Rice, Timothy. 2011. Ethnomusicological Encounters with Music and Musicians (Essays in Honor of Robert Grafias). surrey and Burlington: Ashgate. xix + 342 pp. Hb.: £65.00. IsBN: 9781409420378.
Anthropology and ethnomusicology have many common interests and goals, but where is the boundary between them? The contributors of this edited volume explore the common ground between anthropology and ethnomusicology, providing accounts about methods, ways of teaching, musical projects and musicians.
The current book is a collection of nineteen short essays from all over the world, covering the territories of the 'seven of the nine major regions of the world' (xiv): Africa, the United States, South Asia, East Asia, Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East; it is probably simpler to say that the book does not cover Latin America and the Pacific. Such a broad scope of regions is justified by the themes underlying the publication. One is the idea of an ethno-musicological encounter with music and musicians. Thus, when there are so many "musics" and musicians to encounter, it is no surprise that the encounters may be short and sometimes of a rather teasing character. Another underlying idea of this book is that the essays are honouring the founder of the ethnomusicology program at the University of Washington, Robert Garfias. He is an eminent scholar, film-maker and world music educator, whose model of teaching includes the so-called world music performance program, which is discussed in this book as an interactional method for obtaining both auditory and cultural knowledge of music itself.
Garfias was particularly in favour of training ethnomusicologists as anthropologists, an idea which migrates throughout different essays in this book, all referring to Garfias. The volume begins with an introductory chapter by Robert Garfias, which is an auto-biographical account of his own path towards ethnomusicology. The authors in this volume allocate particular importance to the practice of doing ethnographic fieldwork in ethnomusicology, trying to bridge the domains of ethnomusicology and anthropology, but at the same time keeping the disciplinary divide.
The first part of the book is symbolically dedicated to the encounters with musicians, while the second concentrates on the encounters with music. Although it may seem that it is difficult to separate music from musicians, but in the end, the idea of such division is shown to be valid. The chapters in the first part of the book document encounters with individual musicians, most of whom are distinguished masters in their field.
The first chapters may attract researchers interested in teaching techniques. Uso-pay Cadar describes the flexible way in which his mother, a famous kolintang performer taught him to play, and which he later implemented with his American students. Patricia Shehan Campbell provides an insight into various teaching techniques of different artists visiting the University of Washington. Sean Williams draws a musical portrait of the Irish sean-nos singer Joe Heaney and the representations of the Famine in Ireland in songs. Karl Signell reflects on the process of understanding of the Turkish makam system as a student of Neced Ya§ar, the most distinguished tanbur player; and Timothy Rice's chapter questions the criteria for understanding the artistry in musical performances of Bulgarian bagpipers. Andrew Killick's study explores how and why a culture at large values a particular individual, in his case, the Korean musician Hwang Byungki.
The remaining chapters in this part of the book have an even stronger biographical touch. Richard Jones-Bamman grants biographical attention to a Sami joik singer Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa. The conclusion is drawn in the chapter by Daniel Neuman, a reflection on the importance of his encounters with outstanding musicians, resulting in the insights in his own academic career.
The second part of the book focuses on the encounters with music, which happen when an ethnomusicologist generalises the encounters with the musicians up to the level of interpretative statements about how music functions and acts within the community. Such encounters with music can happen on four levels: through recordings, in rituals and performance events, in cultural ideas and social circumstances, and from the perspective of a particular discipline. In this part, Philip Yampolsky exposes the creation of the Music of Indonesia recordings series; and Gavin Douglas analyses the aesthetic sound choices in commercial recordings of Burmese music produced in Burma and abroad. Irene Markoff raises the topic of tradition and radicality of a Turkish musician Ali Ekber Qigek. Larry Shumway summarises the changes in music and religion in the modernizing Japan; and Yoshitaka Terada reflects on the identities of the performers of Okinawan dance. Philip Schuyler provides an engrossing account of a situation he encountered in Marrakech, when two Arab and Berber musicians broke the spheres they occupied traditionally and performed together.
The next chapters open more explicitly the social contexts and the circumstances in which an encounter with music occurs. Hiromi Lorraine Sakata shows how Afghan music is shaping political representations. Bruno Nettl discusses the theory of song ownership among the Blackfoot Indians; and Fredric Lieberman provides an insight into the delicate engineering principles and acoustic faculties of a Chinese qin.
Finally, in the concluding chapter Simon Ottenberg explores the ways in which disciplinary orientations shape historical musicology, ethnomusicology and anthropology. He summarises the relation between anthropology and ethnomusicology in comparison to situational ethnicity, when one acts in an ethnic way only in some situations. He refers to it as 'situational ethnomusicology' (p. 301), assuming that ethnomusicologists view themselves sometimes as ethnomusicologists, or music educators, and sometimes as anthropologists. Ottenberg summarises that the relationships of anthropology and ethnomusicology will continue to change, but without hostility or confrontation.
This book will be a good help for anthropologists interested in ethnomusicology and for social scientists whose areas of interest are connected to music. Moreover, each chapter includes a good number of references to the musical recordings of the mentioned artists, as if inviting readers to listen and sonically experience the music that they read about.
POLINA TSERKASSOVA
University of Tallinn (Estonia)