Critical Review - "Teaching What Cannot Be Taught" by Ted Solís

In his introduction to the book Performing Ethnomusicology: Teaching and Representation in World Music Ensembles, Ted Solís talks about the obstacles that ethnomusicologists face when putting their research to practice through a so-called "World Music Ensemble". The typical world music group is a challenge, he concedes, because it is an "experience ensemble": "students here embrace a second (cultural) childhood, akin to the sort of entirely new musical experience most musicians underwent as children with their first piano lessons or sixth-grade band" (p. 7). On the other hand, groups like choir, orchestra, and concert band can be thought of as "realization ensembles", for "students enroll in them not primarily for mind-opening cultural experiences, but rather to realize preexisting musical skills" (p.6).

The high turnover rate and consistently beginner-level students of world music ensembles would perhaps not pose as much of a challenge if the director did not feel pressured by the expectations of musical academia to put on a public performance every semester. As Solis writes,

Our difficulties are compounded by the fact that as directors we do it all: we are obliged to represent all the instrumental, vocal, and choreographic abilities required within a complex, multitasking performance ensemble. Western university orchestra conductors, on the other hand, are not required to teach, for example, flutter tonguing or the col legno technique; students have already learned such things and can consult with their studioteachers about difficult score passages. (p.6)

Performance challenges the relationships between the performers' cultures and the culture they are performing, as well as the audience's preexisting beliefs about both. Solis quotes David Locke's wise words that "Performances of world music by born-in-the-tradition musicians reinforce comfortable categories, but anomalous presentations of the other by nonothers confound expectations." (p.12)

Though sometimes accused of essentializing a culture, Solis argues that "As ethnomusicologists, we embrace a trope that challenges orientalism and facile essentializations of multifaceted and fluid cultural systems." (p.10) He admits, nonetheless, that "both experience and simple logic teach us that without at least some encapsulization and abstraction we cannot transmit cultural information. Furthermore, no "pure, unadulterated essences," untouched by human hands, can be conveyed or are even possible." (p.10)

He also claims that "music studies, unlike less performative modes of cross-cultural inquiry, encourage nondominant relationships." (p.10) Perhaps by directly experiencing how difficult and complex another culture is, students can begin to overcome the so-called "Western superiority complex" that sometimes arises when we try to analyze another culture without really understanding it or without trying to see it through its people's own eyes. Similar to learning a whole new language, learning the music of another culture forces one to confront the limits of one's own knowledge and fluency, as one must relearn how to "speak" and even think before one can understand and effectively communicate in the foreign tongue. The humbling effect of struggling with a language or music puts a damper on the urge to jump to conclusions about a culture and its practices ("No linguist would dare take a tape of an unknown language and try to analyze it.", Solis quotes Leonard B. Meyer on page 4). Accordingly, while earlier ethnomusicological study focused largely on product, during the last thirty years or so emphasis has increasingly turned its attention to person ("teacher as text", p. 3) and process.

The effects of ethnomusicology are not limited to the "receiving culture", however; it can also have an effect on the culture or music being studied. The prestige of ethnomusicological activity can sometimes affect the tradition itself. As Solis writes, "Netsky and Witzleben both attest to heightened interest in, and greater approval of, klezmer and Chinese orchestral musics once they were presented to members of the heritage community in academic contexts."(p.13). Ethnomusicologists, then, play a much larger role than just presenting or reproducing a foreign culture in an academic setting--they are, in effect, "interpreters, creators, re-creators, and molders of those cultures in the academic world." (p.11).

Another interesting thing that Solis points out is that "Many ethnomusicologists so strongly identify with their chosen cultures through extended fieldwork, ethnicity, acquired language facility, and shared musical and other deep experiences that they resemble "halfies," Abu-Lughod's term for "people whose national or cultural identity is mixed by virtue of migration, overseas education, or parentage" (1991: 137). " (p.11). In a way, this could imply that ethnomusicologists themselves are a sort of "diaspora people", to use the term loosely, or at least possess a sort of "diaspora consciousness" that is created through affinity rather than heritage. Separated from the culture that they have perhaps come to identify with due to widespread expectations/preconceptions about identity and culture, and subjected to the superculture of the academic world in which they must function but don't quite fit, ethnomusicologists as a whole could function as a sort of diaspora, albeit a backwards sort of one. I'd like to look more into this analogy if possible, and see if some ethnomusicologists really could be called a "diaspora people", or if I am using the term too loosely.


Solis, Ted. Performing Ethnomusicology : Teaching and Representation in World Music Ensembles. Ewing, NJ, USA: University of California Press, 2004. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/brown/Doc?id=10068592&ppg=26