Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music

373 Pages·2000·1.96 MB·English

by  Georgina Born

Western Music and Its Others

Western Music
and Its Others
Difference, Representation,
and Appropriation in Music
EDITED BY
Georgina Born and
David Hesmondhalgh
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
All musical examples in this book are transcriptions by the authors
of the individual chapters, unless otherwise stated in the chapters.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2000 by the Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Western music and its others : difference, representation, and appropriation in music /
edited by Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn0-520-22083-8 (cloth : alk. paper)—isbn0-520--22084-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Music—20th century—Social aspects. I. Born, Georgina. II. Hesmondhalgh,
David.
ml3795.w45 2000
781.6—dc21 00-029871
Manufactured in the United States of America
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). 8
For Clara and Theo (GB) and Rosa and Joe (DH)
And in loving memory of George Mully (1925–1999)

CONTENTS
acknowledgments / ix
Introduction: On Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music / 1
I. Postcolonial Analysis and Music Studies
David Hesmondhalgh and Georgina Born / 3
II. Musical Modernism, Postmodernism, and Others
Georgina Born / 12
III. Othering, Hybridity, and Fusion in Transnational Popular Musics
David Hesmondhalgh and Georgina Born / 21
IV. Music and the Representation/Articulation of Sociocultural Identities
Georgina Born / 31
V. Techniques of the Musical Imaginary
Georgina Born / 37
1. Musical Belongings: Western Music and Its Low-Other
Richard Middleton / 59
2. Race, Orientalism, and Distinction in the Wake of the “Yellow Peril”
Jann Pasler / 86
3. Bartók, the Gypsies, and Hybridity in Music
Julie Brown / 119
4. Modernism, Deception, and Musical Others: Los Angeles circa 1940
Peter Franklin / 143
5. Experimental Oriental: New Music and Other Others
John Corbett / 163
6. Composing the Cantorate: Westernizing Europe’s Other Within
Philip V. Bohlman / 187
viii CONTENTS
7. East, West, and Arabesk
Martin Stokes / 213
8. Scoring the Indian: Music in the Liberal Western
Claudia Gorbman / 234
9. The Poetics and Politics of Pygmy Pop
Steven Feld / 254
10. International Times: Fusions, Exoticism,
and Antiracism in Electronic Dance Music
David Hesmondhalgh / 280
11. The Discourse of World Music
Simon Frith / 305
contributors / 323
index / 327
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book has had a long genesis. The initial ideas came from two direc-
tions: from thoughts Georgina Born developed while writing a Ph.D. and
an earlier book on music; and from a timely conference, called “The Debt
to ‘Other’ Musics,” held in July 1990 jointly by the Royal Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland with the Institute of Contemporary
Arts in London. We would like to thank Jonathan Benthall, Michael Chanan
and Judith Squires for organizing the conference which, as far as we know,
was the first ever held on these themes; and Ragnar Farr and Helena Reckitt
of the ICA for their early help in developing a book project following the
conference.
Our authors have had to exercise enormous patience, since obstacle af-
ter obstacle arose to delay progress toward publication, always for unavoid-
able human and professional reasons. We want to express our heartfelt thanks
to all the contributors for sticking with it, as well as for their creative and se-
rious engagement with the book’s themes. We hope they find the end prod-
uct worth all the waiting. We thank also those who gave feedback on aspects
of the manuscript. They include John Butt, Aaron Fox, Ralph P. Locke, Do-
minic Moran, Ato Quayson, Michael Stewart, Will Straw, Daniel Thompson,
and three anonymous reviewers. Needless to say, they are not responsible
for any errors or misjudgments that remain. Thanks too to Jan Spauschus
Johnson at the University of California Press for all her hard work; Evan
Camfield for his extremely skillful copyediting; and Lynne Withey for shep-
herding the project.
I want to thank Dave Hesmondhalgh for coming on board and helping to
shape this book so well; his contributions have been essential for its com-
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
pletion. I was fortunate to be the Senior Research Fellow at King’s College,
Cambridge in 1997–98, for which I am grateful to the Provost, Professor Pat
Bateson, and the Fellows of the College. Between 1996 and 1998 I also held
the Visiting Professorship at the Institute of Musicology of the University of
Aarhus, Denmark, for which I thank my friend and colleague Steen Neilsen.
Both situations provided me with the mental space in which my work on this
book was brought to fruition. The ideas have been presented over the years
in seminars for the University of London Intercollegiate Anthropology sem-
inar, Magdalen College, Oxford, the Queen’s University, Belfast, and at the
departments of Music or Anthropology of the University of Ottawa, the Uni-
versity of Rochester, New York University, the University of Chicago, and the
University of California, Berkeley. My thinking in this area was stimulated by
the teaching of Mike Gilsenan, to whom I remain grateful, and very early
on, Richard Middleton kindly gave me useful criticisms.
The interest of my colleagues Philip Bohlman, Jonathan Burston, Steve
Feld, Simon Frith, Antoine Hennion, George Lewis, Ralph P. Locke, Colin
MacCabe, George Marcus, Martin Stokes, Marilyn Strathern, and Janet
Wolff has provided me with the confidence to pursue these concerns, and—
even though some of them may not admire this effort—I offer my gratitude.
For his support, for refusing to limit life to academia, and for his wonderful
dancing, I thank my partner Andrew Barry—whose musical tastes are way
ahead of mine. On a very different note, just twenty-four hours after I com-
pleted work on this manuscript I was woken to the awful news that my beloved
stepfather, George Mully, had died suddenly and unexpectedly. My pleasure
in this book is thus tied inextricably with a sense of loss. George lived ac-
cording to strong progressive convictions and was exceptionally talented, as
a father and an artist (opera and theater director, filmmaker, writer, trans-
lator). As a child, I watched him produce and direct chamber opera and the-
ater, and it left me with a lifelong interest in analyzing authorship and cul-
tural production. This book, which Dave and I intended to dedicate to our
children, is now dedicated also to his memory.
Georgina Born
Many people provided me with practical and emotional assistance during
the period in which this book was being prepared. I would like to thank the
following groups of friends in particular: colleagues and students at Gold-
smiths College and at Coventry University; various members of the Inter-
national Association for the Study of Popular Music for providing times and
places in which musical culture can be discussed seriously and enjoyably; and
the Accrington-Amsterdam posse for wonderful holidays away and for revi-
talization closer to home.