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Jean Ngoya Kidula - Ethnomusicology, The Music Canon, and African Music, Positions, Tensions, and Resolutions in The African Academy PDF
Jean Ngoya Kidula - Ethnomusicology, The Music Canon, and African Music, Positions, Tensions, and Resolutions in The African Academy PDF
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Africa Today
Introduction
z
been a tenuous position for Nketia. Oral history was questioned as a reposi-
c
tory of accurate and reliable historical information and data, particularly
z before and during colonial occupation. The notion of an African musicol-
z ogy garnered from such sources did not provide plausible grounds for the
z
exercise of traditional musicology-that of "establishing an accuracy of
0
texts" (read: written texts) with "surrounding historical records" to "ana-
C
c
lyze and classify works" and "synthesize them into a historical narrative"
zn (Randel 1986:520). Nketia's heritage and practice could have questioned
this European position, but working in an academy founded on the power
of the written word, he possibly grappled with the implications of support-
ing an African musicology before there was sufficient publication to defend
that position.4 A lack of a dominant African art music as was presented by
Europe hindered the case for an overarching African counterpart. Ethno-
musicology as a study of music in human context, particularly cultural
context, and of music outside Western art music, provided an entry point
for African musics, and possibly prepared a way for an African musicology,
but these musics and this musicology were defined relative to European or
Eurocentric conceptions.
Philip V. Bohlman (2001:201) notes that a definitive determinant of
the characteristics of European music was obtained by comparing European
music with musics outside Europe. V. Kofi Agawu (2003b:230) invokes this
kind of differentiation as a European enlightenment strategy for locating
and managing the other-than-European. Features dominant in African
p;
I-'
0
-I Thesis, Beginnings, and Processes
There are few critical assessments of the positions, tensions, and resolutions
extant in African academies on the continent regarding the study of music
0
in general and African music in particular. Hardly any studies evaluate how
a
African music is presented and represented by African and Africanist schol-
z
ars, theorists, and performers who teach or research for audiences in Europe
0
0 and North America.6 The situation in Africa is grave, for until the late 1990s,
-u few organizations gathered music scholars on the continent to talk among
themselves or with African and diasporic Africanist scholars.7 Since the
1950s, the journal African Music, published at Rhodes University in South
0 Africa, was the lone pan-African voice on the continent. With sanctions
I
against South Africa from the 1960s until the 1990s and other problems, its
0
dissemination to other African countries was limited. Many senior African
scholars, researchers, educators, and performers migrated to the North and
West partly for better access to materials and for easier dissemination of
z their work. For a variety of reasons, Africanist counterparts in Europe and
0
C
the Americas rarely shared their findings with African universities. Little
z dialogue occurred between music departments in Africa and Africanist
musicologists, theorists, and composers abroad. Recognizing a need for all
the parties to engage in discourse to work more efficiently, I began conversa-
c
tions with music scholars8 in an attempt to bridge the gulf. It became evident
from these encounters that the strongest tensions were related to research
facilities and dissemination of findings locally and abroad while minding
both personal and national agenda. My approach has been to evaluate the
definition, place, role, and impact of music in academies in Africa, serviced
or served by the continent's scholars, as well as the dispersion of African
music knowledge and ways of experiencing music into the global canon.
To assess the positions, tensions, and resolutions in African music
academies, my case study is drawn from Kenya, though this situation is
common in other African countries. I therefore present a type of national
musicology9 under a broader rubric of African musicology. The academy and
the media are the main institutions utilized by governments to rally and
promote a kind of national image, in part as a way of asserting imagined bor-
ders and identities. They provide a framework for examining the processes
of cultural amalgamation, but the two institutions are part of a broader
sicology and African music scholars was that, given a definition of ethno- z
0
engaged in African music. They were ethnomusicologists when they stud- c
ied African music with European methods; however, it was unclear, given
relatively scant documentation available and broad spectrum of cultures,
what African methods and practices were. Ambivalence was noted toward
approaches and methods in ethnomusicology that had more anthropo-
logical or sociological reportage than analysis of music style, form, theory,
pedagogy, and performance practice.
In essence, the discussion suggested that each continent or country
had different needs for the information, and the most published and estab-
lished venues for scholarship that dominated the academic industry had
saturated the global market (this in reference to scholars from Nigeria,
Ghana, and wheresoever they had relocated in Europe or North America).
In a globalizing space with increasing economic and political leverage from
dominant cultures, the boundaries and needs of Africans might, I think,
be gradually sidelined in deference to the larger picture; however, African
music scholars on the continent are experiencing a certain transition and
desire to represent themselves at home and abroad from their own positions,
perspectives, and worldviews that are at the same time both emic and etic.
The presentation and representation is evident particularly with the forma-
tion of national, regional, and pan-African music associations by educators,
musicologists, and performers. Scholarly organizations have begun to hold
annual conferences, symposia, and workshops that encourage participation
by national, continental, and international participants. Journals, websites,
and newsletters have been inaugurated to report on the proceedings or pub-
lish articles.'0 I believe this direction will enrich and expand Africanist and
African scholarship worldwide.
a
Hyslop, the colonial music and drama officer, trained conductors in the
interpretation and performance of European choral music, with injunc-
z
tions about the proper approach to staging African music and a compara-
0
0
tive musicological approach to the study of African music (Hyslop 1964).
u- African music became a serious examinable subject in high school from
1974. While the examination included European music history, theory, and
c
performance, the African section assessed performance and sociocultural
z
0
f) aspects of music. The basic text, Nketia's Music of Africa (1974), provided
zI
m
a broad survey in the academic tradition of the times-a rubric for the
:> anthropological study of music, positioning African music in a cultural,
more than a musical, study, with Merriam's theoretical and methodologi-
cal axis: rooting the analysis of music in function, use, instrument types,
--I
0
z and song text.12 Such approaches provided rich insight in music in the life
z of Africans more than in the art and science of music in Africa. It is no
n
wonder that music students in Africa had an ambivalent relationship with
C
it (Agawu 2003a:14).
Music was offered at the undergraduate level from 1977 with a cur-
riculum that included the then-current ethnomusicological theories for
studying African music and musical performance. The program in Nairobi,
a major African airport hub, saw visiting professors and ethnomusicolo-
gists such as John Blacking, Gerhard Kubik, and other European scholars
intent on demonstrating African music theories and practices from their
research.13 The bulk of the university curriculum was European "art" music,
present also in any school in Europe or the Americas. The daily musical
life of the students and the studied music were separated in profound ways.
Methods of acquiring European musical knowledge had to be learned by
many students. This process distanced the notion of lived music, studied
music, and music appreciation. African music was therefore processed as
a cultural artifact and understood as a cultural phenomenon, rather than
a lived, historical musical process. The result was a mixed relationship
with African music-studied as artifact, but performed as life. It was, and
still is, difficult for students to accept African musicianship as viable and
0
ceiving African music as an art form, rather than just a cultural artifact. c
D-
More students entered the undergraduate music departments at two public
and several private universities. The curriculum included the traditional
European canon and African music theory, history, and practice. Musics of
Asian and other cultures were included. Since Kenya has a sizeable South
and West Asian population, particularly visible and powerful in the last
150 years at the Kenyan coast and moving inland with British employment
of Asians as middlemen, South and West Asian music has been part of the
national culturescape.
The presidential commission on various occasions attempted to docu-
ment music in Kenya from a nationalist perspective (Kavyu 1995), and held
workshops and symposia for these purposes;14 a larger problem, however,
was a lack of pedagogical output to invigorate ethnic and national music in
the academy. The broader agenda of the universities sidelined the construc-
tion of buildings for performances and archival purposes, so that, while
students engaged the music in class and performance, the music still fell
short of its intended status in the academy.
A music symposium titled "Africa as the Cradle for a Holistic and Inte-
grated Approach to Music," intended to assess critically the African music
academy and student expectation of the discipline, was held at Kenyatta
University, Nairobi, in November 2002. It included creative folkloristic
and reenacted performances of African music, such as those mandated or
-I
and critiquing the perceived European agenda in how African music was
C)
m
z introduced, presented, and practiced in the academy. The pervasiveness of
0
music in society was seen, not as a product for commercial or academic
consumption, but as a basic daily ingredient. Consequently, while local
z
0
specialists are respected in their language groups, performers nurtured in
z the academy did not appear to earn community respect as indigenous car-
z riers of genres or instrument specialists. Pedagogical paradigms for music
and music instruments from African frameworks were therefore reinforced
C
z
c
and demonstrated. Chronological developments in African music were
LA
performed and analyzed. Animated discussions encouraged the inclusion of
African popular music in the curriculum. The term popular was construed
in more ways than suggested by the global-music industry. It was clear that
popular music, whether sacred or secular, provided primary endroits for
negotiating, integrating, and articulating local, national and global music
encounters.
Scholars from history, religious studies, language, medicine, and other
disciplines provided insight into the dimensions of music: as historical
archives, language transmitter, repository of belief-systems and social and
cultural values, and facilitator and enactor of feelings, thoughts, viewpoints,
and other ideas. It was observed that the location of African music in ethno-
musicology from the "Western" school serviced the other disciplines more
than it served music itself. Texts with music in the title inferred a musical
underpinning, rather than a music centralization. Music departments were
challenged to rethink their approaches to the African academy in the study
of African music. African musicology enjoyed a better reception among the
0
For this paper, African musicology as a discipline presupposes a prac-
00
tice, a methodology, and rules in assessing, directing, or changing African
m musical behavior, or training to achieve what is construed as African music,
I
z
both on the continent and beyond. It implies a process or production of
0
events, a historical development of musical materials, and procedures to cat-
C
c
egorize trends, styles, progressions, or projections. It ought to examine and
0 describe the art of music as physical, psychological, aesthetic, and cultural
0
G)
H
phenomena. I believe music phenomena in Africa in diverse forms are appre-
ciated and critiqued for their artistic and aesthetic attributes, understood in
I
m
African terms, and exported for those very terms and attributes; otherwise,
African or African-derived and infused styles would not enjoy such global
appreciation. African and Africanist scholars have been grappling with the
z
z definition of African music. Some look beyond the sonic confines of Euro-
0
z pean delimitations to video and motion, so that dance, drama, costume, and
z spectacle are intrinsic to music's definition and presentation.
C
Ethnomusicology presents different dynamics because of the role it
plays as an alternative to the dominant hegemonic European canon, which
z traditionally repressed other musics, such as folk, "minorities," and popular
c styles. It has developed its own canon for presenting and representing Afri-
V}1
z
I "other" ourselves in time, in space, and even by audience, when we embody
0
music, orally, in writing, or in performance.
c
Insights by African scholars from the continent situated in music and
C'
NOTES
1. The use of the term academy includes the idea of educational institutions as places, but also
as specific disciplines.
-I
2. This discussion was presented as a seminar paper at Kenyatta University (Kidula 2001) and
;z
revised for the SEM conference in Tucson, Arizona (Kidula 2004). It focuses on research in, 04
writing about, and education of African music from the view of ethnomusicology's role and
3. Wachsmann and Nketia set the stage for later developments (positive and negative) in the
perception, study, and performance of the music of Africa in the discipline of ethnomusicol-
ogy from the late 1950s. Both bring African, European, and North American perspectives
m
9
and concerns by their national heritage and how they interfaced with the three continents z
z
in their philosophical, theoretical, and other positions.
0
4. Nketia and Djedje (1984:xiii-xv) noted that while there was an accumulation of data on Afri-
0
can music, these data had not been analyzed and published in sufficient amounts to create a C)
repository of materials for classification and synthesis. They observed the regionalization of c
studies and focus on select problems were problematic in creating a holistic approach, one
International Society for Music Education (ISME), the International Center for African Music
and Dance (ICAMD), and the Center for Intercultural Music Arts (CIMA)-all of which gained
momentum in the late 1990s. Only PASMAE meets primarily on the continent.
8. "Diaspora" refers to African scholars formerly on the continent who have relocated to other
continents but continue to work in and/or with African music.
9. I use the term nationalist, rather than national musicology, particularly drawing from Bohl-
man's discussion on national music and nationalist music (2004b:81-160). I defer to the
notion that national music "seeks to reflect the image of the nation" in such a way that
"those living in it recognize themselves in basic but crucial ways" (83-84), while nationalist
music serves more political, economic, or cultural functions in competition against other
nations (119).
10. Books, CDs, videos, journals, and articles resulted from collaborations among PASMAE mem-
bers to promote and document the concept of musical arts as an African view or definition
of the discipline and art. The seminal text is MusicalArts inAfrica (Pretoria: Unisa Press 2003)
with an offshoot journal: Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa, launched in 2004. Regional
bodies also exist. The Kenyan branch KASMAE was discussed in 2002. Other bodies include
the Association of Music Educators of East Africa, launched in Kenya in May 2005, with an
accompanying journal.
12. Nketia's linguistics education is evident in section 4. Nketia dedicates two chapters to
speech, and draws song texts with examples from groups in Ghana and Nigeria.
13. I joined the program in 1978 as an undergraduate and profited from this interaction.
14. Two conferences held in 2001 and 2002 brought together the variety of musicians in Kenya.
Choirmasters, rather than music teachers, dominated the event. Select papers from the
15. West Africans, particularly Nketia of Ghana, were in the forefront of this movement (Djedje
and Carter 1989:16-27); however, Euba (1969) felt that there was already a musicology of
African music going on, but done by non-Africans. An examination of musical reportage
0
-I in African Music in the 1960s and early 1970s demonstrates that analysis of African musical
structures ("folk," popular, and religious) was a vibrant exercise. Samples were drawn from
16. For example, Makubuya's analysis of organological adaptation and repertoire expansion of
-.
z
0
=
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