312. Alternatives

(. . . continued from previous post.)

In Chapter Six, of the book Folk Song Style and Culture (1968), titled "Song as a Measure of Culture," Alan Lomax unveiled a five-point scale of subsistence types as the basis for an evolutionary approach to the development of both culture generally and music in particular. The link he claimed to have discovered "between the norms of work and the norms of song" implied "that song style is a reflection and reinforcement of the way a culture gets its work done" (123), and that musical style will consequently change as work methods become more complex over time, from foraging to horticulture to increasingly sophisticated forms of agriculture. On this view of history, which Lomax was to vigorously promote and elaborate for many years thereafter, differences in musical style can be explained in terms of differences in subsistence type, each of which entails different methods of work. Therefore, in very general terms, as people work, thus do they sing.

Lomax's theory developed from a more basic assumption, shared by a great many anthropologists and ethnomusicologists even today, that music is an expression of culture and can be understood only in relation to its cultural context (a view that, as I see it, cannot be sustained, as it is inconsistent with abundant evidence that musical style can survive despite radical changes in cultural context). On this view, the musical gap I've noted could be explained as the result of a change in subsistence type that would, theoretically at least, have occurred in South Asia but apparently not Southeast Asia, Island Southeast Asia or Melanesia. I suppose such a change could be explained as a response to environmental factors unique to this region, or possibly to demographic factors due to rapid population expansion, according to the model suggested by Maju. As should be clear from my comments in Post 225, I have serious doubts about Lomax's theory, which was universally rejected many years ago, for reasons both good and bad, by anthropologists and ethnomusicologists alike -- but, again, it is an alternative to be considered.

The gap I've been pointing to in relation to my overview of the initial Out of Africa migration, centered on the distribution of P/B style, is in fact only one part of a much larger musical mystery, the almost total absence of traditional vocal polyphony of any kind throughout so much of Asia, from the Middle East through virtually all of village India, to Central Asia, almost all of China, Japan, Korea, and most (though certainly not all) of Southeast Asia, associated with the development of a remarkable type of virtuosic solo singing that Lomax called "elaborate style" (see Post 296). While the wide distribution of elaborate style can be understood in relation to the spread of various forms of "high culture" from the Neolithic to the modern era, the initial loss, in Asia, of polyphonic traditions stemming from our African roots (assuming the Out of Africa model), and commonly found in so many other parts of the world, must nevertheless be explained.

As far as I know, the only other musicologist to have systematically investigated this mystery is Joseph Jordania, who offers an explanation very different from mine in his remarkable book, Who Asked the First Question? The Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech.* Since Jordania does not subscribe to the Out of Africa model, but endorses the multiregional view instead, his overall orientation is very different from mine. There are some important similarities, nevertheless, including his conviction that our musical traditions ultimately have their origin in Africa (though among Homo Erectus rather than Homo Sapiens) and that these traditions were originally polyphonic:

According to the suggested model, initial forms of polyphonic singing (proto-polyphony) were distributed in all ancient populations of Homo Erectus (or more correctly, archaic Homo Sapiens). This ancient tradition of polyphony singing, with the new human cognition and the ability to ask questions was taken along on the long journey to different regions of the world (349).

As Jordania sees it, early humans lacked articulated speech, but made up for it through the development of musical abilities. Their displays of musical coordination had important survival value because they helped them ward off predators. As articulated speech slowly developed in various places, presumably via convergent evolution, their original musical aptitude withered, to become a kind of "vestigial organ":

After the advent of articulated speech musical (pitch) language lost its initial survival value, was marginalized and started disappearing. Early human musical abilities started to decline. The ancient tradition of choral singing started disappearing century by century and millennia by millennia. Musical activity, formerly an important part of social activity, also started to decline and became a field for professional activity. As a result of this decline, in some regions of the world the tradition of vocal polyphony is almost completely lost (349).

The reason why "[t]he tradition of choral polyphonic singing has been lost among East Asian and Australian Aboriginal populations [while] still strongly present in European, Polynesian, Melanesian, and particularly – sub-Saharan African - populations" is due to "the shift to articulated speech among different populations in different epochs. Regions where vocal polyphony is absent (lost) must have shifted to articulated speech earlier. Regions where the tradition of vocal polyphony is still alive and active must have shifted to articulated speech much later" (350). Thus, for Jordania, we find no trace of choral polyphony in East Asia or Australia because articulated speech must have developed at a much earlier period there than in Europe, Oceania and Africa, and the advantages conferred by such an ability would have made coordinated musical activity no longer necessary.

Jordania's theory, while imaginative and interesting, is based on a long list of assumptions, most if not all of which are probably untestable. The only evidence he provides in support of his model is an apparent correlation between the distribution of traditional vocal polyphony and the worldwide distribution of stuttering. Since stuttering, for him, is associated with the relative novelty of articulated speech in the societies in which it occurs, a correlation between stuttering and polyphony would, in his view, support his theory that the development of articulated speech led to the decline of musical aptitude.

While I have the greatest respect for Jordania as an important authority on the polyphonic traditions of Europe (see Posts 119 et seq.), his theory associating an alleged convergent development of articulated speech independently in different parts of the world with the loss of vocal polyphony as a survival mechanism, piling one huge and untested assumption on top of another, seems extremely far fetched. What impresses me, nevertheless, is the fact that Jordania, almost alone among students of world music, has recognized the importance of this problem and at least made an attempt to deal with it. The fact that he was forced to go to such lengths to account for the extremely uneven distribution of vocal polyphony worldwide gives us an inkling into the difficulty of solving this perplexing enigma.

*Jordania's book was at one time freely available for Internet download, but that website has now disappeared. As I understand it, a new edition is currently in press and should be available for purchase soon.