The Use of Music in the Study of a Problem of Acculturation*

Abstract

N RECENT years the acceptance of comparative musicology, or ethno-I musicology, as a recognized branch of anthropological investigation has increased considerably. The result has been a number of studies of the music of nonliterate people, but as yet little theoretical application for such studies has been shown. The present paper will attempt to indicate one way in which musical investigation can be used to support anthropological theory, with the hope that its broader ramifications will become apparent by implication.For purposes of discussion let us state a hypothesis in the field of acculturation studies as follows: When two human groups which are in sustained contact have a number of characteristics in common in a particular aspect of culture, exchange of ideas therein will be much more frequent than if the characteristics of those aspects differ markedly from one another. In order to test this hypothesis let us examine the musical acculturative situation which exists, first, between Western culture and the Flathead Indians of western Montana and, second, between Western culture and urban Africa south of the Sahara with special reference to the Belgian Congo.Among the Flathead Indians the evidences of acculturation with respect to music are by no means pronounced, and those changes which can be documented appear in areas of activity surrounding the music rather than in the actual music itself, that is, in such matters as the construction of musical instruments or the use of song texts as opposed to vocal quality or scale structure.Flathead musical instruments a t present include the war drum, hand drum and end-blown flageolet, a reduction in number from that indicated in earlier sources. Turney-High, for example, speaks of the whistle "made of bird bones" which was used in courting and, more specifically, in arranging trysts, as well as "rattles made by stringing deer hoofs on thongs tied to sticks," which were used both by shamans in the Camas Dance and by laymen in less esoteric dancing (Turney-High 1937: 39, 83). Teit further indicates the presence of the rasp which, however, he mentions only in passing and without description (Teit 1927-28:386). The whistle and rasp are nowhere found in use today while the modern sleighbell has been substituted for the original rattle; these bells

The AndeanConjunto, BolivianSikureadaand the Folkloric Musical Representation Continuum

“…My discussion on the role that stylistic commonalities often play in enabling or hampering borrowings between folkloric enactments and their source traditions builds on Richard Waterman's and Alan Merriam's observations on cross-cultural musical syncretism (Merriam 1955;Waterman 1952). Waterman, who sought to account for why 'African musical elements have influenced the musical styles of the Americas ' (1952: 207), argued that this process was facilitated by the stylistic features shared among certain African, Afro-diasporic and Euro-American musics.…”

Compositional Processes of Xylafrique: A Contemporary Art Composition based on the Dagaaba gyil of Ghana

“…If experience is a precondition to creation of new art and if such creation may be understood to subsume artistic "advancement," "growth," or, at the least, "difference," the process will require significant potentialization from a source beyond the personal resources (experience preserved in memory) of the creator. (Fisher, 1992, p.7) Scholars such as Chang (2001), Waterman (1952) and Merriam (1955) were specific about the use of syncretism as a conceptual tool for clarifying cultural synthesis as a process. They are of the view that there must be an "outside" source leading to conceptualization, analytical penetration and activation of system, however informal, if there is to be "process" or control in the making of art.…”

Untitled

“…The North-American Anglo-Saxon culture was rarely reported to learn second cultures and to produce mixed cultures. The exception was Merriam (1955), because he reported mixtures, for example, the jazz music, and Barnett in 1940. The research did an additional search for the words plural and multicultural in the American Anthropologist database. The researcher downloaded the articles from the older pages of both searches in order to get the earlier articles.…”