A Theory of Infinite Variation It is a special honor to be able to

dedicate this very personal and

reflexive work to Professor Emeritus
Dr.]. H. Kwabena Nketia on the
h
occasion of his 9o' birthday. It is excit
ing also, to reflect on the work
of my dear friend and collea e, Gha
gu naian musicologist Dr. Kwasi
Ampene, whose presence and High
life Ensemble perfo
so much joy to the Boulder-Denver rmances brought
community in the years he lived
Colorado. I do not pretend to be in
a specialist in African music, but
some point we all synthesize vast at
amounts of the research our disci
has produced and come up with pline
our own creative and respectful
and I am honored and privileged to ideas
share some here.

Brenda M. Romero I believe that a paradigmatic shift

Brenda M. Romero is professor of
ethnomusicology at the University
of Colorado-Boulder. She holds
a PhD from the University of
California, Los Angeles, and
Bachelors and Masters degrees
in music theory and composition
from the University of New Mexico.
She worked extensively on the
Matachines Danza in New Mexico
as Fulbright Garcfa-Robles Scholar
in 2000-01, and as Fulbright
Colombia Scholar in 2011. She
coedited Dancing across Borders:
Danzas y bailes mexicanos (2009).
Her forthcoming monograph is
titled The Transcultural Matachines,
Creativity and Renewal in the
Americas.
musical meaning is a form of
composition, performance, and
social action," as Kwasi Amp
on Chopi xylophone music
away from Eurocentrism to ka
is taking place in music studies,
leidoscopic glimpses
virtue of their complex, colorful of music, that by
constant transformations of life
, and ever shifting patterns reve
al the
I speak somewhat rhetorically in
everywhere. In this theoretica
l paper,
pursuing a discussion on the wond
of difference, the magic of exploring er
we may one day understand. Acco
different cultural practices that
Hernandez Salgar, however, the
rding to Colombian scholar Osca
r
been maintained by continuin
"natural" status of Western art
music has
(Hernandez Salgar 2005:7), but
g to see the Other as exotic and
different
this should not act as a deterren
pursuing the significances of diffe t to
rent intellectual trajectories.
Rather than search for universa
of music concepts that have deve
ls, I am moved by the
implications
existence, and imply that musi
loped in the very crad
le of human
survival. It is a paper that spea
c is closely linked to processes
of human
force in today's world.
ks to the sense that African musi
c is a
It was Susan McClary whom I
"Africanization of world music"
first heard voice the idea of the
and a power to gather people
together (McCiary 1998). I beca
me intrigued by McClary's idea
understood it, that something , as I
inherent to African music gives
power. T his article attempts to it this
theorize instances in which "intr
insic"
cultural practice, implying a "pro
cess of
listening as an integ
rated system of
ene alluded to the work of Hug
h Tracey
(Ampene 2005:13).

124--Discourses in African Musicology

J.H. Kwabena Nketia Festschrift
125