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neilrcoulter's review
3.0
[Review published in Ethnomusicology Forum, 24:1 (2015), pp. 126-129]
The increasing interconnectivity of the world brings with it a privilege and a burden: the privilege of knowing cultures in greater detail, and the burden of seeing cultures change in real time. Of course culture change is constant, and what we now regard as ‘traditional’ is the result of many generations of change. But many ethnomusicologists feel a sadness at what often looks like a change toward homogenisation. Over the past decade, this sense of loss has become more urgent for a number of ethnomusicologists who advocate for the revitalisation of weakening musical traditions. My own research has looked at ways of understanding the trajectories of musical traditions in Papua New Guinean communities. And so I am pleased to review Catherine Grant’s new book, Music Endangerment: How Language Maintenance Can Help, as the results of a fellow scholar’s wrestling with these issues.
Music Endangerment enters the cultural endangerment discussion with two motives: first, to give the reader an overview of the basic issue; and second, to propose a model for evaluating the vitality of any music genre. It is useful both as an introductory text and as a starting point for discussion and debate. I recommend it, while also questioning some of Grant’s perspectives and conclusions.
In the first three chapters, Grant sets the stage for her evaluative model by explaining and comparing language and music endangerment. The engagement of linguists with language shift and revitalisation has a longer history than the current concerns about music endangerment. Linguists trace this engagement back to at least 1991--a seminal year that included the Endangered Language Symposium at the Linguistic Society of America’s annual conference, and the publication of Joshua Fishman’s Reversing Language Shift. In the nearly 25 years since, linguists have brought language endangerment concerns to the public through books, documentaries and even a stage play. Funding agencies support documentation projects, and linguistics programmes in some universities offer an emphasis on documentation. Thus, it makes sense for ethnomusicologists to consider the experiences of our linguistics colleagues.
In Chapter 2, Grant suggests that there are adequate synergies between language and music to make adapting language maintenance strategies for music a worthwhile endeavour. She structures this discussion around the five domains identified by Huib Schippers in Facing the Music (2010: 180–1): Systems of learning music; Musicians and communities; Contexts and constructs; Infrastructure and regulations; and Media and the music industry. Grant identifies especially strong synergies in ‘Systems of learning music’ and ‘Contexts and constructs’, but low synergy in ‘Media and the music industry’, due to different potentials as commodities. Her summary conclusion table (69–70) is a helpful overview of synergies and disconnects between music and language. But the structure of the discussion overlooks some foundational questions, especially: what are the primary functions of language and music? If language does something different from music, then is it useful to adapt revitalisation strategies from one domain to the other? True, music is like language in many ways, but as Steven Feld once wrote, ‘Music is somewhat like and almost the same as many things, depending on how good your imagination is’ (1974: 202). We must be cautious in designing an advocacy approach based on surface-level similarities between language and music.
A particular language is vital for a community in ways that may not transfer directly to particular music genres. The Dakar Framework for Action (UNESCO 2000), for example, links literacy directly to the eradication of poverty. Although I agree with Grant that musical diversity--and especially a community’s freedom of musical choice--is important, I do not believe that musical vitality carries the same weight as language choice and literacy. Grant suggests several reasons why people should care about music endangerment—for the sake of humanity, diversity, culture, the people and society (7–10)--but these arguments are most convincing for people who already believe in the value of musical diversity. The need to safeguard musical diversity comes across as less urgent than the importance of linguistic diversity.
Lamenting the anecdotal nature of much ethnomusicological ‘evidence’ for music vitality, Grant proposes an evaluative framework intended to quantify observations. The resulting Music Vitality and Endangerment Framework (MVEF) is adapted from UNESCO’s(2003) ‘Language Vitality and Endangerment’ paper. The MVEF considers 12 factors that affect music vitality, including: intergenerational transmis-sion; numbers of practitioners and participants; changes in context and function; engagement with mass media; availability of resources; government policies; attitudes toward the music; and documentation. The MVEF leads naturally to ethnographic questions, opening up many fruitful avenues for further conversation--regardless of whether the ultimate goal is revitalisation. The issues raised will help a community see how their choices in a number of domains can affect their musical options. I appreciate Grant’s emphasis, in the MVEF and throughout the book, on understanding music endangerment through collaborative research and community conversation.
Grant’s goal of objectivity in evaluation of music genres is not completely realised, but that will be true of any such research tool. The inherent subjectivity in her survey--for example, requiring the researcher to choose between ‘The genre displays weakness’ and ‘The genre displays significant weakness’—is not necessarily a drawback, but it does introduce difficulties for Grant’s recommendations for next steps. Her recommendations are: develop a tool; undertake a scoping study; implement a public advocacy initiative; within ethnomusicology, promote the need for consolidated response; establish a music-specific resource network; and develop an independent, international non-profit foundation (170–1). The MVEF’s subjectivity makes the ‘scoping study’ problematic, because of the vast number of variables in any context that will disallow meaningful comparison of musical vitality on a global scale. Such a ‘key to all mythologies’ would not necessarily help those minority communities whose musical freedoms are threatened.
The main point about which I disagree with Grant is her focus on individual music genres as objects that need to be saved. What is at stake in music endangerment is not so much the loss of any particular genre, but rather the diminishment of opportunities for community music grooving (to borrow from Charles Keil). Musical choice is more flexible than language choice in key ways, and this reduces the pressure on any specific music genre. The emphasis is instead on the freedom of a community to express itself in the ways that are most meaningful to them. The musics will change over time--even, sometimes, seeming to ‘die’. The crux of this discussion, for me, is not the life or death of a genre, but the opportunities available for community members to express themselves together musically.
Even though Grant and I follow slightly different roads, we want to end up at much the same destination: that people benefit from learning to appreciate their own and others’ musical heritages and preferences, and that the world’s policies are fair and sensitive towards the musicking of all communities. Therefore, I recommend Music Endangerment as a good contribution to applied ethnomusicology. Grant’s desire for discourse and policies that strengthen communities to make wise choices is an admirable call to follow. This book is an excellent reminder to look at the big picture, using our skills and resources to benefit all communities.