blacking - some problems of theory and method in the study of musical change

7/27/2019 Blacking - Some Problems of Theory and Method in the Study of Musical Change

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Some Problems of Theory and Method in the Study of Musical Change

Author(s): John BlackingSource: Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, Vol. 9 (1977), pp. 1-26Published by: International Council for Traditional MusicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/767289

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SOME PROBLEMS OF THEORY AND METHOD IN THESTUDY OF MUSICAL CHANGE

by John BlackingMusic, music-making, and musical changeThe main purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the need for acomprehensive theory of music and music-making, and for studies thatseek to distinguish musical change analytically from other kinds ofchange, and radical change from variation and innovation within aflexible system.The chief problem in developing a theory of music is to find out if it ispossible to identify an area of "musical" behaviour that differs qualita-tively from other kinds of social behaviour. The common-sense view inmany different societies is that music-making is a special kind of be-haviour, and that it is more likely to be emotionally rewarding, and eventranscendental (cf. McAllester 1971), than many other social activities.Ethnomusicological method requires that all "ethnic" perceptions betaken seriously in defining the parameters of music in any theory ofmusic making, and so the special qualities assigned to music-making andmusical experience make its symbol systems sociologically and an-thropologically problematic. It is therefore inappropriate either toanalyse musical structures independently of the fact that some sets ofmusical symbols are more emotionally effective than others, or toanalyse their use in society without attention to the patterns of thesymbols chosen in the course of social interaction. Analysis of the socialsituations in which music is effective or not is crucial for understandingthe properties of musical symbols, because it is in these contexts that thenon-musical elements of creation and appreciation can be separatedfrom the essentially musical; and an adequate theory of music andmusic-making must be based on data that cannot be reduced beyond the'-musical'.

Although there is not yet conclusive proof that there are special kindsof behaviour that are "musical", it is a useful assumption to adopt inexamining musical change. Music-making should be treated as prob-lematic, and we should resist attempts either to reduce it to a purelysociological phenomenon or to regard it as an autonomous culturalsub-system. Music is a social fact; but it is not necessarily like any otherset of social facts. On the other hand, the operation of purely "musical"socio-cultural processes could not be expected to explain completelythe various activities and products that musicologists and people inmany different societies describe as "musical" or "music" because oftheir association with special uses of rhythm, tonality, melody, andtimbre of sound as symbols in communication. Political, religious, orsocial meanings may be assigned to musical codes, in such a way thatthey cease to have musical significance and can be analysed in much thesame way as any other social activity.


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What is strictly musical about musical change cannot be treated inexactly the same way as other kinds of socio-cultural change, andcurrent sociological and anthropological theories of change cannot befreely adopted and adapted. Inevitably, 'musical' activities overlapnon-"musical" activities, but they are not wholly interchangeable. Ifthey were, and if all "musical" activities could be reduced to sociologi-cal principles, there would be little point in musicology and eth-nomusicology, let alone the study of musical change. We must start withthe assumption that music involves certain unique characteristics at thelevel of intentional social action, if not at the level of motor behaviour.That is, even if it is not accepted that there are specific musicalcapabilities common to all normal members of the species, at least weshould look for special kinds of action that are distinguished by membersof different societies as "musical".

Many analyses of so-called musical change are really about socialchange and minor variations in musical style, if viewed in terms of thesystem affected. If, for example, features of a society's musical systemare that every sect or corporate group has its own associated music andthat novelty of any kind is welcomed, then the addition of new styles anditems through social contacts cannot be regarded as cases of musicalacculturation. They may have no more significance than the introduc-tion of foreign words into a language. Admittedly, the social change mayeventually be followed by changes in the musical system, but they wouldhave to be demonstrated by more than an accumulation of new sounds.In my analyses of Venda music, I did not treat the incorporation ofsome new styles of music as examples of acculturation or musicalchange, because they are regarded by the Venda as parts of their musicalsystem. There were changes in the Venda social system, but no radicalchanges in their musical system, when they adopted girls' and boys'initiation schools and possession dance cults from their neighbours(Blacking 1971). On the other hand, there were musical changes whensome Venda adopted Christianity: drums and sounds associated withtraditional religion became taboo to a section of the population, whoadopted a new musical system. Imported European music was regardedas different and was not fully incorporated in the same way as earlierstyles. As result of this, there has been a significant musical change inVenda society resulting in the production of at least three concurrentmusical traditions, which might be called "traditional", "syncretic",and "modern". Any analysis of musical change in Venda society mustconsider all three traditions together, because the lives of their prac-titioners overlap in many respects, both within and outside the contextof music-making.The study of musical change must be concerned ultimately withsignificant innovations in music sound, but innovations in music soundare not necessarily evidence of musical change. If the concept of musicalchange is to have any heuristic value, it must denote significant changesthat are peculiar to musical systems, and not simply the musical conse-quences of social, political, economic, or other changes.Major political changes, such as the revolutions in Russia and Cuba


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THEORYAND METHOD N MUSICALCHANGE 3

and the independence of African states, seem not to have been accom-panied by significant musical change. On the other hand, a new ideaabout music, or a new social formation, may have profound consequ-ences on musical structures, if attitudes to music and social formationsinvolved in its performance are an integral part of the musical process ina society. Thus Wachsmann (1958) showed that the introduction of thebugle in the 1860s and of a band of European instruments about 1884 didnot 'start a musical revolution' in Buganda as might have been expected;and the lyre, which was introduced from Busoga at about the same timeas the band, and the tube-fiddle, which appeared in 1907, were incorpo-rated into the musical system. The influence of Western music becamefelt, not directly through its sounds, but through the Churches' view"that music itself must be spiritual in order to be suitable for thingseternal", and Wachsmann suggested that this attitude to music influ-enced African musicians and "has continued to affect the developmentof their music ever since (Wachsmann 1958: 55)."A crucial problem in the study of musical change, therefore, and onethat reinforces its claim to be a special category of action, is that changesin music do not necessarily accompany the changes of mind that affectinstitutions related to music-making. Truly musical change should sig-nify a change of heart as well as mind, since music is a "metaphoricalexpression of feeling (Ferguson 1960: 88)", which can explore thestructures of emotion and express values that transcend and inform thepassing scene of social events. Since "affects are the primary motives ofman" (Tomkins and Izard 1966: vii)", musical composition and perfor-mance are intricately linked to motivation and patterns of decision-making. Musical change may epitomize the changing conditions andconcerns of social groups, perhaps even before they are crystallized andarticulated in words and corporate action; but it may also reflect anaffection for novelty and changing intellectual fashion. Conversely, anabsence of musical change may reflect a retreat from challenging socialissues, or a determination to face them and adapt to them, while main-taining essential social and cultural values.The retention of traditional music can be enlightening and positivelyadaptive as it can be maladaptive and stultifying: the meaning of musicalchange or non-change depends on their structural and functional charac-teristics in the particular context under review. There is some justifica-tion in the traditionalists' argument that musical non-change can signifya successful adaptation to the threat of anarchy by the retention ofessential cultural values, as there is to the opposing view that musicalchange expresses a vigorous adaptation of musical styles to the chal-lenge of changing social conditions. But the traditionalists (or "purists",as I call them in the next section) have neglected the dead weight oftraditional routines, as the modernists (or "syncretists") have seemedunaware of the superficiality of merely fashionable changes, and bothhave failed to distinguish the varieties of musical change and the levels atwhich they operate, or to relate them to other changes that are takingplace in the society, especially changing relationships between classesand changing patterns in the allocation of power. It can, in fact, be

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argued that all evaluations of musical change tell us more about the classand interests of the evaluators than about the real nature of musicalchange. This objection can certainly be made to my own arguments, aswell as the work of the "purists" and the "syncretists", and to theefforts of Ministries of Culture and other agencies to promote the per-formance of traditional music. In so far as music is in itself non-referential, almost any meaning or value can be assigned to it, andbecause it can easily be internalized through participatory movementsof the body, these meanings and values can become invested withspecial value through pleasurable association. Music can be, and is,used in society for all kinds of purposes, good and bad; and so theultimate decisions about what to do with it rest with performers andaudiences, and not even with indigenous music researchers, who arescarcely less biased than foreigners.The processes of music-making and their musical products are conse-quences of individual decision-making about how, when, and where toact, and what cultural knowledge to incorporate in the sequences ofaction. But in music-making there are behavioural consequences ofaction that cannot be dismissed analytically as "happenings", becausethey have an effect on subsequent action. Performers and audiences donot, in fact, have complete control over musical situations and theirinterpretation. Although in theory, any pattern of movement could haveany meaning, and there could be an infinite number of permutations andcombinations of signifier and signified, as in language, in the movementsof music-making there are important differences. Once people haveagreed to participate in a musical event, they must suspend a range ofpersonal choice until they have reached the end of the sequence ofaction that was determined by their original decision. Whatever themeaning of that decision was to the participants when they made it,whatever meaning they attributed generally to the music they decided toperform, and whatever meanings attach to isolated movements to partsof the music in other contexts, once the performance is under way theintrinsic meaning of the music as form in tonal motion may affect theparticipants. Many sequences of body movement are not entirelyneutral, in that they have physiological consequences and evoke aspecific range of somatic states, feelings, and corresponding thoughts. Itis for this reason that a number of composers have emphasized that thenonverbal communication of music can be more precise than language,and Susanne Langer (1948:191) has written that "music can reveal thenature of feelings with a detail and truth that language cannot ap-proach." Moreover, because of the basic biological and psychic unity ofthe species, a decision to perform music can lead people to shareemotion through the link of their common participation in sequences ofmovement and its relation to what Manfred Clynes calls "essenticforms." "The emotional gestures .. .have precise representations inthe brain (Clynes 1974:52)." In this way the collective movements ofmusical performance can generate collective feelings and collectivethought, which is the basis of cultural communication. But music is notonly adaptive through its power to link the biological and cultural


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aspects of human experience and reinforce the affective bases of sociallife: by releasing the brain from the task of immediate attention toenvironmental stimuli, it stimulates creative thinking by allowing the"memory-surface" of the brainto deal with information for its own sake(De Bono 1969:130, Blacking 1976b:7).These two complementary and adaptive functions of music, conser-vative of basic human values but creative in their cultural application,are epitomized in the approaches of the "purists" and the "syn-cretists", and appear to be represented to a greater or lesser extent inmost societies. That is, there is music that must be performed in thesame way on every occasion, and there is music whose performance isexpected to vary from one occasion to another. The former is particu-larly true of ritual music, but even within a corpus of ritual music, thesame distinction may be made. For instance, in the music of the dombarites, the Venda distinguish between Ngoma songs, which ought to beperformed in exactly the same way at every initiation, and Mitambosongs, which vary from one initiation to another according to the tastesof the master of initiation and the performers. At all events, the mostimportant decision made in musical situations are the decisions to makemusic, because the music itself may generate experiences and thoughtsthat transcend the extra-musical features of the situation.Musical change must be given a special status in studies of social andcultural change, because music's role as mediator between the natureand the culture in man combines cognitive and affective elements in aunique way. The only other comparable human activities are dance andritual. Music is the best-equipped of the performing arts to express boththe ever-changing realities of biological and social life and the continuityof the concepts on which human societies depend for their existence. (Itcan be more specifically "real" than dance, because it can incorporateverbal language, which is the most widely used and readily understoodform of cultural communication. It is more "super-real" than drama,because it can transcend the restrictions of dialogue in time and space:for example, musical communication is declamatory and does not ex-pect direct answers from participants, but drama generally requiressome nexus of communication; call-response and antiphonal structuresin music are not like conversations.)The laws of nature require that an organism, to survive, shouldconstantly adapt to its changing environment, and determine that almostevery human being is genetically unique; and music obeys these laws, inthat it has to be re-made at every performance and it is felt anew insideeach individual body. The laws of human nature lay down that man canonly become human through association with fellowman (Blacking1974) and that the human organism's basic adaptive tool is culture,which is possible only in so far as genetically unique organisms cantranscend individual sensations and share sentiments and concepts.Essential features of culture are the repetition, replication, and trans-mission of ideas and sequences of action, as seen in the widespreaduniformity of the Acheulean material culture of the Stone Age. Theextension of the capacity for culture and the development of technologi-

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cal mastery have depended on man's ability to halt or control naturalchange. Music therefore obeys the laws of culture, and so throughbodily experiences enables man to come to terms with the natural andcultural grounds of his being: it is a kind of adaptive ritual behaviour thatby the special nature of its means of production combines the creativeconditions of objective technological mastery and subjective humanexperience.In so far as music-making is a technique of the body (cf. M. Mauss1936) that by repetition can halt change in a predictable way and trans-cend time and place, but only for as long as its makers are involved andexperiencing it, it has special expressive power that routine technologi-cal processes lack. This is why musical changes cannot be properlyrelated to technological developments, even though they may give asuperficial impression of being progressive. Each apparently new idea inmusic "does not really grow out of previously expressed ideas, though itmay well be limited by them. It is a new emphasis that grows out of acomposer's experience of his environment, a realization of certain as-pects of the experience common to all human beings which seem to himto be particularly relevant in the light of contemporary events andpersonal experiences (Blacking 1973: 72-73)." A bridge or a Jumbo Jetcannot be built with the emotional freedom of a performance of a Mahlersymphony, and yet the symphonic performance requires similar preci-sion and expertise. In this respect music is more true to life thantechnology: it expresses the fact that although cultural artifacts canprovide permanent adaptations to the external world, the organismcannot halt its own propensity to change and decay. Music halts changetemporarily by harnessing time through the non-utilitarian repetition ofevents.We should not be surprised by innovation, acculturation, and superfi-cial changes in musical performance. They are to be expected, given theadaptive nature of the organism. The most interesting and characteristi-cally human features of music are not stylistic change and individualvariation in performance, but non-change and the repetition of carefullyrehearsed passages of music. (It should not be necessary to emphasizethat rehearsal and accuracy of performance are features of orally trans-mitted "folk" music as well as of written "art" music.) This is why trulymusical changes are not common and why they reveal the essence ofmusic in a society. What is constantly changing in music is that which isleast musical about it; and yet these micro-changes are the raw materialout of which the changes are made, and in the context of performancethey are evidence of the meanings that participants attach to the music.For example, the meanings that the sounds of different drum-row com-positions have for Igbo audiences vary according to the social contextthat generates them (Nzewi 1977).Studies of musical change should focus on change that is specificallymusical, and change that really is change. The kinds of music that aremade are an obvious focus of musicological interest, but they are theproducts of processes in the behaviour of the species and the action ofgroups and individuals. In my view, musical changes can only be use-


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fully defined as radical changes in the organization of these primaryelements. That is why the reasons for some of the heated exchanges in"folk" music circles have been sound, but the categories over which thebattles have been fought are essentially social, rather than musical."Purists" and "Syncretists" in "folk" music studiesStudies of "folk" music have invariably been concerned with musicalchange, but have attended to musical products more than musical pro-cesses. Even if they have not been motivated by the explicit aim torecord music that is disappearing or being "contaminated", they im-plicitly invoke the notion of historically ancient, pre-industrial or pre-urban musical traditions. Classifications such as "folk", "art" and"popular" reflect the concern with identifiable musical products, ratherthan similar or contrasting musical processes. Changes of musical pro-cess have been generally taken for granted as a concomitant of changesin the product, and discussion has focussed on non-musical processes.Thus, both "purists" and "syncretists" among folk music resear-chers have attributed non-musical significance to musical sounds. The"purists" assume that radical changes in the sounds of orally transmit-ted music reflect some sort of moral decay, and that restoration andpromotion of the "authentic" music of the people will help to re-animatethe life of the community, but they do not explain how this could be so,or whether music has any more significance in the process than gymnas-tics or the Boy Scouts. Nor do they explain why "folk" music issupposed to be preserved without change, but a twentieth-century com-poser, whose music sounds like Tchaikovsky, is dismissed as unoriginaland irrelevant.The "syncretists" do not seem to have questioned the moral state ofthe community, except in cases where the immorality of their exploitersor oppressors may be a stimulus to musical production: they assume thatthe vigorous production of new sounds indicates that the community isadapting successfully to changing circumstances. Like the "purists",they may be correct in their deductions, but they do not explain theconnection between musical creativity and social welfare, or considerthe possibility that an increase in musical creativity may accompany adecrease in political status. How, for instance, do we compare the moralvalue of the syncretic South African Freedom Songs and Jurry Mfusi'sShaka with the equally syncretic "all-Black" musical Ipitombi, whichWhite South African promoters brought to London in 1976?Ifjudged byits music, it was not unreasonable of a London critic to write, "Happi-ness is a musical called Ipitombi." The music alone, or even the story aspresented in the theatre performance, does not disclose that Ipitombi isa monstrous piece of propaganda for South African racist policies and asource of great profit for its white promoters.The "purists" have been curiously ambivalent in their attitudes tocontinuity and change in music. They have lamented departure fromwhat they conceive to be traditional practices and have invoked con-cepts such as authenticity to distinguish between what is and what is not

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good and worthy of study; but they have also applauded the creativemusicianship of outstanding individual performers, whose originalitymust, by definition, threaten the stability of any "authentic" tradition.These contradictions are partly the result of a legitimately sentimentalattachment to the good things of the past and a sense of outrage at thewidespread social and cultural destruction that follows political, religi-ous and commercial exploitation; and partly a consequence of somemuddled thinking about the nature of culture (in the anthropologicalsense of the word) in general, and of music and music-making in particu-lar: for unchanging cultural tradition is dead and of no use to man exceptperhaps as an inspiration to do something else, and music without socialsituations, which by definition can never be identical, ceases to be musicas a performing art. The evidence of anthropological field researchshows clearly that even in those societies that were once thought to besurvivals of our prehistoric past, customs were changing before thearrival of missionaries, traders, colonial administrators and settlers, andpeople were flexible in their use of social and cultural systems. Inflexi-bility is more noticeably a characteristic of technologically advancedsocieties, in which a highly developed division of labour enables elitesand closed groups to wield authoritarian power and reinforce it withreligious and ideological dogma (Blacking 1970:238).

The "syncretists" have emphasized that in many "folk" music tradi-tions innovation and change are valued and applauded, but they havenot followed up the logic of their approach and considered in theiranalyses all that is heard by the groups whose music they study, ontelevision, radio, and in films, as well as in live performance. Modernlistening habits have been the concern only of radio stations and a veryfew sociologists, but they are an essential feature of any orally transmit-ted music tradition, particularly if music is consciously and systemati-cally excluded from consideration for musical and/or political reasons.If Mozart, Gershwin, the Beatles, Ellington, Indian classical music,Country and Western, and Lutheran hymns, are all available for listen-ing, we cannot ignore the positive or negative influence on "folk" musicof Mozart because his is "art" music, or of Gershwin because his is not"ethnic" music.A sociology of music may legitimately confine itself to studying thegroups that use music and the different meanings that they assign to it,without analysing music structures. But musicology cannot account forthe logic of musical systems without considering the patterns of cultureand of social interaction of the music-makers. Even if music is treated asan autonomous activity with its own rules, systems of tonal and rhyth-mic organization are cultural products, and sound structures are per-ceived and selected by individuals interacting in social contexts. Theforms and functions of music cannot be entirely reduced and explainedas extensions of social phenomena; but a musicologist's legitimate con-cern for the music in musical activity cannot ignore the fact that, if it is tobelong to a tradition at all, even the most original musical invention willto a greater or lesser extent draw on remembered sounds. It is therefore


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essential to take into consideration the range of sounds available to anymusician, whether or not the social context of hearing them is consi-dered significant (i.e., whether or not one regards music as an autonom-ous activity).What both the "purists" and "syncretists" in folk music researchhave in common is a central concern for certain types of music, and forcertain moral values that are associated with the music and its uses andfunctions. Paradoxically, the "purists" are more concerned with themorality and the "syncretists" with the music, while both make as-sumptions about relationships between musical and non-musical struc-tures which they seldom state or explain. There may indeed be relation-ships between the state of music and the state of society; but how shallforeign or indigenous folk music researchers be able to judge this with-out either more precise evidence of the connections between musicaland non-musical structures, or a coherent theory of man as music-maker? Unless music in itself has more than the often arbitrary signifi-cance assigned to it by the social groups that perform it and listen to it, itmust be treated as morally neutral, and musical change can be neitherdeplored nor welcomed: it can only be described and related to otherchanges in the society of the music-makers and consumers. As Nattiez(1975) has argued, the music is the "niveau neutre", and its morality isessentially the morality of who and what goes with it, of its performersand of its listeners. Evaluations of musical change cannot be madeindependently of a point of view or a theory that takes into account morethan the musical structures, and so they must always be accompanied bya clear statement of their epistemology.

Culture-based approaches to the study of musical changeEarly writers on musical change, and especially Hornbostel andSachs, worked with a theory of music that flowed logically from theorigins of their discipline, comparative musicology. Broadly speaking,they saw musical changes as the results of discoveries and inventions inthe realm of sound, and of the diffusion of styles brought about by thecontact of different cultures. They paid some attention to the culturalcontext of music, and they thought of the world history of music in muchthe same way as the evolution of culture and technology, but they rarelypursued the implications of Alexander J. Ellis's original dictum (1885)and sought explanations of musical change in terms of changes in theorganization of societies and in ideas not primarily concerned with

music.A global, culture-based theory of musical change has been pursued indetail by Alan Lomax (1968, 1972), but although the basic idea underly-ing his correlations between folksong style and culture is acceptable, hismethod of analysis and some of his conclusions are open to question (seeMaranda 1970). Lomax's theory of musical change is based on theassumption that musical variations are related to variations in culture,and that there are correlations between musical and cultural change.

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The chief difficulties in applying the theory arise from (a) the notion thatmusical changes reflect changes in culture, and (b) a somewhat re-stricted concept of cultural evolution. Lomax compares the surfacestructures of music without questioning whether the same musicalsounds always have the same "deep structure" and the same meaning:thus an apparent correlation between a particular folksong style and aparticular pattern of culture in a number of societies may not be valid.Moreover, a correlation does not necessarily mean that the music re-flects the ethos or eidos of the culture; it may well be counteractingsocial trends, and this could be especially important in calculating thesignificance of musical changes.This leads into the second main difficulty about Lomax's scheme: itdoes not allow for flexibility in estimating what kinds of social andcultural change are the most significant as catalysts for musical change.There seems to be too much emphasis on the means of production andlargely technological changes, and too little on the modes of production,which are concerned ultimately with the structures and quality of humanrelationships. Moreover, even the mode of production is not always initself the decisive factor in shaping the pattern of change: institutionalinteradjustments and social change can rarely, if ever, be attributed to asingle source, as Marx and Weber are said to have claimed, and "no

single form of social behaviour can be conceived to be ultimate or basic(Martindale 1962:38)." Although "only the individual can initiate orstop change and . . . any individual is a potential source of change,social conditions often place the primary burden on a special stratum ofindividuals, turningthem into the innovators or conservers of their times(op. cit.:2)." Inventiveness therefore flowers in certain sections ofsocieties according to the "requirements" of the time, and whether ornot music is affected at a particular period may depend upon its place inthe sociology of the knowledge of the society.Lomax's scheme (1968:/ passim) does not allow for variations inpatterns of social and cultural change such as occurred in ancient China,India, Palestine, and Greece. It also raises, but does not address, acrucial issue in the study of music and musical change: the status ofmusic in biological and cultural evolution. Is music a conscious humaninvention, with a determined (though inevitably unknown) time span,arising out of certain social and economic conditions and utilizingbiologically given capabilities that had originally evolved for other pur-poses? Or is it a species-specific behaviour, partly like language, basedon certain irreducible biological capabilities that have evolved speciallyfor music (whatever that may be) and present in every normal humanorganism? In either case, music-making can be seen as adaptive be-haviour in an evolutionary context, though clearly in the latter, nosociety would really have the option of including music in its culture: toexclude the development of musical capabilities would be the same asnot using language, and would restrict the full development of humanpotential.If music is a human invention rather than a discovery, a product of


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cultural evolution as Lomax implies, it could be an action autonomouswith its own independent rules (cf. Nadel 1951:87-90), like the rules of agame or an action system whose rules are consciously and uncon-sciously influenced by other action systems within the society of themusic-maker(s). This distinction could be crucial for estimating themotivation for and significance of musical changes at any given time andplace, but it is not an absolute distinction that has to be made for allmusic. In some societies music, or at least the music of certain groups,may be assigned the status of a game, with arbitrary rules, while inothers it may be inextricably bound up with extra-musical factors.Again, there may be periods in a society's history when music is treatedlike a game, alternating with periods when its structure is supposed toexpress and evoke extra-musical rules and meanings. This raises theproblem of interpreting one musical style in a period when differentcanons apply, as well as problems for the student of musical change: ifperformers and critics reinterpret the music of a former era, is it legiti-mate to talk of musical change, even though there may be little apparentchange in the sounds produced? Furthermore, could there really be nochange in the sounds produced, if there were a radical change of ap-proach to the music?Whatever view is taken of the status of music in biological and culturalevolution, neither Lomax's scheme nor the earlier theories of compara-tive musicologists consider the full range of behaviour that can bedescribed as "musical change". Furthermore, they do not always dis-tinguish between behaviour, or motor events that happen to individuals,and action, events that are intended to have consequences: it is particu-larly important to distinguish changes in musical composition or per-formance that are not labelled or intended as such by musicians, fromchanges that are intentional and recognized. Finally, they do not providea satisfactory explanation, except in terms of cultural diffusion, com-mercial simplification, or the emulation of technical proficiency, of theconcurrent phenomena of so-called "folk", "popular" and "art"musics, and the crucial role of oral transmission of performance practiceeven in traditions of written music.In contrast to Lomax's global approach, other writers have describedprocesses of musical change that are less clear-cut. In a paper on thevariety of music in a North Indian village, Edward 0. Henry (1976)questions some of Lomax's general conclusions and shows, for exam-ple: "that the groupy, antiphonal style is as important as the elaboratesolo style in India, and that the non-participatory music, although en-compassing the elaborate solo style, is much more diverse than thatcharacterization suggests (op. cit.:62)"; "the stylistic diversity of theregion's music has resulted from a cultural or subcultural admixture,and . . . understanding the diversity in song style of the region requiresreference to the temporal processes of immigration, diffusion and reten-tion (op. cit. :64)." He concludes that the coexistence of integrated andindividualized styles in India and in many other parts of the worldemphasizes "that song sessions may be organized along quite different

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lines than economic or political relations (ibid.)"; but in spite of suchinconsistencies, the relationship between music structure and non-musical aspects of culture remains a basic problem in ethnomusicology.Decision-making in musical change

Music structures cannot be explained with reference to other culturalphenomena, however, unless it is understood that the relations betweenthem are not causal. Musical change, for example, is not "caused" by"contact among people and cultures" or the "movement of popula-tions" (Nettl 1964:232): it is brought about by decisions made by indi-viduals about music-making and music on the basis of their experiencesof music and attitudes to it in different social contexts. The importanceof intentionality in group expression is well illustrated by Ruth Katz's(1970) careful analysis of the singing of Aleppo Jews in Israel, where theyounger generation developed "mannerisms" in their performance oftraditional music: "dedicated to the preservation of a minority tradi-tion" and "resistance to acceptance of majority group culture", theyexaggerated and embellished "those elements of traditional culture bymeans of which the majority [identified] the minority and the minority[came] to identify itself (Katz 1970:469)."Similarly, because of the variety and complexity of situations in whichpeople make decisions about what and how they will sing, severalassumptions about innovation and acculturation must be questioned.For example, it cannot be assumed that the more complex styles gener-ally influence the simpler ones. Not only may factors of political domi-nation and social resistance be critical, but the notion of "complex" and"simple" in the assessment of musical styles is meaningless unless weknow what and who exactly has been involved in their production(Blacking 1973:33 ff. and 116). Again, if Helen Roberts found thegreatest internal variation in melody in one culture, whilst Kolinski

found that melodic changes are most striking in a situation of culturecontact (Merriam 1964:309-310), we have no grounds to assume thatmelody is less resistant to change than, say, tempo and pitch, unless weknow the social contexts in which those decisions were made. Melody isa product of human decisions about the selection and use of acoustic andphysiological elements, and the significance of the musical variationscannot be assessed without knowledge of their conceptual base: "dif-ferent" melodies may be regarded by singers as the same, or theirdifferences may arise from non-musical factors, such as changes inwords or social function, and their intervals be selected according totheir relationship with other music in the society (Blacking 1967). Butknowledge of the conceptual base alone is not enough to explain thechoice of melodies in a given number of performances: the knowledge isrelevant only in so far as it is used in the course of social interaction, inwhich different goals and values are brought into play.Because every case of musical change presupposes a critical momentof cognitive change, it becomes necessary to locate when the changetakes place. This poses a special problem for the analyst, because the


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moment of conscious change, in which individuals make a decision tomove in a different direction, may have been preceded by a period oflatency, in which there is a gradual feeling towards change, and so it maybe necessary to study musical events over a considerable period of time,in order to get the right perspective. From a purely practical point ofview, there are conflicting needs to study a musical system both inten-sively in its social context and at various stages of its evolution.This is well illustrated by Irvine and Sapir's excellent article (1976) on"Musical Style and Social Change among the Kujamaat Diola." I am notsure whether or not this is an example of musical change or a descriptionof part of a period of latency, especially as the authors state that changesin scales and voice range "are only quantitative changes in statisticalfrequencies, rather than qualitative changes (op. cit. :77)," and that onemusical form discussed is so "susceptible to fashion and innovation"that "a new rhythmic line" may become "popular for a month or two,but never for more than a year (op. cit.:69)." But for the sake ofargument I shall take it as a case of musical change and ignore a numberof other problems that arise from their analysis, in order to focus on theproblem of locating the change in musical decision-making. The authorsdescribe how "informants" notions of "old-fashioned" and "new"song styles correspond to actual musical changes perceptible to theanalyst (op. cit. :81)" in a series of recordings made in 1960and 1964-65:"these musical changes are similar in kind, indicating a consistent trendtoward differentiation and individual display," and "this trend can berelated to ongoing changes in Kujamaat social structure (ibid.)," and inparticular to changes in the relationships between participants in amusical event. If there was musical change, how can the analyst find outprecisely when and how the crucial decisions were made? Might it onlyhave been possible by continuous fieldwork between 1960 and 1965?Were they, in fact, made before 1960 and only beginning to take effect inthat year? Or had they not even been made by 1965, so that any changeswere at the level of behaviour, rather than action? This last possibility isnot ruled out by the informants' statements, because their concepts of"new" and "old-fashioned" may have been a function of a particulartime-perspective in relation to ideas about fashion in music: what mighttheir judgements of the same or similar music have been in, say, 1956and 1969?The problems inherent in the study by Irvine and Sapir recall that anyanalysis of musical change depends on hindsight and historical perspec-tive. (As soon as the "purists" were able to perceive a lamentablechange in a music tradition, there was really nothing they could do aboutit!) Wachsmann's understanding (1958) of the processes of musicalchange over a hundred years in Uganda, depended on a careful analysisof past events as much as Rhodes's study (1958) on the diffusion of theopening peyote song and B6hague's account (1973) of twenty-five yearsof "change" in Brazilian urban popular music, though Behague's studyis primarily concerned with variations of text and timbre within a broadmusical style. The initiation of the process, however, can be describedas a musical change and given a date: bossa nova emerged in 1958-59, it

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"revolutionized" the Brazilian popular music scene (Behague 1973:211)by transforming the samba, and the release of the first majorbossa novaalbum, Joao Gilberto's "Chega de Saudade", in March 1959, set inmotion a chain of musical, social and literary events. The significance ofsome of these events was not always clear at the time even to theparticipants, but a distance of nearly a decade allows Behague to putthem in perspective (op. cit.:214).The year or two that is normally allowed for fieldwork in eth-nomusicology rarely provides opportunities for observing musicalchange and the sequences of decision-making that lead to it, and yetstudies of music history can be misleading without the microscopic datathat can only be obtained by intensive study of the cultural and socialcontext of music-making. Frank Harrison (1972), explores the implica-tions of this dilemma in his wide-ranging essay on "Music and Cult: TheFunctions of Music in Social and Religious Systems." He shows how along view of musical history can give different estimates of musicalsignificance and change: for example, Palestrina became the victim "ofan historical dead end", if we think "of what actually happened in thesixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, not of the retrospectiveevaluations of musicologists and pedagogues (op. cit. :323-4)," who laterused his music to teach counterpoint. At the same time, the long viewcan distort analysis of the processes of musical change: thus Harrisonargues:

"At no time in the course of the liturgical controversies of the Reformation andCounter Reformation were questions of musical usage discussed on the basis of suchcriteria as suitability, adaptability, or availability. They were treated only in the lightof nonmusical sanctions of a religious or social character. This raises the question ofthe meaning and usefulness of common historical stylistic terms like Renaissance,mannerist, and Baroque. Are these true entities, or are they merely concepts im-posed much later, as the result of incomplete study of behavior whose criteria wereprimarily social and religious (op. cit.:310)?"Non-Musical Factors and Folk Views in Musical Change

We return full circle to the perennial problems, in studies of musicalchange, of the analyst's perception of events and the importance of thenon-musical in the search for the essentially musical. There will alwaysbe some distortion of past events-and every case of musical change isby definition a past event-because they are perceived in the light of theexigencies of the present. The distortion is legitimate in so far as re-search into the past is relevant only for the making of the future, andprovided that its ultimate concern is for humanity and not only a limitedsection of mankind. Even if the analyst cannot exactly share the experi-ence that he studies, at least he can remember that it is experienced withthe same kind of body that he possesses. Intuitive scientific thinking isparticularly appropriate in matters musical, because music reflects whatGregory Bateson calls the "algorithms of the heart (Bateson 1973:112;see also Clynes 1974 and 1977)." It may be possible to tune into an alienmusical expression without having to acquire all the cultural clutter ofwhich it is a part, and perhaps through the music to gain a deeperunderstanding of some of the principles on which the social and culturalexperience of its makers is founded.


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Intensive studies of decision-making and of non-musical factors re-lated to musical performance may reveal more of the processes ofmusical continuity and change than historical studies that can onlypinpoint trends and significant dates rather than the antecedent socialprocesses. Many studies of musical change are not really about music orchange, though they are about aspects of social and musical life that mayultimately bring about, or have already brought about, musical change.In a recent number of Ethnomusicology, Douglas Midgett writes on"Performance Roles and Musical Change in a Caribbean Society." Iagree with his conclusions, but consider that he is not describing musicalchange. Nevertheless, this kind of study may lead to a better under-standing of musical change. Midgett concludes from his examination ofthe La Rose performance

"that the issues of continuity and change in this tradition are not opposed; notcontradictory phenomena requiring some tortured explanation. For when one ex-amines the structure of performance and the role of the shatit,el, it becomes clear thatregular and consistent change, through the inventive integration of various musicalinfluences, is indicative of the continuation of the tradition (1977:71)."The innovations reported as changes strike me as being completelywithin the traditional structure of the musical system, and therefore notexamples of change but of innovative variation. A "dialectical relation-ship between continuity and change" (ibid.) is not the characteristic ofmusical change, but of music itself. Music is the art of flexible non-change: when Robert F. Thompson observes that "call-and-response isa means of putting innovation and tradition, invention and initiation,into amicable relationships with one another (Thompson 1966:98,quoted by Midgett, ibid.)," he is not writing about musical change, butabout a feature of African music that epitomizes the essential charac-teristics of the art as a dynamic link between the biological and culturalattributes of the species, and apprehends the role of music and dance inits evolutionary adaption. Judith Hanna is surely making the same point

when she writes of "the continuity of change" in African dance (1973),as is also Lawrence McCullough, when he concludes that"style in traditional Irish music, though guided by certain conventions, is not per-ceived by traditional musicians as a rigid, static set of rules that must be dogmaticallyor slavishly followed. It is, instead, a flexible, context-sensitive medium throughwhich an individual's musical expression can be given a form and substance that willinvest his performance with communicative values (1977:97)."

What Midgett defines as musical change, McCullough describes aschanging features of a style. "Styles of traditional Irish music arecontinually undergoing change", but a "new" style, though distinct, is"never entirely divorced from its predecessors or contemporaries (op.cit.:96)." Thus, it might be argued that the differences between theinnovations described by Midgett and the changing styles of traditionalIrish music are matters only of degree and not of kind, and in a sense thisis correct. Nevertheless, until we know more about the nature of music,a line has to be drawn somewhere between continuous change within astyle and a change of style, provided that these distinctions are consi-dered significant by those who participate in the music. It seems thatMidgett's informants consider that the La Rose singing tradition has not

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changed significantly for 150-200years (Midgett 1977:56), whereas Irishmusicians consider that their styles have changed. The difficulty ofreconciling folk views of change with what might be established as astatistical norm was emphasized to me recently when a distinguishedIrish fiddler insisted that the performance of any traditional music onelectronic instruments was a far more fundamental, and quite unaccept-able, change than the introduction of the fiddle in Ireland might havebeen over three centuries ago. Such judgements are critically important,because they reveal concepts of music and of change that make itpossible to distinguish what changes are specifically musical in a societyand how they may be related to other kinds of change.Folk views can, and should, be compared with the kind of objectivemeasurements that can be made with melographs (cf. Katz 1970) andaural transcriptions of tape recordings, particularly when different eth-nic groups or classes make different judgements about what seems to bethe same music, or the same judgements about different music. If folkviews are to be taken as primary data in determining the boundaries ofmusic whose change is said to constitute musical change, then the socialboundaries of the folk who hold the views are as significant as themusical categories that they are assessing. This dimension is missingfrom Mark Slobin's comprehensive study of Music in the Culture ofNorthern Afghanistan (1976): although he takes Barth's work on ethnicboundaries as a point of departure and emphasizes the "ethnic perspec-tive", he does not always accept that folk views represent social ormusical reality. For example, he writes that "a certain confusion aboutthe identity of Turkestan can be detected among native informants,some of whom group Turkestan together with Katagan against Badax-san, while others see Katagan and Badaxsan as a unit distinguished fromTurkestan (1976:18). This is exactly what one would expect, and Isuggest that there may be no "confusion" among the author's infor-mants, that their different responses depend on who they are and in whatsituations they are responding to the question, and that "this problem"is a problem for Slobin and ethnomusicologists, but not his informants(Blacking 1976a).Similarly, the boundaries of music traditions must be established ifchange is to be assessed in the musics of Ireland and St. Lucia. If weconsider Irish traditional music and its practitioners in the context ofIrish society, they constitute one of a number of classes of music andmusic-making, and can then be compared to the La Rose tradition in thecontext of St. Lucia society. The different styles of Irish music could begiven the same status as the innovations in the La Rose tradition.Sociologically, I find this more acceptable, and musicologically it issupported by the fact that the styles of traditional Irish music share verymuch the same repertoire of melodies and may be regarded in the sameway as the dialects of a single language.The analogy from language may help us to understand the compara-tive autonomy of musical changes, though I do not suggest that theyoperate in the same way as language. New dialects can develop withremarkable speed, and the mass media have rapidly ironed out many of


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the variations in speech that depended on class or area of origin, butlanguages generally change much more slowly than other culturalphenomena, and there are no necessarily one-to-one relationships bet-ween languages and cultures, as is illustrated by the variety of culturesof English- and German-speaking peoples and the common culturesshared by the speakers of different Chinese languages. Furthermore, theanalogy of dialect emphasizes the variety that is acceptable within theboundaries of a single language without resort to the notion of change,and raises the problem: when does a dialect become a different lan-guage? The musics of Bartdk, Sibelius, and Kodaly (who to my earsoften sounds very like Vaughan-Williams) are like local dialects, butthey did not change the musical language to the same extent as Debussyor Webern. Similarly, the development of the concerto and symphonyinvolved a number of musical changes, but each of Beethoven's sym-phonies does not constitute a musical change-though perhaps a goodcase can be made for the Ninth. In fact, one of the interesting features ofthe "new" works of most composers is that they do not change, so muchas explore and extend ideas with the original set of rules that bore thestamp of the composer's personal style. Finally, one of the criteria oflanguage distinction is mutual comprehensibility, as recognized by thespeakers themselves rather than the grammarians, and a similar criter-ion may be borne in mind for music. In 1959, I found it significant thatrural Zulu farm-workers should respond positively to Venda songs in themodern idiom, though they did not know the language and had not beento school, while they were totally indifferent to Venda traditional music.Similarly, South African Freedom Songs had an appeal to people whodid not understand the words, because the music "spoke" of a newSouth African Society. (Cf. the way in which Brazilian popular musiccuts across ethnic lines, as described in Behague 1973:209.)

Towards a Comprehensive and Definitive Study of Musical ChangeI hope I have made it clear why musical change deserves seriousattention as a comparatively autonomous area of study. The concept ofchange requires further clarification, and we may indeed ask why weshould study a normal and natural process, particularly when the mostremarkable feature of culture is non-change-in fact, a subject forurgent research in modern industrial societies is the almost lethal con-servatism of institutions and retention of discredited ideas. Since thereis no such thing as a truly static society, any model of society, let alone ofchange, must of needs be a processual model. Thus if we are going todistinguish an analytic category of "change", it really must be some-thing more than flexible variation, though a radical change does notnecessarily have to be synonymous with a revolution. To qualify asmusical change, the phenomena described must constitute a change inthe structure of the musical system, and not simply a change within thesystem. This does not mean that musical change may be studied only atthe grosser, macro-level. On the contrary, careful attention to the con-stant micro-variations within the system is essential, because these may

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reveal the germs of change. But although the preparations for changemay be gradual and spread over a whole community, the observablechange itself will probably be sudden and must be precipitated byindividual decisions. For example, the first locomotive was considera-bly slower than a horse-drawn carriage, but its appearance marked aradical change in transport that had far-reaching implications and couldnot be regarded simply as an extension of the carriage.I hope that it is now clear why I consider that most changes ofrepertory, many examples of changes of style, and even cases of accul-turation, may not be significant as musical change. It should be apparentthat I want a more restricted concept of musical change than Bruno Nettl(1964:230-238), but I also want to apply it more widely. I do not wish toregard change "in traditional music" as "a phenomenon substantiallydifferent from change in a high culture (Nettl 1964:230)," but seek atheory of musical change that may be universally applied.Although studies of musical change must inevitably focus on observ-able phenomena that are regarded as musical by different groups ofpeople, the aim of such studies must be to understand the musicalprocesses that generate these music products. Thus we should perhapsselect as areas of study not particular musical styles but the musical andsocial experience of communities who make and hear music. Even ifmusical styles are selected for study, the social context in which musicalchange is being analysed must first be specified. The categories andintentions of music-makers and audience, and their social groupings,provide the first clues to discovering whether what the observer hears isconsidered musical, and whether it is really changing. The first consid-erations must be: Who makes the music? With whom and for whom is itmade? What other music do people make and regard as their own? Whatdo people hear, and what meanings do different individuals and groupsassign to it?The first stage in any study of musical change, therefore, requires asynchronic perspective, in which the activities and boundaries of themusical community are investigated, in order to ascertain the norms ofthe practitioners and to determine what aspects of action are regarded as"musical". The accounts of changes in music in St. Lucia and Ireland(Midgett 1977 and McCullough 1977, resp.) illustrate the need to con-sider folk views of the social context of music-making before comparingdifferent processes of music change, and show how it is possible, byrelating musical variations, innovations and changes to the scale of thesocieties in which they occur, to include "folk" and "art" music in asingle theory of musical change. The different styles of Irish music canbe given the same analytical status as the innovations in the La Rosetradition.No study of musical change is possible without a diachronic perspec-tive. Every case of musical change presupposes a historical process anda critical moment of cognitive change, but because the moment ofconscious change, in which individuals decide to move in a differentdirection, may have been preceded by a period of latency, in which thereis a gradual feeling towards change, it may be necessary to study events


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related to music over a considerable period of time. From a purelypractical point of view, there are the conflicting needs to study a musicalsystem both intensively in its social context and at various stages of itsevolution. This problem was illustrated by the work of Irvine and Sapir(1976) on the influences of social changes on musical style among theKujamaat Diola of Senegal.All cases of musical change must be considered from both synchronicand diachronic perspectives, and always in their social context. Partlyas a summary of the argument in this paper, and partly as a basis forfurther discussion, I propose a list of some situations in which musicalchange may be found. This is designed as a focus for investigation, and isnot intended as a series of definitions.

To ascertain whether they are changes of the musical system, orinnovations and acculturations within the system, folk views on themusic must be related to people's definitions of the musical community.For example, if a young Venda is confronted with two items of "new"music, one of which is a beer song in Venda and the other an urban songwith Zulu or Sotho words, her categorization of "new" must be corre-lated with her identification of social context and her own relationship toit. (It is assumed that by "new" is meant "new in a known context".) Ifshe regards both items as part of her social world, then the former is aninnovation and the latter a case of musical change. If she regards onlythe latter as part of her social world, then it is an innovation.In order to identify musical change, it is necessary to distinguishbetween innovations within a musical system and changes of the sys-tem. Such distinctions can only be properly made by relating variationsin musical processes and products to the perceptions and patterns ofinteraction of those who use the music. Musical change cannot takeplace in a social vacuum.These provisions apply to all instances listed below:

1. An audible change in the norms of performance that is recognizedas such by performers and audience, and is not merely a variation or anew item in an established style, or a new style in a tradition thatincorporates stylistic variation. Such changes are precipitated by avariety of factors, most of which are extra-musical. For example:a. New music is developed by a member or an associate of aperforming group. (A composer can be described as "an associate" inthat he usually has types of performing groups in mind, if not knownperformers.)b. A new social institution is adopted by members of a group, andwith that institution comes a special style of music associated with andnecessary for the continuation of the institution.c. New music is borrowed from outside and incorporated in oradapted for members of a performing group.d. Social change brings contact with other groups, who have dif-ferent music. Depending on the nature of the contact situation and/orresponses to the new sounds, music will be borrowed, reproduced, orsyncretized with existing forms, or musicians will be hired to play it.

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e. A combination of social factors, such as a tradition of profes-sional musicians, the expansion of radio programmes, and a growth ofnational feeling, can precipitate a burst of individual creativity. See, forexample, Baily's account (1977) of the rapid development of thefourteen-stringed dutar and the increase of musical activity in Herat,Afghanistan, and Merriam's account of the Flathead ceremonial dan-cers (Merriam 1967:140-46).2. An audible change in the norms of performance that is notcategorized as such by performers and audience, and is not classed as anexceptional variation, but is considered significant by an external ob-server, chiefly as a result of objective measurement. This may be due tothe performers' wish to classify new sounds in a traditional way, or tolistening habits which make people deaf to changes (as with eth-nomusicologists' first transcriptions of an unfamiliar musical idiom).For example, Venda Christians said they were singing European hymnsin the European way, and the German Lutheran missionaries wereconvinced that they were being sung exactly as taught, but in fact theVenda frequently applied transformations of traditional Venda techni-ques of harmonization to the German melodies.3. A technical development in a musical instrument or music-producing device, which may be made for purely technical or commer-cial reasons and even without concern for any musical consequences.4. A change in the technique of producing music that is not heard inthe musical product. As with (5) and (6) below, this may be the first steptowards audible changes in the musical product. For instance, a musi-cian may finger a passage in an unconventional way, and this maysuggest extensions of the same idea to the point of producing new musicand a new performance style. (Wachsmann's case of changed techniquein playing the Sebei lyre [1958:54-44]belongs to [1]because it is audible.)5. A change in the conceptualization of existing music which may ormay not be accompanied by a change of technique, but is not necessarilyaccompanied by any noticeably audible change. This is most frequentlyencountered in the reinterpretation of written scores. I suspect that, oncloser analysis, any change in the conceptualization of music will proveto be reflected in performance. For example, Horowitz's interpretationof Liszt's B minor Piano Sonata in 1977took three minutes longer thanthe 1932 version.6. A change in the social use, but not in techniques of performance, ofa particular musical style or genre, which may or may not be accom-panied by changes in attitude to the music and in recruitment of perfor-mers and audiences (e.g., Merriam 1967:156-57).

7. A transformation of the music-making process. This is similar to(5) but goes beyond the realm of action to behaviour, and thus incorpo-rates biological and psychological factors that are not yet fully under-stood. Thus I can give no concrete examples, but only conjectures.Supposing certain musical activities involve the right hemisphere of thebrain more than the left (Critchley and Henson 1977, especially Ch. 9), achange to predominantly left-hemisphere musical activities could eitherprecipitate or be precipitated by changes in other non-musical activities,


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or by a surfeit of predominantly right-hemisphere musical activities.Three basic behavioural concepts are assumed: (a) that adaptive be-haviour of organisms promotes homeostasis and a balance of parts; (b)that the innate capabilities available for music-making, which may ormay not be specific to music, are rarely, if ever, fully used; and (c) thattransformations of emphasis and in application of musical abilities arepossible. These three concepts can be reformulated from the level ofaction (cf. 5 above), and as such can be used either in conjunction with orindependently of their behavioural analogues. Thus (a) human com-munities come into being, and survive as communities, by sharingpatterns of thought and interaction (that is, cultures) and striving forhomeostasis and balance between their interrelated institutions andideas; (b) the culturally given processes of thought and interactionavailable for the production of music are rarely, if ever, fully used in asingle composition or style of music; and (c) the use of music-makingprocesses, as cognitive sub-systems in a culture, is not necessarilyrestricted to making music, and in turn other cognitive sub-systemsmore commonly associated with, say, kinship, economics or certaingames, may be used to make music. I prefer to consider the levels ofboth behaviour and action, but I appreciate that many researchers maywish to exclude the behavioural, on the grounds that too many biologicalunknowns are involved, and that although music uses the body and oftenmoves it deeply, it is at the cognitive/conceptual/mental level that it isgiven meaning in human society. Examples of transformations of themusic-making process would be: application of the processes ofmusic-making (as systems of cognitive procedures) to producing poetry,painting, religious ritual, architecture, or weaving, and vice versa.This seventh situation invokes a third perspective, which hitherto hasnot been considered, and which links analyses of synchronic and dia-chronic action by seeking the behavioural constraints that may motivateaction, or in relation to which action is taken.

This third perspective is biological.All musical behaviour and action must be seen in relation to theiradaptive function in an evolutionary context, whether this is limited totheir functions within the adaptive mechanisms of different cultures, orextended to their functions in biosocial evolution.I maintain that music comes into being as a situational extension of thematurational ritualization found in many social animals. It emerged as adistinctive form of human behaviour when the biological processesinvolved in its production were selected because of their superior effi-ciency as nonverbal communication to promote cooperative and ex-ploratory behaviour. Song and dance preceded speech in the evolution ofhomo sapiens by tens of thousands of years, so that musical processesprovided some of the earliest and most basic elements of human systemsof thought and action.Music is not, therefore, an optional relish that can be afforded onlywhen there is an economic surplus: it is one of the essential foundationsof human society. Though in many cultures music has been part of thesuperstructure of society, and in some sections of modern industrial

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societies, its production has become almost entirely mental labour, thebiological foundations of music are always there as part of the infra-structure of society. Thus, the forces of the musical process inherentin any human provide a basic motivation for both social and musicalchange. Music can bridge the gulf between the true state of human beingand the predicament of particular human beings in a given society, andespecially the alienation that springs from the class struggle and humanexploitation. One might therefore expect that musical change would bebest understood in Marxist terms; and indeed, as an object for use and atthe level of action, a Marxist framework provides a useful approach. Buta strictly Marxist analysis cannot penetrate the subjective nature ofmusic as a special form of nonverbal communication, and of the musicalprocess as a means of generating special forms of human cooperationand conceptual thought that are presupposed by cooperation ineconomic production (See Blacking 1976b and 1977.)This is why even in industrialized societies, the changing forms ofmusic may express the true nature of the predicament of people beforethey have begun to express it in words and political action. In SouthAfrica Black consciousness was expressed in music many years beforeit emerged as a serious focus of political activity. The music of the SouthAfrican Freedom Songs of the early 1950s, for example, was well aheadof the political action of the time. The music was black music, and itresonated with all rural and urban Africans, regardless of ethnic groupand language, but the politics of the time were liberal and multi-racial. Itwas not for many years that black South Africans appreciated the factthat they could not hope for justice from whites, and that to be politicaland effective in the South African situation it was necessary to beanti-white.

Changes in the cognitive and social organization of musical activitiesand attitudes may signify or herald far-reaching changes in society thatoutweigh the significance of the musical changes. Musical change isimportant to watch because, owing to the deep-rooted nature of music, itmay precede and forecast other changes in society. It is like a stage offeeling towards a new order of things.Wilfred Owen said that all a poet can do is to warn. Music is thesupreme poetry of the heart, and the algorithms of the heart may tell usmore than any words about the conscience and consciousness of anation or a community. People's gropings towards real change happenfirst in the arts, provided they are not controlled, and music in particular(as distinct from and words that may accompany it) can be a mostpowerful indication of where a society is going. As language changesreflect changes in the conscious interaction of people and changingthoughts about with whom to communicate and about relationships tothe environment, so musical change may both reflect and affect chang-ing areas of collective feeling. Music is a primary adaptation to environ-ment: with music, mankind may feel across boundaries; while withlanguage, decisions are made about boundaries.In an article on the diffusion of the opening peyote song, Willard


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Rhodes invoked a number of generalizations about music which, thoughnot yet substantiated, go to the heart of the matter. He claimed:"2. The ready acceptance and popularity of the songs are in part a result of thenature of music and man's psycho-physical receptivity to it.3. This psycho-physical receptivity is associated with what, for lack of moreknowledge, we call an aesthetic impulse and man's curiosity or interest in novelty.4. The same psychological principles operative in the re-creation of secular musicare found also in the singing of peyote songs . . .8. Music, though one of the most intangible,fluid and malleable artistic expres-sions of man, is one of the most persistent elements in his culture and least subject tochange in its basic structure andforms (1958:48; italics mine)."

Most of my paper has been no more than a re-emphasis of these andother points made by Rhodes over twenty years ago. And yet suchfundamental issues in the study of musical change have not been fol-lowed up with detailed analyses of social and musical data. Moreover,we need much more data on the cognitive processes involved at all levelsin both the social and musical aspects of music-making, before we canlocate the critical moments of cognitive change that constitute musicalchange. We have studies of unique cultural processes, such asAnderson's (1968) analysis of modes in Ganda music. And we haveattempts to understand the universal nature of music as a unique productof the human mind by Lindblom and Sundberg (1970), Nattiez (1975),Harwood (1976), Laske (1975 and 1976), and others. Until the particularand the general can be satisfactorily reconciled in a theory of music andmusic-making that identifies the specifically musical processes and theirpatterns of interaction with other processes in the production of music,it will not be possible to understand the nature of musical change. But atthe same time, changes in the patterns of music sounds and people'sperceptions and evaluation of these changes, are vital evidence in de-veloping a theory of music and music-making.The study of musical change is not only interesting because musicreflects the deeper sources and meanings of social and cultural con-tinuity and change; it is of vital concern to the future of individuals andsocieties because, it may reveal not only how people have changed theirmusic, but also how, through the medium of music, people can changethemselves in unexpected ways.[Note: I am most grateful to Bruno Nettl and Alexander Ringer, and to colleagues in mydepartment, for constructive criticisms of an earlier draftof this paper. They are in no wayresponsible for its failings, but have contributed to any improvements that might beperceived.]

PUBLICATIONS CITEDAnderson, Lois Ann1968 The Miko Modal System of Kiganda Xylophone Music. UnpublishedPh.D. Dissertation (University of California at Los Angeles).Baily, John1977 "Movement Patterns in Playing the Herati Dutar", in John Blacking,ed., The Anthropology of the Body (London: Academic Press), pp.275-330.

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Bateson, Gregory1973 Steps to an Ecology of Mind. St. Albans, Herts: Paladin.Behague, Gerard1973 "Bossa and Bossas: Recent Changes in Brazilian Urban PopularMusic", Ethnomusicology, 17(2):209-33.Blacking, John1967 Venda Children's Songs: A Study in Ethnomusicological Analysis.Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.1970 "The Myth of Urban Man," in H.L. Watts, ed., Focus on Cities(Durban: University of Natal), pp. 228-38.1971 "Music and the Historical Process in Vendaland", in Klaus P.Wachsmann, ed., Essays on Music and History in Africa (Evanston:Northwestern University Press), pp. 185-212.1973 Hot, Musical is Man? Seattle: University of Washington Press.1974 Man and Felloiwlman. Belfast: The Queen's University.1975 "Ethnomusicology as a Key Subject in the Social Sciences", in InMemorias Antdnio Jorge Dias (Lisbon: Junta de InvestigacqesCientificas do Ultramar), Vol. III, pp. 71-93.1976a "Review of Mark Slobin, Music in the Culture of Northern Afghanistan1976b (Tucson, 1976)", Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 10(3):62-63."Dance, Conceptual Thought and Production in the Archaeological Re-cord", in G. de G. Sieveking, I.H. Longworth, and K.E. Wilson, eds.,Problems in Economic and Social Archaeology (London: Duckworth),pp. 3-13.1977 "Towards and Anthropology of the Body", in John Blacking, ed., TheAnthropology of the Body (London: Academic Press), pp. 1-28.Clynes, Manfred1974 "The Pure Pulse of Musical Genius", Psychology Today, (London,July), 1:51-55.1977 Sentics: The Touch of Emotions. New York: Anchor Press.Critchley, Macdonald and R.A. Henson1977 Music and the Brain. London: Heinemann.De Bono, Edward1969 The Mechanism of Mind. London: Jonathan Cape.Ellis, Alexander J.1885 "On the Musical Scales of Various Nations", Journal of the Society ofArts, 33:485-527.Ferguson, Donald1960 Music as Metaphor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Hanna, Judith Lynne1973 "African Dance: The Continuity of Change", YIFMC, 5:165-74.Harrison, Frank1972 "Music and Cult: The Functions of Music in Social and Religious Sys-tems", in Barry S. Brook, Edward O.D. Downes, and Sherman VanSolkema, eds., Perspectives in Musicology (New York: W.W. Norton),pp.307-34.Harwood, Dane L.1976 "Universals in Music: A Perspective from Cognitive Psychology",Ethnomusicology, 20(3):521-33.Henry, Edward O.1976 "The Variety of Music in a North Indian Village: Re-assessing Can-tometrics", Ethnomusicology, 20(1):49-66.Irvine, Judith T. and David Sapir1976 "Musical Style and Social Change among the Kujamaat Diola",Ethnomusicology, 20(1):67-86.Katz, Ruth1970 "Mannerism and Cultural Change: An Ethnomusicological Example",Current Anthropology, 11(4-5):465-76.


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Langer, Susanne K.1948 Philosophy in a NewitKey. New York: Mentor Books.Laske, Otto1975 "On Psychomusicology", International Review of the Aesthetics andSociology of Music (Zagreb), 6(2):269-81.1976 "Musicology and Psychomusicology: Two Sciences of Music", InTheory Only, 1(11-12):7-23.Lenneberg, Erich H.1967 Biological Foundations of Language. New York: John Wiley.Lindblom, Bjoern and Johan Sundberg1970 "Towards a Generative Theory of Melody", Svensk Tidskriftfor Musik-forskning, 52:71-88.Lomax, Alan1968 Folksong Style and Culture. Washington, D.C.: American Association

for the Advancement of Science.Lomax, Alan and Norman Berkowitz1972 "The Evolutionary Taxonomy of Culture", Science (July 21) 171:228-39.Maranda, Elli Kongas1970 "Deep Significance and Surface Significance. Is Cantometrics Possi-ble?", Semiotica, 2(2):173-84.Mauss, Marcel1936 "Les techniques du corps ('Bodily Techniques')", Journal dePsychologie normale et pathologique, 32:271-93.Martindale, Don1962 Social Life and Cultural Change. Princeton: Van Nostrand.McAllester, David1971 "Some Thoughts on 'Universals' in Music", Ethnomusicology,15(3):379-80.McCullough, Lawrence E.1977 "Style in Traditional Irish Music", Ethnomusicology, 21(1):85-97.Merriam, Alan P.1964 TheAnthropology of Music. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.1967 The Ethnomusicology of the Flathead Indians. Chicago: Aldine Press.(Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 44).Midgett, Douglas K.1977 "Performance Roles and Musical Change in a Caribbean Society",Ethnomusicology, 21(1), 55-73.Nadel, S[iegfried] N.1951 The Foundations of Social Anthropology. London: Cohen and West.Nattiez, Jean-Jacques1975 Fondements d'une semiologie de la musique. Paris: Union g6enraled'6ditions.

Nettl, Bruno1964 Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology. New York: The Free Press.Nzewi, Meki1977 "Social-Dramatic Implications of Performance-Composition in IgboMusic", presented at the Twelfth IMS Congress; to be published in JohnBlacking, ed., The Anthropology of Musical Performance (The Queen'sUniversity Papers in Social Anthropology, Vol. 5, 1979).Rhodes, Willard1958 "A Study of Musical Diffusion Based on the Wandering of the OpeningPeyote Song", JIFMC, 10:42-49.Slobin, Mark1976 Mlsic in the Cultuireof Northern Afghanistan. Tucson: University ofArizona Press (Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 54).Thompson, Robert F.1966 "An Aesthetic of the Cool: West African Dance", African Forum,2(2):85-102.

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26 / 1977YEARBOOKOF THE INTERNATIONAL OLKMUSICCOUNCIL

Tomkins, Silvan S. and Carroll E. Izard, eds.1966 Affect, Cognition and Personality. London: Tavistock.Wachsmann, Klaus P.1958 "A Century of Change in the Folk Music of an African Tribe", JIFMC,10:52-56.

blacking - some problems of theory and method in the study of musical change

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