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Non-Western national music and empire in global history: interactions, uniformities, and comparisons*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2015

Bob van der Linden
Bob van der Linden*
Affiliation:
Independent researcher, The Netherlands E-mail: vanderlinden.bob@gmail.com
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Abstract

Inspired by C. A. Bayly’s notion of global uniformities, this article investigates the different ways in which elitist non-Western music reformers, often with state support, canonized and institutionalized modern national music traditions during the age of liberalism and empire. As these non-Western music reformers reinterpreted liberal and earlier Enlightenment ideas, they envisaged their own musics hierarchically in comparison with Western music. In the context of comparative musicological thinking, they became particularly preoccupied with the systematization of scales, equal temperament tuning, and the origins of their own music. In the process, they often incorporated claims about authenticity and spirituality in music to give strength to burgeoning national, if not anti-imperial, identities. However, beneath the appearance of formal similarity and mutual translatability of non-Western national musics, significant sonic and cultural differences remained. As a contribution to global history scholarship, the article principally attempts to establish these global parallels and comparisons.

Keywords

empireEnlightenmentglobal uniformitiesnationalismnon-Western music
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , November 2015 , pp. 431 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I am most grateful to the editors and two readers of this journal for their incisive and supportive comments.

References

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