Reviews

Healing Rhythms: The World of South Koreas East Coast Hereditary Shamans
SIMON MILLS
Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007
134 pp., CD, ISBN: 978-0-75-465845-0 (t27.50)
For at least the past two decades, students, academics and performers within the
South Korean traditional music world have been enthralled by the power and beauty
of indigenous shaman ritual. Signalling a marked shift away from centuries of
prejudice and denigration, the lions share of such interest with regard to musical
complexity and virtuosity has been concentrated on the hereditary troupes residing in
the southwest and on the east coast. In this beautifully conceived and crafted book,
Simon Mills ushers us through the historical, spiritual, motivational and performa-
tive spheres of the Kim family of the east coast, perhaps the most famous hereditary
shamans active in South Korea today and the Cultural Asset troupe and percussion
ensemble par excellence.
While the organising theme of the experiences and ideas of the male ritual
instrumentalists is stated up front (xi), what emerges slowly and grows with
increasing force is the central importance of rhythm in rituals of healing, the fluid
and accommodating nature of this particular tradition and the bravery and resilience
of those who continue to keep shaman ritual alive and pertinent to modern
audiences. Mills work is solidly grounded in long-term fieldwork and the appropriate
scholarship, both native and foreign. But what immediately distinguishes this book
from so many others coming out of or related to Korea is the manner and care with
which he represents the very personal nature of his interactions with his two principal
mentors, Kim Junghee (drummer/vocalist) and Jo Jonghun (gong player/vocalist). In
the attention Mills pays to the musicians concerns and desires as expressed through
extended interview transcripts, we are reminded of musics human agency, and that
all successful ethnography is ethically and humanly engaged. And with the structuring
and naming of the books chapters around core rhythmic cycles, we know that the
substance of the music will also be treated seriously in this work (a promising return
within our field).
The opening two chapters act as a welcoming introduction to the key themes
and concepts of Mills research, a kind of drawing back of the stage curtain on a
world unknown to most Koreans and foreigners alike. In Chapter 1 we learn of the
ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online)/08/020275-23
DOI: 10.1080/17411910802327392
Ethnomusicology Forum
Vol. 17, No. 2, November 2008, pp. 275297
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two main strains of shaman practice in South Korea today*charismatic and
hereditary (the latter the topic of this book)*and the gendering of specialist roles
along the east coast (predominantly female shamans and male musical accom-
panists). The text then moves to a rich oral account of the Kim familys personal
history, revealing the ways in which the shaman class have interacted with and
have been viewed by broader society over time. Structural and semiotic analyses are
also provided for the two primary rituals performed by the Kims. Chapter 2
focuses on instrumentation, the mechanics of musical construction, and the
aesthetics of sound. Formal analysis of rhythmic cycles (to be discussed further
below) and distinctive elements of the playing technique help to support the claim
of the centrality of improvisation to east coast drumming*the methods by which
pacing, mood and the ultimate goal of release are accomplished and maintained
over the course of a ritual. The chapter ends with a brief but highly contextualised
discussion of the malleable nature of this tradition and its musical practices,
further rooting this book in the particular experiences of specific individuals
(moving away from the timeless Other and untouched tradition fallacies).
The last three chapters draw us deeper into the belief systems, learning contexts
and growth of the hereditary shaman tradition. Chapter 3 outlines the widely held
acceptance of an afterlife and spirit world, provides detailed and extended
translated passages of texts used by ritualists and explains the symbolic imagery,
cosmology and deities referenced during the special part of the ritual known as
Chiokka/Hell Song (the title of this chapter). Chapter 4 focuses on pedagogical
issues and concerns, illustrating a useful contrast in teaching methodologies found
between two generations of performers that mirrors my own experiences in the
1990s with folk drummers: an older and more informal practice firmly established
within a hereditary institution, versus a younger perspective positioned initially as
outsider informed by formal musical and theoretical training. The last chapter of
this book (before the Conclusion) looks into the challenges, successes and
expansion of the hereditary shamans territory in the face of declining societal
demands for the grand rituals performed by the Kim family.
The accompanying CD with tracks/rhythms matching the chapter titles will be a
real revelation for those unfamiliar with the power and intricacy of east coast
drumming and song. Mills had the advantage of being funded by the AHRC Research
Centre for Cross-Cultural Music and Dance Performance that allowed for an
extended residency in London by his mentors Kim and Jo. Their recordings made
during that period can be matched to carefully thought-out structural diagrams of
the rhythmic cycles found in Chapters 25, reductions that provide clarity for novices
to the tradition without sacrificing the musics underlying complexities. More serious
theorists or performers, however, will delve into Mills detailed surface-level analyses
interspersed throughout with many rewards at the end for such efforts. The only
concern I had more specifically was with Figure 2.11 (51), a transcription of a single
line of a hand gong part. Even for a sophisticated listener, the example is hard to read
because of the speed at which the beats fly by (exacerbated by the fact that the track
276 Reviews
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doesnt start at the beginning of the notation), and because the internal repeats
marked by boxed figures throw us off a sense of the proper length of the cycle. This
led to my second more general thought, that it would have been nice to have had
timings in the book indicating when the musicians switched from one structural unit
(or chapter in Mills translation) to the next to aid those unaccustomed to multi-
layered percussion music (though this is part of the fun for those with more time at
their disposal).
For the field of ethnomusicology in general, and Korean musicology more
centrally, this book heralds the successful synthesis of the study of culture with
musical analysis. Mentors voices are seamlessly woven into the narrative as a kind of
counterpoint to Mills own voice and presence, creating the overall effect of an
extended conversation between intimate friends. This deep care and respect on Mills
part is further felt in his balanced and sympathetic account of this Korean belief
system and those who embrace it. I have long waited to read about the inner
workings of the east coast hereditary shamans, and in this work I have been both
satisfied and deeply impressed.
NATHAN HESSELINK
University of British Columbia
n.hesselink@ubc.ca
# 2008, Nathan Hesselink
Selected Papers on Music in Sabah
JACQUELINE PUGH-KITINGAN
Kota Kinabalu, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, 2004
232 pp., CD, ISBN: 9-8323-6917-7 (US$18.00)
This book consists of research papers Pugh-Kitingan presented at conferences and
seminars over a period of 20 years or so. The papers are grouped into three parts: the
first provides an overview of the people and society of Sabah and the organological
background of its music; the second investigates in detail the music of the
Kadazandusun, the largest indigenous group in Sabah; and the third analyses
instrumental music amongst coastal communities.
Pugh-Kitingan explains in the preface that the books purpose is to introduce
aspects of traditional music in Sabah. Although titled Selected Papers, which may
imply that the papers are not all related, Pugh-Kitingan has updated the papers so
that the chapters are related logically. Chapter 1, The Background to Music in
Sabah, provides a detailed and useful outline of the people of Sabah and their
culture, and the literature review covers all notable early and recent research on
the music of Sabah. Where appropriate, Pugh-Kitingan updates and corrects some
of the early literature based on her own research. For example, she points out that
Reviews 277
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Edward Frames publications in the 1970s80s on music in Sabah (though she
does not specifically point out which ones) contain many mistakes mainly
because he had little understanding of Sabahan cultures (13), not having spent a
long period of time there.
The second chapter is Musical Instruments in the Cultural Heritage of Sabah.
Pugh-Kitingan examines the significance of instruments in different communities.
Instruments are grouped under the headings: membranophones (drums), idiophones
(gongs, xylophones etc.), aerophones (flutes, horns, jaw-harps etc.) and chordo-
phones (tube zithers and lutes). Numerous photographs are provided. Pugh-Kitingan
observes in her conclusion that there is no musician class, and in general there is no
gender segregation on instruments: women are generally as adept as men in
instrumental performance (41).
Part 2 focuses on the music of the Kadazandusun. In chapter 3 (Music and Change
Amongst the Kadazundusun of Tambunan), Pugh-Kitingan writes that
the phenomenal social and infrastructural improvements in Sabah beginning in
the 1960s have caused some musical forms and genres to lose their importance in the
Kadazandusun community. In sharp contrast to earlier times when females had an
important community role as bobolian, traditional spirit mediums, these women now
accord higher importance to education and are keen to develop their own secular
careers (47). Pugh-Kitingan further writes that musical roles in traditional
ceremonies such as the wedding are increasingly taken over by electric pop bands
or karaoke, eroding the traditional rituals. However, she also identifies signs that
culturally aware tourists might have an impact on cultural preservation and
development (65). The remaining two chapters in part 2 are devoted to detailed
studies of the sompoton, a mouth organ, and the tongkungon, a plucked tube zither.
Part 3 focuses on music from coastal communities. Chapter 6 is about the Bajau
music ensembles where Pugh-Kitingan analyses four gong ensemble case studies. In
each, she describes the physical characteristics, performance practice and social
contexts of the instruments used, and includes musical transcriptions. She observes
that close and regular contacts between ethnic groups play a significant part in their
musical and cultural (ex)change. For example, the gong musicians of the Bajau of
Kota Belud and that of the Iranun not only share similar repertoires but also wear
similar costumes (166). Chapter 7 is titled Instruments and Instrumental Music of
the Iranun of Kota Belud. Pugh-Kitingan classifies their instruments into membra-
nophones (e.g. the gandang), idiophones (e.g. the kulintangan), aerophones (the
suling flute and the kubing or jaw-harp) and chordophones (the biula, which has a
body shaped like the classical violin) (180), and provides detailed descriptions of
them.
Chapter 8 is titled Acculturation at Kota Belud: Examples from the Gong Ensemble
Music of the Iranun, Bajau and Tindal Dusun. Pugh-Kitingan notes that the three
groups of people lead different ways of life: the Iranun are known chiefly for their
horsemanship, the Bajau are traditionally a fishing community, while the Tindal
Dusun are inland people practicing wet rice agriculture and rearing water buffalo.
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They also speak different languages. Pugh-Kitingan explains that inter-ethnic contacts
may have made it possible for the kulintangan set of small kettle gongs to be
introduced from one group to the next: for example, the Kota Belud sets may have
been introduced into the area by the Iranun, who may have acquired their own sets
from the southern Philippines via Brunei (188, 190). According to Pugh-Kitingan,
cultural contacts between the three groups give rise to similar performance practices,
and variations arise usually in using fewer smaller gongs (190). Comparing the
musical repertoires of the three ensembles, she concludes that acculturation has also
led to very similar repertoires.
This book aims to provide glimpses into the rich kaleidoscope of Sabahs musical
cultures (17), and succeeds in doing so. The rich content on organology begs
numerous cross-references to The Music of Malaysia (Matusky and Tan 2004), to
which Pugh-Kitingan has contributed materials. I feel there would have been scope in
this book for comparative studies with similar performance practices and musical
cultures, for example, with gong traditions in other parts of Southeast Asia.
The results of modernisation, especially on the west coast of Sabah, are well
explained by Pugh-Kitingan. I suggest that readers who are unfamiliar with
Sabahs historical, geographical and demographic details consult works such as
those by Ranjit Singh (2000) and Danny Wong (2004). My own thesis (2005) on
the musical culture of the Sabahan Chinese in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries may also be useful to provide a contrast. Together, these give readers a
deeper account of why Sabahs west coast underwent greater modernisation efforts
than the rest of the state, and what the socio-cultural consequences were. While
Pugh-Kitingan discusses the effects of acculturation, further in-depth studies will
reveal many additional interesting observations, such as the greater mobility of the
younger generation who have to travel to towns to work during the weekdays and
return to their village at the weekends, and how acculturation affects music in
ritual practices.
The book boasts over 40 pages of colour plates of musical instruments which are
very useful. The accompanying CD of musical examples, and maps indicating key
towns and concentration areas of the ethnic groups discussed, are certain to be
helpful for readers.
This book excels in organological and ethnographic details of community life and
music-making. I strongly recommend this book as it significantly strengthens
ethnomusicological studies on this part of the world. At the time of writing, the only
distributor I can find (apart from Universiti Malaysia Sabah; http://www.ums.
edu.my) is Borneo Books (http://www.borneobooks.com), operating from Kota
Kinabalu outlets, and its online store.
References
Matusky, Patricia, and Tan Sooi Beng. 2004. The music of Malaysia: The classical, folk and syncretic
traditions. Aldershot: Ashgate.
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Singh, Ranjit D.S. 2000. The making of Sabah, 18651941: The dynamics of indigenous society. Kuala
Lumpur: University of Malaya Press.
Wong, Danny Tze Ken. 2004. Historical Sabah: Community and society. Borneo: Natural History
Publications.
Wong, David Tze Wan. 2005. Music-making amongst the Chinese communities in Sabah, Malaysia:
The keyboard culture. PhD thesis, University of Shefeld, UK.
DAVID WONG
The Open University (UK)
d.t.w.wong@open.ac.uk
# 2008, David Wong
Mek Some Noise: Gospel Music and the Ethics of Style in Trinidad
TIMOTHY ROMMEN
Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, and Chicago, University of California Press, Center
for Black Music Research, 2007
xii+217 pp., ISBN: 978-0-52-025068-0 (pbk 12.95), ISBN: 978-0-52-025067-3 (cloth
32.95)
Mek Some Noise is an ethnographic study of Full Gospel Pentecostal worship in
Trinidad (primarily) and Tobago. Formulating a new theoretical approach that he
calls the ethics of style, whereby he seeks to situate the believers and the music they
perform and/or listen to within the dual contexts of their faith and nation(s),
Rommen explores four main Gospel styles: gospelypso, North American gospel
music, dancehall, and jamoo. As explained by Rommen, the ethics of style functions
as an analytical model that investigates the process by which musical style informs
identity formation for both artists and audiences; illustrates how style thus becomes
the vehicle for a multifaceted communal discourse about value and meaning; and
interrogates the process of personal identification or disidentification with musical
style as a moment of ethical significance (2). The term Full Gospel designates, for
the author, largely Pentecostal Protestant communities, but also other charismatic
denominations.
In his introduction Rommen gives clear and concise definitions of how he is
using his terms, contextualises this study within the realm of Caribbean studies in
general, and lays out the plan of the book and his approach to his materials. His
first full chapter gives a brief and useful history of Trinidad, traces the history of
the denominations under scrutiny, outlines briefly the essential characteristics of
the four gospel styles to be examined (i.e., the primary styles in circulation in the
Full Gospel community), and situates them within the context of worship.
Chapter 2 outlines his theoretical approach*the ethics of style*and seeks to
convince the reader that the ethics of style focuses analytical attention on the
process by which style becomes the vehicle for a multifaceted communal discourse
about value and meaning (27). Subsequent chapters each examine one of the four
gospel styles under consideration, and a final chapter and very brief epilogue
280 Reviews
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revisit the ethics of style focusing on the negotiation of a range of musical options
available in a single Baptist church in Point Fortin, the southern town where
Rommen conducted much of his fieldwork.
Drawing on a wide range of scholarship (e.g., Taylor 1989; Nussbaum 1990;
Harpham 2002), Rommen tackles the thorny issue of ethics head on (33, ff.). In this
regard he argues convincingly that ethics should be re-centred within ethnography,
drawing on previous work in Afro-Caribbean philosophy or Africana thought
(most notably Paget 2003 and Gordon 2000). Of the chapters analysing specific
musical styles, chapter 3 on Gospelypso, which the author argues is descended from
Calypso and Baptist choruses, is the most successful. Rommen considers physicality,
time, sociability, some melodies, and detailed analysis of song lyrics, to illustrate why
gospelypso has remained on the periphery of Full Gospel worship, largely because of
its strong secular association with calypso and thus its virtual inaccessibility to church
worship. The following musical chapters, 4 to 6, are less successful: no musical texts
are provided, and the discussion centres instead on the lyrical content of songs,
iconography and context. Throughout, however, excerpts from Rommens field
diaries bring the musical contexts to life, and the ideas of the performers feature
prominently in his narrative. In the final chapter, Reenvisioning Ethics, Revisiting
Style, Rommen carefully details his own involvement in the community of Mt.
Beulah Evangelical Baptist Church, clarifying his role as a participant-observer and
stating his discomfort with some of the discussion because of the involvement of
some of his close friends.
There can be little doubt that Rommen is widely read, particularly in the areas of
philosophy and subcultural theory. His grasp of musical style is coherent and
thorough, but it is a pity that he does not use this to greater advantage to convince his
readers. Mek Some Noise has a wide potential readership, and would be of
considerable interest to scholars of the Caribbean, obviously, but also to scholars of
religion and spirituality, identity, music, and perhaps*for its engagement with moral
and ethical discourse*philosophy. It is doubtful, however, that it would be accessible
to undergraduate students, and its usefulness for pedagogical purposes would be
most pertinent for postgraduate studies, especially where those focus on Caribbean
studies.
Ultimately, I found this book difficult to read, partly perhaps because of the
disjunctures of style. Chapters and sections open clearly, laying out what is to be
discussed and accomplished, but the body of each section becomes increasingly
dense, involving the reader in complex and sometimes convoluted argument. Perhaps
my major frustration with the book is that, despite the promise inherent in the title
Mek Some Noise, we are not given a coherent expose of sound. Discussion
throughout centres more on philosophical and lyrical discourse. True, in the initial
chapters (2 and 3), Rommen does give us one detailed transcription and a few basic
melodies, but thereafter musical texts disappear from the book, replaced by
transcriptions of song lyrics and heuristic diagrams. This is all the more striking
in this instance because, somewhat unusually for a contemporary monograph in
Reviews 281
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ethnomusicology, Mek Some Noise has no accompanying CD. These frustrations
notwithstanding, Mek Some Noise adds a new and thoughtful voice to studies of
music in religious community.
References
Gordon, Lewis. 2000. Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana existentialist thought. New York:
Routledge.
Harpham, Geoffrey Galt. 2002. Language alone: The critical fetish of modernity. New York:
Routledge.
Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Loves knowledge: Essays on philosophy and literature. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Paget, Henry. 2003. Calibans reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean philosophy. New York: Routledge.
Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
THE

RE
`
SE SMITH
University College Dublin
therese.smith@ucd.ie
# 2008, There`se Smith
Music and Altered States: Consciousness, Transcendence, Therapy and Addictions
DAVID ALDRIDGE and JO

RG FACHNER (Eds)
London and Philadelphia, Jennifer Kingsley Publishers, 2005
208 pp. ISBN: 1-8431-0373-8 (19.99)
The Music Effect: Music Physiology and Clinical Applications
DANIEL J. SCHNECK and DORITA S. BERGER
London and Philadelphia, Jennifer Kingsley Publishers, 2005
272 pp. ISBN: 1-8431-0771-2 (17.99)
Jennifer Kingsley is a company that deserves to be better known by ethnomusicol-
ogists; specialising in music therapy texts, they offer invaluable material to
supplement Judith Beckers beautifully written but arguably limited Deep Listeners:
Music, Emotion and Trancing (2004). That being said, although both these books are
extremely valuable, the first is inherently flawed, with a look about it of conference
proceedings; one of the contributions has been published only as an abstract, some as
fully worked-out ethnographic chapters and others as overviews of specific topics.
Schneck and Bergers volume is much more worked out, to the extent that it develops
a complex theoretical model for its subject. It comes with illustrations by Geoffrey
Rowland that guide us through unfamiliar science, and a foreword by George Patrick,
who works at the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
Thus, we are in the realm of clinical practice here, rather than anything purely
academic; in fact, The Music Effect seeks to prove a scientific case for the efficacy
of music therapy.
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Music and Altered States begins with a back-of-a-postcard overview by Aldridge,
who is Chair for Qualitative Research in Medicine at the University of Witten-
Herdecke. He has something of a dominant position with Jennifer Kingsley as author/
editor of at least seven additional titles. Maybe it isnt an overview, despite its title,
Music, Consciousness and Altered States, since it has brief sections on performative
development, participative performance, religion/spirituality and change, none of
which are tied to each other, let alone to the remainder of the book. We then get a
wonderful and concise overview of music and altered states of consciousness by
Fachner, in which a cartography of altered states of consciousness is first mapped
onto Rougets (1980) differentiation of trance and ecstasy, then explored through
shamanism, hypnosis (with Mesmers glass harmonica taking pride of place, although
I longed for a mention of Mozart), drumming, imagination and absorption. There
are recommendations for therapists, and a section devoted to electrophysiological
studies of music-related states. All very valuable, not least because of a wealth of
references.
The editors then step back. At least so it seems, since the next chapter, by John
J. Pilch, covers much the same ground as Fachner, but in a more easily absorbable
format, and with one exception (Rouget) utilising different reference material. Next
comes Csaba Szabo , writing about The Effects of Listening to Monotonous
Drumming on Subjective Experience. This is a clinical psychology piece, written in
a much less literary style. It curiously offers absolutely no references to the plentiful
accounts emanating from Michael Harners Foundation for Shamanic Studies (by, for
example, Sandra Harner and Warren Tyron (1996, 8997), or from any of the many
other apologists for the use of drumming in soul journeying: is there some
unmentioned antipathy about methods hiding in the background? A second chapter
by Fachner, Music and Drug-Induced Altered States of Consciousness, provides a
more friendly way into the Learyesque psychedelic world from which Harner
ultimately sprang (by way, some would say, of Castanedas Don Juan (1970)). Fachner
references the Beatles, Queen, and Ian Drury (specifically, Sergeant Pepper, Another
One Bites the Dust and Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll), and this second chapter
again collates a large body of clinical data.
All seems well, but amongst the other chapters are three that might better be
offered as an extension of Penelope Gouks excellent Musical Healing in Cultural
Contexts (2000): Delia Cohen (Israel) writing about schemata for perception in
Western and Arab musics, Alla Sokolova (Adyghea, Russia) about music and
medicine among the Adyghs of the north Caucasus, and Uwe Maas and Suster
Strubelt (Germany) about Iboga initiation in Gabon. A fourth, slightly more
troubling for my ethnomusicological self, is a four-page abstract of something that
has elsewhere been expanded into articles and books: Marlene Dobkin de Rios
(Irvine, California) on the use of hallucinogens for healing through music in tribal
and western studies. Now, de Rios knows what she is talking about, but still the
conclusion presents something of a challenge:
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Any planning for psychotherapeutic intervention. . . would necessitate a clear
musicological approach to create therapeutic states of consciousness . . . Music can
be a major mode of managing the drug-induced altered state of consciousness for
therapeutic goals. (100)
Beyond Oliver Sacks use of L-DOPA for long-term Parkinsonism documented in
the book Awakenings (1991) and the film of the same name, Im not convinced many
music therapists are ready for this. I suspect there is a story to be told as to why de
Rios abstract is here, and quite possibly we would know if the complete article had
been published; as it is, readers will question why the abstract has been published. My
assumption is that she is firing a broadside or two at New Age apologists, possibly at
those academics who have tentatively argued for bringing old and new together*I
have in mind, though most probably wrongly, Ruth-Inge Heinz and her Shamans in
the Twentieth Century (1992).
Four further chapters do address therapists more directly; two of these, by Tsvia
Horesh (Israel) and Marko Punkanen (Finland) explore the use of music in drug
rehabilitation, while Aldridge and Lucanne Magill (New York) consider the use of
music in suffering and terminal illness. All are fine, and the latter is a particularly
useful and timely contribution.
This volume can be of interest to ethnomusicologists as an illustration of just how
much further clinical experiments have gone than the ethnographies with which we
tend to be more familiar. This is why I referenced Beckers text at the beginning.
Those of us working, however marginally, in this territory need to familiarise
ourselves with research and practice in psychotherapy and clinical psychology. While
this in itself would justify getting the book, the overviews by Fachner and Pilch on
music and altered states of consciousness offer core background readings for any
degree course considering music and spirituality or music therapy.
Moving to the second text, The Music Effect, I might start by summing the whole
volume up as Helmholtz for the general reader. But that doesnt really do justice to
this compelling text, a roller-coaster ride that seeks to demonstrate how music is
effective in clinical applications because it has a symbiotic relationship with the
human body, because it is based on the human instinct for survival, and because it is
received and reacted to in the pre-cognitive brain. Music, then, affects the essence of
me, and hence The Music Effect is less concerned with the claim that music can do
something than with demonstrating why and how it has power and affect. The two
authors*Schneck a biomedical engineer trained in physics, physiology and
medicine, and Berger a concert pianist, educator and certified music therapist*
explore their theme from two distinct but intertwined perspectives, namely, music
therapy viewed from a scientific physiological understanding, and science viewed
from an aesthetic-driven musical perspective. The end result is a volume that mixes
nature with nurture, the former expressed through the laws of physics and the basic
principles of human physiological function, and the latter through an understanding
of musical aesthetics, the choices of structure and form, and the integration of
structural elements of melody, harmony, scale, rhythm and more.
284 Reviews
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The problem with Helmholtz is, as Alexander Ellis demonstrated within a few years
of publishing his translation of On the Sensations of Tone (Helmholtz 1875), that no
musical system abides by the physical rules pertaining to the production of
soundwaves (Ellis 1885). And yet, some still assume that Western art music pretty
much does so. Hence, before I continue, I should note occasional lapses in Schneck
and Bergers account. Within the otherwise excellent consideration of the compo-
nents of music, melody is defined as the sequential linking of one pitch to another,
and another, and so on, in a curvilinear relationship. . . to take on a smooth shape, a
contour, a soundscape, the tracking of which suggests a tune (34). Later, with
reference to Rodgers and Hammersteins The King And I, we get this comment: The
master element of musics emotional content lies within the nature of its tune, the
melody (160). This simply doesnt necessarily apply in, say, the Middle East or Asia.
Again, the overview of consonance and dissonance, as the tempering of the musical
scale (82), considers that the current twelve-tone chromatic scale contains the
maximum number of equally spaced notes containing the minimum number of
dissonant frequency ratios between any two of those notes . . . the actual note-to-note
subdivisions of the scale, itself, are further constrained by the resolution capabilities
of the auditory system (823). Out, then, go musical systems that use intervals
smaller than semitones, because all sensory perception is constrained by the ability of
the corresponding sensory modality to resolve the adequate stimuli (83); and the
considerations of tone deafness (tin ears), perfect pitch, and the likelihood that a
specific person has a C-major personality or an A-minor personality, or that
C major has inherent stability and grounding about it (30, 82, 126, 160, 171, 210)
seem somewhat Eurocentric.
These minor points aside, Schneck and Berger offer a very compelling argument.
Key to their account is that music is received in those parts of the brain involved with
ensuring survival*the very oldest part, the archipallium (also known as the
archicortex or allocortex)*and with the limbic system, the interconnected neural
structures surrounding the midline surfaces of the cerebral hemisphere that ensures
the maintenance of baseline physical balance by controlling anatomical control
systems. This is somewhat revolutionary, since three things follow. First, music can be
used to restore balance, helping to heal the body, managing special needs and
resolving adaptive conditions (which we might call syndromes). Second, since at all
levels of organisation the mechanical operation of the body involves dynamic activity
and motion, then music can drive the very organism that invented it (71). Third,
processing music occurs in parts of the brain that predate the development of the
cerebrum (the part enabling cognition, thinking and language), confirming that
music is emotional rather than based on reason. Further, the very organs that protect
from danger and measure how the body is situated in respect to its surroundings
become the transducers through which music is carried to the brain for processing.
Now, all of this has implications, not least for the way we think about entrainment
and meaning in music, how we talk about music, and how we understand the effects
of particular musical stimuli.
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Charles Darwin, we are told, believed that music predated the formalisation of
language: I have been led to infer that the progenitors of man probably uttered
musical tones before they had acquired the power of articulate speech (quoted in
Schneck and Berger, 29). For Schneck and Berger, music is rather more complex
than this, and refers to sound attributes embedded in six elements*rhythm, melody,
harmony, timbre, dynamics and form*that together create an anatomy of music.
These six elements have a physiology, in that they are used or combined to express the
emotions, impulses, intuitions, will, intentions and abstract ideas of musical creators.
Put together, Schneck and Berger offer this description of music:
. . . an artificially contrived, external explication of combined sound events, con-
jured and organized by human beings, reflecting distinguishing internal and
external occurrences, energies, sensations, emotions, and rhythms, derived from
corresponding emotional, physiological, psychological, and environmental states
and events. (31)
This can largely be summed up in one word: control. Man controls the elements of
music, and thereby creates expression. The music therapist seeks to use music to
control syndromes and conditions. The volume explores how sensory information is
processed, and the constraints on processing (the audible frequency range, the range
of loudness that the body can tolerate without consequence, tolerance for
consonance, optimisation of inputs, nerve transmission rates, and so on). From
here, the role of music therapy becomes the reconfiguring or adjusting of processing
and transducers, enabling a coming to terms with difference. There is much to
fascinate, for example how a few people singing in a crowded room drown out the
surrounding noise (122) or how the body resonates*or how our biorhythms can be
synchronised*to specific music (140). If some of this seems speculative, so it needs
to be, not least because all human beings are imperfect listeners (204), gifted with
different sensitivities caused by personal physiology.
Throughout the volume, it is the way that the perspectives of the two authors are
combined that creates the interest, integrating human anatomy and physiology with
the physics of sound. Real case studies of anonymous clients are liberally included,
bringing the lessons to life. And all musicians and musicologists will find the
conclusion appealing: [W]e recognize that humanity created distinct forms of music
as a mirror image of the human animal. And, like a mirrors reflection, music
consistently and accurately returns to humanity its own image. . . Music may very
well be the single most brilliant creation of mankind (249).
References
Becker, Judith. 2004. Deep listeners: Music, emotion and trancing. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Castaneda, Carlos. 1970. The teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui way of knowledge. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
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Ellis, Alexander. 1885. On the musical scales of various nations. Journal of the Society of Arts 33:
485527, 11021111.
Gouk, Penelope. 2000. Musical healing in cultural contexts. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Harner, Sandra, and Warren Tyron. 1996. Psychological and immunological responses to shamanic
journeying with drumming. Shaman 4/1 and 4/2: 8997.
Heinz, Ruth-Inge. 1992. Shamans in the twentieth century. New York: Irvington.
Helmholtz, Hermann. 1875 On the sensations of tone as a physiological basis for the theory of
music. Trans. Alexander J. Ellis. London: Longmans.
Rouget, Gilbert. 1980. La musique et la transe. Paris: Gallimard.
Sacks, Oliver W. 1991. Awakenings. Revised ed. London: Picador.
KEITH HOWARD
School of Oriental and African Studies
kh@soas.ac.uk
# 2008, Keith Howard
Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Postcolonial Politics of Music in
South India
AMANDA J. WEIDMAN
Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2006
xv 350 pp., ISBN: 0-8223-3620-0 (23.95)
From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music Academy: A Social History of Music
in South India
LAKSHMI SUBRAMANIAN
Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2006
x 196 pp., ISBN: 978-0-19-567835-2 (19.99)
Three recent monographs argue from a set of positions rooted in contemporary
postcolonial studies that Karnatak and Hindustani musical practices were selected,
transformed and made to be classical in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The
two studies reviewed here concern the recent social history of Karnatak music. The
third (Bakhle 2005) assesses the role of two key figures in the transformation of
Hindustani music during the same period and is not examined here.
Amanda Weidman and Lakshmi Subramanian implicitly distinguish the South
Asian musical traditions codified in treatises over many centuries from what was
selected for emphasis by contemporary practitioners and reformers in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Classical music to both authors is not merely art music, but
an art music legitimised by a hierarchical canon of compositions, by the recognition
of individual composers and performers and by an appearance of being modern and
scientific. Making music classical involved, in no small part, the efforts of a growing
Indian middle class to define itself in relation to the British colonial establishment.
Classicalness in music projected both a sense of connectedness with ancient Indian
(Hindu) origins and a modern sense of orderliness and refinement. Efforts at musical
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reform, making some kinds of music classical, became closely entwined with nation
building.
Weidman reads historical texts and images as a trained anthropologist, grounding
her ethnography in interactions with her violin teacher, an eccentric inheritor of an
antiquated violin style. Weidmans musicianship informs her fine readings of violin
techniques and aesthetics; her style of argumentation is bold and declarative; her
presentation of evidence leisurely and attentive to detail. Weidmans greatest strength
is in the presentation of primary materials, both popular and technical, in Tamil. Her
fluency in spoken and written Tamil makes her source analyses rich for the specialist
and the general reader.
Subramanian, a social historian of Tamil descent, grew up immersed in the
Karnatak musical culture of the Tamil-diaspora community in Calcutta. Subrama-
nians learned and engaging monograph reaches back further into Indian history than
does Weidmans, but is less detailed. After a wide-ranging introduction and
genealogy of Karnatak music (a little less than a third of the book), Subramanian
focuses mainly on the activities of the Madras Music Academy and on the Tamil
language movement in a series of chapters entitled Defining the classical,
Consolidating the classical, On the margins of the classical and Contesting the
classical.
Where Weidman is declarative, Subramanian is interrogative; her questions engage
broader debates in the field of Indian history. For instance, Subramanian takes cues
from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history-writing, which placed an
increased emphasis on facticity, sequence, and. . . individual authorship (56), to
assess the degree to which Chinnaswamy Mudaliar, the Madras Academy and the
Tanjore court were registering an attempt to establish a newer framework. This
example also illustrates another difference between the authors: unlike Weidman,
who asserts newness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with little reference to
evidence from earlier periods, Subramanian is more apt to address issues of
continuity (see also 93).
The differences between an anthropologist and a historian treating a series of the
same moments in Indian history are often subtle. The following example, however,
brings the differences into relief. Subramanian describes the discourse on music and
the performing arts in the early twentieth century as being derived from the larger
project of Indian national self-discovery (14). She locates the roots of this in the
establishment of the Madras branch of the Gayan Samaj in the 1870s, the aim being
to preserve and transmit music to the middle class (15). Weidman focuses not on
what the Gayan Samaj represented per se, but how, in 1989, the vina player S.
Balachander used the published proceedings of the Gayan Samaj to call into question
the authorship of compositions that had been attributed to the composer-king Swati
Tirunal, and what this implied about changes in conceptions of what it meant to have
ones name associated with a work (1937).
Both authors thematise language but in different ways. Subramanians treatment
is limited mainly to the Tamil music movement. Weidman subsumes language under
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a larger notion of voice that includes: the voice itself , the sound of the human voice
as opposed to instruments, the capacity to speak, language and its politics, and
transformations of vocal sound under the impact of recording and broadcasting
technologies. Using the master trope of voice, Weidman makes these subtopics speak
to each other interestingly, if at some points confusedly.
In one passage, Weidman suggests that the logic of an anxiety that the voice will
be lost if not captured by writing contradicts the logic whereby the voice could be
lost precisely by being completely captured by writing (242). The contradiction is only
apparent, however, if the former voice represents musical content (e.g. a piece or
theory in a treatise) and the latter, oral tradition as a locus of Indian musics identity
and authority. It is possible that the contradiction derives from Weidmans use of the
term voice. This is unfortunate, for it detracts from the important point of the
passage, that the English language conferred authority on the orality of Indian
tradition.
Indigenous Indian classical music, for Weidman, is an idea that emerged in the
twentieth century as a result of a politics of voice that pitted Indianness against
Westernness. The voice stood for oral tradition, originality, humanity and tradition;
as opposed to notation, reproduction, mechanisation and modernity (5). South
Indians did not opt in a simple way to cling to the Indian side of this set of
oppositions; they developed a sense of what was the voice, what was traditional, as
they interacted with others, especially colonial and modern others (an argument
similar to that in Irschick 1994). The idea that the English language conferred
authority on the orality of Indian tradition is part of this larger interactionalist
argument.
Weidmans analyses of interactions are particularly insightful and detailed with
regard to notation and instruments. The fluid, syllabic notations of the Indian past,
some felt, were inadequate when compared with the scientific notations of the West;
and yet, that very contrast is what allowed South Indians to foreground their
melodies (voice) as Indian, as escaping exact representation. Regarding instruments,
Weidman shows how the violin, entering the Indian realm in the mid-eighteenth
century, became a tool for defining the ideal physical voice of the performer on stage
in the twentieth century. It provided an externalised model for unsegmented melodic
movement (unlike the vina); and a loud and accurate accompaniment to the singer,
articulating melodic gestures sometimes more clearly than the singers could
themselves.
Subramanian largely upholds Weidmans views on the violin, but points out that
the discourse on the tradition of nagasvaram (double-reed aerophone) as a referent to
the voice was equally important at that time (103). Both studies could be criticised
for failing to acknowledge substantially the long history of attention to the problem
of vocal-versus-instrumental production by Indian writers, theorists and philoso-
phers. Instruments appear in early literature as little more than a tool, according to
Lewis Rowell. Early authors used human vital breath (prana) to connect the universal
substratum of sound with individual musical sounds (Rowell 1992, 40). These
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abstractions of voice could be read against what Weidman describes as the ideal of a
voice that came naturally from within, unmediated by performance of any kind in
the mid-twentieth century (116).
Oft-cited examples from South Indian musical history treat the theme of what
happens when an instrumentalist attempts to imitate the human voice. The twelfth-
century Periyapuranam, for example, describes the so-called yal-breaking pans*
melodies too complex and fluid to be accommodated by a harp (see Ayyangar
1972, 54). The Mamandur inscriptions of the seventh century describe the
interactions of a parivadini (harp) player and vocalist (Lockwood and Bhat 2001).
Both of these sources represent interactions that stage the voice (and instruments),
in Weidmans terms, from much earlier periods. One might also question the degree
to which the new discourse on voice was shared in the emergent national period.
T.N. Ramachandran argued in the 1930s that the Mamandur inscription described
the vina as a model for the voice, rather than the reverse (Lockwood and Bhat [2001]
dispute Ramachandrans interpretation). Such a prominent art historian, active early
in the twentieth century, might have been expected to use this ambiguous passage to
support a primordialist position on the voice, but he did not. Weidman did not
present such contrary evidence. I found myself wishing for Subramanians question-
ing of what new meant as I read Weidmans assertions about the emergence of a
new conception of voice in twentieth-century south India.
The idea that India and the West share a unitary modernity linked by colonialism is
central to Weidmans argument. In her view, this modernity gave rise to the modern
idea of classical music in both parts of the world (288). In resisting the possibility that
Indias modernity could be alternative, Weidman avoids the pitfall of assuming the
existence of real modernity against which the Indian version should be compared.
However, in not granting difference, she also devalues the idea that anything like
culture could persist through time other than as a colonially infused gaze upon the
past. The assumption of a single modernity also allows Weidman to apply theories of
modern selfhood (Taylor 1989), nationalism (Chatterjee 1993), colonialism and
modernity (Mitchell 1988; Mitchell 2000) to matters of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries without considering the extent to which the processes described are versions
of what has come before.
Subramanians attention to the earlier history of Indian music and pre- and early
modernity in India continually allows the reader to assess the degree to which
colonial modernity represents rupture or continuity. Subramanian positions her
discussion in the context of current debates about early Indian modernity as a
period or a conceptual framework. Like Weidman and others, she locates
modernity in moments of interaction, citing the cabinet of Tanjore Maharaja Serfoji
(r. 17981832) as an example of new modes of engagement with science and art
mediated by the growing interactions with Europeans (7).
One place in which Weidmans single-modernity approach falters is in reference to
Timothy Mitchells notion of enframing. In this essential element of the colonial
gaze, time and space are divided into exact and precisely repeating units that seem to
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exist independently of what they contain (Weidman 211; Mitchell 1988, 856).
Weidman uses this idea to contrast Chinnaswamy Mudaliars musical notations,
which employ the uniform spaces provided by the staff , with the more differentiated
idea of time provided by tala, hand gestures, and so forth. There is no question that
these two notations do different things. However, enframing in these abstract terms
is neither colonial nor new to Indian musical thinking. Richard Widdess amply
demonstrates the tendency for Indian writers to represent music in a tabular format
dating back to the very first extant notations of the seventh century (1995, 92); the
fact that these grids mean different things in different sources only serves to underline
the fact that enframing has important roots in Indian musical representations. Aside
from the specific origin of staff notation in the West, was Mudaliars enterprise
entirely colonial? Are we left with a tautology, whereby Mudaliars enterprise differs
from what came before only because it is, to use Subramanians words, guided by the
imperatives of modern identity politics (34)?
Weidman devotes an entire chapter (192244) to arguments about the use of
notation, the development of the idea of a modern composer, and to issues of raga
theory attendant on fixing knowledge in written form. These are rich and informative
sections of the book. Subramanian leads the reader quickly through some of the same
points. She touches on notation occasionally (e.g. 939), provides verbatim
quotations from those actively consolidating the classical in the early days of the
music academy (84110), and arrives at conclusions similar to those of Weidman.
Both authors foreground the importance of Tyagaraja (17671847) as a model of the
classical. For Subramanian, the quest for authentic versions of Tyagarajas composi-
tions (correcting imperfect versions when necessary) (91) was linked with a project
of constructing an acceptable heritage for the nation; this entailed artistic and social
engineering and foregrounding the spiritual functions of music (723). Related to
the emphasis on single composers, Subramanian and Weidman also both argue that
classical sensibility involved a focus on the individual soloist and a de-emphasis on
percussion (Subramanian 101; Weidman 102).
A few technical matters pertaining to Subramanians book should be mentioned
here. First, at least one of Subramanians chapters was published in nearly the same
form as an article elsewhere, but nowhere is this acknowledged in the text. Second,
the book reads as a series of separate articles, whether or not they were published as
such. More could have been done to knit the parts of the book together and remove
redundancy. Third, the copy editing is exceedingly poor; several undecipherable run-
on sentences and many sentences in which a comma separates the subject from its
verb make careful reading slow-going and frustrating.
The implications of these works (along with Bakhles) extend beyond India or
Indian music. The question of what motivates societies, or societal subgroups, to
codify repertories, to select styles to stand for a nation or people, and to argue about
these questions, heatedly, at particular historical moments, remains a ripe one for
further cross-cultural consideration. Complementary studies might detail, for
example, the micropolitics associated with the rise of the radif of Mirza Abdollah
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in nineteenth-century Iran*multiple colonialisms were at play as todays Iranian
classical music began to assume its modern form. Another approach would be to
reach beyond obvious colonial situations and classical music repertories. According
to David Hughes (1992), some so-called folk songs (minyo) in Japan, such as
Esashi Oiwake, have come to be regarded as classical. Emphasis on accurate
transmission, establishment of authoritative notations and the attempt to raise the
status of the art through bowdlerisation are but a few of the processes that we also
recognise in the development of modern Indian classical music. Comparison will,
hopefully, loosen some of the entrenched positions certain postcolonial writings have
bequeathed to scholars writing on music.
I assigned both of these books for a recent seminar on South Indian classical music
and have also used articles by both authors that were eventually included as chapters
in these books. The writings generated considerable enthusiasm among the students
and without question comprise some of the more interesting and challenging
scholarship to emerge on South Indian music in recent years. I recommend them
without reservation, and ideally as a pair, for advanced students and specialists alike.
References
Ayyangar, R. Rangaramanuja. 1972. History of South Indian (Carnatic) music from Vedic times to the
present. Madras: R. Rangaramanuja Ayyangar.
Bakhle, Janaki. 2005. Two men and music: Nationalism in the making of an Indian classical tradition.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Hughes, David W. 1992. Esashi Oiwake and the beginnings of modern Japanese folk song. The
World of Music 34 (1): 3556.
Irschick, Eugene F. 1994. Dialogue and history: Constructing South India, 17951895. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Lockwood, Michael, and A. Vishnu Bhat. 2001. The Kudumiyamalai and Mamandur inscriptions of
King Mahendravikramavarmans: A review. In Pallava art, by Michael Lockwood, with
A. Vishnu Bhat, Gift Siromoney, and P. Dayanandan, 23953. Madras: Tambaram Research
Associates.
Mitchell, Timothy. 1988. Colonising Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press.
***, ed. 2000. Questions of modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rowell, Lewis. 1992. Music and musical thought in early India. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the self: The making of modern identity. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Widdess, Richard. 1995. The ragas of early Indian music: Modes, melodies and musical notation from
the Gupta period to c. 1250. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
RICHARD KENT WOLF
Harvard University
rwolf@fas.harvard.edu
# 2008, Richard Kent Wolf
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Frank Denyer: Music for Shakuhachi played by Yoshikazu Iwamoto
Single CD with 8-page booklet
Text or Liner notes by Bob Gilmore
Another timbre at03, 2007
This CD is a landmark of contemporary works for the Japanese end-blown notched
oblique bamboo flute, the shakuhachi, written by the British composer Frank Denyer
and played by Iwamoto Yoshikazu. The shakuhachi is one of the most successful non-
Western instruments to enter the world of new classical or avant-garde music in
recent years. The CD comprises four compositions, written between 1977 and 1997,
and through them the listener can follow how Denyer ventures ever deeper into the
possibilities of the shakuhachi and utilises to the maximum Iwamotos impressive
playing skills. More than most composers, Denyer creates his own unique sound
world. His music here sounds completely unlike most traditional shakuhachi music,
the honkyoku repertoire inherited from the komuso monks of the Fuke sect of Zen
Buddhism, nor does it fit any particular genre in contemporary music. Rather, it
constitutes a distinctive musical world, perfectly rendered by Iwamotos otherworldly
playing.
Denyer and Iwamoto met in the 1970s at Wesleyan University, where Iwamoto was
artist in residence in the World Music programme and Denyer a doctoral student in
ethnomusicology. Denyer is also a koto (Japanese zither) player and has a thriving
career as a pianist, alongside his professorship in composition at Dartington College
of Arts.
Denyers shakuhachi compositions are very difficult to play, requiring almost
superhuman control of this already very difficult instrument. The player is forced to
create new techniques in order to play the material as written. Denyers deep
engagement with Indian music seems to have influenced his rhythmic aesthetics,
providing his compositions with a complexity in sharp contrast to traditional
shakuhachi music, which calls for a free interpretation of time and phrasing. And yet
Denyers compositions for shakuhachi suit the instrument very well; the difficult
writing is not due to a lack of knowledge of the instrument*Denyer just writes difficult
music. In fact, the careful listener soon discovers the care the composer has taken to
remain true to the nature of the instrument while at the same time challenging it.
Denyers dynamic markings and his writing require a player of the calibre of Iwamoto,
who fearlessly accepted the challenge and dedicated a large part of his performing life to
deciphering Denyers music. This CD is thus the fruit of an intense and unique musical
friendship and collaboration between composer and player.
The first four minutes of On, on*it must be so (19778) are in a tempo and
density that takes the breath away from even a listener who plays the shakuhachi. The
melody line, accompanied by castanets and bass drum, moves restlessly on to the next
finger-twisting challenge. After a stroke on a metallic percussion instrument, the
percussion becomes silent and the piece slows down and enters a realm of beautiful
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serenity before ending as energetically as it began. Iwamotos dexterous rendition of
the portamenti alone makes this piece impressive.
Quite White (1978) is characterised by restrained dynamics at the top of the
shakuhachis range. What most strikes the listener is Iwamotos skill in playing
pianissimo in registers where the instrument, in the hands of most players, can only
produce notes in forte. Together Denyer and Iwamoto are exploring new possibilities
of timbre and expression on the shakuhachi. The tempo of Quite White is slow,
although Denyer has expressed his reluctance to write slow pieces for the shakuhachi
since most of its traditional music is slow. However, in Quite White Denyer again
shows his mastery in creating his own music. The music is as elusively transparent as
water and, at the same time, as solid as a rock.
Wheat (197781) consists of six pieces, all of very different character. Instru-
ments such as stones, bamboo slit drum, sandpaper blocks and various steel plates
employed as gongs all accompany the shakuhachi. Here, Denyer explores new and
surprising possibilities of tempo and intonation for the instrument, and Iwamoto
moves with dexterity through these novel melodic lines.
Unnamed (1997) is the only piece on this CD which has not previously been
released on LP. This 45-minute piece is a celebration of restrained pianissimo playing
and microtones. Denyer has notated the score in several colours to differentiate the
conflicting scales, so that the player knows which scale is being played. Although
Iwamoto has written on his systematic approach to playing microtones on the
shakuhachi (1994), he does not seem to have anchored his system sufficiently in his
students before abruptly retiring from shakuhachi playing*a great loss to future
shakuhachi players of new music.
Although the CD was released 10 years after the last piece Unnamed was written,
the musical fruits of the collaboration between Denyer and Iwamoto are as cutting-
edge today as they were at the time the pieces were written and first performed. No
performer today can really match Iwamoto in his dedication to playing music so
extremely challenging to the players rhythmic precision, dynamics and technical
skills.
This CD is a testimony to a collaboration between composer and performer that
took shakuhachi playing to a new level. It is also an important milestone in the
history of the instrument and an affirmation of the role it can play in genres outside
its own tradition. The popularity of the shakuhachi is growing rapidly outside Japan.
Players throughout the world, enchanted by its unique and haunting timbre, are
introducing it in new genres and inventing new playing techniques. This CD is a
monument to shakuhachi music without roots in any particular tradition. It
demonstrates just how much an instrument of the world the shakuhachi has
become.
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Reference
Iwamoto, Yoshikazu. 1994. The potential of the shakuhachi in contemporary music. Contemporary
Music Review 8 (2): 2832.
KIKU DAY
School of Oriental and African Studies
kiku@kikuday.com
# 2008, Kiku Day
Music of The Hakka: Mountain Songs and Bayin Instrumental Music
Single CD with 27-page booklet in French and English
Recorded by Pierre Bois from the Maison des Cultures du Monde
Text by Wu Rung-Shun, translated by Pierre Charau
Inedit 2005 W 260127, 2007 (14.95)
This worthy CD of music from Taiwan debuts as an internationally distributed release
in a scene which has seen a number of noteworthy private Hakka recordings that have
largely only circulated within Taiwan or*in a separate line of production origin*
mainland China. On the wider international scene, Inedits release joins a small but
growing pool of important Hakka recordings that includes part of Alan Thrashers
Sizhu Silk Bamboo: Chamber Music of South China (Thrasher 1994) as well as releases
by Taiwan state agencies (such as the National Center for Traditional Arts) and an
album of mountain songs by the Taiwanese label, Wind Records (Wu 2000).
Music of The Hakka represents a careful selection of two distinct Hakka genres:
shange ( mountain songs) of agricultural/secular roots, and the boisterous
instrumental bayin ( Eight-tone music), originally used in rituals and closely
associated with Confucian aesthetics. On closer inspection of this album, however, the
two genres are shown to exhibit a fair amount of cross-referencing in terms of borrowed
melodies and context. This is further reflected programmatically in interwoven items of
vocal and purely instrumental music found in the order of the CD tracks, structured
between a ritual horn-call and an apt celebration of the end of ceremonies with a Da
Diao (Big Tune) in the final item, Da Tuanyuan (Big Meeting).
The Hakka people, estimated at 92 million around the world, make a prominent
Han dialect group in China and its diaspora. Literally translated as guest people, the
two Chinese characters represented by the word Hakka ( ) reflect the migratory
history of this people, who trace their origins to the Yangtze River basin of north-
eastern China. Over centuries the Hakka have moved towards the south-eastern
provinces of Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi. While the strongholds of Hakka culture
now rest in the cities of Dapu and Meixian in Guangdong, comparatively recent
(seventeenthnineteenth century) migrations overseas*largely from the south but
also in part from the original north*have led to the mushrooming of Hakka
communities in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. This re-dispersal of
peoples over time and geographies has had an impact on the emergence of different
musical styles as well as re-invention and cross-referencing of contexts and genres.
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Inedits CD*produced in France but featuring the specific community of musicians
in the southern Taiwanese Hakka village of Meinong*is an example.
Inedits compilation situates mountain songs and bayin as two genres in a larger
encompassment of five, the other three being caichaxi (tea-picking theatre),
shuochang (story-singing) and zuoba (a combination of singing, theatre, dancing
and acrobatics). Such a categorisation is apparent in the fairly informative sleeve
notes (if sadly lacking in original Chinese characters) by Wu Rung-shun. Wu himself
is a well-known producer of ethnographic recordings in Taiwan, having made
multiple private Hakka recordings as well as a recent DVD imprint of the same group
of musicians performing similar repertoire featured in the Inedit release.
Wus Taiwan-specific classification of Hakka music is but one of many (Cheng 2004;
Thrasher 2008). Some of these other classifications refer to Hakka music as Guangdong
hanyue ( Han music from Guangdong), and contextualise the sub-genre of
bayin here*primarily an outdoor wind-percussive genre so named for its eight tones
derived from the ancient classification of musical instruments by material (metal,
stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, clay, leather and wood)*against quieter Hakka chamber
genres such as sixian (silk-string music) and qingyue (Confucian music).
What has appeared in Taiwan*and even here Wu and others (Cheng 2004, 4073)
tell of different traditions evolving in the separate northern and southern parts of the
island*is a development of new sub-styles through the re-ordering and
re-conceptualisation of existing genres, contexts and repertories as a result of
migratory and historical change. These developments have ultimately found their way
into distinctive performance aesthetics rooted in Taiwans*and specifically, in the
case of this CD, Meinongs*history.
Signature bayin tunes such as Bai Jia Chun and Da Tuan Yuan*favourites in the
Taiwanese festival and wedding repertory*are dispensed with confidence and elan by
a band led by Chung Yun-hui. Other pieces such as the structurally accelerated
Shierzhang exhibit a keen sense of internal rhythm and ensemble work, propelled by
percussionist Wu Chin-chang. There are also paraphrases of Mainland-originated
melodies. This can be found in Da Diao, by way of a variation of a well-known
melody-type known as the Baban pattern that is also manifested in other silk-
bamboo (sizhu) genres across China. In the vocal arena, further cross-referencing of
context and history continues. Two Hakka mountain songs in this collection hark
back to their origins in Guangdong villages such as Dapu, as indexed by song lyrics as
well as melodic origins. Yet other songs believed to originate in Taiwans Meinong
have been shown to be borrowed from bayin instrumental music melodies. In all the
vocal items, singer Wen Tzu-Mei makes the fifth member of an otherwise all-male set.
Her voice is plaintive and sweet, if somewhat too genteel for the piercing, open-
throated warbling heard in recordings of actual mountain songs in Henan and
Shandong, or indeed other Taiwan-originated releases of Hakka folksongs.
Chungs bayin ensemble featured here is a compact quartet of distinguished senior
musicians, where noisier ensembles that bear this genres name in China (for
example) may feature a larger number of instruments. The resulting performance
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style in the Inedit version has a more chamber and concertised feel in opposition to
the ambience of an outdoor ritual for which the genre is famed. While this might
potentially stem from a cross-referencing nod to the gentler, Confucian aesthetics
implied in sister Hakka genres of sixian and qingyue, one suspects that the studio
environment of this recording might also have contributed to the distilled
atmosphere. This is especially heard in particularly elegant expositions by the leader
and suona player Chung, as well as huxian fiddlers Chung Tsai-hsiang and Lee
Lai-tien, who occasionally and gracefully imitate the voice in turns of phrase.
While not comprehensively exhaustive of Hakka music as a genre, these collective
vocal and instrumental features render the album a valuable representation of the rich
and distinctive fare available in Taiwan. The island is a territory in which the
vicissitudes of the Cultural Revolution have had a limited political impact, even as
local Taiwanese cultural renaissance movements have developed in parallel, among
which a 1970s pro-Hakka Nativist movement has allowed for the retrospective
celebration of Taiwanese (as opposed to mainland Chinese) identity through
expressions of the idealised simple peasant in literature, art and music.
One imagines that the evolving Hakka musical traditions in Taiwan have flourished
in the historical setting of this last movement, developing independently of China not
only as a matter of geographical but also ideological segregation. To a certain extent,
the distilled (even clinical) chamber setup in this Inedit performance and recording
can be seen as a demonstration of the Hakka aesthetic of simplicity in the true Han
Chinese spirit (Thrasher 2008, 1516)*re-interpreted with an aestheticised
Taiwanese peasants sensibility, using state-of-the-art studio technology from France.
There are several repercussions to this, one of which can be found in this CD in the
side benefit of a certain clarity in ensemble-work and overall sound production and
recording. Quite apart from its production values, however, the sheer musicianship of
its performers makes this album delightful in its own right, forming a useful testament
to a particular brand of Hakka musical culture for any good world music library.
References
Cheng, Rung-hsin. 2004. Taiwan kejia yinyue. Taichung: Morning Star Publishing.
Thrasher, Alan. 1994. Sizhu silk bamboo, chamber music of south China. CD. Leiden: Pan Records
2030CD.
_______. 2008. Sizhu instrumental music of south China: Ethos, theory and practice. Leiden, Boston:
Brill.
Wu, Rung-shun. 2000. The Songs of the Hakkas in Taiwan. CD. Taipei: Wind Records/Wind Music
CB-11.
SHZR EE TAN
School of Oriental and African Studies
shzree@yahoo.com
# 2008, Shzr Ee Tan
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