We Are All in Music Studies Now (But I'm Not Really Talking About That)

This less than polemical title is what Amico is actually (kind of) suggesting (via Nooshin) in his recent article (30), despite the language about “The End of Ethnomusicology.” As one of the people cited as being “discipline-defying,” I have to say Amico articulated most of the frustrations I have about disciplinary definitions. The top three issues which have caused concern for me (not the issues themselves, but the way in which they are positioned in discourses) are: 1) ethnic identity, 2) ethnography, and 3) Western music. These are issues that I have had conversations with ethnomusicologists about, or on which ethnomusicologists have spoken about in public fora such as email lists or conferences (as opposed to scholarly publications). My focus on ethnomusicological common sense as embodied in public discourse is in line with Amico’s critique about the reliance of ethnomusicologists on the “one percent” (10) vanguard of scholarship, as evidence that problems related to the three issues above have been more or less resolved.

I have benefited from the friendship and feedback of several ethnomusicologists over many years, including the 22 in the 6 panels I convened at SEM conferences from 2014-2020. Thus, the following account of some expressions of ethnomusicological conventional wisdom is not intended to disrespect anyone, but to gently point out that my advice has generally not been sought with regards to the specific musical cultures that I have been enculturated in for many years (27 years in Singapore, 5 years in Suzhou, China).

1) Ethnicity. My research reveals what should be common knowledge, that traditional musical forms face declining audience numbers over subsequent generations of listeners, such that some young people have no relationships with traditional musics. This information has been received with skepticism, perhaps unconsciously reflecting the belief that ethnicity is a unified entity with ethnic identity and musical preference in alignment. It has been suggested to me that my preliminary "assumptions" will be proven false through interactions with music-makers (this was after my research had been completed). The problematics of the ethnicity concept reflected in these interactions is outlined by Amico as implicit or “ascribed” (12) authenticity/reality putatively unearthed through ethnography taking place in particular localities, thus reinforcing/naturalizing differences and stable ethnic identities.

 

2) Ethnography. Many well-intentioned ethnomusicologists have explained to me ethnomusicology’s methodology-based definition as ethnographic research on both global and Western musical traditions. (Such explanations are not necessary if one’s interlocutor has been present at SEM conferences for a few years, or if they have read Slobin’s Micromusics.) Those who have been in the field for longer can speak to this better than I can, but isn’t the “universal” outlook a reaction to postcolonial theory that forced academia to reckon with the power asymmetry inherent in disciplines based in Western universities but with a global purview? As Amico points out, the coloniality of the disciplinary “ethno” prefix continues to be a source of contention, suggesting a need for decolonization efforts that must incorporate historical perspectives on the discipline. The near exclusive reliance on ethnography (also pointed out by Amico) is interconnected with other issues. First is the assumption that cultural others are so different that ethnography is the only means by which musical reality can be assessed. Putting aside whether reality can be assessed as such (or whether it is always a construction, a view which is mainstream in anthropology), the difference of cultural others can be exaggerated without a close examination of the precise musical practices in which they engage; consider that e.g. the high school music curriculum in Singapore was 100% Western music until around 2000. Second, the idea that reality is accessible has contributed to resistance against research collaborations (e.g. with “native” co-authors, research team members), perhaps because the "authenticity" of data retrieved is assumed to be guaranteed by first person ethnographic experience.

 

3) Western music. It is conventional wisdom among some ethnomusicologists, many of whom work in departments dominated by Western music, that the latter music is oppressive. This is not necessarily the case for postcolonial milieus in which political, economic, and military power has been returned to the former colonies, and where Western and traditional musics are inextricably intertwined. The assumption of certain musics as having an “inability to engender resistance” (Amico, 16) (and thus not worthy of study) is countered by the central anthropological tenet that all cultural (re)production involves the exercise of agency. This is why Beethoven was deemed to be sounding out both Marxist revolution and bourgeois-capitalist capitulation from the 1950s-70s in China. The oppressor in post-independence China is not Western music per se, but the communist party’s state apparatus, which included musical appropriation and censorship. That is to say, it is not music per se which is oppressive, but the uses to which music are put (cultural imperialism does not exhaust the full range of musical functions, including what may seem like the paradoxical appropriation of Western sounds for anti-racism). The exclusive study of musical cultures in a counter-hegemonic frame that is distinctive to ethnomusicology has sometimes meant the elision of critique of oppression in global musical cultures (including heteronormative readings of female impersonators in China opera, or purely aesthetic assessments of cultural production during the Cultural Revolution in China). I wonder if it is the disciplinary counter-hegemonic stance which is preventing some of our most well-respected ethnomusicologists from taking further steps towards decolonization. When one is focused on putative externalities (like Western music), internal problems of one’s home discipline may not be as obvious?

The US Musicological Frame: “Western Music” Redacted, But Is History Now Anti-Racist?

In the wake of the recent controversy over music theory’s white racial frame, there is heightened awareness among musicologists of the need for anti-racist research and pedagogy. One type of anti-racism has taken the form of removing “Western music” from the academic lexicon (a project begun in global music history; see Irving 2019), much as “Westernization” and the “West” were previously discursively redacted, because the former is oppressive, and the latter is over-generalized. Against this background, consider three historical developments: the dissemination of European music to East and Southeast Asia since the 1800s; the diversification of the Singaporean high school curriculum around 2000 from 100% Western music to 60%, with 40% newly-introduced Asian musics; the establishment of the Tianjin Julliard School in China in 2019. What all this points to is the historical fact of Western music’s expansion and contraction in the global arena. The ease with which the term “Western music” is dropped points in part to the gap between musicological research and musicologist-designed course syllabi, versus the material world of global musical practices, far removed from the pages of US musicology journals and from US music classrooms. Though it is possible to replace “Western” with words like “modern” and “cosmopolitan” to describe global musical practices, these terms refer to the positionality rather than sounds of musicians performing the same four notes of Beethoven Fifth. Discursive redaction of Western music in US academia has little effect on sounds from across the Pacific Ocean; consider that of the nine oldest conservatories in China, only China Conservatory is dedicated to Chinese music, with the rest competing to produce the next Lang Lang. (For the purposes of this short post, I am considering only US musicology and not other musicologies.)

I make the foregoing argument not to detract from US musicology’s anti-racist efforts, but to point out the ways in which such efforts ultimately reflect US priorities, namely, the urgent need for a concrete response to the violence of racism, horrifically evidenced in the murder of George Floyd. Racism is one of the reasons why conceptual revision in disciplinary and curricular reform—including in the form of discursive redaction—are sometimes emphasized over the actual history of global music that would require a reliably specific musical nonmenclature for naming the (Western, modern, cosmopolitan?) sounds that are impacted by waves of westernization, dewesternization, and rewesternization (corresponding respectively to the three historical developments listed in the opening paragraph). Discursive redaction has been given new life in the age of social media, but it is rooted in post-structuralist approaches in which there has long been a tension between naming and redacting a marginalized identity, where the former alternately allows for the object to be named (for the purposes of resistance) and reified (as an unchanging essence), while the latter points to a future in which oppression of that identity has ceased and thus the identity itself becomes obsolete.

 

After redacting “Western,” “music history” itself could become the object of musicological study and teaching. In theory, this could take the form of emphasizing and expanding the lessons of new musicology: non-teleological historiography refuting “heights” of musical development by geniuses such as Beethoven; refusal of historiography itself as overly generalized, focusing instead on “centuries”-framed cultural studies (18^th-, 19^th-, 20^th-centuries). In theory, that is, the new music history could end up like much of the New Musicology of the 90s—examining primarily Europe and North America. Against this possibility, there is some utility in arguing explicitly for the inclusion of global, non-European, and non-North American locations in the new music history.

 

Despite the redaction in “Western music history,” a contradiction persists in that such history typically redacts "Western music" that has been sounded globally e.g. in East and Southeast Asia since the 1800s, but projects a US redactional construction of anti-racist music history over the global history of Western music. I would argue that the ability to articulate such contradictions are necessary to a responsible anti-racist musicological agenda. Consider another contradiction: the complexities of racism are such that even global sounds, when included as tokenism in a conservatory environment, can—in that specific setting—become part of the apparatus of institutional racism. That is to say, it is not Western or global musics that are essentially racist or anti-racist, but discourses that construct musics as racist or anti-racist. It is often easier to redact terms than to address pervasive, often clandestine ideologies that are intertwined with various histories and historiographies.

 

Indeed, the vagaries of history begin with the very concept of history, which is tied up with the racist bifurcation between Western music, literacy (notation), and history, on the one hand, versus global music, orality, and ethnography (which emerged in the age of European imperialism), on the other. Even assuming that the problematics of history have been resolved and we can proceed with music history, problems can easily occur without a comprehensive global historiographical framework. An anti-racist music history that is entirely methodological in its revisionary efforts might end up focusing on postcolonial issues such as Western musical orientalism, without stepping out of Europe and North America, or it may do so only  minimally. Even a diversified history can still be Eurocentric if it commences with chants (folding outward from Gregorian to e.g. Buddhist chants) that constitute the conventional originary point for European but not global music histories. Such a chronological history can reproduce Eurocentrism in the periodization of everything before 1500s as the Middle Ages, whereas it is only Europe that was in the “middle” of the fall of the Roman empire and Europe’s recovery. 

 

From a pedagogical perspective, in many cases, the primary purpose of the undergraduate Western music history survey was never to teach about music history per se (archival research, historiography), but to provide a diachronic array of chronologically-ordered background contexts in which musical works are foregrounded (this is not necessarily a problem from a pedagogical point of view, as long as there is an understanding that music and "context" are co-constituting, e.g. Chinese composers's symphonies co-constructed Chinese modernity). If the pedagogical necessity of history proper is asserted, this needs to be clarified in the light of the racist conceptual bifurcation of Western music notation's historical trace and global musics's orality. I would point to the common undergraduate pedagogical ground of context for both Western and global musics, since the latter are presented in a “synchronic” array of contexts in which social function is emphasized (c.f. diachronic contexts of Western music). This raises the issue (and the promises and dangers) of merging musical disciplines and courses, which may be inevitable for anti-racist music research and teaching.

From Selective Disavowal to Comprehensive Anti-Racism in Music Theory

The symposium on Philip Ewell’s SMT 2019 plenary presentation, “Music Theory’s White Racial Frame,” in the most recent issue of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies (JSS) has been widely criticized for its systemic racism. (Note the difference between (i) individual racist beliefs, versus (ii) social structures that systematically exclude and disadvantage people of color—i.e. "systemic racism," or just "racism." The “social structure” definition applies in most contemporary discussions of institutionalized racism.) As I observe the unfolding reactions to the JSS issue, with anti-racist statements by formal and informal collectives as well as individuals, I thought it is important to direct attention also to the need to not just disavow systemic racism in Schenkerian theory and JSS, but to take further concrete action now by looking within our individual and collective teaching and scholarship, rethinking every element of music theory—i.e. to immediately and systematically materialize the promise made in several anti-racist statements (and in yet other words, action commences rather than concludes with drafting and signing a letter). Disavowal needs to be accompanied by a commitment to rooting out systemic racism in all areas of music theory, and in ethno/musicology if that is one's discipline. This is in part because selective disavowal can lead to distortions and unintended forms of coerciveness against minorities. Selective disavowal without a wider systemic anti-racism has the structural effect of at least temporarily implying that other areas of music research and teaching are not racist, excusing them from critique—clearly, music theory as a whole (beyond Schenker) is embedded in systemic exclusions that we know as systemic racism. Selective disavowals have the effect of ascribing a "racist" identity to the discarded object (as opposed to racist approaches to a given music-theoretical object), potentially re-inscribing violent epistemologies of essentialist racial identities onto people of color—through the implication that people of color "ought to" be anti-racist and thus cannot authentically teach or conduct research in Schenkerian theory or Western music in general. A similar problem is found with blanket decolonial projects aimed at dismantling Western music, which ignore the presence of composers, performers, and music scholars of Western music who are people of color. Any kind of dichotomous bifurcation, such as that effected by a selective disavowal, inevitably implies dualist-essentialist identities that always turn into the epistemic violence of coercive minority identity, commonly known as minority stereotyping. Put more simply, racism does not inhere in particular musics or theories; rather, racism is a social structure within which musics and theories are embedded, and thus all musics, theories, and disciplines have racist elements which need to be confronted.

 

As the contribution by Suzannah Clark in the JSS issue shows, it is possible to trace the racist elements in Schenkerian theory, as a first step in revising the entire theoretical apparatus. While Schenker was clearly racist, and his theory necessarily has racist elements, there are a wide range of ambiguities, complexities, and multiplicities which unfortunately were raised in the JSS issue for the purposes of deflection and defense, thus posing the real danger of shutting down all discussion of various issues: (i) race and racism, (ii) context and history, (iii) Schenker’s Jewish identity (not as a "defense" of Schenker, nor as an attack taking the form of accusing critics of Schenker of anti-Semitism; but as a real facet of his identity), (iv) the complex co-constitution and separability—or not—of music theory and race, (v) the applicability—or not—of facets of Schenkerian theory to repertoires beyond Western music, and more. Future scholarship will need to consider the contingency of racist elements of the Schenkerian apparatus, making difficult judgements on what elements can reasonably be regarded as having musical explanatory power and may be separable from racist ideology, on the one hand, and what elements are inextricably intertwined with racism (Clark suggests that Schenker's privileging of the dominant and exclusion of the subdominant speaks to his racial ideology). Various components of Schenkerian theory such as centricity-hierarchy or diminution were infused with his racism but have not been shown, by themselves and across musical genres, to be universally co-constituted with racism. I believe the work I outlined here is what Ewell is referring to when he wrote in his recent article in Music Theory Online: "If Schenkerian theory is to survive in the twenty-first century, as I hope it does, we must confront the uncomfortable realities not just of Schenker himself but, more important, of the legacy of how we have engaged with his ideas and what that means with respect to race in American music theory."