Unwrapping the West's Self-Image

Many books have been written containing the term "Western Music" in their titles, and many courses in colleges have been taught with similar titles. And yet the very idea of such a label passes through a great many different stylistic and political agendas and generations of constantly changing sociological paradigms. The use of this preface, "Western" to describe art, culture, and geography has served the best and worst intentions, yet remains to be problematic. At best, the limit of scope in calling a body of knowledge "Western" effectively makes whatever is "non-Western" hands-off and thereby untainted by the hands of those not able to speak with authority on such material. Claude V. Palisca seems to be keenly aware of the dubious nature of this labeling in his preface to the 5th edition of A History of Western Music. He writes that the limits of Western music were generally agreed on at the time of the book's first publication in the 1950's, and "hardly anyone doubted the value of studying its history." (xi). He admits the importance of non-Western musics, and applauds the inclusion of alternative sources and perspectives in school curricula, though ultimately holds that the limits of a particular view of Western music are necessary to efficiently explain this music chronologically and accurately. At worst, the identification of Western culture serves deliberately diabolical purposes in upholding imperialistic infrastructures and reinforcing the superior centrality of the West and the inferior marginality of the Other. Henry Kissenger's essay "Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy" divides the world into two fundamentally different entities, the West and the non-West according to the notion of whether the Newtonian Revolution has taken place or not, thus characterizing the mind of the other as somehow incapable of some level of rationality known to the West.

The obvious imperialistic projects of England and France in the first half of the century and America more recently tend to overshadow the flaws latent in the better intentioned divisions of East and West. When such inhumane treatment of oppressed and marginalized peoples as we can see so readily in today's media saturated world abound as the result of unequal relationships among nations and peoples, much is at stake. The vilification of the immediate perpetrators polarizes the distinction between good and evil, thus making the large spectrum of unknowingly complicit subjects mistakenly absolved of wrongdoing or responsibility.

The assumption that such a boundary between these two worlds exists is often taken for granted, though historically there are some reasons to make such a division. It is true that for a rather long period of time, East and West in boundaries similar to those in casual usage today, namely between Europe and the Middle East, were ruled Christian and Islamic empires respectively. The Crusades of a thousand years ago marked a period of intense antagonism between these two entities that would persist until the present day. However, as natural and perhaps even necessary it may seem that such a division exist, the act of drawing a line and calling one body East and the other West has enormous repercussions. Whenever two entities are divided from each other in this binary way, each side tend to become consolidated - they become more themselves than they otherwise would without the other. The East becomes more essentially Eastern than it ever would have with out its opposite, and the West becomes more Western than it ever would have on its own. Furthermore, as one side assumes more power than the other, the weaker of the two is unable to speak for itself, defined, enslaved, and even imagined by the stronger power. Much has been written in the last century critiquing the central position of the West and it's domination of the East (which now may as well include the Far East, South Asia, South America and Pacific). In recent decades, minor transnational discussions have emerged to circumvent the futility of the margin's critique of the center (an arrangement that tends to reinforce the binary opposition). Edward Said asks in his book Orientalism, "Can one divide human reality, as indeed human reality seems to be generally divided, into clearly different cultures, histories, traditions, societies, even races, and survive the consequences humanely?" (45).

At this point, I should reveal my own position and agenda in the post-colonial discussion. In trying to discover and articulate fundamental essentials of music such as rhythm, flow, principles of modality and the psychological processes of music cognition, and to operate as a composer and academically trained specialist in the contemporary world of music, I have found that the West's image of itself in opposition to its non-Western Other has created an essentialized, historically inaccurate, Narcissistic and unnuanced reduction of musical culture in Europe and America. At the same time, German and Austrian scholarship such as the work of Heinrich Schenker have had a hegemonic effect on European music in forming the canon of "great works" in the Western repertoire which serves as the legacy of a large region and time of far more diverse and varied characteristics than are apparent in what "comes down to us."

INHERITING THE LEGACY

In making the assumption that there is an "us" and the "we" are the heirs to some legacy rather than discoverers of some vault of sealed treasure, the question arises, who are "we?" That is a truly complex and obviously unanswerable question that I would decline to speculate on. The question of who "I" am is somewhat more reasonable and fruitful, and the reader may freely identify with some aspects of my musical/cultural self and not with others. In either respect, this exercise illustrates the complexity of growing up in the heterosylistic musical climate of today's America.

My earliest musical influences were the songs of Fred Rogers, Jessie Norman's performance of Erwartung, a textbook written in the 1970's including folk songs and a few old standard elementary school songs as well as Japanese children's songs (probably included after the post-war reconstruction transmission of culture), and my father's singing to me at bedtime (Over the Rainbow, Old Black Joe and Me and My Shadow being our favorites). I began training as a clarinetist in school programs, playing forgettable for-band literature, a few pop hits and some classics. In middle school and high school, I joined an orchestra that would play from a repertoire of favorites including Berlioz's Farandole, Saint-Seans Bachanale from Samson and Delilah, Brahms First Symphony (I was shocked when I first heard a "proper" rendition), a healthy dose of Broadway; a general assortment of pieces of music from here and there over the centuries. In college, my school orchestra performed more Revueltas than Mozart, one Beethoven Symphony a year, and more Giacinto Scelsi than any other composer. In a curriculum more designed to bolster the school's academic profile than to provide "meat and potatoes" training to career minded undergraduate performers, I received anything but a typical, thorough exposure to the canon of masterworks.

In reflecting on my own exposure to a great many styles of music as well as the almost embarrassing omission of general core repertoire, I realize that the pattern of exposure to music among young musicians in America is complex and reflects an organization of institutionalized music education and performance that is unique to America. Much of the music performed by American choirs and instrumental ensembles is either arraigned for, written for, or found to be useful for, the ensembles that play it. The utility of music selection in the service of a school or community band or glee club trumps the value of repertoire as a need-to-know standard. The perennial surplus of wind players generated by the American school system (in comparison to string players) may play a serious role in differentiating American repertoire from European, where wind band music is more accessible to the skilled amateur than orchestral music.

Another area in which Americans are systematically exposed to music that may or may not reflect the canon of great German and Austrian masterworks is in the publication of textbooks, for both general compulsory music education and elective instrumental study, particularly the former. I taught for four years in a grade school that used the Silver Burdett and Ginn textbook serious. I found the books to be somewhat frustrating from a teaching standpoint in that the songs selected for inclusion were often chosen for highly political reasons, and the concept of music as serving a utilitarian, technical purpose was noticeably absent. I do not propose to make music apolitical, and fully recognize the reasons for the inclusion of songs that would expose children to the culture of Ghana, Mexico, Japan and Europe. But the failure of the material on technical points (i.e., poorly selected tesuratura, ill-conceived movement exercises, large amount of print devoted to cultural/interdisciplinary studies) makes the selection process for the music that much more apparent. What may come as a surprise to adult teachers and school board members, though, is the profound effect such benign politically motivated decisions have on children. Essentially, we have created, through manipulating exposure of musical material to children through printed media, a synthetic musical environment in which the children thereby become hybrid musical beings, embodying neither the authentic sensibility of the Other nor a traditional image of the West. Children are in this way given mixed signals about Otherness. The separation is made clear by exoticized representations made by adults, while they learn repertoire from exotic sources as their own, free of any culpability in the act of appropriation.

Thus the question of ownership, stewardship and inheritance of Western classical music is no simple one. The would-be heirs themselves (culturally educated citizens of "Western" countries studying in institutions presumably designed to transmit essential cultural material to the younger generation) have complex, non-traditional backgrounds. The institutions offer a variety of perspectives and motivations for inclusion or exclusion of material. And far from a world where the pearls of ancient wisdom are wasted on the ignorant youth, the European and American academy has produced highly motivated, productive graduates who often simultaneously embody and reject the standard conservatory curriculum. On a recent trip to New York I attended a concert featuring performances by ten of New York's lesser funded new music performing groups in a five hour marathon event in Brooklyn. Certainly a "downtown" program, and a very hip young crowd attending, the composers and performers themselves were highly trained conservatory and ivy-league graduates presenting a countercultural. menagerie of electric guitars, Gothic texts, Dada poetry and free improvisation.

POST-COLONIAL CRITIQUE IN MUSIC

Since the mid-twentieth century, emerging trained scholars from around the world have raised their voices in critique of Western imperialism. The great empires of Britain, Spain and France were disassembled, and their colonies returned to domestic rule, often with the guiding ideology put forth by post-colonial native writers. But most post-colonial critique deals with text and not with other forms of culture. Recent writings have been made dealing with music as the subject of critique, including Timothy Taylor's Beyond Exoticism, though the body of work is small. Critique of text is much more immediate because the political leanings of the author and his act of representing the Other are so clear and easy to identify. Also, the readership of such critique is able to read the language and comprehend the issues with minimal initiation. Music, however is a different substance; critique of intent, politics and representation in music are not so immediately apparent. Most writings on music tend to focus on the text of lyrics, the social peripherals to music production (which in pop music are rather immediate) or clear instances of attempted stylistic hybridity and the composer/producer's own words regarding his or her work. Therefore, post-colonial discussion of actual musical material is still painfully sparse. I find it interesting that Edward Said, himself a trained musician, avoided stubbornly the post-colonial critique of musical material in the deconstruction of Orientalism.

Music as a cultural substance, is quite a different thing from text. Sure, there is a textual aspect to music, such as the use of exotic material to represent people and places in film. And there is the hybrid studio project fraught with dubious intentions of sensation-craving record producers who profit from the native being asked to perform himself before an audience more apt to coldly classify him than to be enlightened by any particularly new understanding. But at some level, the music speaks for itself and is what it is. At some point, people are listening to the music, consuming it, engaged with it in an immediate and intimate way. Music is in a way more akin to food than to text. There is a distinct gastronomical reality to food that cannot be ignored no matter how imperialistic or enlightened the eater is. An Orientalist fantasy about the Middle East isn't going to change the chemical nature of a Lebanese dinner or make it taste any better or worse. For certain, interest in a culture or place may make one more likely to try the food or even to develop a taste for it, but at some point you are just eating and will have to confront the reality of the food on a supremely intimate level. The experience of music is the same. Even if one listens to music with the intention of demonstrating some sort of cultural association, it is something that ultimately is consumed, ingested into the human equilibrium and experienced intimately.

[this chapter is incomplete]