British Forum for Ethnomusicology

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Carole Pegg
Reviewed work(s):
Vsr van Elootem: Egyni alkotsok s trsadalmi kontextusok egy dl-magyarorszgi olhcigny
lass dalban. The Fair is Ahead of Me: Individual Creativity and Social Contexts in the
Performances of a Southern Hungarian Vlach Gypsy Slow Song by Iren Kertsz Wilkinson
Source: British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 7 (1998), pp. 155-156
Published by: British Forum for Ethnomusicology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3060715
Accessed: 06/01/2009 20:00
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REVIEWS: BOOKS
IREN KERTESZ WILKINSON, Vdsdr Van
Elootem:
Egyeni
alkotdsok es tdrsadalmi
kontextusok
egy
del-magyarorszdgi
olchcigany
lassuz dalban. The
fair
is
ahead
of
me: individual
creativity
and
social contexts in the
performances of
a
southern
Hungarian
Vlach
Gypsy
slow
song. Europai cigany nepzene
4.
Gypsy
Folk Music of
Europe
4. Institute for
Musicology
of the
Hungarian Academy
for
Sciences,
1997.
316pp., plates,
musical exx., references. ISBN 963-
7074-64-3
(pb).
This book, which considers the individual
musical
creativity
of the Southern
Hungarian
Vlach
Gypsies by investigating
the varied
performances
of a
single song,
is a welcome contibution to the
study
of
European Gypsies
and their music. The
author is
Hungarian
and first writes in her
native
language (1-89)
and then
provides
an
English
translation
(93-177).
These
two texts are followed
by appendices
containing tables, notations of
Gypsy
songs
with
texts, and
wonderfully
evocative
photographs.
Research
methodology
included documentation
by
60 hours of audio
recordings
and 30 hours
of video
recordings.
A
major importance
of the book is that
Kertesz Wilkinson breaks
away
from
previous Hungarian Gypsy
music research,
which has been
primarily musicological
in
focus, to include both social
anthropological
as well as
musicological
perspectives.
The difficulties in
marrying
those
uneasy
bedfellows
-
musicology
and
anthropology
-
are
side-stepped by
rather
cleverly allowing
them their
independence
as
partners. Theoretically,
the author
situates herself within the
"ethnography
of
musical
performance"
school
(McLeod
and Hemdon
1980, Blacking 1981,
Behague 1984,
Qureshi 1986) and,
following
Hood's
concept
of
bi-musicality,
uses her own
participation
as a
singer
as a
research tool.
On the
anthropological side,
Kertesz
Wilkinson follows
Blacking (1995:228),
investigating
musical
performance
as a
social
phenomenon
and
seeking
to
uncover the
relationship
between musical
performance
and "other social and
symbolic systems
within the same
society".
She
provides
a context-sensitive
study
of
performance,
based on
fieldwork, and
incorporates
the Vlach
Gypsies'
own
concepts
and values about
song,
musical performance and
classification. She devotes a
separate
chapter
to
Gypsy concepts
of
"purity"
and
separates
her fieldwork
methodology
from her musical research
methodology.
Importantly,
she stresses the individual
by examining
the
dynamics
between
individual and communal musical
creativity. Equally importantly,
she
stresses affective
aspects
of musical
performance
as a mode of
communication, viewing
musical action
as a human
phenomenon,
that
is, "an
ability
to feel and act
transculturally"
(93). Moreover, the Vlach
Gypsies,
unlike
many societies, use more-or-less
the same
repertory
in a wide
range
of
contexts, allowing
Kertesz Wilkinson to
investigate
the
ways interpersonal
relationships
are enacted and created
through singing.
She therefore
joins
a
growing
band of social
anthropologists
and
ethnomusicologists
who
recognise
that
conceptions
of
personhood
involve
the
expression
of emotions
(e.g.
Schieffelin
1976,
Feld
1982)
and that
performance
involves social creation and
construction
(Seeger 1987, Schieffelin
1993, 1998).
On the
musicological side, she
transcribes and
analyses
eleven
performances
of a
single
Vlach
Gypsy
song
-
known to different
groups by
different titles but
providing
also the title
of the book: The
fair
is ahead
of
me. I am
uncomfortable with several
aspects
of
this, that is, her musical
analyses
of
variations which use an
underlying
155
156 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.7 1998 156 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.7 1998
"model" version
against
which others are
measured, the
emphasis
on
transcriptions
(rather
than
giving
us the chance to hear
the music on
CD),
and the use of
oppositions
such as
Gypsy/non-Gypsy
and
Gypsies/Rom
-
even
though
the
author
points
out that these are activated
in different contexts.
Why
do
they
have
to be
polarities
rather than
multiple
choices? I would have been
happier
to
see less of
Blacking's
structuralist
phase
echoed in this
publication
and more of his
work on the
anthropology
of the
body.
But don't be deterred. It is a slim but
interesting
volume and contains some
fascinating insights
and information.
References
Behague,
Gerard
(ed.) (1984) Performance
practice: ethnomusicological
perspectives.
London: Greenwood Press.
Blacking,
John
(1981) "Ethnography
of
musical
performance."
In D. Heartz
and B. Wade
(eds) Report
of
the
twelfth congress, Berkeley
1977.
Kassel: Barenreiter, pp.
383-401.
(1995)
Music, culture and
experience.
Selected
papers of
John
Blacking, Reginald Byron (ed.).
Chicago
and London:
Chicago
University
Press.
Feld,
Steven
(1982)
Sound and sentiment.
Philadelphia: University
of
Pensylvania
Press.
McLeod,
Norma and Marcia Herndon
(1980)
The
ethnography
of
musical
performance. Norwood,
Penn.:
Norwood Editions.
Qureshi, Regula
Buckhardt
(1986)
Sufi
music
of
India and Pakistan.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University
Press.
Schieffelin,
Edward L.
(1976),
The sorrow
of
the
lonely
and the
burning of
the
dancers. New York: St. Martin's Press.
(1993)
"Performance and the
cultural construction of
reality:
a New
"model" version
against
which others are
measured, the
emphasis
on
transcriptions
(rather
than
giving
us the chance to hear
the music on
CD),
and the use of
oppositions
such as
Gypsy/non-Gypsy
and
Gypsies/Rom
-
even
though
the
author
points
out that these are activated
in different contexts.
Why
do
they
have
to be
polarities
rather than
multiple
choices? I would have been
happier
to
see less of
Blacking's
structuralist
phase
echoed in this
publication
and more of his
work on the
anthropology
of the
body.
But don't be deterred. It is a slim but
interesting
volume and contains some
fascinating insights
and information.
References
Behague,
Gerard
(ed.) (1984) Performance
practice: ethnomusicological
perspectives.
London: Greenwood Press.
Blacking,
John
(1981) "Ethnography
of
musical
performance."
In D. Heartz
and B. Wade
(eds) Report
of
the
twelfth congress, Berkeley
1977.
Kassel: Barenreiter, pp.
383-401.
(1995)
Music, culture and
experience.
Selected
papers of
John
Blacking, Reginald Byron (ed.).
Chicago
and London:
Chicago
University
Press.
Feld,
Steven
(1982)
Sound and sentiment.
Philadelphia: University
of
Pensylvania
Press.
McLeod,
Norma and Marcia Herndon
(1980)
The
ethnography
of
musical
performance. Norwood,
Penn.:
Norwood Editions.
Qureshi, Regula
Buckhardt
(1986)
Sufi
music
of
India and Pakistan.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University
Press.
Schieffelin,
Edward L.
(1976),
The sorrow
of
the
lonely
and the
burning of
the
dancers. New York: St. Martin's Press.
(1993)
"Performance and the
cultural construction of
reality:
a New
Guinea
example."
In S. Lavie, K.
Narayan
and R. Rosaldo
(eds)
Creativity/Anthropology,
pp.
270-95.
Ithaca and London: Comell
University
Press.
(1998) "Problematizing
performance."
In Felicia
Hughes-
Freeland
(ed.) Ritual, performance,
media, pp.
194-207. London and New
York:
Routledge.
Seeger, Anthony.
1987.
Why Szuya sing:
a
musical
anthropology of
an
Amazonian
people. Cambridge:
Cambridge University
Press.
CAROLE PEGG
Department of
Social
Anthropology
University of Cambridge
c.pegg@newgrove.co.uk
Guinea
example."
In S. Lavie, K.
Narayan
and R. Rosaldo
(eds)
Creativity/Anthropology,
pp.
270-95.
Ithaca and London: Comell
University
Press.
(1998) "Problematizing
performance."
In Felicia
Hughes-
Freeland
(ed.) Ritual, performance,
media, pp.
194-207. London and New
York:
Routledge.
Seeger, Anthony.
1987.
Why Szuya sing:
a
musical
anthropology of
an
Amazonian
people. Cambridge:
Cambridge University
Press.
CAROLE PEGG
Department of
Social
Anthropology
University of Cambridge
c.pegg@newgrove.co.uk
JAN LING, A
history of European folk
music. Rochester:
University
of
Rochester Press, 1997. ISBN 1-
878822-77-2.
This is an ambitious
survey
of various
European
folk musics. Six recurrent
themes in folk music
scholarship
are
raised in the twelve
chapters.
These are
the collection of folk music,
folk music in
the contexts of
everyday
life
(work,
the
life-cycle
and
seasons), song forms,
instruments,
the folk ensemble and folk
music in town as well as rural centres.
Ling begins
with that familiar
problem
of
defining
"folk" music and considers the
discovery
and collection of folk material
from the
mid-eighteenth century
onwards. The collectors introduced
include travellers who described
performances
in "musical
travelogues",
composers
who transcribed and
incorporated
folk
examples
into their
own
compositions,
and those who
collected for
posterity,
often as
part
of
nationalist
enterprises. Contemporary
revival
groups
are identified as the latest
JAN LING, A
history of European folk
music. Rochester:
University
of
Rochester Press, 1997. ISBN 1-
878822-77-2.
This is an ambitious
survey
of various
European
folk musics. Six recurrent
themes in folk music
scholarship
are
raised in the twelve
chapters.
These are
the collection of folk music,
folk music in
the contexts of
everyday
life
(work,
the
life-cycle
and
seasons), song forms,
instruments,
the folk ensemble and folk
music in town as well as rural centres.
Ling begins
with that familiar
problem
of
defining
"folk" music and considers the
discovery
and collection of folk material
from the
mid-eighteenth century
onwards. The collectors introduced
include travellers who described
performances
in "musical
travelogues",
composers
who transcribed and
incorporated
folk
examples
into their
own
compositions,
and those who
collected for
posterity,
often as
part
of
nationalist
enterprises. Contemporary
revival
groups
are identified as the latest