list of sources.)

Secondly, McAllester sometimes appears to be implying that the changes he celebrates are a “zero sum game,” in which weakly supported traditional practices must inevitably give way to newer and stronger ones, through a process dangerously akin to social Darwinism. I knew McAllester well enough to know how alarmed he’d be at such an interpretation, but for many younger colleagues influenced by him, social Darwinism was only a launching pad. It took hardly any time at all for me to find the following all too typical pronouncement during a cursory Google search on something like “ethnomusicology AND popular music”: “Popular music performance is a special context for the public construction and evocation of indigenism; through popular music many indigenous performers employ musical and cultural signifiers to reinforce their status, illustrate commonalities between indigenous communities, and challenge western demands for cultural authenticity. . . I argue that the issue of representation in ethnomusicology is directly challenged by these complex constructions of identity in musical performance, and by a new understanding of the world music aesthetic employed by many indigenous performers” (from an abstract for the MACSEM meetings of 2005: "Sámi Popular Music and Identity in the New Millennium," by Rebekah E. Moore, University of Maryland).

Whereas McAllester noted with astonishment the transfer of interest from authentically indigenous to popular music, Moore celebrates the use of popular music as itself a tool for the “construction and evocation of indigenism”; and moreso, as an effective means for indigenous performers to “challenge western demands for cultural authenticity” (my emphasis). The example of “world beat” music she offers as a “complex construction of identity” and a challenge to “the issue of representation in ethnomusicology” in the hands of “indigenous performers” looks suspiciously to me like a variant of some of the most naïve forms of “new age” dilettantism as practiced by individuals, “indigenous” or not, seeking a safe and hopefully lucrative niche in the global marketplace. As for “western” demands for cultural authenticity, this sort of typically “postmodern” rhetoric is particularly unfortunate, as it effectively marginalizes any truly indigenous voices that might still remain to speak on behalf of their own dying traditions, with or without the support of “western” sympathizers.

One finds similar sentiments expressed almost routinely in the ethno literature these days; for example, in the following abstract, by Professor Paul Greene of Penn State, for a panel on “Global Rock” at the annual meetings of the Ethnomusicology Society in 2005: “The panel thus not only offers new research directions; it also inspires much needed reflection on the past and future of our field, and a reflection on the efficacy of rock music as a vehicle of self-advocacy for marginalized voices around the world today.” Marginalized by whom, one is tempted to ask. Could rock music itself be part and parcel of the same global forces responsible for the same marginalization? Just raising such a question would already brand one as an “elitist” in this milieu.

One thing I particularly like about Peter Jones (see previous post) is his unusual combination of compassion and sense of justice on the one hand, and hard-nosed critical thinking on the other, a clear headed sophistication that prevents him from falling into some of the traps encountered by well meaning, but often naïve and overly idealistic, advocates. As he states in a recent post, in which he takes a native American group to task for manipulating the legal system to its own advantage, “Indigenous peoples’ issues are perhaps some of the most complex issues in the human rights arena today.” A good example of such difficulties arises when one considers what sort of policy one might want to recommend with respect to the traditional musical cultures of indigenous peoples, threatened by globalization in the form of the mass marketing of commodities such as “Rock,” “Country,” etc. – and the valorization of this process by the academic establishment.

There’s no point, of course, in ranting and railing over the triumph of what Lomax would call “cultural pollution” (or, perhaps, in more timely fashion: “Global Yawning”). What’s most important is not whether Rock or Country is more or less valid, meaningful or “authentic” than any other type of music, but what sort of role it plays in today’s world, and especially the world of the young. And in this case one is forced to admit that, for whatever reason -- marketing, aesthetics, crisis of identity -- young people all over the world are drawn to Western values, products, mass media – and music. If traditions are to have a future, it must be among the young, the younger generation must become involved. This is as true of courting practices, marriage customs, dietary habits, etc. as it is for music. The older generation may be set in its ways and unwilling to change, but their children seem to have another idea these days. If there is such a thing as “human rights” or “cultural rights,” then what about the rights of young people to choose for themselves the type of culture and the type of society they’d prefer?

How are we to think about that? What can be done? What should be done?

I have some ideas on the above but am curious to see what Peter might have to say – and of course anyone else who might want to chime in with a comment.