Theoretical Basis of a Music and Dance Curriculum: an Ethnomusicological Perspective

by

Elizabeth Mackinlay
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit, the University of Queensland

 

Introduction

In 1950 Jaap Kunst used the term "ethnomusicology" to replace "comparative musicology". This was the first connection of the study of musicology with ethnography and anthropology, and Kunst's new term stressed the fact that music does not exist by and of itself but rather as a part of the totality of human behaviour. Merriam (1964:3) recognised the academic disjunctures to arise from the dual nature of the discipline and asserted that "[e]thnomusicology carries within itself the seeds of its own division, for it has always been compounded of two distinct parts . . . and perhaps its major problem is the blending of the two in a unique fashion which emphasises neither but takes into account both". Ethnomusicology today continues to embrace these multiple realities. On the one hand the ethnomusicologist is engaged in a musicological discourse of analysing music-culture as sound and on the other, the scholar embarks on an anthropological endeavour to understand music-culture as concept and behaviour. Both approaches require the ethnomusicologist to engage in fieldwork, that is, to become as Rice (1994) suggests, a "dancing scholar" who through observation of and participation in performance events, and through socio-musical interactions with performers, comes to an understanding of music-culture through a shared performative experience.

The challenge of ethnomusicology in an educational setting then, is how to serve the dual function of allowing students to grasp the theoretical underpinnings of the discipline while partaking in some theorising of their own about the dynamic relationships between music and culture through personal experience. The fact that ethnomusicology exists as a discipline of study assumes that it is possible to teach students how to understand music and dance within the context of human life. Once we accept that music in the context of human life can be taught then the question becomes not as Reimer (1994) suggests "[c]an we understand music of foreign cultures?" but rather as Brennan (1992:221) "[h]ow can experiences be planned for learning this cultural manifestation which exists, in many guises, in all societies?" It is this aspect of my current research which I will address in this paper.

 

Planning learning experiences in ethnomusicology

In 1998 I began teaching a subject called MU323: Practice in Ethnomusicology A which is offered in the School of Music at the University of Queensland through a Bachelor of Music and a Bachelor of Arts to advanced students. The aim of this subject is to examine the processes and methods of study of music and its culture. Students are provided the opportunity to gain an understanding of ways of thinking and talking about music as systems of sound and as expression of cultural values. This subject addresses the historical development of ethnomusicology as well as current trends in theoretical approaches to the study of music and methods of understanding music in the context of culture as both product and process. Through lectures, academic research and discussion, the subject examines theories and tools used by ethnomusicologists for description, transcription and analysis, and interpretation of musical systems.

In 1998, the assessment for this subject consisted of three essays. The first essay required students to answer the question "What is ethnomusicology?" Students were expected to address this question with reference to the history, development, theory and practice of ethnomusicology. The aim of this assessment piece was to ensure that students had grasped the basic historical and conceptual foundations of the discipline. The second essay asked students to employ anthropological methods in examination of music in the context of social behaviour and how musical patterns reflect patterns in other cultural systems. Students were required to focus their research on a specific geographical area (for example, Central Australian Desert) and examine a particular issue (for example, gender) with reference to a certain type of performance practice (for example, sacred ceremony). The objective of this assessment piece was to give students the skills to understand music in the context of human life through self-directed research on a specific musical culture and ethnomusicological issue. The third piece of assessment was a musical transcription and musical analysis practical which intended to give students experience in doing the basic musicological "stuff" that ethnomusicologists do. Indeed, the completed assessment pieces demonstrated that students were able to recognise, understand, apply, and analyse ethnomusicological theoretical processes and methods of examining both musical product and musical process as a part of and in relation to culture. Upon reflection however, one essential component of the ethnomusicological endeavour seemed to be missing from this assessment program - the opportunity to learn and be assessed on the learning about music-culture through the experiential and personal process of becoming a performing and reflexive scholar.

 

Notions of experience and reflection in ethnomusicology and education

The emphasis on experience intersects with current trends in anthropology and ethnomusicology towards fieldwork and reflexive practice and those in higher education towards reflective teaching and learning. Reimer (1994) and Brennan (1992) highlight the importance of learners partaking in the musical experience and to varying degrees adopting the perspective of or in fact becoming an "insider" within a musical culture as the primary means for the learner to gain a rich understanding of that culture's music. In contemporary ethnomusicology, field research is "[n]ow a prescribed liminal state for ethnomusicologists, an anticipated, supported, and funded rite de passage" (Barz and Cooley 1997:206) and as suggested by Barz and Cooley (1997:4), "[f]ieldwork is the observational and experiential portion of the ethnographic process during which the ethnomusicologist engages living individuals in order to learn about music-culture". Dunbar-Hall (1998:11) agrees and further suggests that in both music education and ethnomusicology, combining "[a]n ethnographic approach and a focus on personal experience have become the means for leading students to a position from which to theorise".

In attempting to reconstruct through both description and interpretation the music-culture with which they are involved through the process of fieldwork, learners by necessity become involved in reflexive ethnographic practice. As Marcus (1998:193) contends, such reflexivity requires the ethnographer/learner to partake in a personal quest of self-critique which plays upon "the subjective, the experiential, and the idea of empathy" and reflexive ethnography is keenly aware of the personal context of experience. Often resulting in "messy texts", it is this type of introspection which allows students to reconcile "what to do in the field" issues with "what to do with experiences after leaving the field" which at times may be difficult to distinguish (Barz and Cooley 1997). Described by Barz and Cooley (1997) as "music-ing", the subtle combination of fieldwork experience with reflexive ethnographic practice in ethnomusicology provides students with one of the greatest learning opportunities to position themselves for new understandings about music-culture to emerge.

In the field of tertiary education, the past two decades have witnessed a growing interest in the concept of reflection which feeds upon and into the same debate in ethnomusicology, and more broadly the social sciences as a whole. Foley (1995:47) asserts the idea of reflection in education is often linked to learners and teachers as "[a]ction researchers who plan, act, reflect on their practice and plan, act and reflect again, in a continual spiral". This is particularly so in the setting of experience based learning (hereafter EBL) where often fieldwork experience and academic considerations need to be closely integrated (Boud and Walker 1998:192). Andresen, Boud and Cohen (1995:207) indicate that "[a] key element of experience based learning . . . is that learners analyse their experience by reflecting, evaluating and reconstructing that experience . . . in order to draw meaning from it". Drawing meaning requires the learner to engage in a series of interpretive moves which in turn suggest that context is perhaps one of the most important influences on reflection and learning. As Boud and Walker (1998:197) write, context is all pervasive

It is not possible to step aside from it, or view it 'objectively', as it permeates our very being. It is reflected in our personal foundation of experience, which although constructed from unique experiences, is also formed by the context in which we have developed. Context is subject to rereading and multiple readings: while it may be experienced as 'given', it is always available to reinterpretation.

The inference is that "[e]xperience alone is not the key to learning" (Boud, Keogh and Walker 1985:7) but rather it is the constant interplay between preparation, action and reflection which transforms experience into learning and the development of understanding.

 

Enacting change: fieldwork as a legitimate learning experience in ethnomusicology

It is with these thoughts in mind that the assessment program for MU323 in 1999 was revised to consist entirely of a semester long action learning fieldwork project. The project aims to immerse students in a performance context so that through their own experience they will come to an understanding of music and dance in human life. The course provides students with theoretical models and the fieldwork project enables to students to use those models to make sense and gain meaning through preparation, action and reflection. The project is based on the following quote from Feld's 1990 text Sound and Sentiment. Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression:

During my last few months of fieldwork, I played my drum virtually every day and composed many songs, while plunging deeper and deeper into the analysis of recorded materials in order to grasp why Kaluli responses to song are so strong. Reading back over my diary, I must have become obsessed with the issue of how Kaluli perceptions of me changed and developed as a result of my more open participatory actions in musicmaking. Some of my songs and drumming and dancing lessons were the cause of laughter and embarrassment for Christian Kaluli, who felt that a man from a powerful culture with medicine, missionaries, money, and airplanes had to be crazy to want to learn these things. Yet for me it was the physical sensations of vocalizing and drumming that brought me closer to the performance aesthetic and brought some Kaluli closer to talking to me about its inner dimensions. At the point, too, they began to disappear from my mind and notes as "functionally beautiful art forms" and to take hold as "affecting presences" that I could experience in a feeling way (Page no?).

Using ethnographic and participant/observation fieldwork techniques, students are required to study a performer or a group of performers in the Brisbane community for the purpose of identifying, analysing and understanding music in the context of human life.

The group of ten students enrolled in this subject entered into preparation for their project with mixed feelings of enthusiasm and apprehension. Initially there appeared to be a problem of perception amongst students in relation to the scope of ethnomusicological research. Although the general consensus is that ethnomusicology is indeed the study of music through culture, the immediate assumption by students, is that ethnomusicology is concerned with the study of ethno-music, ethnic music or music which stands outside the culture of the researcher. As Nettl (1992:4) comments, it is true that much ethnomusicological research has been and today is largely concerned with the music of what may be described as "traditional" or "tribal" societies and has shown little interest in the study of Western art music. However, the tide is changing and many ethnomusicologists are choosing to conduct their fieldwork at "home" in local settings as the scope of ethnomusicology broadens. Students were asked to remember the basic definition of ethnomusicology as the study of music in the context of human life and encouraged to think broadly and creatively about the "field" of study for this project. The range of research settings chosen by students is extensive and include: The Teaching Of African Drumming In Brisbane, Salsa Bands: Dancer Versus Spectator, Songs of the Latter-Day Saints: A Study of Music and Gender in a Brisbane Mormon Chapel, Hungarian Music in Brisbane: Alternative World Fusion, and, The Celtic Harp: Social and Musical Perspectives in Traditional Performance Practice.

The assessment for this project is developmental, continuous and thus far has involved completion of a fieldwork project proposal which identified the performer or group of performers students plan to observe during the semester while defining the parameters of the project. Students have also completed a draft project report which described the progress of each student's fieldwork project by providing a thorough ethnographic description of performer/s and their performance(s). Essentially this draft project report expanded the original project proposal and was informed by student's observations in the field. At the end of semester, students will partake in a project presentation day where each member of the class will deliver a 20 minute oral presentation. This presentation describes the student's fieldwork project and will enable them to report to the class on their progress and results and stimulate discussion on relevant issues. Students are encouraged to include sound recordings, photographs and other types of ethnographic data they may have gathered throughout the duration of their fieldwork, and further, to reflection upon their own feelings and responses to the fieldwork process. Finally, students are required to draw together the information presented in the draft project report and oral presentation to submit a final report which describes, analyses and interprets the performance context investigated in light of their observations and experiences.

 

Reflections on the ethnomusicological learning experience: the student perspective

On paper, this ethnomusicologically based action learning project appears to provide a valid and beneficial opportunity for students to gain a more complete understanding of music in human life. However, in order to gauge more effectively student responses to this type of action learning, I have encouraged my class to continually reflect upon their fieldwork experience, for example, by scribbling their personal and often emotional responses to the fieldwork process alongside more objective ethnographic observations in a journal. When asked in a more formal context to write down their thoughts on the fieldwork project as process and product, students indicated that this type of assessment was a challenging learning experience that they have never had before. For some students, the idea of conducting fieldwork was initially confronting and threatening. For example, one student wrote "[I] felt like I would be "pretending" to be an ethnomusicologist without any idea of what I was doing". In some cases, the experience of entering into a performance context and interacting with a group of performers has prompted students to think about music in an entirely new way:

It . . . has provided me with the experience of being exposed to music and history completely foreign to my past knowledge of music.

The fieldwork in general has opened my mind to other styles of music and performers other than the traditional western culture.

In some cases, the new realisations gained about music-culture through the fieldwork process have invigorated students to know more. For example, one students wrote that "[I]t is just exciting to find out new things that had never dawned on you before and there is a 'burn' for sharing the knowledge". For others, the new knowledge gained has, as one student put it, "[a]llowed my thoughts to go into overtime!" and further,

[I] have found it difficult to document the varying thoughts I have had and recently it has become necessary to carry my fieldwork journal with me on all occasions to jot down random thoughts . . . There are so many questions.

While these student comments reveal a positive reaction to the fieldwork project process and product, they tell us very little about the way students think about and respond to the learning that they are engaged in. Recently I asked students to reflect upon what they felt was special about the type of learning they are currently engaged in. Interestingly, many students equated learning with assessment as demonstrated by the comment that the fieldwork project is "[m]uch better assessment than "what is ethnomusicology" type essays and an exam". Several students emphasised the value of the "hands-on approach" adopted in the fieldwork project and suggested that the practical application of theories and methods in the field as they are learnt leads to greater understanding:

the learning approach for this subject has been very beneficial as it incorporates the practical nature of ethnomusicology by having to participate in a fieldwork study;

[the assessment is spanned over the semester which allows time to build on the project and consult theory to justify and explain events from the fieldwork. I think to participate in a practical learning assessment makes learning about ethnomusicology more interesting;

it allows me to consolidate knowledge firstly through theory and readings and apply it to my fieldwork. Secondly, it allows a hands-on approach rather than just purely theoretical (as is often the case in learning institutions these days).

Some students made a connection between this learning environment and that of a professional ethnomusicologist. One student suggested that the action learning project represents a "[m]icrocosm of ethnomusicologists who work in the wider community". Another remarked: "[n]ot only does fieldwork make you feel like you are a real ethnomusicologist (as opposed to us, the fake ones), but it encourages more exposure in the world of ethnomusicology". Student comments also reveal an awareness of the self-directed learning style students must adopt if they are to successfully complete the fieldwork project, prompting one student to write:

The most important aspect (or one of them) about the way the fieldwork has enhanced learning processes in ethnomusicology is the individual and self-guided learning that I (we) have had to undergo through our own research. This autonomous approach has perhaps, while sometimes harder to instigate and control, develops skills of working and learning outside of the university environment - no hand-feeding! ! It's about taking control of your own work and, most of all, the initiative to want to study a topic self chosen and self guided.

In the next few weeks, students will enter into the closing stages of this project. They will be required to report and reflect both publicly and privately on their fieldwork as theory, practice and personal experience. This will be the final interpretative move students will perform in order to complete the action learning cycle in this project. It is anticipated that the written reports generated by students will enable me to further evaluate the effectiveness of this form of assessment in providing a suitable context for learning about and generating understanding about music-culture.

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, in this paper I have drawn upon pedagogical discussions in anthropology, ethnomusicology and education and my own teaching practice to examine how we might best plan for effective learning experiences in ethnomusicology. I have suggested that a combination of reflection and reflexivity within the experiential context of fieldwork provides an exciting opportunity for ethnomusicology students to learn about music in the context of human life. The fieldwork project in which my students are currently involved is based on the premise that experience "in the field" as a participant and/or observer combined with "out of the field" ethnographic reflexivity is an essential aspect of learning music-culture in ethnomusicology. In doing so, I have immersed students in a challenging form of assessment which has required them to pose their own ethnomusicological questions in terms they can pursue in a context which they alone can define and thereby enact their own interpretative moves.

 

References cited

Andresen, Lee, David Boud and Ruth Cohen. 1995. "Experience Based Learning." Understanding Adult Education and Training. Griff Foley, ed. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. 207-219.

Barz, Gregory and Timothy Cooley (eds) 1997. Shadows in the Field. New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Boud, David and David Walker. 1998. "Promoting Reflection in Professional Courses: The Challenge of Context." Studies in Higher Education 23(2): 191-206.

Boud, David, Rosemary Keogh and David Walker, eds. 1985. Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning. London: Kogan Page.

Brennan, Philomena S. 1992. "Design and Implementation of Curricula Experiences in World Music: A Perspective". Music Education: Sharing Music's of the World. Heather Lees, ed. Proceedings of the 20th World Conference of the International Society for Music Education. Seoul, Korea. 221-225.

Brooks, Jacqueline G and Martin G. 1993. The Case for Constructivist Classrooms. Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 3-14. ¹

Dunbar-Hall, Peter. 1998. "Field Experience as a Means for Theorising Music Teaching and Learning". Unpublished paper presented at the National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia. Adelaide, South Australia.

Feld, Stephen. 1990. Sound and Sentiment. Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Foley, Griff. 1995. "Teaching Adults". Understanding Adult Education and Training. Griff Foley, ed. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. 31-53.

Kunst, Jaap. 1950. Musicologica. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute.

Marcus, George E. 1998. Ethnography Through Thick and Thin. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Merriam, Alan P. 1964. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.

Nettl, Bruno. 1992. "Ethnomusicology and the Teaching of World Music". Music Education: Sharing Music's of the World. Heather Lees, ed. Proceedings of the 20th World Conference of the International Society for Music Education. Seoul, Korea. 3-9.

Reimer, Bennett. 1994. "Can We Understand Music of Foreign Cultures?" Musical Connections: Tradition and Change. Heather Lees, ed. Proceedings of the 21st World Conference of the International Society for Music Education. Tampa, Florida. 3-9.

Rice, Timothy. 1994. May it Fill Your Soul. Experiencing Bulgarian Music. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

 

 

¹   I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of my students in MU323 for their patience and thoughts, and to Geoff Isaacs, Jim Butler and Fiona Broadbent for their insightful comments in preparing the material for this paper.

 

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