Critical Review - The Invention of "African Rhythm" by Kofi Agawu

In this article, Kofi Agawu argues that the notion of "African rhythm" is "an invention, a construction, a fiction, a myth, ultimately a lie" perpetuated by both Western and African scholars alike (p. 383). The main point of Agawu's argument is not to convince the reader that African music and African rhythm are not one and the same, although he points out that they are not, but to show how the domination of "intellectual space defined by Euro-American traditions of ordering knowledge" leads to misrepresentation and essentialization (p.383). For one, the very idea of "Africa", he argues, is itself a construction of European discourse, since it seems ridiculous to lump 400 million people spread across 42 countries speaking some thousand languages into one pan-African category. He also notes an "ongoing resistance to knowing about Africa" that helps to perpetuate the stereotypes people hold of it. "Why should we bother to learn the strange and often unpronounceable names of people in remote places practicing weird customs when we can simply invoke the all-purpose "Africa"?" he challenges (p.384).

When I first read this, I immediately scribbled on the side of the page that the "Mande class serves to counteract this". After all, we are learning about a specific region of Africa, one that I previously knew nothing about (though this is probably because I too invoked the all-purpose "Africa" out of ignorance). However, I wonder if, when serving as the only class one will ever take on Africa, the class might have an essentializing effect, as it portrays things stereotypically "African" such as drumming and dancing, with little mention of other African musical/cultural traditions unrelated to either drumming or dancing. Perhaps the class just serves to reproduce the "metonymic fallacy--the part representing the whole" that Agawu criticizes (p.385).

Agawu also questions the emphasis that many ethnomusicologists put on difference rather than sameness. "When did we last encourage our students to go and do fieldwork not in order to come back and paint the picture of a different Africa but of an Africa that, after all the necessary adjustments have been made, is the "same" as the West?" (p. 390). Although I understand his worry that difference is easily exoticized and used to create oversimplified binaries of "us" versus "them", especially in Africa, I feel that he is oversimplifying reality. At least from the ethnomusicologists we have read in class, I feel that many of them do focus on both "sameness" and "difference", although I suppose it depends on what standard you use for comparison (same as who? different from what?). Perhaps the study of diaspora encourages a focus on both, as one is comparing/contrasting a culture to both its homeland and its hostland, allowing for a less dualistic approach (similar to what we talked about in class today the idea that liminality or hybridity can help escape binaries).

In the end, Agawu goes even further to challenge the field of ethnomusicology as a whole--why not, instead of just relying on "native" perspectives and emic viewpoints to solidify Western, specifically non-native theories, as ethnomusicology tends to do (as manifested in the transcription of musics which aren't usually transcribed, such as djembe drumming, and in interpreting such music in Western terms, while claiming insights as to why people make the music just from talking to them) instead rely on "a direct empowerment of post-colonial African subjects so that they can represent themselves." (p.395). Though this seems like a nice idea, is it realistic? I don't mean to say that other cultures cannot represent themselves, but is it possible, in a Western-knowledge dominated world, to represent oneself on one's own terms? Or in other words, is it possible to engage in a dialogue with the dominant culture without assuming the dominant culture's language (is it wrong of me to assume that there must be a dominant culture as well)? Or does a culture, in order to be able to represent themselves on their own terms, have no choice but to keep to themselves?

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.