"Universalism" and "Imperialism" - how does Music "spread"?

[Richard Barrett]

Very happy to be corrected if I overlooked better candidates that are universal.

But the point that MrGG and I have been making in various ways is that the idea that a musical "object" like a particular melody can be "universal" is mistaken to begin with. Wouldn't it be rather too much of a coincidence if all the examples of "universal" musical phenomena just happened to have emerged from one single musical tradition (as in your examples of Beethoven and Elgar)?

[gradus]

Can you think of any equivalent from non-Western music? If you are happy, clap you hands is originally a Japanese pop song but is composed in the western scale.

I didn't know it was japanese, it sounds western to me. Happy Birthday counts then as universally popular?

[Richard Tarleton]

At a tangent though, when you say that Africa during the British Empire didn't contribute much to the economy, surely the slave trade was extremely profitable? and wasn't it also a prerequisite for the profits extracted from the Caribbean colonies?

Indeed, and forgive me for not mentioning the slave trade. I was thinking of the main drivers for colonial occupation, with the thread topic in mind. Obviously slavers loading slaves bought from Arab traders onto ships extracted profit from Africa, but had relatively little (AFAIK) contact with the interior. Africa differed from the Caribbean, Latin America, India, the East Indies and China in that - in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - the race for Africa was primarily diplomatic and strategic, with a great deal of proxy jostling for position amongst the European powers. The drivers for ruling India, inflicting opium consumption on China, etc. etc., were very much economic. Robinson and Gallagher discuss the relative GDPs of Africa, India etc. during the age of empire in their seminal and still important book Africa and the Victorians.

Serial_Apologist

In instances of colonial conquest the means of transmssion would have been through the elders of particular societies, in whom authority was vested, with the added "legitimacy" of "yours (ships, guns) are bigger than ours (spears, bows and arrows)", and elders are subject to the lure of inducements, financial and culturally interconnected, of course, wherever they are, and thus would have commenced a chain action in which in, for example, colonised parts of Africa would "take on" aspects of Western music (instruments with their associated tunings, diatonic counterpoint, harmony and associated forms (songs)) along with their social and economic roles and performance contexts.

I'm still puzzling over the mechanics of this and would welcome an example. As I've already discussed re India, nothing could have been further from the minds of the colonisers than music, (beyond the obvious missionaries with hymns, and army teaching native regiments to play brass instruments and bagpipes in military bands....) which was not a marketable commodity until (for the most part) post-independence - unlike Indian fabrics and design, Oriental ceramics, etc., the plastic arts which would be marketed in Europe.

[Serial_Apologist]

Can you think of any equivalent from non-Western music? If you are happy, clap you hands is originally a Japanese pop song but is composed in the western scale.

But the "western scale" didn't originate in Japan though, did it?!!

[doversoul1]

But the "western scale" didn't originate in Japan though, did it?!!

That was what I meant. You can’t say that this tune is a product of non-Western culture/music.
So are there any tunes from non-Western music that enough people in the West can hum along?
Or have a got you wrong?

[Serial_Apologist]

[QUOTE=Richard Tarleton;730178]

I'm still puzzling over the mechanics of this and would welcome an example. As I've already discussed re India, nothing could have been further from the minds of the colonisers than music, (beyond the obvious missionaries with hymns, and army teaching native regiments to play brass instruments and bagpipes in military bands....) which was not a marketable commodity until (for the most part) post-independence - unlike Indian fabrics and design, Oriental ceramics, etc., the plastic arts which would be marketed in Europe.

I think the example is right there in African popular music - in the harmonies, the dilutions of the rhythmic complexities, the jazz inflexions, the omnipresence of western instruments and associated arrangement models additional to or substituting for indigenous ones. Not much thought would have had to be devoted by the colonial powers as to how this was to be undetaken. As we've observed in the west, music is a very straightforward means of "mind colonisation", especially where elements of the imported forms are compatible with those already present.

[Serial_Apologist]

That was what I meant. You can’t say that this tune is a product of non-Western culture/music.
So are there any tunes from non-Western music that enough people in the West can hum along?
Or have a got you wrong?

The first thought that came to me was the theme music to the film "Tea House of the August Moon" - It would depend on what one regarded as being "non-Western music". This goes to the heart of what is a very complex issue, one which fades into the mists of time and history, and arguably nowhere better summed up than by jazz, especially black American jazz musicians, who feel in particularly painful ways the memory schism brought about by slavery to the continuities in their musical inheritance.

[doversoul1]

The first thought that came to me was the theme music to the film "Tea House of the August Moon" - It would depend on what one regarded as being "non-Western music". This goes to the heart of what is a very complex issue, one which fades into the mists of time and history, and arguably nowhere better summed up than by jazz, especially black American jazz musicians, who feel in particularly painful ways the memory schism brought about by slavery to the continuities in their musical inheritance.

The song was composed using Western scale. If the scale had not come to Japan, this song would not have come into existence, i.e this tune is not exactly non-Western.

[doversoul1]

I didn't know it was japanese, it sounds western to me. Happy Birthday counts then as universally popular?

Yes, from the point of the West, its music, some of it (Happy Birthday etc.) at any rate, looks universal but do you know any non-Western music/tunes that people in the West can say ‘yes, we all know it’? And if we can’t think of any non-Western tunes, then Western music is universal but nobody else’s is?

I’m not getting at you personally. It’s just that that is the point I am interested in.

[Richard Barrett]

Not necessarily directly relevant, but:

Japanese music is of course pentatonic, and so is a great deal of non-Western music from many parts of the world, although it seems to me that Japanese pentatonic scales are more varied than in most other traditions (including the Chinese and Korean traditions from which they're descended). Moreover, the oldest surviving pitched instruments (bone flutes) also seem to use a five-note scale, as do many folk traditions in Europe, and indeed five-note scales are at the heart of the blues and jazz traditions which arose from the mixing of those folk musics with the music African slaves brought with them. Seven-note scales such as are used in most Western music go back at least to ancient Greece, although they're shared with Arabic/Persian traditions and music of the Indian subcontinent, which is where I suspect they ultimately stem from (together with the Indo-European languages of course). It would be an interesting piece of speculative musicology to try and trace musical origins in the same sort of way that linguists do.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not necessarily directly relevant, but:

Japanese music is of course pentatonic, and so is a great deal of non-Western music from many parts of the world, although it seems to me that Japanese pentatonic scales are more varied than in most other traditions (including the Chinese and Korean traditions from which they're descended).

E,F,A,B,C being the underlying scale of the "Teahouse of the August Moon" theme tune, the first-ever "Japanese" music I ever heard having been from that very sentimental movie. What immediately struck me about it, in that back-to-front manner of first hearing musics, was that the same scale was to be heard in a lot of, for example, Debussy - the opening instrumental movement of "Le Martyr de Saint Sebastien" being dominated by it - only later did I find out that Debussy had been hugely influenced by Japanese music and eastern pentatonicism more generally.

Moreover, the oldest surviving pitched instruments (bone flutes) also seem to use a five-note scale, as do many folk traditions in Europe, and indeed five-note scales are at the heart of the blues and jazz traditions which arose from the mixing of those folk musics with the music African slaves brought with them. Seven-note scales such as are used in most Western music go back at least to ancient Greece, although they're shared with Arabic/Persian traditions and music of the Indian subcontinent, which is where I suspect they ultimately stem from (together with the Indo-European languages of course). It would be an interesting piece of speculative musicology to try and trace musical origins in the same sort of way that linguists do.

Really I should look up "ethnomusicology" rather than writing off the top of my head, but somewhere I have read that Bartok is considered one of the original ethnomusicologists - which is interesting in the context of this discussion, given that Bartok began adult life as a staunch nationalist, not appreciating that the "gypsy music" that he was initially influenced by (via Liszt's example) was in fact a bourgeois fictional genre devised for entertainment purposes (and probably much more than that!). Ironically it turned out to be Bartok's "romanticism" about the supposed "purity in spirit" of the Magyar peasant people, and his wish to preserve their musical folk forms, that led him into the deeper investigations into origins that took him way beyond national boundaries, so that, in a sense, his politics, on the left, such as they were, never became Stalinised - which is an interesting reflection on the question of musical internationalism or universality, albeit incidental to what we are discussing here.

[Richard Tarleton]

I think the example is right there in African popular music - in the harmonies, the dilutions of the rhythmic complexities, the jazz inflexions, the omnipresence of western instruments and associated arrangement models additional to or substituting for indigenous ones. Not much thought would have had to be devoted by the colonial powers as to how this was to be undetaken. As we've observed in the west, music is a very straightforward means of "mind colonisation", especially where elements of the imported forms are compatible with those already present.

Thanks, much clearer We seem to be talking about an economic and cultural dominance for which imperialism (empire) paved the way, even though it didn't for the most part express itself until empire had largely ceased to be (except in the cases of Rhodesia and S Africa,where pernicious white rule was prolonged but a lot of good music went on......)

It would have helped (me) to have better understood the terms of reference of this discussion. I was simplistically equating "imperialism" with "empire", and used the term "post-imperial" in the sense of "post-independence" or "post-colonial", before RB put me right . In thinking about Mr GG's original question I was merely pointing out that music played no part in the imperial (or should that be empire) project, hymns and military bands apart, that the imperialists (civilian, military or settlers) were on the whole unmusical philistines, and that unlike other art forms which were copied, exported or looted, music had no commercial value to the imperialists.

I'm a big fan of Tinariwen, by the way - who make me wonder about analogies in the natural world with things like convergent evolution, generalists and specialists, survival and extinction....also Youssou N'Dour......saw Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Cardiff ....

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks, much clearer We seem to be talking about an economic and cultural dominance for which imperialism (empire) paved the way, even though it didn't for the most part express itself until empire had largely ceased to be (except in the cases of Rhodesia and S Africa,where pernicious white rule was prolonged but a lot of good music went on......)

It would have helped (me) to have better understood the terms of reference of this discussion. I was simplistically equating "imperialism" with "empire", and used the term "post-imperial" in the sense of "post-independence" or "post-colonial", before RB put me right . In thinking about Mr GG's original question I was merely pointing out that music played no part in the imperial (or should that be empire) project, hymns and military bands apart, that the imperialists (civilian, military or settlers) were on the whole unmusical philistines, and that unlike other art forms which were copied, exported or looted, music had no commercial value to the imperialists.

I'm a big fan of Tinariwen, by the way - who make me wonder about analogies in the natural world with things like convergent evolution, generalists and specialists, survival and extinction....also Youssou N'Dour......saw Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Cardiff ....

Thanks a lot, Richard - what you say here adds an important element to the discussion, inasmuch as the benefits of Western cultural induction and appropriation should be considered as long-term, unfolding along with the network of international trading and financial operations, which were not then established.

[gradus]

Yes, from the point of the West, its music, some of it (Happy Birthday etc.) at any rate, looks universal but do you know any non-Western music/tunes that people in the West can say ‘yes, we all know it’? And if we can’t think of any non-Western tunes, then Western music is universal but nobody else’s is?

I’m not getting at you personally. It’s just that that is the point I am interested in.

I didn't think you were and yes it would seem that Western music is as close as we can get to universal. Much the same could be said of the English language which is still I think spoken more widely than any other although by fewer people than Chinese(I think?).

[doversoul1]

I didn't think you were and yes it would seem that Western music is as close as we can get to universal. Much the same could be said of the English language which is still I think spoken more widely than any other although by fewer people than Chinese(I think?).

Thank you for your reply. It maybe Spanish but I imaging English (American) probably tops the language being learned as a foreign language.

A piece of Horrible History
Japan signed the Peace (and trade) Treaty with America in the mid-19 century, which was Japan’s first formal diplomatic contact with the West. Immediately after the signing, one of the first things the newly formed Japanese government did was to create its own military band, as it was so impressed by the Commander Perry’s brass band. Within a few years, the government was sending talented young men to France and Germany to study composition. The first music college was established in 1887. For many years, the band performed Western classical music at formal occasions where Western guests were present. I haven’t checked if there are any scholarly articles about this but I’m sure this was not a development America had expected. The power of music or Imperialism at work?

I am aware that brass band was always used to demonstrate the power but all the same.