880 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
Bauman’s excellent summary and introduc-
tion, the thirteen articles are heterogeneous
in content and eclectic in approach. Re-
jecting universal classification systems, they
are more concerned with locally defined,
culturally specific categories in style, form,
and function. The collection is unified by
the common view of folklore as communica-
tion and performance. This clearly repre-
sents the new wave of folklore research, for
while the search for definition continues,
nowhere are the concepts of other dis-
ciplines rejected. The three lead articles by
Ben-Amos, Abrahams, and Bauman again
grapple with the problems of defining the
field, but along with the other essays, they
do not hesitate t o draw on linguistics,
ethnology, psychology, and aesthetics t o
establish the main point that the component
aspects of folklore are inextricably linked t o
their psychological and cultural contexts.
Although the essays are patently theoretical
in nature, the writers do not subscribe to
any common theory. For them the study of
folklore becomes the study of human ex-
pressive behavior, and their researches are
enriched by the expanded cross-disciplinary
approach. Ben-Amos’ paper is particularly
interesting in this respect, arguing that folk-
lore study should focus on the processes of
artistic communication in small groups
rather than on the folklore item itself. In his
paper, Hymes maintains that the study of
folklore performance and genre are crucial
to research in sociolinguistics. Sutton-Smith
borrows from developmental psychology
and literary criticism in his analysis of
children’s dreams, stories, nursery rhymes,
and games. Drawing upon semiotic and
psychological theory, Robert Smith’s essay
focuses on audience response rather than
performance of folklore. In fact, each of the
papers in this volume cuts across folklore
genres and related fields to point the direc-
tion for future folklore research and analy-
sis. While some of the concepts and argu-
ments invite critical discussion, on the whole
this collection of essays is an excellent and
innovative contribution.
How Musical Is Man? JOHN BLACKING.
John Danz Lecture Series. Seattle: Univer-
sity of Washington Press, 1973. xii + 116
pp., figures, plates. $6.95 (cloth).
[76,1974]
Reviewed by HOWARD K. KAUFMAN
Ripon College
Blacking endeavors but fails to explain, as
the title would indicate, “How musical is
man?” The reader, in the end, is more in the
dark than when he began.
In his first of three essays, “Humanly
Organized Sound,” he argues that the func-
tionalist approach to ethnomusicology is not
the correct one, yet he tells us that to
properly understand a people’s music, we
must analyze it in terms of its role within
the culture. He argues that one must live in
the culture, and preferably, be born in the
culture t o fully comprehend both denotative
and connotative aspects of the music. Black-
ing does not demonstrate how this would
assist us in arriving at the “musicality of
man.” If music reflects culture, as Blacking
claims, why is it that at the premiere of
Stravinsky’s “The Firebird Suite” half the
audience walked out in media res? How
would Blacking explain the appeal of a
Palistrina motet to a twentieth century
American audience, or why a child raised on
music by the Beatles may show a preference
for Bach, which he has heard only once or
twice?
Blacking states that music is a combina-
tion of cultural, societal, psychological, and
physiological phenomena, without explain-
ing in what ways and to what extent. More
important, he does not discuss the interrela-
tionships of the four phenomena. He speaks
of the social setting as the sine qua non of
music, yet tells of the shepherd playing his
flute, alone in the fields. He waxes meta-
physical and concludes that we must first
study the “nature of man.” The reader is left
to conclude that the ethnomusicologist has
no alternative but to turn philosopher before
he does his fieldwork.
Later, he discusses the separate functions
of audience, composer, and performer, and
implies that all three are equally musical. He
does not treat any of them in depth. He goes
on to say that Venda music is no better and
no worse than a Bach cantata, but fails to
clarify how he arrives at this conclusion. He
states that music has not evolved, and the
reader must conclude that a Venda girl finds
it as difficult t o learn a puberty dance song
as would a pubescent American, a Bach toc-
cata and fugue. Blacking fails to note that
 GENERAL, APPLIED AND THEORETICAL
there might be hierarchies of music within
each culture, and that perhaps at the higher
levels, musical creativity and performance
work in inverse proportion to Leslie White’s
cultural evolutionary thesis. Genius, for ex-
ample, has been described as 90% sweat and
only 10% inspiration.
I do not argue with the idea that culture
places limitations on musical evolution. I
merely claim that a complex culture, here
measured by the number of available alterna-
tives, will produce complex music; that com-
plexity is a symptom of a higher level of
musical evolution, in terms of thematic
structure, tonal progression, harmonic struc-
ture, though not necessarily in terms of
rhythmic patterns, since we are dealing with
the musicality and not the rhythmic poten-
tialities of man.
The book is provocative, but I would
prefer had the author expanded his writings
within his forte, i.e., that he had delved
further into Venda culture in terms of the
reactions of the Venda to other African
music rather than attempt to generalize in
simplistic fashion on the musicality of man,
based primarily on one small ethnic group.
The Folkgames of Children. BRIAN
SUTTON-SMITH. Foreword by William
Hugh Jansen. Publications of the American
Fdklore Society Bibliographical and Special
Series, 24. Austin & London: University of
Texas Press (published for the American
Folklore Society), 1972 (publication date
1973). xvi + 559 pp., figures, map, tables,
section appendices, section references,
published works of Brian Sutton-Smith,
index. $12.50 (cloth).
Reuiewed by SANDRA L. SCHULTZ
University of Arizona
Brian Sutton-Smith’s book is of consider-
able value to folklorists, psychologists, and
anthropologists, as it focuses deserved atten-
tion on a largely ignored facet of human
behavior, children’s folkgames. The book
consists of sixteen of Sutton-Smith’s articles
on varying aspects of children’s games. These
articles are arranged in four sections accord-
ing to methodological and theoretical a p
proach: historical, anthropological, psycho-
logical, and “unified.” Subject matter ranges
881
from kissing games of adolescents in Ohio to
unorganized games of Maori children. Sex
differences, roles, power, and strategy are
among the topics discussed.
The articles included in the section “An-
thropological Approaches” deal with games
as cultural forms, forms particularly related
to child rearing practices. Sutton-Smith
proposes t h e “con flictenculturation
theory,” wherein it is explained that “con-
flicts induced by child training processes and
subsequent learning lead to involvement in
games and other expressive models which in
turn provide buffered learning or encultura-
tion important both to the players and to
their societies” (pp. 341-342).Also in this
section, Sutton-Smith relates folktales to
games and extra-game behavior to behavior
displayed in games. Further, he correlates
types of societies with types of games.
The Folkgames of Children is a fine
source of concepts and methods relevant to
a topic that is relatively ill-represented in
anthropological literature. This book has the
potential to achieve an extremely desirable
effect on its readers, that is, a reinforcement
of sensitivity to the cultural significance of
children’s games. The Folkgames of Children
is recommended to those with a well estab-
lished interest in children’s games, to those
developing an interest in this cultural form,
and to those merely curious about kissing
games of adolescents in Ohio.
The Social Construction of Communities.
GERALD D. SU’M’LES. Studies of Urban
Society. Chicago & London: University of
Chicago Press, 1974. X + 278 pp., maps,
tables, index. $9.50 (cloth).
Reviewed by LEONARD D. BORMAN
Evanston, Illinois
This volume consists of nine papers by
Suttles, one co-authored with Albert J.
Hunter, designed to have us see local
residential urban communities, primarily in
the United States, as essentially the creatures
of a larger society. The citations alone make
interesting reading, with over 270 clarifying
footnotes. In two of the papers, Suttles
elaborates on some of his observations and
fieldwork in the Near South Side (“The