Response to Blog Comments

Thanks to everyone who commented on my blog posts for your helpful suggestions and critiques. As the project has progressed I have started to get a better sense of what I want to focus on, which has helped me to narrow down the scope of my topic as a few people have recommended. It was also very good advice to try to do some research outside the Brown classroom, and I will certainly try to find a few examples of how West African dance is taught elsewhere, either by attending other classes in Providence/Boston area or by watching videos of classes on the internet. I have also found some interesting blogs and informal articles on the internet about some of the issues I am attempting to address in my research, which will be a valuable addition to my next fieldnotes or blog post. I will also try to make my next fieldnotes more personal.

At this point, I think I want to focus mainly on the effects that learning about Mande culture has on students, or at least what the value of teaching and learning West African dance in America is, and about how Mande and American cultures interact in the classroom setting. This will certainly require that I begin talking to more students about the class and getting their perspective on things (maybe by doing a group interview, as Kiri suggested), and I just recently interviewed the teacher of the class, Michelle, which was very helpful and informative. Again, thanks for all the useful feedback!

Critical Review - Kubik (1994)

Kubik raises many interesting questions in his essay Ethnicity, Cultural Identity, and the Psychology of Culture Contact. Ethnicity, he writes, "is not only a descriptive, but, in a sense, an ideologically prescriptive concept." (p.19) The idea that ethnicity is an ideology, not biological or cultural fact, is controversial, especially in a day and age in which we pride ourselves on understanding "diversity" and people's differences, of both cultural and personal nature. Yet ethnicity movements, Kubik argues, "are always a form of collective response in opposition to some other community perceived as oppressive, and as an ethnic threat." (p.32)

In particular, Kubik raises questions in my mind about the researcher's role in all of this--by calling cultures or communities a "diaspora", are we imposing on them the same sort of false, circumstance-produced "ethnicity" that Kubik so harshly critiques? Can the researcher--especially the ethnologist--somehow avoid this problem, which seems to arise from the practice of defining a culture in general (and thus implying that the culture is a certain way, when it never just is, it is always becoming)? Also, do ethnologists have a right to define other cultures when in doing so, they are imposing their own vocabularies, their own cultural baggage, onto that culture? Shouldn't cultures be defined on their own terms, in their own words and concepts (otherwise, don't we just fall into the same trap of us versus them, or them versus everyone else)? Even more confusing, how do we define the boundaries of a culture, especially if the world isn't just a bunch of binaries, or cultures sitting (ever so kindly) in perfect opposition to one another so that ethnologists may draw neat lines around where they start and end. As Kubik writes, "in reality the cultural environment of any area of the world is complex and characterized by smooth shades and transitions" (p.25).

The imagery of a smooth transition in this sense was very powerful to me--it is so easy to forget that the world isn't the simplified set of binaries we often make it out to be, but a complex palette of colors and subtle differences, in everything from culture to race to gender. It also made me realize the shallowness of recent trends promoting "diversity!" as if it were as simple as placing students of starkly different skin colors on the cover of a textbook. People's concept of "diversity" nowadays, at least in the manners and situations I have heard it, are as superficial as Kubik argues people's notion of ethnicity is--the majority of the time, we pat ourselves on the back for achieving "diversity" when really we've only suppressed it (by lumping individuals into one of three or four groups that are essential ingredients to the diversity recipe).

I was also confused and yet somewhat intrigued by Kubik's idea that "for you to be nothing cements your freedom" (p.33). Is this even possible? For what is identity, if not what a person is and is not, according to what it is and is not possible to be? Is it possible for identity to exist, then, without the existence of certain generalizations and categorizations from which identities are constructed? Is he suggesting that it would be best for identity not to exist at all (for in the end, is it not identity that oppresses or is oppressed)? After all, identity is just a bunch of comparisons (or at least, that was my impression of it) and can comparisons ever be truly objective (for even something as seemingly objective as hair color can have subjective associations, as well as the fact that the choice of what to compare in the first place is a subjective one)? I would argue then that "ethnic identity" is no different than identity in general, in that both consist of creating definitions of oneself according to pre-existing, external concepts and vocabulary. What does Kubik mean when he writes that "identities are not discussed in societies in which a living identity is in operation" and is it true then that "identity begins to be discussed from the moment it has become somebody's problem"? (p.27) If not, what purposes, besides to oppress and to fight oppression, does the process of identification, either as an individual or as part of a cultural group, serve?

Research Materials

Websites:

• Preservation and Promotion of Traditional Djembe Culture
• Big Little West Africa (article about the West African community in NY)
  
• Djembe and Mande Music (other resources)
  
• Mande Traditional Artists (from National Geographic)
• Djembefola - U.S. page
  
• Djembe-L - Yahoo Group
  

Scholarly Articles:

• Knight, Roderic. The Mande Sound: African Popular Music on Records. Ethnomusicology, Vol. 33, No. 2. (Spring - Summer, 1989), pp. 371-376.
  
• Knight, Roderic. Mandinka Drumming. African Arts, Vol. 7, No. 4. (Summer, 1974), pp. 24-35.
  
• Stone, Ruth M. In Search of Time in African Music. Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 7, Time and Rhythm in Music. (Spring, 1985), pp. 139-148.
  
• Knight, Roderic. Review of African Music, a People's Art. African Arts, Vol. 9, No. 3. (Apr., 1976), pp. 89-90.
  
• Agawu, Kofi. The Invention of "African Rhythm". Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 48, No. 3, Music Anthropologies and Music Histories. (Autumn, 1995), pp. 380-395.
  
• Zack-Williams, A.B., and Giles Mohan. Editorial: Africa, the African Diaspora & Development. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 29, No. 92, Africa, the African Diaspora and Development. (Jun., 2002), pp. 205-210.
  
• Lake, Obiagele. Toward a Pan-African Identity: Diaspora African Repatriates in Ghana. Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 1. (Jan., 1995), pp. 21-36.
  
• Palmer, Colin A. Defining and Studying the Modern African Diaspora. The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 85, No. 1/2. (Winter - Spring, 2000), pp. 27-32.
  
• Mukuna, Kazadi wa. Creative Practice in African Music: New Perspectives in the Scrutiny of Africanisms in Diaspora. Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 17, No. 2. (Autumn, 1997), pp. 239-250.
  
• Fosu-Mensah, Kwabena, Lucy Duran and Chris Stapleton. On Music in Contemporary West Africa. African Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 343. (Apr., 1987), pp. 227-240.

Books:

• Mande music : traditional and modern music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa / Eric Charry
• Africanizing knowledge : African studies across the disciplines / Toyin Falola and Christian Jennings, editors
• Musical thought, history, and practice among the Mande of West Africa / by Eric S. Charry
• The African diaspora : a musical perspective / edited by Ingrid Monson (Short overview here)
  
• The world of African music / written and edited by Ronnie Graham
• Culture on tour : ethnographies of travel / Edward M. Bruner
• Same and other : negotiating African identity in cultural production / edited by Maria Erikson Baaz and Mai Palmberg
• Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World's Cultures / Tyler Cowen
• Performing Ethnomusicology: Teaching and Representation in World Music Ensembles / Ted Solis
  

Other Media:

• Mali [videorecording] : the music of life / BBC Videos for Education & Training
• Badenya [sound recording] : Manden jaliya in New York City (see here for related article by Ryan Skinner)
  

Interesting Questions - Locke (2004)

Locke's essay about the African Ensemble in America brought up many questions in my mind about authenticity and cultural ownership that definitely relate to my research project:

How does an “awareness of the hardships that face third world musicians challenge the moral authority of first world ethnomusicologists”? (p.171)

What motives might an ethnomusicologist have in studying a certain culture (affinity, heritage)? What moral difference do these two motives make?

Does race/heritage undermines legitimacy as a teacher or researcher or participant?

• “Is a show “African” if the song texts, dance movements, and drum parts are well researched and the instruments and costumes are imported from the motherland?” (p.180)

• “The integrity of an adaptation depends upon the leader's quality of knowledge of both the original music-culture and the culture into which the new work is being introduced (p.179) – can a cultural “outsider” ever have this knowledge?

• Is there an “authentic” way to teach/learn, and does this make the final product more “authentic”? (can an outsider like Locke authentically teach Ewe culture?)

Who has cultural authority? - “One village may say the next village has got it wrong; one artist may say another artist failed to learn the work thoroughly” - Even groups among the same culture may argue about authenticity – but then again, where does one draw the lines between different cultures?

• And who has the right to modify/interpret a piece of music? Is this right reserved to people of that musical/cultural heritage? Can a well-informed outsider do what he/she wants with an ethnic music without being “culturally inappropriate/insensitive” (and what does this mean—p.171)?

• And how much inter-cultural interactions can there be before a music becomes “inauthentic”--again, where do we draw the line between cultures? (idea of tainting pure, authentic indigenous cultures with Western ideas/culture)

  • Notation as commodification and inauthentication of indigenous musics

“There is nothing to guarantee that a first existence performance will be a more accurate source than a private lesson in the United States.” (p.171) – how can this be?

He then goes on to say “Fidelity to the source is important.” (p.179)-- but what does this mean? What is an “accurate source”?

What is the relationship of a privileged, white, American student-musician to a poor African musician—what are the dynamics of this relationship? Does it perpetuate colonial attitudes/dependencies? Who has the power in this relationship? (p.172-173)

• What might Locke mean by “authentic interdependency”, which he hopes will eventually come out of his relationship with his teacher?

“I sensed honesty within that complex soundscape..” (p. 168). What does Locke mean by “honesty” in this sense (musical honesty)? - perhaps he means “honest” in the way that he uses it later regarding art—honest art does not compromise itself for the sake of what the audience wants—but is this true? Are all “authentic cultures” this sort of “honest art”? If this is so, then does catering to an audience, either Western or African make something “dishonest art”, and thus inauthentic? (p.177)

Reinvention of the African ensemble as an art object - “performances of African music by non-Africans are at least as much about the attitudes toward Africa of the performers and the audience as they are about African expressive culture itself.” (p.180) - what attitudes toward Africa does African music convey?

• “what truths about Africa can music convey to non-Africans?” (p.181)

• “Performances of world music by born-in-the-tradition musicians reinforce comfortable categories, but anomalous presentations of the Other by non-others confound expectations” (182)

Orientalism – perpetuated or dispelled by the African Ensemble in America?

• “The African ensemble can reinforce systems that perpetuate unjust power relations, or it can counteract them.” (p.187) – how might it do this?

  • “Art works, in particular, are capable of creating the ironic distance necessary to gestate change.” (p.188)

Locke believes that “traditional African expressive culture is a transregional heritage available for fair-use by everyone; and [he] acts in the world to challenge stereotypes and empower others.” (p.185) – this seems a noble enough cause – are there similar beliefs about other types of music? Is this view valid?