Blacking_j_how Musical is Man

7/30/2019 Blacking_j_how Musical is Man

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ril(MUSIC IN SOCIETY AND CULTURE 33&Msrrtw

3ocwty ande,fu,.(f||HA\l Dls( RlBl Dmus:, as hu.-"nlv orsrni/ed.ounJ Ij/ ha'e "rsrr"a rh,t {e ouBl- Lo lool ro, rela,;on-hip. be-i recn pntterns of hurnan organization and ihe patterns ofsoLrnd produccd as a result of organized interaction. I reinforced this general slatement by refcrrinS to rhe concepts ofrnusic shared by the Venda of the Northcrn Transvaal. TheVenda also share the erperience of music 'rnlcing, and without ihis cxpedence there would be vcry little nusic. The pro-duction of th patterns of sound which the Venda call nusicdpends, Iirsi, on the continuity of ihe social groups whoperform ii and, second, on the way the nmbers o{ thosesroups relate to cach othr.

In order to find out whit music is ind how nusical mnn is,"'c ned to ask i,ho listens and who plays and sings nr anysiven socjety, and why. This is a sociological quesrion, andsituations in different societies can be compared w hort anyreferencc to the surface forms of music becausecemed onty rlith its function in social tife. In tlis respecr,there may be no sisnificant differcnces between Black Music,Couniry and Wesicrn Music, Itock and Pop Muslc, Operas,Symphonic Muslc, or Plainchant. What turns one man otr

may turn another man on, not bccause of any absolute qual-ity h th music itself but because of {rhat th music has cometo man to him as a member of a particulnr culiure or socialgroup. We must also remember Lhai, while 'e nay have ouro*'n personal prefcrences, we .annot judse the effectivenessof music or the feelings of musicians by whai seems to happen to people. If an old, blind master of Venda initiationllstens in silcnce to a recording of th dor?bd injuation song,r\, cannot rate the music more or less effective than a record-ing of Spokes Mashiyanet penny whistle band from Johannesburg, which bores him but excites his grandson. Wccannot say that the Kwakiutl are more emotional ihan theHopi because their style of dancing look. m.....(t,ti. t^our eyes. ln some cultures, or in ccrtain iypes of music anddancing within a culture, emotions nay bc deliberately internalizcd, but they are not neccssadly less intensc. A man'smystical or psychedelic eaperienccs may not b seen or fclttry his neighbors, but lhey cannot be dismisscd as irrelevantlo his life in society.The sam crlrc a of judgment should be applid to appar-nt diferences in the surfac complexity of nusic, which wetcnd Lo see in the same rerms as thai of other cultural prod-ucts- Becarse the srowing .omplexity of cars, airpl;nes, .ndmany other machins can be related to ihcir efficiency asme,ns of .omhunl.ation. it is often assuned that tcchnicaldevelopmcnl nl music and the arts rnust likewise be a signof deeper or better cxpression. I slggest that ihe populadtyof some Indian music in Europc and America is not unrelaiedto thc fact that it seens to be technically brilliant as rvel1 aspleasing to thc car, and that it is accompanicd by profoundphilosophizing. Whcn I iry to interest my students in thesounds of Africdn !sic, I know that I too tend to draw thcirattention to icchnical feats in performance, becausc these aremore immediatcly appreciated. And yet the simplicity orcomplexity oI the music is ultimalcly irrelevant: the equation

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IIOW MUSICAI- IS MAN ? MUSIC IN SOCIETY AND CULTUREsinale musical system greaier surface complexiiy mav be likean extension of vocabularv, which does not alter the basicpriniciples of a srammar and is meaninSless aPart from thcmSecond, in comparins dilferent svstems we cannot assumethat s /face complexity is either musicallv or coSnitivelv morecomplex- In any case, the mind of ma is infinitelv more-.pf"* ,ft". mything Produced bv parti'ular rnen or cul-u,.".. ebou" all, the funciional ef{ectiveness of music seemsto be more importani to listeners than its su'face complexityor simplicity What i5 the use of being the grcatesl pianist inth world, or of wdting the .leverest music, if nobodv wantsto lisien to it? What iE ihe human usc oI inventing ol u'5ingnew souncls just for their own sake? Do new sounds meaninvthins in Vcnda trrlture, lor instance in terms of newgro'p. I'a ,o.irt ch.rnge? Whv sing or dancc or plav rt all2irvr'y f,.tl* to improvc nrsi'al rcchnique if the ain of pcr-formance is to shar a socidl experience?The flnctions of music in societv mav be the decisive fac-tors promoting or inhibiting latent musical abilitv' as well as'r'ii"" 'he '\ol " of culr''ol 'onccpr' ard mJreri'Jl' wilhwhi.h lo.ompoce mujic We 'hall nor b" able to e'plr:n rheprinciples of composition alld the cffects of music until weunderstand better ihe rel;tionship between musical and hu-man experience. If I dcscribe some of the tnciions of musicin Venja society, perhaps the new knowledge mav stimulAtea better understanding of similar Processes in other socicties'This has certainty bcen mv own experien(e Since mv initialstrv oI lwo vedr n the sib#a dislri' betwcen ro5o 1ndIe58 ,nd r5 ' t"(ull of _rrb eqJent r'cldworl' in orher Frrt'of Airica, I hav come to understand mv own societv moreclearlv and I have learncd to appreciate mv own music better.I do not know whether or not mv analvses of Venda musicare correctr I have benfited greatlv bv the criticisms ofVenda who have been good enough to discuss mv evidenceand conclusions, but there mav be other interpretations that

,ilrrrld not br or MoRE = BErrR, but uorr orDTTFERENT. lt is the fi,'nan content of the humanly or-

t.rnized sound that "sends" people. Even if ihis emerses as.rn cxquisite turr of melody or harmony, as a "sonic object"if yo! like, ii Etill began as the thought of a sensitive humanbeinA, and it is this sensitivity that may ouse (or not) thefeelinSs of anolher human being, in much the same way ihatmagnctic inpulses .onvey r telephone conversation from onespeaker to anothr.The issue of musical complexity becomes important onlywhcr we try to;ssess human musicality. Supposc I arguethnt, because there are some socieiics whose members are as.ompprer in ru'r' r. all peoplc rre in langrrrge. rnr,i, m.rybe a species-Epccific trait of man. Someone will almost cer-tainly retort that evidence of a widesprad distdbution oflistening and performing ability among ihe Vencla and otherapparently musical so.ieiies should not be comparcd with thlimited distribution of musical ability in, say, England becauscthe complexity of English music i, such that only a few couldmaster it. In other words, if Enslish music were as elementaryas Venda nusic, ihn oF .ourse the EnslGh would seen tobe as universally mlsical as the Venda! The broader implica-tion of this argument is that technological developrnntbr.ng' dboul a J"gr"e oi sor.al e',lrrrion: being ,) pa-.i\e ru-diencc is the price that some must pay for membership in asuperior so.icty whose superiority is sustained by the excep-tional ability of a chosen few. The techni.al level of nhat isdefined as musicality is therefore raised, and somc peoplemust be brandd as unmusical. It is on such assumptions thatmusical ability is fostered or mesthetized in many modernindustrial socjeties- These assumption, are diametrically op-poscd to the Venda idea that all normal human beings arecapable oI musical performance.The issue of musicrl .omplcxity is irrelevant in my con-siderrtion of universal musical compctence. First, within a

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36 HOW MUSICAL IS MAN?have so far escaped us_ Whatever rhe uttimate iudsment onnr1 an.rly-e,.oI V"nd.r mJ-ic, I hope rhar my d -cove.ic" mJypld\,r


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HOW MUSICAL IS MAN?

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During the vadous staSes of the girls' schools, instructionis siven both direcily and indirectly by means of svmbolicdances, which are olten very strenuous physical exrcises,perlormed to a variety of comptex rhythms. One song tellsgirls not to gossip-

IN SOCIETY AND CULTURE 39with an authoritarinn system that contradicts traditionalAfrican dmocracy. Is ii suryrising, therefore, that inditrer-ence and even hostility to Euopean music should go alongwith their resistance to white domination? The general re-action to European music is in keepinS with the lunctiol ofmusic in thei society, and it must be seen as a sociologicalas well as a musicnl phenomenon.Much Venda music is occasional, and its performance is asign of the activity of social groups. Most adult Venda knowwhat is happening nerely by listening to its sounds. Dudnggirls' iniiiation, whnever a novice is being taken down tothe river or back to her initiation hut, the women and girlswho accompany hcr warn people of their approach with aspcial sons, in which the lower lip is flapped with thc fore,fingcr.

The followins sons, with its unusual prelude, indicares rhata novice is being taken from her home lor initiaiion. Themelody will be recosnized even by women who cannot hear

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'il40 HOW MUSICAL IS MAN? MUS]C IN SOC]ETY AND CULTURE 4t

The Venda learn to und.rsrind the sounds of nusic asthey undcrsiand spcech. No fe ,cr than sixrcen clifferentstylcs are distinguished, wirh different rhythms and combinations of sineers and instruments; and within thcse sryles a.efurthr subdivisions of sty1e, as wcll as differcnr sonss wiihineach division. For example, at the ir,rsoi initiation schoot forsirls, therc are foul main types of song;1. Nyb ba dzd, i.ljl]etha (sonss for d.ncins round) aresung by thc sirls as ihcy dance countrclo.kwisc in a circleround the druns. The tempo of rhe sonas is r;pid, and iheyarc sung morc often than any other type of sons ai rhe school.Cl,rssed with them are two songs wiih speclal rhyihms,a "song of clisnlssal" (luinba laa a cdela, literalty, song forslecping), urhich aLv,rys tcrminates a scssion; and a recruftlngsons lLuinbo lwa ,edz,, literally, sons lor helpins a personacross i river), which is sung when senior menbers go round2. Nyimllo dza Tlhrhujn (sott1s oi the masked dancrs)are ng when the rnasked dancers perform in froni of rhe

girls. The tempo varies, wiih fast and slow ePisodes to ac-compnny .liffereni phases of ihe dancc and disiinctiverhythms to mark ihe vadous stePs.3. Nyir/'ba dza ilzinsoni (sonss for special riies) accom-pany cedain ordeals thai ihe novices musi underso whenihcy are ln ihe second stage of initiation. Each one has adisthciive rhythmic Pnttern.a. Nyimbo dza milayo (songs of the laws of the school)are sung by the novics and any graduates present Thevkneel on the sround by the drums while m l,ohe, the girlappointed to be in charge of the novices,leads the singhg'Figure 5 summarizes the dilJereni tvpes of communalmusic recognized by the Venda and indicates thc tnnes ofyear when they may or may not be perlormedAlthotgh the Venda geneLally classifv their music accord-ing to iis social furctior, and the name for lhe funciion andits music is often the sarnc, ihe critcria of disc mindtion areiormal and musical. It is b), its sound, and particolarlv bv iisrhythm and the make up of its vocal and/or instrumental ensemble, that the f nction of music is recosnired. The contextsin which songs are sung a.e not xclusive, but thc wav inwhich they are sung is gencrally detcmined bv contert Thus,a beer sons may be adapted as a play song for ihe girls'dombd initiation, in which case a drul1r accompaniment willbe addcd and the call response form nav be elaborated inioa sequence of interlocking melodic phrascs Sir1]ilarlv, a nunrber of dilferent iransformations of the national dance, ts,ikoaa, may be petiormed on Vcnda musical instruments. Thevsound diffcrent, but they are all ca11ed tslikond and are conccived as variaLions on a thenre in the "languases" of the.lilTerent instrum.nls.When rhc Venda discuss or classify differcnt tvpes of song,thcy senerally distingtish between songs that are Proper iothe function and those which have been adopted and adaptedAs I belicve that this is a comnon phenomenon in ccnlral


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HOW MIJSICA I, IS MAN?

WORK

MUSIC ]N SOCIETY AND CULTURECOMMUNAL MUSIC OF THE VENDAp.


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44 HOW MUSICAL IS MAN?terest and abiliry ilzzled out because le couid not relate hismusic ro life with his fe ows, rhre must be thousandi ofp"ople rro nor lore rnu


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HOW MUSICAL IS MANI MTJSIC IN SOCIETY AND CULTUREil

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Let us return to the matier of kinship in the developmenro( musical ability. The Venda may not consider the possibilftyof unmusical hunan beings, but they do recognize rhar somepeople perform better than others. ludsment is based on thperformer's dlsplay of technical brilliance and originaliry, andthe vigor and confidence oI his excution. Anyone whotroubls to perfect his techni.tue is considered ro do so b-cause he is deeply commiited to music as a means of sharinssom cxperience with his fellows. A sincere desir lo expressfeeling is noi accepted as an e)icuse for inaccuraie or incompetent performance, as it ofien is in the coniused 1rorld ofmodcn Pop and so-cailed Folk music. IF n person wanis rodo his thing, he is expected ro do it well. The abiliry of amaster drumnrer (:mntsise) at a possession dince is assessedby the sounds he produces, and not by the extenr io whichhe ,o hi. FJe. .,nd 'hror. h - body abo,:.The Venda nay susscst that exceprional musical abiliiy isbiologically inheritcd, but in praciice they recognize thatsocial factors play the most important parr in realizhs orsupprssin8 it. l-or hstance, a boy of noble birth mi8ht showSreat ialent, but as hc grolvs up he wili be expected ro abandon regular musicat performance for the more sedous (forhim) Lrusiness of sovernmenr. This would not man rhat he*'ould cease lo listcn crjtically and inteuigenrly ro music: infact, inrportant suidance to successful government mighr bgiven to him in song. Conversely a sirl of noble birrh hasvery en.ourdgemcnt to develop hr musical capacfties, sothnt is a woman she can play an a.tive role in supervisingthe girls'initiation schools which are held in the homs oirulers, an{l for }lhich m!si. is an indispensable adjlncr ofthcir did;ctic and ritual functions. During two months of -darly rehearsals of the youns sirls' dance, tshiso lbelo, I,atched the young rclatives oI a hcadm.n enersc as outstanding performers, although at first they did nor seem tobe nor nusical than their asc-mates. I am sure that the Ley

to thir development as dancers was ihe Praise and the interesi shown in them by the women in the audience, who weremostly from ihe headman's family, and who therfore knewthe girls by name because they were rlatives- It was surelythe ,ocial conscquences oi blood relationship ihat alTected ihegrol,vth of their musicality, rather than special, senetically in-herited musical capacities. Again, it is not surprising thatmasters of initiation tend to "inhedt" the craft from iheirfathrs. A master must know nany songs and rituals, and sohls son is in a favored position whcn he assists his father onthe job.In Venda soclety, exceptional musical ability is theieforeexpected of people who ar born into certain families or socialgroups in which musical perlormancc is essentjnl for maintaining their sroup solidariiy. lust as nuslcal perforrnance isthe cenLral factor that justifies thc continued existnce of anorchestra as a social group, so a Vendn possession cult 8roup,or a don&d initlation school, or a srnglri girls' school, woulddisintesraie if there wcre no muslc. Only a few of those whoare born into the dght group actually emcrs as eaceptionalmusicians, and what seems to distinguish them from othersis that they perform bctter beca se they have devotcd moretime and encrsy to it. In applauc{ing the nasiery of exceP-tional muslcinns, the Venda applaud human effort, ancl inbeinq able to recognizc mastery in the musical medium, listeners reveal that their general nusical competence is no lessrhan that oi the musicians whom they applaud W shouldremcnber ihat the existence of Bach and Beethoven dependson .liscriminating audienccs as much is on performers, iusias some Venda ancestors canot return to ihelr homes excePtbv the sood offices of their descendants.Althoush co'nmunal music dominates ihe Venda musicalscne, and so.ial factors influence the developmcnt of musicalabiliiy, there is individual music naling, and sood solo in-strumntalists can cnerse without any of ihe incntives I

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48 HOW MUS]CAL IS MAN? MUSIC IN SOCIETY AND CULTURE 49havc described. Youns srowins sirls .onfide in rhe quiet,intimate iones of a lrg!&e musical bow or iis modrn equiva-lent, the jaw's harp. Youihs sins of thc joys and panss oflove whlle accompanying thmselves wfth an l]irira or another kind of bow, called tshihaons. A rhird rype o{ bow(denile) is nost commonly played by semiprofessional musi,cians who are noioriously popularuith women.The name siven to such minsirels tshilonbe is rclatedto words thar refer to spirii possession, such as tshilonboand 'flrlorrbo. The Venda acknowledse that nanifesratjons ofmusical abiliLy cnn emerge in unexpected quarrers andamons unlikely subjects, but insist ihat thcy be normalizedby losicnl explanaiions. The tml rsn,lom&e should be re-garded as not so nuch an acclamation of genius or of exceptional taleni ns an occupaiional descriprion. An outstandinsindividual musician is one who puts himself in iou.h withspidtual forccs, like a docior or the membcr of a possessionrult, and so js able Lo express a wider range oI experiencesihan most people. li may seem paradoxical thar his creativeabilities should be erpressed in the ori8nralfty and thoushr-fulness of the words hc composes, rarhcr rhan in the music.But there is a rcason for tlis io be found in rhe balance ofiwo basic principles oI Venda nusic.As I emphasizd in the first chapier, Venda music is distinsuished lrom nonlnusic by lhe crearion of a special worldof time. Thc chlef function of music is to involve pople nrshared cxperiences within the framework of rheir culi ralexpcrience. The form the music takes musi serve this func-iion, ancl so in the nomlal couise oI evcnrs Venda music be-nllsical and ]ess culturc-bound whenevr pos,sible, and the resirictions of woLds are abandoned for thefrecr murical .xpression of lndividuals h community. Tonsure that the folm does not lose iis cssentinl function, iheprocess is inverted in the compositions of certiin individuals.Thc function of such compositions is to jolt and expand the

consciousness of Venda audiences by borh reflectins and con-tradiciin8 the spirit of ihe time. They reflect the political interests of the maximurn number of people bv contrndiciingthe musical tendencies to which those people are accustomedThe sane kind of analysis of musical effeciiveness misht beapplied in other conteats: I {'ould not consider it an exasgeration to say that Beeihoven achieved his ertraordnrarv nusicalpower by bing dnfimuslcal and shocking the complacencvof his contmporary society- His contemPoraries mav havebeen more rnusical in their treatmcnt of melodv, for instance,but their kind of conventional musicaliiv was lss relevani tocontemporary problems although it was n logical consequenceof iemporary cognitive processesTo analyze the composition and apPreciation of nusic interms of iis social function and of cognitive processes thaimay be applicd in other {ields of human activiiv does not inany way diminish ihe importance oi the music itself, and ii isin line with ihe common custom of intcrrlating a sries ofhrman activitics and calling them The Arts However, at thisearly stage of investigation we should be careful noi toassume thai music is always created bv the same Processes/or that its processes are specinlly related to ihose emploved inthe other arts. The processes that in one culture are appliedto languase or music m;y in another be applied to kinshipor economic organization.It will be usefui to distinsuish different knlds of nurica]communication, which misht broadly be described as iheuiilitarian and nrtistlc uses of music in Venda societv. lt isclcar from thc way ihe Venda talk about it that not all musichas th same vatue. A11 their music sroNs otlt of humanexperiences and has a clircct function in socjal life, bui onlvsome ol it is resarded as whai lohn Dewev has called "aninstrument indispensable to the transformation of man andhis world."As ny examples have shown, much Venda nusic is nerelv


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50 HOW MUSICAL IS MAN?a signal or sign of social events and no less utilitarian rhancommeicial jingles, radio station identifications, some incidental music, and the hymns or sonss that are essentially the"badges" of dilTerent social groups. Many songs of initiaiionare more important as markers of siages in ritual or as rein,forcements or mnemonics oI lessons than as musical experiences; work songs coordinate and ease labor; and a specialgroup of beei songs can be used to voic complaints and makerequests when parties of women take Bifrs of beer to thehomes of their in-laws. As in women's pounding sonss, ceitain children's songs, and songs oI protst, a musical framework can ritu;rlize communication h such a way that mes-sages nay be conveyed but no counLeraction is takn. You donot "go io prison" if you say it in music, and something maybe done abollt youl complaini becaus it may be a rlarningof srowing public feeling.It is temptins to define the utilitarian tunctions of Vendarnusic as tho5e in which the effects of music are incidntal iothe impact of th social situation, and ihe artistic as those inwhich the music itseu is the crucial factor in ihe experience.Th testimony of ihe high value atrached ta tshikond, theitnational dance, and the apparently antnnusical performanceby acknowledged experts does not coniradicr this argumenrwhen we see lhat it is the process of music making ihat isvahed as much as, and sometims more ihan, the finishedproduct. The value of music is, I believe, io be found in termsoI ihe hrman experiences involved in its creation. There isa dif{erence between music thai is occasional and music rharenhances hurnan consciousness, music rhat is simply forhaving and music that is for beinS- I submit ihat ihe formermay be good craftsmanship, but that the latter is art, nomatier how simple or complex ii sounds, ind no matir underh'hat circumstances it is producd.The music of isftllconr expresses the value of rhe largstsocial sroup to which a Venda can really fcel he belongs. Its

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A hP??tui"k at a hedihrln's homestead.

The lillase af aV.ndd clLief at Thensbe The houses are occupiedb! his tuiaes, reldtires, and cotscilors. The bi. trce slitlnly tuthe left ol .entet shodes th. khota, neetias Place ol the calnciland rene ol mrsic ntu1doncilry.

. # -"qi,Tuo Vendd gitLs play aho dtuns (nj.unba) ar rnedomba initidti.n. TheV su,dV th.t bodies lftn side toside, keeping d *eddv thythm sa that the *Lnbedt ispatt ol a tatnl bady nloument.


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Mastcd da,.cr (muhwi.a) at the V.nda xnk' s\n(\!i initiolion.

tshikanda inilintior Nate thc contnst in rcsPa se betroee her t@acanpanions n"d the tnatried wamen tuftkikg the prcc..dingsNsonra dza n zimu, V?rdd d"nceaf sPirit posserriar. Thehuachbacked gm who is Aan.itth the arena tuiLl not be Passessedbe.n"se she does nat belanE to this pntricular cult {aulJ Thoseuho hdxe been posscssed uear d speci|L rfli{onn anC, shnke

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Venia gnls pmctice the [i/sr pdlr ol tlie trhigombe]a drr.e.Vcnda sitls dancntg "solo" (D Eaya) duting th! second patL af i

A ttia an the lart. mbias (mbila dza nadeza).A boy p)ays the smtll nbira (nblla tshipaj).


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Dende nasical boo.

A duet on two mauth bous(zwihwana, sinA"l,r tshihwana).A *ia bl ttuee-holetl ttd srerse flutes(zwitiringo, sitsrl4l !rhitiringo).

Boyt 4ilitlli flute, nade al an oPettrbe ot tirer rced bith nflatchedenbauchtue ^fld stoPPed @ith thefitst fuEet at the distal.ni.


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7oo ,1cr play tlr. mbila nta\.]o rylaphan.; a thiftl alds

The da$e al the Venda Aomba i"iriation sclool.

,4 Vc'rd, f.d,i ol tsfil.on a iPe ddrccte lt'n I'h1nncs&'rE lisirsn rwal nt.a drtitl!, Erstlt rncotion

A V.nd, ,rnFtlel (lshiloFbeJ s'nssd b.e|d.ink otsr iz.d bY d tut,lLins(lshiiokofel.t) itlat nl 't.a

nnd lntetLains !)ilh Ptu?ets at


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MUS]C IN SOCIETY AND CULTURE 51

Solo Vendd idncet lenputgdrtiris perfarmarl.e af pcntnlaak reel'pi\ ntsic(tshikansansa or visa). Tiisrltrle al ddn.nry ts .allei !Eaya, ns in the snond uaft alkhisomb]a, ,,,d is lGtnrs"ishetl lrcn tlLe cotnnwLdl,l,,.ina (r telina) i" rlrc

perlormance involves the lar8est number of people, and itsmusic incorporates the largest number of tones in any singlepiccc of Vcnda music involving more than one or two players.From what I havc said about sharcd crpcriences in Vendamrsic- it shoul.l be.leai thnt rs,;ko,d is valuabl nnd beau-tiful to the Vencla, not only ber:arse of the quantity of peopleand toncs involvcd, bul because of the quality of the relaiionships that must be csiablishcd bciwcen pcople and toneswhenver it is performed. Tsftlkoaa music can be produccdonly when twenty or more men blow dilferently tuned pipeswith a precision thai depends on holcling on', ol\rn part aswell as blending with others, and at least four womcn playdilTerent dr!ms in polyrhythmic harmony. Furthernorc, is,iton, is rloi complt ulless the men also perform in unisonthc differcni stcps which rhe dance masier direcis from tnne

The effecriveness oI tshika r is not i case oI MoREBrrrrR: it is an cxample of lhe production of the maxinum ofavallable human energy jn a siiuation thai generates the higherr degree of nldiviclu.rlity h the hrgest possible communityof individuals. l-shikon.] prov e, an experien(e of the best ofall possible worlds, and the Vcnda arc fu11y awarc of its value.Tslrilrord, they say, i.s lui lLr mash khsli i tshi ohila, "t\etime when people rush io ihe scene of the dance and leavethcir pots to boll ovcr." Tsltkonr "makcs sick people feelbetier, and old men throw away their sticks and dance-" Tslii-Lofld "bdnss pace to the countryside." OI all shared experiences nr Venda socieiy, a pcrfoNance oi rsr;Lo,' is said tobc ihc nost highly valued: the dance is connected with anccstor worship and state occasions, incorporates the livingand the de;d. and is the mosi unilersa1 of Venda nusic.It is because music can creaie a world of virtual time thatCusiav Mahlcr said thai it may lead to "the'other world'ihe world in which things are no longer subject to time an.lspace." The Balinese speak of "the other mind" a5 a staie oI

Ndri.cs rt, V.n,i, don b a init idlioa, with thei hnn t.c.ntly .uI,rte led i, .ont b! the nnster al initiation, urhil. his nssisttr..!di.cts th.nt ta the iossbean Df thc cau cil hul, ltont whtch theytuill hi * rpsltle doutn, likc bats, ds pnrl af d lessan nba t.hinbnth. Note the baby o1i the boch al tlLe l othet playrq th.

;\1

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HOlv MUSICAL IS MAN?beina that can be reached through dancins and music. Theyrefer to states in which people become L.eenly aware of thetrue nature of theh being, of ihe "other self" within them-selves and other human beinss, and of thei. rlationship withthe world around them. OId age, death, sdef, ihirst, hunger,ad other amiciions of this world are seen as traniitoryvents. Thre is freedom from the resldctions of actual timeand complete absorption in rhe "Timeless Now of the DivineSpirit," the loss of self in beins. We often expedence sreaterintnsity of living when our nornal time values are upst,and appreciat the quality rather than the lenath of timespent doing someihing. The virtual time of music may helpto generate such experinces.There is excitement in rhythm and in the prcgression oforsanized sound, in the tension and rlaxations of harmonyor melody, in thc cumulative evolution of a fugue, or in theinfinite variations on the theme of movement from and backto a tone center. The motion of musi alon seems to awakenin our bodies all kinds of responses. And yet people's re-sponses to music cannot be fully explained without some ref-ercnce to their experiences in the culture of which the notesare signs and symbols. If a piece of music moves a vadety oflistenrs, it is probably not because of its outward form butbecause of what the form means to ach lisiener in terms ofhuman experience. Th same piece of music may move different people in the same sort of way, blrt for different reasons.You can enjoy a pjece of plalnchant becaus you are a RomanCatholic, or because you Iike the sound of the music: youned not have a "good ear" to enjoy ii as a Catholic, norneed you be a believer to enjoy it as music. ln both cases theenjoym"nt d"perd5 on a br, ksround of human p\perience.

Even if a person describes musical experiences jn ihe tcchnical language of music, he is in fact describing emotionalxpednces which h has learned to associate wiih particularpatterns of sound. If anothe. person dscribes his experience

MUSIC IN SOCIETY AND CULTUREin the same musical iradirion, he may be describing a similar,if not identical, emorional experiene. Musical rerminoloSycan be a language with which ro descdbe human emorionalexperience, just as membership in th Venda possession crltoffers both a ceriain rype of experience and a way of ra[ingabout it. Thus, under certain conditions, the souna of m".icmay recall a state of consciousness that has been acouiiedthrough procerse, of co.rdt e\perienle. Whether Lhe etfe.Liveagent is the right social situarion, as in th Venda possessioncult, or ihe right musicnl situarion, as in the responses of inosimilarly trained musicians, ft is effedive oniy because ofassociations berwen certain individual and cultural experi_

I am sure that many of the funcrions of music in Vendasociety which I have described will recall to you similar situa_tions in other societies. My general argumnt has been rhar,if ihe value of music in socieiy and culture is to be assessd, itmust be described in terms of the attitudes and cognftiveprocesses involved in its crearion, and the functions and ef_fecis of the musical product in society. Ir follows frorn thisthat there should be close structural relationships among rhefunction, conient, and form of muric. Roberr Kautrma; hasdrawn my attntion to a passage in LeRoi Jones,s Bl,esPeople (New York, Wiltiam Morrow,1e63), in which h savsrhar the ba"ic hlporhe,i" of his bool depcndr on understod_in8 that "music can be seen ro be rhe resutr of certain atri-tudes, certain specific ways oI thinking about tle world, andonly ultimately about the,ways,in which music can bemade" (p. 1s3). It is enough that rhis should be said anda.cppled. But I think it is uqfut if the argumenr can be rein.forced with demon.lrrtions of how ir worlc our:n Dra.r:.eThir is someihing thar ethnomucicolo8rrts,Jn do, and mostof my work durinS the pasr fffteen years has been direcredtoward the discovery of sriuctural relationships berweenmusic and social li fe.


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CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 550riltve,n d,tocwty urOfusic/n fl usrc ldn e\preiq so.id. a.rirudec and .o8n:rive proWtt ,"""- Our ir '-,-.rut dnd etre{ iiv" only (hen it iaheard by the pr"prred rnd re.pplive par5 or peopie who ha\eshared, or can share in some way, the cultural and individualexpednces of its creaiors.Music, therefore, confirms what is aheady present in so-ciety and culture, and it adds nothing new except patterns ofsound. But it is not a lurury, a spare-time aciivity io be sand-wiched between sports and art in the hendmaster's report.Even if I believed that music was, or should be, merely ameans of decoraiins social events, I would still have to explainhow rhe music of many composers can exciie me although thecavortinss of their patrons are a bore. When E. M. Forstersaid, "History develops, art stands still," he was referrins totheir subjct matier, io the fact that history is about eventsbur Jrr i. Jbour reelina,. lhrl i, why we.rn Jl\o.dy thar'ni'io.y .iii. 6iit i* i;u"", althoush art is a reflction of history.I share the Venda view that music is essential for the verysurvival of man's humanity, and I found it signilicant thai asa subject for discussion they senerally sreeted music more en-thusiastically and with nore erudiiion than history, though

not less than current politics. This may have ben partly aresponse io my own bias, but I think ii also reflectd theVenda concern for life as a process oI becomins, rather thanas a sta8e in evolutionary progress.We shall do

'\,eUto look at music in the same way. And so,

before I work back to the surfac pattems of music from ihecultural and social processes to which I have reduced them,before I discuss the oriSins of music in culture and society, Iwant to dispose of two kinds of evolutionary approach tomusic history which are of no use in seekin8 an answer to thequestion, How musical is nan? They are useless chiefly because they can never be proved. The first approach seks to''understand the meanins and Iorms of music by speculaiinsabout its historical origins in bird song, mating calls, and ahost of oihs reactions of some mythical "primitive" man tohis environment. Since the chief sources of inlormation Iorthis guesswork have been, and can only be, the musical prac-tices of livins people, and a knowledge of music's orisins isuseful only for understanding these practics betier, the exer-cir is c1arly fuiile.I The second kind of evolutionary approach is concernedwith the, development of musical styles as ihings in them-selves. It tends to assume that there is a world history ofmusic, in which man began by using one or two tones andthen graduaily discovered more and more tones and patternsof sound- It leads to such siatements as: "In the growth ofgreat civilizations, music is the first of the arts to emerSe andihe last to develop." Such remarks usually ignore the fact thatour knowledge of past music i, ofien limited to what literateclasses chose to recogrize or record of such activities. Somewhite missionaries in the Sibasa disirict, for instance, wereasionishd that it could take more than six monihs to learnall there was io know about Venda music because their earswere closed to the varity and complexity of its sounds.The absence oF information on musi. in the rcords of the

54


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56 HOW MUSICAL IS MAN? CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 57elite does not mean rhat there wa, no good music in the livesof ordinary people; nor is rhe appareni simplicity oI someconiemporary nusical styles evidence thar rheir music is asuNival fron a stage in the history of world music. In 1s85,Alerander lohn Ellis, the man who is senerally regarded asthe Iather of eihnomusicology, dmonsrrated thar musical.cale' rre rot naturrl bur hiBhlv drtitiLial. dnd rha law. ofacousti.s may be irrelevant in rhe human organization ofsound. In spite of his timely waining, rhere are srill someethnomusicologisrs who wdre as if it were thei rask to fillin the gaps oI nusical history by describing the musical stylesoI exotic cultures. Even if they do not say ir in so manyNords, their techniques of analysis betray ajTection for anevolutionary view of music. Musical styles cannot be heard as-lag''n .hF e\olution ot ru5iL. d< judBed in rprmr of onppa icular civilization's concepts of music. Each style has itsown hi,,ory. and t. pre.en- .tJre represerlc orly or" sragein its own dvelopmnr, rhis may have followed a separareand unique course, although its surface parrerns may suSgestcontacts with other styles. Moreover, even though people aresometimes mor conservarive about music than about otheraspects of culture, it is hard to believe that nr some parrs ofthe world there has been no musical innovation for thousands

Speculative histories of world music are a complete l{asteof elTort. Even if we knew how musical styles had changedin the cultures which are ciied as evidence oLiases in thedevelopment of music, the knowledge woutd be of only ency-clopedic ;nterest- It would give us little or no insight intohuman creativity in music unless we had corresponding evi-d"n.e or rhe.ulru'Jl and so,i,t en\i,onmn, .r wh:.h.hemusical developnents took place. On rhe other hand, if cuttural and social history is well documented, srudies of musichistory are both possible and useful. There is a vast dilTerencebetween studies such as Paul Henry Lang,s Music in Westen

CiDiLizatian, Hugo Leichtentitt's Music, HistorV and ldeas,and Alec Harrnan's and Wilfrid Mellers'volumes on Man andHis Mrsic, in which the origins of certain aspects of musicalstyle are sought in the social movemnts and philosophicalconventionE of the time, and studies rhat irac musical devel-opment in terms of more tones to the ociave, more thirds tothe chord, and more instruments to the orchestra.Where, for insiance, would our speculative music hisiorianplace the Venda in his hisiory oI world music? There aremlirds that have five-, six-, or seven-tone scales, and sets ofreed pipe, that use either five or seven tone scales- The nel-odies of sonss may use anything from one to seven tones,selected from various heptaionic modes. Songs that use fivetones may be based on a pentntonic scale or on selections offive rones Irom a heptatonic mode (like ihe "Ode to loy"in Beethoven's Ninth Synphonyl). If our music historiangivs the Venda ihe credit of producing ihe heptatonic scaleihemslves and does not assume thai ihey must hav bor-rowed ir from a "highr" cL ture, I suspect that he mightdescribe their music as beinS in a stage of transition frompentatonic to heptatonic music a fascinating example ofmusical evolution in action! The only trouble about such adescription is that social and cultural evidence contradicis it.For xarnpl, the Venda used a heptatonic xylophone and hep-tatonic red pipes long before they adoptd ihe pentatonicred pipes of their souihem neighbors, the Pedi, who in tumsny that they adoptd and adapted the hptatonic reed pipemusic of the Venda. According io evolutionary iheodes ofmusic history, the Venda should be going backward like theChinere, who selected a pentatonic scal for their music al-thoush they knew and had used "bigser and btter" scaleslIt may be argud that I have used one kind of speculativehistory in order to thror{ out another, and that ihe staiedcultural orisins o{ Venda and Pedi music may be no less eth-noceniric and inaccurate, as ralionalizations of a system, than


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a concept of musical evolution that explains paitems of soundin a dilTerent r!ay. To this objection I would reply that in- udy ng ru.i,d. .\ rpm' I Jm prim.rrily (on.erned !\:hhistodcal /./e?nn.e. Even if we knew exactly how the Vendaaat tshilrano, dotnba, and a heptatonic scale (and I doubt ifwe shall ever kno{r, and even if ii were true that the hepta-ionic music had evolved from the pentatonic, it would notcontribute much lo our underslanding of the Venda musicalsystm or of the development of musicality in Venda socieiy.I am intcrcsted in Venda music nore as the product of humanmhds in Venda cultue and sociciy than as a siage in thehistory of world music.In askins how musical is rnan, I am obviously concrnedtith all aspccts oi the origins of muric, but not with spccula-tive origins, or even with o gins which a forign historlanthinks he can deLecl, but which ;rre not rcognized by thecreators of Lhc muslc- The odgins of music thatare those s'hich are to be Ioun.{ in ihe psychology and in thecultural and social environmenl of its creators, in the assemb1y oI processcs that generate the patterns of sound. If nusicexpresses attiiudes, we should expect correlations beiweerthe different attituds and the palterns of sound with whichthey are expressed.To whal cxicnt is mrsic a "language of emoiions, akin iospccch," as Dcryck cooke has claimed in The Langunge alM'/s;.? The thesis must be considcred in the context in whichit is proposdr Europcan tonnl music beineen 14oo and 1953.Cooke has shown that specific musical fisurcs seeem to beused asain and aSain to convey similar feelinss, and that theuse of this kind of cod is an essential feature of musical com-munication. His argumcnt goes a long way toward bridgingthe gap between formal and xpressive analyses of music,and iorrard showins eractly how music can be described asthe xprcssion of ceriain atiitudcs. lor instance, hc describesthe descendins pro8ression 5 (4) 3 (2) I (MrNoR) as a fi8ure

"which has been much used to express an 'incomins' painfulemotion, in a context of finality: acceptance of, or yielding togdef; discouragemeni and depression; passive sulTering; andth despair connecred wjrh death" (p. 133). Thus he comparesa phras of Gibbons' madrisal "What Is Our Life?" wiih theopenine of the finale oI Tchaikovsky's Prtfteri4ae Symphony:

Cooke's thesis impressed ne at first because it seemd tonake sense in terms of my own musical experien.e. For instance, I had noiiced and felt the musical and expressivesimilaity between the pleadins melody in the "Recordarelesu Pie" of Benjamin Britten's Wat Requiem (see Example10) and ihe fisure with which Mahler accompanies the nostal-sic words, "Ich sehne mich, O Freund, am deiner Se e dieSchoenheit dieses Abends zu seniessen," in "Der Abscheid,"ihe lasi sons ol Das Lied oon rlet Erde (Universat Edition,sections 23,30, and 53 to the end) Gce Example 11). Thefisure 1-3-4-5 (MrNoR) also opens the spiritual, "NobodyKnows the Trouble I See" (see Example 12). Same figure,same kind of feelinS. Deryck Cooke quotes other instancesoI this 6gure and describes ii as "an assertion of sorrow, acomplaint, a protest against misfortune" (lrnguage of Music,p.122).

HOW MUSICAL 15 MAN I CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 59


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60 HOW MUSICAI, ]S MAN? CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 61

Again, although I have delibraiely never read any analysesof Mahler's Ninth and Tenth syrnphonis because I first wantto find out what the music says io fle, I react quite definitelyto two parallel sequences of intervals in their final move-ments (in the case of the Tenth, I refer to Deryck Cooketperfoming version). First, in th iwenty+hird bar of the lasimovement of the Ninth, the first violins play the tones of adesce'?dt"s scale, bui in /tsinE pairs of fallins tones.

Then in the Tenth, there is an ascend;ng scale which is playedin descending groups of rising tones (bar 327 oI ihe lasi

I will nake no aitempr to express in words what I feel whenI hear this music, because Mahler explicitly staied thai heIelt the need to express hirnself in music only when "indefin-able enoiions make thenselves fe1t," and if they could hivebeen expressed in lansuase he would have don so. I willmerely say that for me they express someihinS about liIe anddeath and man's sirussle for fulfillment and spiritual peac.The final chords of ihe Tenih sem to express ultimate iesis-


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62 HOW MUS]CAL ]S MAN?nation whether ihey were wdtien by Mahler or by Deryck

Now, have I received the aititudes that prompted Mahlerio compose those notes, or have I reinterpreted them in thelisht of my own experience? And does anyone else feel aboutthem in ihe same way? Am I out on a limb, like the novicesi^ the tshikaflda Sirl's initiaiion, listening to Mahler bui notharins him? Cr'r anyone else heai those notes as I do, or asMahler did? Is the purpose of musical experience to be alonein company? Is there no hope of establishins common relationships ihrough music except where there js a fairly specificextramusical program? Could "soul" nusic a(feci BlackAmcricans if its lorms were not associated wiih a whole setoi eatramusical experiences wlich Black Americins share?In spite of the beautifully stated antiwar message of Bdtten'sWar llequien, can all ihose who share his sentiments sharethe jntense message of his music? Does it renlly mean thesane to the Russian, Enslish, and Cerman solo singers whomnde the first recordins of th work? To those who shareaspects of Brittent cultural, social, and musical background,th music may enhance the pity of Wilfrd Owen's poeiryand creat a greater horror of r{ar than could the poeiry on itsown. For oihers, the poetry may be a stirring experience, butthe music a bore. We cannot say that they shar the experrencc of the poetry more than that oI the music, because they,like Bdtten and most of his listeners, did not share Owen'sultimately fatal expedence of trench warfare. We can only saythat they share the expelience of th convention of the poetrymorc asily than th convention of the music.Althoush "'nusic can rel,eal the nature of feelinss wiih a.letail and iruth thaL language cannot approach/'(to quoteSusanne Langer, Ph;/osaphy h a Neu) Key lNew York: Mn-tor Books, 19481, p. 191), ii is also tied ro the culture in a wayin rlhich the descriptive capacitics of languag are not. Con-sider the elements of British and European cuhure in the

CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUS]C 63music of Bdtien's Wat Requiem and, again, in ihis descrip-tion I shall speak oI ih work as it strikes me: I have notread any commentaries on it. The vry first two bars oI the,ork set the stase for death, with the tollins of a bell and theintoning of the opening words of th Requiem Mnss-

si;u otr,l sol",r I = i: !6

Later, the sounds of boys' voices and an orsan recall the hopeand innocence of childhood,

',8:ii;l:,,,-8,4 ji.l


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HOW MUS]CAL IS MAN?and brass insiruments and busle-call notifs recnll warfare.

CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 65

Musical imitations of ih sounds of shrapnel accompany the'vords oI Owen's jaunty soldiers sinsins, "Out there we'vewalked quite friendly up to Death." Now it is the shrapnelthat sings aloft, but a few momenis before, in ihe "Rex tremendae, majestatis," it was heaven. The military associationsof druns are reinforced rhen they are used to refer to thefirins of artillery.

Bul drums and trumpeis may also take us to heaven anddivine iudSment in ih "Dies Irae," and Britten makes a pow-erlul contrast between "Tuba mitum spargens sonum" and"Busles sans, saddenins the evenlns air"

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I66 HOW MUS]CAL IS MAN? CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 67

the slorious trumpets of God, and then ihe bloody buslesTo someone who has been imnersed in the cufture of rhecomposer/ ihe sounds Bdtten uses and the contrasis he makesbetween ihm cnn be hearFrcnding and poisnant. For onewhose school friends have been killed in actlon, it has thesame kind oI effect as the contrasting phorographs of cricketfields, choirboys, rockets, and war which Peter Brook showedat the beginnins of his lilm of Lard af lhe Flies. In rhis case,

my reactions to the music may be closer to the leelings Britienhad when he wrote ii than they were in the case of Mahler'sNinih and Tenth synphonies. Bui have Bdtten and Mahlerreally usd a lan8uase thai is in any way akin to speech?Composers acquire characteristics of style by listening to

the music of the past and preseni. Britten acknowledges adebt to Mahler, and boih Bdtten and Mahler speni some timein the United States. But is there really a common factor intheir use of the same fisure in the War Re4 iem a d Dns Liedwn der Erde? And is it likely that the creators oI "NobodyKnows" would have used the same musical lansoa8e as Bdi-ten and Mahler, when it is clear (to me, at any rate) ihatspirituals are a development of African principles of musicmaking rather than an imitation of the European? (For in-srance, the basic merer of "Nobody Knows" is 3+3+2, andthe apparenily un Airican melody may have begun as thelower part of a charactedstically African "falling" melody,which was given the harmonic treaiment that is iypical ofAfrican music and not necessarily borrowed from Europe.)Just as Britten assiSns differeni meanings to the sametimbre in the coniexi of a single work, so the same patternof melody may have a variety of expressive meaninss, and infact it is ihis variety in the contexi of unlty which may add tothe e)(pressive power oI music. In Vivaldi's The Fa r Seasons(Op. 8), snnilar scales and arpeggios depict different subiectsranging from the staggering oI drunken peasants in //Aut-umn" to icy winds in "Winter." Even withoui a knowledge ofthe sonnets that inspired the music, the meanings of the similar mu'i.rl figure, rr" ' l"a,l\ d,ffFren' whPn heard in rh".on-text of the work. Asain, the marchiike melodies of MahlelsThird and Sixth synphonies, and ihe March in Act 1, scene 3of Beq's Wazzeck, when Marie is admidng th sergeanimajor, have nothins to do with feelinss nboui war' Theirmusical and dramatic coniexis suggest entirely different

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68 HOW MUSICAL IS MA N?None of these musical meanings is absolute even vr'ithin rhesame European musical tradition, in which the rules areclearly stated and the system of leamins them has been simi-lar for centuries. They depend noi only on the context oI thework, but also on th musical convenrions of the time. Much

ha. bpen wri.ten dbout Lhe use ot musicJi tigure- lo illu. rJteideas, espcially in the nusic of J. S. Bach. But ihe music ofBach and Handel cannot be lully understood without refer-en.c io lhe eighteenlhlenlurv riew ot the world. in hhi, hae"rl^criL theo'ie in.luded d ,ompli.ated docfline ot emotional expression going back to certain corelaiions of rhythmand melodic line with various emotions" (Hugo reichGnrriti,Music, History an.1 ldeas [Cambtiaie, Mass.; Harvard Uni-versity Press, 1e461, p. u2). For instance, F mrjor was thekey of the pastoral idyll, and F-shary major was a transcen-dental key: "Handel's enine harmonic system and style ofmodulations is based on rhe underlyins meanins of the var-ious keys" (ibid., p. 1sa). Similarly, if northrn Indian musicclaims to be able to bring out /'a nuance of sadness, or oflove . . . by careful and impermanent use of the intervalsthat correspond with these emotions" (Alain Dani6lou,Northetn Indian Mlsic [London: Halcyon Press, aes4], 2:9),it is bcause the music is heard and perforned in the contexrof Hindu culture and of a rnusical sysrem rhat is intricaielyThe musical conventions of the eightenth cenrury siand

between the Gibbons madrigal and the Tchaikovsky sym-phony io which I referred earlier. And so I Iind ir hard toaccept that there has been a continuous musical rradftion between England in 1612 and Russia in 1893, in which certainmusical figures have had correspondine emorional connota-tions. The only jusrification for such an argument would bethai the emotional siSnificance of certain intervals arises fromIundamental features oI human physiology and psychology.If this is so, some relarionships btwen musical intervals and

C1]T,TT]RE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 69human feelings ought to be universal. An example fromAfrica will be suf{icient to question such a theory. It is notsufficient to dismGs the theory altosether, because it is pos-sible that Venda musical conventions have suppressed aninnate desire in Venda people to express theii emoiion3 in aspecific, universal way.Fisure 6a shows a Venda childrent sons in which smallvariations in ihe melody are seneraied by changes of speechtone. When I first learned io sing it, the Venda iold me thatI was doing wetl, but that I sans 1ik a Tsonga (their neigh-bors to ihe south). I sang all word phrases to the melody ofihe first, and I thought thai my fault lay in ihe pitch of myintervals. Eventually, when I realized that the melody shouldvnry, they accepted my performance as truly Venda even if Ideliberaiely sang oui of iune. The pattrn of intervals is con-sidered more importani than their exact pitch, because incertain parts of a melody they are expected to refleci changesin speech ione. Fisure 6b shows a childrent song in whichthe speech tone patiems of the firsi phrase generate the basicmelody, and subsequent vadations in words bins aboutrhythmic, as well as melodic, vaiations. Such rhythmicchanges,are someiimes catled asogic accent, in orthodoxnusical analysis. Valiations in melody and rhythm maytherefore lndicate not musical preferenceE, but the incidentalconsequences of changes in speech tone, which are ihem-selves snerated by the use oI diffrnt words whose sequenceis Seneratd by the "story" of the song.Essential generative factors in the music of ihese and otherVenda songs are therefore extramusical. Pa s of the melodiesare formal repreEentaiions of paiterns of speech tone, whichare also formal and not necessarily relaied to the meaninsand expressive purpose o{ the words. Relationships betwenthe specific emotional .ontent of the words and the shape ofiis associated melody may exisi, but ihey would be coinci-denial.


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HOW MUSICAL IS MAN? CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 71

i = high srcelb bri=toltrsrcclosoftgi1drpblrcrodv

FrcqRE 6. Parts ol t@o Vehda .h Arcfl's sangs, illustrdtins soneefects ol chdnsins speech tanes aa the pdfietus ol nelodv.This does noi mean that the Venda are unmoved by music,or that they regard it as a mere extension o language. Thetreatment of a Aitls' tEhigombela dance song illusrrares thisvery clearly. The tendency is for rhe music to become more

musical as the peraormance proceeds. Even in solo vocal musiclike the children's sonss, ihe form of melodies can be dividedinto call and response sections, reflectinS a sociai situation inwhich someone "so\\s" ( sit11a) a song, and others "thunderin response"( baunela) a metaphor derived from horiiculture. Ir is only in the call section of rhe songs thar melodisfollow the speech-tone patterns of words, and also the sen-eral rule that each syllable of a word may be accompanied byonly one tone. If performers substiiute for words various

combinations of phonens s.uch, as ee, ahee, huuelele wee'yawee, and. so forth, they giv ihemselve greater freedom ofmusical xpression. This is important, because it is ihe pari ofthe shared expedence o{ musical activity which may beconetranscendental in its el{ect on individuals. In the developmentoI a tshigombela sons durins a performance that may lastfrom ten io more than thirty minures, the straightforward calland response is elaboraied into a quasicontrapuntal sequence,and words are abandoned. Durins the course of freer musicalexpression, a variety of melodies come out //on top" becausein ihe excitement of the dance the pitch of the girls' voicesrises, and when they cannot reach a tone they transpose itdown a fiith or an octave. Thus, falling intervals nav some-times express the feeling, "I can't reach the next tone"!There are also relationships between variations in thesocial and enotional content of a tshisombela dance and theform of the muslc, so that a formal analysis of different per-formances is also an xpressive analysis. But unless theforrnal analysis begins as an analysis of the social siiuationthat senerates the music, it is meaningless One has only tolisten io perlormances on an aftemoon when ihe girls areIew in aumber and bored, and on another occasion whenihere is a good turnout, an appreciative audience, and anatmosphere of excitemenr and concem, to realize how and{,hy two performances of the same song can be eniirelvdiffeint in expressive power and in forrn The number andquality of vadations in rhythm depend on ihe ability of ihedrumners and dancers, bui it is not simply a matter of run-ning throush the gamut of siandard paiterns which ihevknow. When and how these variations are introduced is whatgives ihe musj. iis expressive power; and this dePends onthe commitment of those present and ihe quality of theshared experience that comes into being among performers,and between performers and audience.I iniroduced Deryck Cooket theory of the language of

:L 11 J-

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HOW MUSICAL IS MAN? CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 73music because, although I cannot accept it/ it is undeniablythought-provoking. I have concluded my criticism with ex-amples from Venda music in order to show ,hy an eihno-musicological approach is necessary even in the study ofEuropean music btween 14oo and 1953. Cooke cannot befaulied for choosins a particular arei of music, but, becausehis theory is not general enough to appiy io ffiy culiure orsocieiy, it is auiomalically inadequate for European music. Itis not suf{icienlly context sensitive- Tonal music between14oo and 1953 cinnot b isolaied as a thing in itslf, espe-cially il it is to b related to human emotions. The aestheticconventions of the eighteenih century cannot be consideredapart from the erperience of lhe social groups who were orwere not involved in ihem. lf music serves as a sign or synbolof dii{erent kinds of human experience, iis performance mayhelp to channel the felings oI listeners in certain directions.A composer who hopes to communicate anyihing more thanpretty sounds nust be aware oI the associarions that dilTereni sounds conjure up in ihe mhds of di(erent social sroups.Ii is not simply a maiter of expressing feelnrs by relaiingsounds in the context of a sin8le piece of music, as in Bditen'sWat Requien. The principles of musicnl orSanization musibe related to social experimces,- of which listeninS to an-dperforming music form one aspect. The minuei is not simplya musical fom borrowed from dancing: it has entirely differ-ent social and emotional associations before and after theFrench Revolution.From a distance, th forms, iechniques, and building rnaterials of music may seem to be cumulative, like a technologi-cal tradition. But music is not a branch of technology, thoushit is affected by technolosical developnents. It is more likephilosophy, which may also give a superficial impression oIbeing evolutionary. Each apparently new idea in music, likea new idea in philosophy, does not really grow out of pre-viously expressed idas, thoush it may well be limited by

them. It is a new emphasis which grows out of a composer'sexperience o{ his environment, a realizaiion oI certain aspectsof ihe experiences common to all human beinss which seemio him io be particularly relel'ant in the light of contmporaryevents and personal expedences.

The most importani thing about a cultural iradition at anytnne in its history is the way in which its human componentsrelate io each other. It is in the context of these relaiionshipsihat emotional expedences are had and shared. Artistic en-joyment is "based essentiaily upon the reaciion of our mindsto form" (Franz Boas, Pimittue Art lNew York: Dover, 1e55(1e27)1, p. 3ae), but the forns are produced by human mindswhore workins habiis are, I believe, a synthesis of given,universal systems of operation and acquired, cultural patternsof expression. Since these patterns are always acqunedthrough and in the context of social relationships and theirassociaid emotions, rhe decisive style forming facior in anyattempt to express feeling in music must be its socinl contnt.If we want io find the basic organizing principles ihat alfectthe shapes of patterns of music, we must look beyond the cultural conventions oI any century or society to the social situa-tions in which ihey are applied and to which ihey refer'The selection and use of scales may be the produci oI socialand cultural procsses that are not necessarily related to theacoustical properties of sound. In Venda, the use of penta-ionic, hexatonic, and heptatonic scales reflecrs a process ofsocial change, in which diffeient sroups, l\]ith dif{erent musi-cat styles, hale become incorporated into a lar8er society. It isstrange that even a sociologist should ignore similar socialprocesses in the development of the European tonal systen. Inhis study of The Rational and SociaL Faundatians of Muslc(trans. and ed. Don Martindale, Iohannes Riedel, and Gertrude Neuwnth [Carbondale, Ill.: Southen Illinois UniversityPress, 1e581), Max Weber claimed that the European musicalsystem was rationalized from within the tone systemr it was


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74 HOW MUSICAL ]S MAN? CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 75concerned not with real distances on instruments, such asequidistance between frets oi Rute holes, but wiih harmonicdistances. "Th appearance of iheories dealing wirh the dis-sonances rnarks the beginning of the special musical develop-ment of the Oc.ident" (p. z5), because ,dissonaice is rhebasic elment of chordat music, morivating the progressionfrom chord to chord" (p. 6). Weber attribures rhis develop-meni to the scientific attitude that emerged al ihe rime of theRenaissance. Although he acknowledges thar theory followspractic and that "modem chordal harmony belonged ro practical music lons before Rameau and the encyclopaedists pro-vided it with a theoreric basis" (p. 103), he does noi 80further and show how harmonic music arose out oI poly,phony, and that polyphony was ar first modal and distinguished from monody more by its rhythm ihan by its ronal

The polyphony of early European music is in principle noiunlike the polyrhythm of much African music; in boih cases,performance depends on a number of people holdins separateparts wirhin a framework of meiric unity, bur rhe principle isapplied "vertically" to melodis in polyphony, and ,,hodzon-tally" to rhythmic figures in polyrhyihm. The source of bothtechniques is surely in cultural concepts and social activity,- such as dancins. The change in European musical techniquefrom the monody oI plainchant to polyphony depended onmensuraiion, on the strict organizarion of rhyrhm so that

the diffeient singins parts would fit. And mensuration is thechief feature of dance music, which was a vital aciiviry ofthe peasanis. The mdieval church had allowed onty plainchant, lrhich was intended to express the unity of societywithin the framework of a church dedicaied ro Cod; its siylewas completely divorced from the regular rhythms of seculardancing and the unsophisticated "roni. dominant,, retarionships that occur in lively pieces such as "Sumer is icumenin." Ii is not surprising that the early masters of polyphony

came from the Netherlands and England, wheie ihe peasanishad become Iree durins the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-tries, respectively. As the peasants/ political importance Srew/so their dance music becam incorporated in the music writienfor the church by professional composers

It is possible thar th predominance of ihirds and sixths inth music of Iohn Dunsiable, and of fourths in the music ofthe Flemish composers, may be explained as a legacv fromthe popular mtrsic of theil societies (ln Africa todav, socieiieswho sing in parallel motion show preferences for certainintervals.) Asain, the remarkabte developmeni oI polvPhonicmusic in England during the sixteenth century mav have beenstimulaled as much by the advent of Wlsh nonarchs nndthir followers as by the musical invention of individual com-posers in the first hau oI the fifieenth ceniury. \Nhen theTudor King Henry VII cane to the ihrone in 1485, he re-eriablished Welsh influence in England; and Welsh popularmusic had been noted for its polyphonic iechnique since atleast the twelfth ceniuryA composer's style is "diciated by the kind of humanbeings and human emotions" he "iries to bring into his afi,using th9 language elements of his iime," savs Sidnev Finkelstein in A/f and Societv (tNew York: Intelnational Pub-lishers, 1e471, p.2e). The influence of popular culture isstrons in the works of nany great composers/ who havestdven to express themselves, and hence their societv, in thebroadest terms. Lutheran chorales were deliberatelv derivedfrom "Iolk songs," and Bach organized nuch of hls musicround them. Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert, in particular,orsanized their music round the Austrian "folk" idiom. Bart6k, Kodily, laniiek, Copland, and numerous other com-posers of nntional schools have found rhe greatest siimulus inthe sounds of their own societies. In ihe third ind fourthvotttmes ol Man and LIis Mrsic, and especiallv i^ The SanatttPrinciple (fron c. 1750) (London: Rockliff, 1es7), Wilftid


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76 HOW MUSICAL I5 MAN?

IMellers has shown how dance forms, the tone and stress ofthe .omposer's own language, and particularly the melodiesof "Iolk" music, have all played as vital a part in the processot assimilation and creation as have conventions of musicalstyle. He has drawn attention to the successive dominmce ofvocal and instrumental forms in the development of tech-niques of European "art" music, and has linked these develop-ments with chdges in the social oder (Wilfrid Mellers,Music and Saciety [London: Dobson, 1,esof, pp. a1, 1,32).Curt Sachs has likwise discussed the influence of so.ieties'styles of dancins on thir melodies (n Wo d History ol theDatrce [Nw York: W. W. Norton, 1937j, pp. 1a1.-2o3).Changes in musical style have generally been reflections ofchanges in socity. For example, aftr about A.D. 12oo inEurope, kniShts and other secular powers tumed increasingly"to the people, whose popular Etyle of sin8ing thy adapted tothir more lefined tarte" (Leichtentritt, Mltsic, Histoty andIdeas, p. 60l.In turnina a ,ay from the social dominance ofthe church, they also rejcted its music. Sirnilarly, the variousstyles of Venda music reflect the variety of iis social arolrpsand the degree of their assimilaiion inio th body politic.Musical performances are audible and visible sisns of rocialand political sroupin8s in Venda society, and Figure 7 showstheir pattrn in the social structure. Music in the traditionalstyl is contained in concentric circles syrnbolic of Vendahouses and dance patieins, and nontraditional music is inrectangles, sjmilar to the European house desi8ns that manyeducated people have adoptd. The initialion schools ohusha,tshiknnda, a d domba are directly controlled by rulers, whilemuruwiu and s rsrui are privately owned, but under theaurpices of rulers and tradiiionally oriented. Together withthe possession dances (nsoma dza midzinu\, which are heldby family cult groups with the permission of rulrs, each ofthese insiitutions is regarded very seriously and, called, ngoma(literally, drum). Other types of music may be referred to as

tsscHooL MUSIC

I4EURQPEANCHU RCHE S

EPARATISC HU dC HES


iiii"il ?ijr rnirulrto, tiurqwo,ngomo drunsmusrc wrth nirumbo orn uuryleo:,ul'"'?l:$..'"^",'-^.,."t..", """,*-*^* "'*,.-*.2."*,. *^*".- .^-*,*3 ^",".""',""".,"-"'-'" "" ",."'4,"..",".", . .*.,,"' fr tU*;;5'+:i'-*P:':at+S+:t ;

FtLuAE 7. Diasqa haaiagle dotion-hip brtur"a nusical aqd,.,i"t "u*t,i n Venda societv Conpa'' uith FBurc s


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HOW MUSICAL IS MAN?amusements (n,ramro), but this does not mcan they are noian impoftant part of Venda social and politcal tife. ThcEuropean run churches came and scr themselves up in rornlopposition io traditional Venda life, but schoots and separaiisi churchcs have devetoped music thar reflects ihc syncre-tism oI thcir social life.The variety and vigor of Venda mrsical slyles are rhc product of a political siruaiion similar ro thal in Austria in ihelate eightcenth ceniury, when promineni families and princes"rivallcd each oiher in the ex.ellence of their privare orches-tras" (ibid., p. 173). The diversity or musicat sryles reflects adiversity that underlics the apparent homogeneiry of Vendaculture and society, .nd hence both the hisrorical process thathas brought ihcm at oul, and their mennins in contemporarvlifc. There are onl]' iwo types of potitically regr ated com-munal music that can rcally brins rraditionally orientedVenda togethr. Thy are ishiLond, rhe narionat dance, and,o,Jln, the premarital initiation dance, which used to be performed by youihs and sirls but is now performe.t almostexclusively by girls because migrant labor and the growth ofschool education havc changed rhe pattern of Venda rurallife.The music and dance of rhe to,rra initiarion schoot pro-vidc an astonishing illusiration of rhe wa]' in which formaland expressive elements may be combined ro portray symbolically in music thc essential themes of a cult1lle. What makesthem all the nore remarkable is rhar the process of crcarion*'as almost .ertainly not self-conscious, but the forms aresystematically related to thci expressive prrpose. The Vendaexplah thit domLc has been wirh rhem for cenruries, andthey have nuch to say on the frnctions oi the inftiationschool and the beauty and value of rhe chief ritlal dance.They make no cornment on the form of thc dance and itsmusic, excepi Ia say that ".Lomba is do'rla; ftt an imporrantitc (nso'nd)." And yer rhe music and dance depici an essen_

CIJLTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 79tI'

tial featur of adult life, and thelr resular performance synbolize the imporiance of narriage, childbirth, and insiitulionalizcd motherhood.On the surfice, donrn sounds like a regular picce of Vendarnuslc in callresponse fonn, with polyrhyih ic accompaniment and musical developmeni of the response. The circularform o[ the dance is characterisiically Venda, and with a lotof sirls in relativcly small dancin8 srounds, it is not unreas-onable thai thy shoutd holcl each other. The movement hasbeen wronsly called "The I'ython Dancc" in illustraicd jor]rnals and tourist brochures, in which it is cilcd as one oa themost interesting things about the Venda prcsumably be-ca se ir is perfoined by a chain of alnost naked maidensAnd yet thc dance movemeni, the kind of musical dcveloPmeni which the response is given, and the sisnals for thcbegimring and the end of the dance movements are all genrated bv ihe expressivc functions of lhe music Whai ismor,I could ncver have discovered this ii I had not attendedscores of performances of ihe dincc in di(erent parts of Ven-da, recordcd hunclreds ol the word phrases suns by rhe soloist, noted thc rlationshlps among words, dance, .nd nusic,and learned the csoteric syrnbolism of the school l had toimneree myself in Venda culture and society in order tounderstand this pro.lu.t of Vcnda ninds.The analysis of don*r I prescni is derived from a conbina-tion of different kinds of ethnographic hformauon l do noiclaim that it G the last nord on the slbject, bui at leasi it islosical and it nrises out of the cthnography- When I beganthe analysis,I had no idea how lt would turn ott, and I neversuspected that the iormal and expressive clements would beso unified. My conclusions wcrc thtusi on m by the regulari-ties and correspondences that emersed lrom the material Ih:,1 rollccrcd in the field.Domha \. the last oi a seies of initiation school$ thatprepare sirls for marriage. Although there is much emphasis

i

I


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80 HOW MUSICAL IS MAN?on sex and reproduction, the schools are not concerned solelywith fertiliiy. They are designed to prepare girls for institu-tionalized motherhood, toaether with all rhe rights andobligaiions that go with it. There is evidence rhat the contntand form of the school have changed over the years, particu-larly since iis "nationalization" by the ancesrors of the rulingclans. In the past, when dom&a was a ritual of the commonerclans, the emphasis on physical srowth seems to have beenstronger. The tulins clans have expanded the political sisnificance of the initiation schools, but the basically physicalorie'1rir.on oi rl-e mL-i. rrd dJn.e remainsEach performance of the dance symbolizes sexual inter-course, and successive performances symbolize the buildinsup of ihe fetus, for which regular intercourse is rhought tobe necessary. The music and the dance are not meant to besexy: they symbolize the mystical act of sexual communion,concepiion/ the growih of the fetus, and childbiith. Afterthree warning drumbeats, the voice of the male soloist, themaster of initiation, "pierces the air like an arrow," like aphallus. and the g rl. replv hith d low rnurmuring re:pon\eThe man's volce begins on what is functionalty similar to adominani in Venda tonality, and rhe Sirts' voices take rheresponse to ihe "tonic," the point of relaxation. Three diffei-ently piiched drums entel in polyrhythm, iwo agninsr three,and the son8 is under way.The sirls are beins symbolically roused. After a fewrepeats of the basic melody, the master sings "the river reedunwinds," and the girls, who are in a line holding each other,sbodies, begin to step around the drums. The river reed andthe line oI girls are both phallic symbols, and the beginningof the dance movement symbolizes the entry oI the phallus.The girls immediately begin quasi orgastic singing which theycall khrlo. As in the tslt/cona national dance, hoclet techniqueis employed. After several minules, when the master sings theword-phrase "grdr has stirred up your entrails," rhe girls

CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC 81stop moving and lean over ioward the centr of the dancingcircl, symbolizins detumescence.There is a fire in ihe center of the dancins place, whichmust be kept alight ihroughout the duration of the school.

-:

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64 HOW MUSICAL IS MAN?

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The "white" ashes symbolize the semen rhat is considerednecessary Ior the srowth of the fetus. The swingins bassdrum is called "the head of the child" in the esoteric symbotisrn of the shool. At rhe besinnins of damba, it hes on theground. After three or four months (thoush somerimes less,it seems), ihere is a ceremony at which the drun is ',cooked,,and then hung from the crossbar. This is like rhe movins ofthe child in the womb, symbolized by the dance circle. Thesymbolism is not conclusive about th drums. bur ft seem6ihat their diFerent beats express the heartbears of farher,

On the last night oI rhe initiation school, rhe girls dancewith their hands above their heads, symbolizins the pains of

childbirth and a night of labor. On the lollowins mornin8they are stripped and washed, and dressed in iheir sradua-iion clothes. They are carried, like babies, on th backs ofthei "mothers" up to the ruler's courtyard, where ihv dancerlomba for the last iime ns novices- Thncefodh ihev areready for mardage and {or fuller particlpation in Vendasociety. One function of ihe music and dance was to createa baby synbolically, and, as if to reinforce this, the bassdrum is removed from the crossbar for ihe 6na1 ritesThere is an important relationship beiween the music oftlomba and of tshlkona, \\hich reflcis the function of thetwo types of music in Venda society. A complete sei ofreed pipes is called mut|ah, The liord refers to the set andnot to the number of tones to an octave- The sane word isused io refer to a set of keys on the mbira and the xvlophone.However, names are given io ihe notes in such a wav thatiheir relaiionships within the ociave and their musical functions are recognized. The chief ton of a set of heptatonicreed pipes is ca|Ied phaln, and rhe tone an octave above it isca11ed, phalana, ot "lirtle phala" The tone above phaln iscalled thakhula, the "lifter," because ii leads the melodv backdown onJo ihe chief tone. (li is functionally like a leadinsnote in European music.) Every tone has a companion tone/ alitrh belo('. This is not a dvice limiied to tshikana. it isimplicit in every Venda melody based on heptatonic modesThe companion tones in a pentatonic scale differ because ofthe spacins of ihe intervals, but the basically social principlethat a ione must have a companion tone still applies, and iimay be expressed explicitly in ihe "harmonies" improvised

In instrumenial music the interval of a tdtone is permiited,but in vocal music it is avoided as a chord An interesiingcontrast exGts between tshikona and the khulo al domb|, i^which girls sing with their voices almost the same patternthai men play on their reed pipes (see lisure 8) The per-


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86 HOW MUSICAL IS MAN? CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MUSIC

L

mitted tritone is noi in the same posiiion in the pattem oftshikona (c" /fl" ]n sa) as ii would be in the pattern of f,h,lo(second chord in 8b), if it were not avoided. This is videncthat /rhalo is nof a simple transposirion af lshil@nat ]f itwre, ihe avoided tdtone {'ou1d appear, as in fshikona, in dne

penultimate/ and not in the second chord. Klulo is, raiher, aLrrn5lormdlion that i5 Seaerdrpd ov lhe differelt lun.lion oithe music. Thus the companion tones of the mea's tshikona \Bin sa, sc, ind 8e) have been selected as the chief mode of thegnls' khulo, for which a furiher set of companion tones hasbeen taken (C in sb, 8d, and 8e). It is as ]f tshikanaembodies within its mutapha a male and a female mode, andthe male mode has been chosen for ihe men's music and thefemale rnode for ihe girls' music. Both are united by theircomron realion\h;p to r -irgle ba"i, hdrmonic ProSrc*ion(8f). Noti.e thai in the harmonic prosrssion there is a shiftoI tonal power fron phala (d" in 8c, 8e, and 8f) to thakhula(e" in sc, se, and ef), and then back to pral". The relaiion-ship between the chords is deiermined by the fact that in theishilcona patiem every tone has two companion tones the6rst a filth below and the second a fifth above. Thus d"/g'ande"/a' are functionally "sironser" chords than d" / a' and e" /b'(se Fisure e).- rId+l rFrcuRE e. Dt4s/dfl af th. hdtnonic atLd toBl prosressians oftshikona ad khtlo, shoaias hat the pouq of phala \4"'t anrlthakhula (e") |\terc as thev chanse thei conpania tanes. Therectansles symbolize shifts aI rDnality, Rnd the chnfl\iflg thicknessaf the "ued4el' ilh$nates lhe Aecrense dnd lkctease of the tonalpoa,er ol phala and thakhula.

FrcnnE 8. Illusttdtioft ol the tronslotttation pracess by bhi.hkhulo is /elaied fo khikona, a,d sutunatv af nodes and basic(a) 'lhe pper tones of tshikona, trnnsposed dowh d scmirone.(b) The bosic poftern alkhntalat sitls' oaices.(.) Ttdnspasitia of tshikona to the sdme pit.h as khu1o. Noie rief natural aulthepositian ol the tritone.(d) Ttu sfarnntiafl of tshikona, /e@/ ins d" as ph^1a isstea.l afa". Nate how the positioa af the ttitane difrerc f/on tshikona inEc, but ssrees uirh khvlo in 8b .(e) The th/ee nades used i, tshikona aad khulo, /ewtifiefl withaut(l) The harmonic bdsis af khlla.'the settuehce ol choftls alsa fit,the tshikona polletfl, rcsdrdless of the differc"t nlodes used.Note: the fiswes indicnte the number al senitafles ih the inteft@ls


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88 HOW MUSICAL IS MAN?ln spite of iheir diFernt iimbre and iempi, the musicalaffinity of rsliko"l7 and lcftrlo ought to be appareni even toone who has no kno{,ldse of Venda culture. To a certainexteni the music speaks for itrelf. But, although the general

nature of ihe relaiionship is clearly audible, ihe precise wayin which this musical relationship has been achieved cannotpossibly be derived from a study of the notes alone. Theanal1.' mr-r begin wrth rhe role ot mLsir in Venda .o(ie.yand culture (see Fisures 5 and 7), so thai we can see howpatterns of culture and society have emerSed in the shape ofhumanlv oreanized sound.

ULNLW,Ona,iAWnW,?x .fUr ltn:r (HAlllR l.irted rhdt,,r wn wdnt ro!1r.""" 1." musicar mdn is. we mLcr be abre ro dec.r:beirar rlv whar happen\ to an) picce of mu... . In the se(ond andthird chapters I have tried to show why we shall never beable to do this until we understand what happens to thehuman beings who make the music. Music is a synihesis ofcognitive processes which are present in culture and in thehuman body: the forms it takes, and the ef{ecis it has onpeople, are senerated by the social experiences of humanbodies in different cultural environments. Because music ishumanly organized sound, it expresses aspects of ihe experience o{ individuals in society.

Ii follows that any assessmeni of human musicaliry mustaccount for procsses thai are exiramusical, and that theseshould be included in analyses of nusic. The answers to manyimporiant questions aboui musical struciure may not bestricily musical. Why are certain scales, nodes, and inte alspreferred? The explanation may be historical, political, philo-sophical, or rational in terms of acousticat laws. What comesnext whn a certain musical pattern has been playedT Is thenexi tone determined by the logic of the melodic pattern,

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Blacking_j_how Musical is Man

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