Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples

Abstract

A textbook aimed at undergraduate classroom teaching in the United States may be questionable fare for review in an international scholarly journal. (The U.S. perspective reaches its most egregious in one move on page 20 across "the country" from New Mexico to Ontario.) Such a review is probably justified, however, by the dearth of introductory material in a still-nascent field. To some extent disciplines define and present a public view of themselves through textbooks, and examining them can have scholarly implications. This book, along with two cassettes of recorded examples, is the product of five prominent New England ethnomusicologists, each of whom writes a case study of a single music-culture or "world of music,"-hence the plural of the title-and who collaborate on two general chapters, one introducing a slightly modified version of "Merriam's model" as the basis for studying a music-culture and the other outlining procedures for a field research project in the student's own community. Although such collective efforts usually are reviewed item by item, there is enough unity of conception in this project to evaluate it in terms of the goals the authors set for themselves. The first and perhaps best decision was to avoid a survey of world music in favor of exploring "in depth the music of a small number of representative human groups" (p. xvi), The question is, how many groups are needed to represent human music making? They chose five, covering Africa, North American natives, North American blacks, Europe, and India, on the rather silly grounds that they felt comfortable teaching that many case studies in a 13-to-15-week academic term. But what about full-year courses? We would all construct slightly different lists of areas omitted, but I would suggest that at least East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania are missing from a sample of case studies that represents humans and their music. This is rather like designing a book or course on western music history that excludes, say, music of the Renaissance and Classic periods. Perhaps if they extended their circle beyond New England, a revised version could include at least eight case studies. Once the choice of case studies was made, each author supposedly followed "six guiding principles." First, the music was to be understood "as the people who make the music understand it." Case studies have the virtue of allowing sufficient time for a detailed examination of a particular culture's perspective, and the use of Merriam's model more or less insures that music will be viewed in its own social, intellectual and musical context. Three of the studies work rather well in this regard. David McAllester concentrates on the Navajo, Jeff Titon on black Americans, and David Reck on southern Indians. All are selfdefined "people" or groups with some claim to their own "world of music." Concentrating on a people and their music gives these studies an attractive sense of immediacy and intimacy. Two of the studies, however, define their groups from an outsider perspective: the ...

The origins of music

“…The use of such songs in connection with symbolic activities such as rituals and rites is predominantly not symbolic or propositional. Rather, their use contributes emotionally to the context at hand (McAllester, 1996). Some songs, however, do have a more symbolic role.…”