Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T09:43:46.016Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ethnomusicology in Radio and Television

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Francesco Pellizzi

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The idea of this study stems from two considerations: on one hand Western civilization has brought the audio-visual recording and broadcasting media to such a level of technical perfection that it has become possible to collect and broadcast documents regarding primitive peoples even in the most difficult conditions; on the other hand ever-widening strata of the “civilized” world are interested in the products, attitudes and spiritual world of primitive peoples which these technical media are now able to make known to them.

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Diogenes , Volume 16 , Issue 61 , March 1968 , pp. 81 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © 1968 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Edited two years ago on request of UNESCO this text constitutes a con tribution to the Table Ronde de Salzbourg (22-29 august 1965) which dealt with the problems of musical spectacles for radio and television. Its aim there fore was to ask the non-specialists to bring their attention to bear on the problems posed by the study of the manifestations of music and dance of the peoples with an oral tradition and their usefulness as "spectacles" documented for a Western public. Preparing the text today for publication, we have added only the notes and a few clarifying details because it is not possible to rewrite it entirely in order to adapt it to the exigencies of readers of Diogenes who are more numerous and more specialized.

We wish to express our gratitude to Miss Nicole Becquemont whose help in correcting the French form of this piece was precious.

2 Theodor Koch-Grünberg, Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern, Reise in Nord-West Brasilien, I, Berlin 1909-10, pp. 188-198.

3 Carl E. Seashore, Introduction to Milton Metfessel, Phonophotography in Folk Music, (Chapel Hill) 1928, pp. 16-17.

4 Claudie Marcel-Dubois, "Principes essentiels de l'enquête ethnomusicolo gique: quelques applications françaises," Journal of the International Folk Music Council, XIII (1961), p. 14.

5 Marius Schneider, "Le rôle de la musique dans la mythologie et les rites des civilizations non européennes," Histoire de la Musique, Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, I, Paris, 1960, p. 131.

6 Gilbert Rouget, "Un chromatisme africain," L'Homme, Sept.-Dec. 1961, p. 35.

7 Gilbert Rouget, "Musique de l'Afrique Noire," Histoire de la Musique cit, pp. 235-236.

8 Marcel Griaule, Dieu d'eau. Entretien avec Ogotemméli, Paris, 1948. Griaule notes in his preface (p. 9): "Certainly, this people does not always have a profound knowledge of its gestures and prayers but in this it resembles all peoples. One would not charge the Christian dogma of transubstantiation with being esoteric on the pretext that the man of the street does not know this word and has only the vaguest ideas on the subject."

9 Gilbert Rouget, "Un chromatisme africain" cit., p. 33.

10 Mervin Evan McLean, "Oral Transmission in Maori Music," Journal of the International Folk Music Council, XIII (1961), p. 59.

11 Ibid., p. 60.

12 The forms of "primitive" music have a history as long as those of European music: one cannot be too careful in the formulation of genetic hypotheses of this type.

13 Marius Schneider, "Le rôle de la musique…" cit., p. 192.

14 Marius Schneider, El Origen Musical de los Animales Simbolos en la Mito logia y la Escultura Antigua, Barcelona 1946, p. 5.

15 Marius Schneider, El Origen… cit., pp. 17-18.

16 Marius Schneider, El Origen… cit., p. 16. We have the impression that this major work by the great and learned German is not yet well-known or fully appreciated even by specialists of ethnomusicology: for this reason we quote long passages from it.

17 Enrique Llano and Marcel de Clerck, Danses indiennes du Mexique, Bruxelles, 1939, p. 19.

18 Alain Daniélou, "Valeurs éthiques et spirituelles en musique," Journal of the International Folk Music Council, XVI (1964), pp. 12-13.

19 Alain Daniélou, op. cit., p. 12.

20 Because technical progress has made possible the construction of rather manageable synchronous moving-picture cameras, it has become possible to record at the same time, or better still, on the same time, dances and music. This is not always without technical or other problems when it is a question of recording primitive rituals in the often very difficult conditions of the area of ethnographical inquiry as has been clearly indicated by G. Rouget who, with the collaboration of Jean Rouch, made one of the first perfectly synchronous sound-motion pictures. The subject of inquiry was a group of Dogon beaters. In writing about this experience Rouget said, among other things that "… syn chronous cinema can render the greatest services to ethnomusicological research," and that the documents collected "enable us to show that films made in this way, by making evident the relationships which exist between music and the movements from which it springs, can play a determinant role in the study destined to make up an inventory of the different sounds put in motion by a given music; a study, as indispensable to musicology as it is to linguistics, that of the articulative movements for the inventory of the sounds of a language." Rouget, "Un film experimental: batteries Dogón. Eléments pour une étude des rythmes," L'Homme, April-June 1965, pp. 126-7.

21 Alain Daniélou, op. cit., p. 12.

22 Marius Schneider, El Origen… cit., p. 5.

23 Simone Dreyfus, "Formes de musiques rituelles chez les Indiens d'Amérique du Sud," Actes du VIe Congrès International des Sciences Anthropologiques et Ethnologiques, Paris 1960, T. II, vol. 2, p. 101.

24 Gilbert Rouget, "A propos de la forme dans les musiques de tradition orale," Les Colloques de Wegimont, vol. I, 1954-55, Paris-Bruxelles, 1956, p. 142.

25 Ettore Biocca, Viaggi fra gli Indi, Alto Rio Negro - Alto Orinoco. Appunti di un biologo, Roma, 1965-66, vol. IV.

26 A.R. Wallace, A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, London, 1853, pp. 348-9.

27 It is necessary to keep in mind, however, that Oriental doctrines and practices have only an indirect influence on the works of the best composers of the Amer ican "school" (as it does on all compositions by the serious composers who have been inspired by them); for these it is a question in fact of finding a new way of thinking about music in relation to our culture (and from which we cannot escape in any case), much more than borrowing ready-made determined musical modes and materials. The American composer Morton Feldman was asked at a lecture if he did not think that Japanese music had had a great influence on his own music. He answered by telling how a young Japanese composer, after having heard recordings of all his compositions, had exclaimed: "But to my ear that sounds absolutely like Beethoven!"

28 Simone Dreyfus, op. cit., p. 103.

29 G. Rouget, "Un chromatisme…" cit., pp. 40 and 46.

30 Ibid., p. 32.

31 M. Schneider, El Origen… cit., p. 28.

32 This seems true also for the doctrines which appear more esoteric as Marcel Griaule has made very clear à propos of the cosmology and the rituals of the Dogons of Africa in a work we have already quoted: "Although it is not known in its entirety but by the old and certain initiates, this doctrine is not esoteric because cach man who has reached old age can know it. On the other hand, Totemic priests of all ages know the parts corresponding to their speciality. More over the rites relating to these groups of beliefs are practiced by the people as a whole." (M. Griaule, op. cit., p. 9).

33 A. Daniélou, op. cit., p. 13.

34 E. Llano and M. de Clerck, op. cit., p. 18.

35 Peter Crossley-Holland, "Preservation and Renewal of Traditional Music," Journal of the International Folk Music Council, XVI (1964), p. 18. The "manifestation of genius" of which Crossley-Holland speaks cannot produce itself, it seems to us, but within a culture which can find the sense of its totality. Now, this culture would not know how to form itself by means of recuperating elements from completed or exotic civilizations. This is admirably expressed in a page by René Daumal, taken from his essay Les limites du langage philosophique et les savoirs traditionnels:

"It is impossible to create out of nothing a traditional knowledge embracing all human thought and activity. But it is also not possible to imitate a foreign tradition, nor to give life to a dead tradition; for peoples as for the individual; the law of one may be the death of the other. Nonetheless, the analogy of the Hindu tradition may suggest to us that traditional knowledge must always be built on the basis of a collective myth linked to institutions and maintaining concrete relations with nature and society; I see at present only scientific know ledge, linked to technical development and modern economic evolution, which tends to answer to this definition: this is a mythology and not the literary genre which one commonly refers to by this name. Perhaps it is on this basis that a new culture can be edified. It is difficult for us to conceive of our scientific knowledge as a ‘myth' since we are so envelopped by it. But the ‘myths' of the ancients were no more ‘mythical' for them." (René Daumal, Chaque fois que l'aube parait, Paris, 1953, pp. 160-1).

36 In writing this we think above all of the rites of Haitian Voodoo. Is there need to recall that these far too general considerations could not be adapted such as they are without nuances and clarifications to the very different examples of rituals of possession that there are in the world? As Rouget says: "There are too many different types of possessions and consequently too many different types of music of possession for it to be possible to generalize on the basis of one single example…" (G. Rouget, "A propos de la forme…" cit., p. 142). But what seems important for our present subject is that to our knowledge there exists in no culture of oral tradition possessions which do not require more or less codified emissions of sounds and body movements in relation to these musical manifestations.

37 M. Schneider, El Origen… cit., p. 19.

38 G. Rouget, "A propos de la forme…" cit. p. 143 n. 1.

39 Report edited upon request of the UNESCO.

40 Antonin Artaud, Le Théâtre et son double, Œuvres complètes, IV, Paris, 1964, p. 11.