Roots

Thanks so much for making my project your latest 'enthusiasm', that's a really nice piece and very much appreciated.  I'm sorry I never got back to you with an essay for Musical Traditions, but maybe I can make that up to you now.  The following has been hanging around for a while in my computer after having been turned down by the Ethnomusicology Journal last year - a briefer version was read at the ethno meetings in 2005 and it's oriented toward their 50th anniversary celebration that took place that year.  My attempt to set them straight on the matter of their own roots apparently didn't set well with the editor.  But it might work for you!

I would like to dedicate this essay to two remarkable individuals who had a profound impact on my life: David McAllester, who introduced me to ethnomusicology and ethnography and a great deal more of tremendous value, which changed my life forever; Alan Lomax, not only a mentor but almost a second father.  Much of what I have to say in the following presentation stems from his insights, his ideas, and the research we did based on them, both together and apart.

Ethnomusicology is rooted in the question of roots, the roots of music, its deepest and most perennially elusive mystery.  The pioneers were rooted in the search for roots but may have stumbled over them.  Currently, however, the field seems to have lost touch both with its roots in the search for roots and the roots at the root of that search.  Is postmodern skepticism of 'grand metanarratives' at the root of the current rootlessness?  But postmodernism is no longer (post)modern.  Fashions change, roots remain entrenched.

While this conference commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the Society for Ethnomusicology, there is another anniversary to be considered, for it is now one hundred years since the publication, in 1905, of Erich von Hornbostel's pivotal essay, Die Probleme der vergleichenden Musikwissenschaft.  Noting at the outset that '[a] new, specialized area of study faces the need to justify its existence', Hornbostel declares his intention to demonstrate 'just how the problems of comparative musicology lead directly to the most general questions, namely, the origin and growth of music and the nature of the musically beautiful.'  For Hornbostel, 'systematization and theory depend on comparison.  In this sense, all learning is comparative, and comparison is a general, and not a special method.'  Knowledge gained from comparative studies, 'yields new principles of classification and at the same time stimulates new and specialized investigations' (von Hornbostel 1975:249, 250).  So far so good, perhaps.

But the impetuous 28 year old had greater ambitions: 'we would like to uncover the remotest, darkest past and unveil, in the wealth of the present, the ageless universal in music ...'  To such an end, '[w]e may draw parallels - if with some caution - between the condition of 'primitive' peoples and earlier stages of our own culture.  We would then have to seek analogies in primitive music to the music of our ancestors' (von Hornbostel 1975:269).

For almost all ethnomusicologists (and anthropologists) today such ambitions have become anathema.  For one thing, they would appear to smack of colonialist attitudes toward tribal peoples, too often either dismissed as 'primitives', or offensively pigeonholed as 'living fossils' or 'stone-age relics.' For another, they seem hopelessly unattainable.  Unlike stone tools, burials, pottery, cave paintings, etc., music has a way of vanishing into thin air.  Some instruments have been preserved from various periods, but no one can say for sure what they played or how.  Considering the many methodological problems entailed, not to mention the relative scarcity of data, such grandiose notions came to seem quite hopeless.

In contrast to the old comparative musicology, which so often adopted a broad-based theoretical perspective immersed in 'Western' values and interests, modern ethnomusicologists seek instead, in the words of Jonathan Stock, 'to understand the topic from the perspective of the native 'informant'' (Stock 2002).  Consequently, they are 'as interested in the people making the music as in the sounds of music they are making, and we try to consider the whole process and contexts through and within which music is imagined, discussed and made, not just the musical sound structures themselves' (Stock date unknown).

Ironically, it was one of the early pioneers of this very approach, a tireless collector and interviewer whose attention had been focused almost exclusively on his informants and their immediate social and political context, who ultimately felt the need for an extension of such contexts into more broadly defined historical, geographical and social areas, therefore initiating broad-based comparative studies of precisely the sort that had so recently been consigned to the dustbin of musicology.  I can't elaborate here on the methodological and ideological clashes that ensued or the many controversies that arose from and eventually thwarted the Cantometrics project and its perennially embattled founder, Alan Lomax.

When I worked as Lomax's assistant, back in the early '60s, we felt confident we could overcome at least some of the difficulties faced by our hoary comparativist forbears.  For one thing, far more recorded music was available, from almost every corner of the world, which meant we could fill in many of the blanks over which they could only speculate.  For another, as was becoming increasingly evident, the research strategies of our predecessors, focusing on scales, modes, tunings, melody types, etc, while useful for the analysis of particular compositions and regional repertoires, hadn't proven particularly helpful for broad-based comparative purposes.  Lomax pioneered a very different strategy, scrapping the old notation oriented approach for an innovative, statistically oriented methodology, based on parameters easily observable from recorded performances, which enabled us to meaningfully isolate and compare various patterns of musical style on a worldwide basis.1

It should be noted that Cantometrics was by no means intended as an extension of the idealist search for universals and origins proposed by Hornbostel.  On the contrary, Lomax was always more interested in the social and cultural meaning of music than its history, per se.  Hardly had we begun our research, however, when we became, willy-nilly, tantalized by some of the same possibilities that had lured so many pioneers of vergleichenden Musikwissenschaft so many years ago.  Over and over we found ourselves especially fascinated by the music of two hunter-gatherer populations in Africa: the many bands of so-called 'Pygmies' and 'Bushmen', all of whom shared a remarkably similar musical practice.2  Not only was there an uncanny similarity between them, both stylistically and structurally, but 'Pygmy-Bushmen style' seemed prototypical in many ways for sub-Saharan Africa generally.

In Cantometric terms we can describe the vocalizing of both groups as interlocked, with maximal vocal blend, contrapuntal polyphony, precisely coordinated rhythms, yodeling, with open, relaxed throats, no embellishment, short, repetitive phrases, meaningless vocables, etc.3  Particularly interesting is the continuous flow of sound, based on the dovetailing of repeated or slightly varied, short motives, a highly distinctive technique of vocal interplay closely related to medieval hocket.

Gilbert Rouget had already, in 1956, zeroed in on this style in a remarkable publication with musicologist Yvette Grimaud, comparing recordings of Bushmen from the Nyae Nyae region of the Kalahari desert with his own recordings of Babinga Pygmies living in a totally different tropical forest environment, far to the north (Rouget 1956).  Rouget stated the problem succinctly: 'If, as it is traditional to do, one should consider the Pygmies and the Bushmen as belonging to two races entirely distinct, how can one explain the troubling relationship between their music and their dances?  It cannot be a phenomenon of convergence, the resemblances constituting a system too complex and too coherent to allow for an explanation of this order.  A reciprocal influence is also to be rejected, being given the distance as much geographic as climatic which separates the ones from the others.  Is it necessary to believe, then, that the Pygmies and Bushmen are of common stock, and that their dance and music represent the remainder of a common cultural heritage?' (Rouget 1956:3).

While our Cantometrics findings strongly suggested both a functional and historical link, it was, for a great many years, not possible to answer Rouget's question with any degree of certainty.  While many anthropologists tended to believe that the Pygmies and Bushmen could be regarded as the aboriginals of Africa, there was no solid evidence of this.  Nor was it an easy matter to determine what if anything the presence of more or less similar modes of musical organization in certain other parts of the world might mean - or whether, in fact, this style had its origins in Africa or elsewhere.

Recently, however, the picture has radically changed.  Thanks to exciting new developments in the fields of anthropological genetics and archaeology, it has been possible to draw scientifically defensible inferences regarding both the origins of modern humans and their earliest paths of migration.  And lo and behold, in study after study we find references to various Pygmy and/or Bushmen groups as representative of mankind's oldest ancestry.

For example, in a frequently quoted study from the year 2000, by Yu-Sheng Chen et al., we read: 'these data showed that the Biaka Pygmies have one of the most ancient ... sublineages observed in African mtDNA [mitochondrial DNA] and, thus, that they could represent one of the oldest human populations.  In addition, the Kung [Bushmen] exhibited a set of related haplotypes that were positioned closest to the root of the human mtDNA phylogeny, suggesting that they, too, represent one of the most ancient African populations' (Chen 2000:1362).  In a more recent publication, based on more comprehensive research using 'autosomal' (i.e., nuclear rather than mitochondrial) DNA, authors Zhivotovsky, Rosenberg and Feldman identify two of the hunter-gatherer groups they studied (in this case, Mbuti Pygmies and 'San' Bushmen) 'as descendants of the root of the [phylogenetic] tree, indicating that they descend from the most ancient of the sub-Saharan African populations' (Zhivotovsky 2003:1182).  While certain aspects of such research remain both problematic and controversial, we find African Pygmy and Bushmen groups singled out over and over again in study after study as genetically representative of mankind's earliest ancestry.

In the light of both our musical findings and the overall tenor of the genetic research, one might well ask: if the vocalizations of just about all extant Pygmy and Bushmen bands, distributed over such vast regions of Africa, resemble one another so closely, despite the highly distinctive and complex nature of this style, and, at the same time, the preponderance of genetic evidence tends to link these same groups with the ancestors of all homo sapiens now living, would it not then be logical to conclude that when we listen to the vocalizing of such groups today we could be hearing a very distinct and compelling echo of the music of our most ancient homo sapiens ancestors?  All the available evidence would indeed seem to indicate that Pygmy/Bushmen style might lie at or near the long sought, now long forgotten, goal at the root of ethnomusicology itself: the origins of music.

There's more, a great deal more, which I can touch on only briefly here.4  According to the now well-known 'Out of Africa' theory, which developed from essentially the same body of genetic research I've been discussing, the earliest ancestors of all non-African peoples consisted of a relatively small band of Africans who seem to have crossed the Red Sea into southwestern Asia anywhere from 60,000 to 90,000 years ago.  While this theory remains controversial, especially among certain archaeologists favoring the so-called 'multi-regional' model, the preponderance of genetic evidence would seem to support it quite strongly.  Most investigators tend to agree that the most likely route for the original migrants and their immediate descendants would have been along the southern coast of Asia, from Yemen across the coast of the Indian subcontinent, to Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia and beyond, to Melanesia and Australia.  This would have been the first great wave of migration beyond Africa for homo sapiens sapiens.  Remarkably, there is a mounting body of evidence, genetic and otherwise, indicating that certain indigenous peoples living in isolation in some of these areas today could be directly related to that first 'Out of Africa' group.5  If that's the case, then we might well wonder whether there is any musical evidence of that archaic connection.

Evidence of that sort did indeed suggest itself in some of the earliest Cantometric research, but was, at that time, very difficult to interpret.6  Since then much more evidence of a similar nature has become available.  We do in fact find a great many aboriginal groups along the early migration path, notably in Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, New Guinea and Island Melanesia, who vocalize in an interlocked, hocketed and/or canonic manner, often with yodel, remarkably close in many respects to Pygmy/Bushmen style.

Here are some examples:

1.  !Kung Bushmen from the Nyae Nyae region of southern Africa - from Bushmen Music and Pygmy Music, edited by Gilbert Rouget.
2.  Mbuti Pygmies, Congo, from Music of the Rainforest Pygmies - recorded by Colin Turnbull.
3.  Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands - from Vocal Music of the World.
4.  Kaluli Men's Work Group, New Guinea - from Bosavi: Rainforest Music of Papua New Guinea, recorded by Steven Feld.
5.  'Are 'are Lullaby, Solomon Islands - From The Solomon Islands: Sounds of Bamboo, recorded by Ronald Buaoka and Hisao Sekine.
6.  Ede, Vietnam, from Vietnam Anthology, Musique du Monde.

Here are some examples of hocketed performance involving wind instruments:

7.  Babenzele Pygmies, Africa - solo voice hocketing with 'hindewhu' pipe - from Anthology Of World Music: Africa-Ba-Benzele Pygmies.
8.  Bagwogo, Uganda - 'Gisu' song - solo voice hocketing with flute, recorded by Peter Cooke.
9.  Huli, New Guinea - solo voice hocketing with pipe - from Music of Papua New Guinea, Musique du Monde.
10.  Wahgi/Chimbu, New Guinea - solo voice hocketing with pipe - from Primitive Music of the World, Folkways.
11.  Mofou, Cameroon - trumpet and pipe ensemble - from Flutes of the Mandara Mountains, recorded by Nathalie Fernando et Fabrice Marandola.
12.  Ede, Vietnam - panpipes - from Vietnam Anthology, Musique du Monde.
13.  Buma, Solomon Islands - panpipes - from Spirit of Melanesia.

14.  !Kung Bushmen - Choma initiation ceremony - from Bushmen Music and Pygmy Music, edited by Gilbert Rouget.
15.  Bali - Ketchak ('Monkey Chant') - from Golden Rain, Nonesuch.

If a group of Africans did emerge from that continent tens of thousands of years ago, destined to populate the rest of the world, could they have sung and played as they went in the hocketed, interlocked, continuous, yodeled, polyphonic style of today's Pygmies and Bushmen?  Was that same style then passed on from generation to generation as this lineage left colonies along its epic journey, perpetuating traditions that have persisted to this day?  When listening to such music today could we indeed be hearing our own musical roots, echoes of 'the remotest, darkest past', as prophesied by Hornbostel at a time when Ethnomusicology was itself taking root?

Was that hoary, grizzled old forefather of 28 on the right track after all?  And must Ethnomusicologists now steel themselves to tolerate such long dismissed notions as 'diffusion', 'survivals', 'origins', 'roots', etc.?  Indeed such terms can now be found with some regularity in the literature of genetic anthropology - but with more precise - and circumscribed - meanings.  Clearly we can no longer regard any of the tribal peoples of our own day as 'living fossils', throwbacks to the archaic, 'Paleolithic', past of our earliest fully human ancestors.  Each group, including the Pygmy and Bushmen hunter-gatherers, who are in fact quite different from one another in many respects, has adapted in its own way, as have we, to very different environments, both physically and culturally, and each has developed, as have we, its own characteristic customs, rituals and value systems.  If, therefore, a very distinctive and remarkable musical style has survived over such a vast period of time while so much else has changed, then this may be telling us more about music than anything else.  Because, as now seems evident, certain musical roots can go very deep indeed.

Ethnomusicology, in rejecting the concern with roots at its own root, may thereby have denied one of its most potent claims to relevance.  It is only when we are able to recognize that the roots of music may well go deeper than those of just about any other cultural practice that the special importance of this magical art - and the study of its traditions - becomes apparent.

Victor A Grauer - 26.6.07

Notes:

1.  For a detailed description of the Cantometrics project, see Lomax 1968.

2.  Neither so-called 'Pygmies' nor 'Bushmen' have traditionally referred to themselves as such, invariably using more localized 'tribal' names, such as 'Mbuti', 'Biaka', '!Kung', etc. Moreover, as is well known, the words 'Pygmy' and 'Bushmen' have pejorative connotations that many find offensive. Unfortunately no one seems to have come up with a meaningful alternative. Specific terms, such as 'Mbuti', won't do, since that applies to only one subset of the larger population being referenced. Some have proposed 'Forest People' in place of 'Pygmy', but that seems both vague and also, to my ears at least, patronizing. Moreover, if 'Bushmen' (people of the bush) is deemed offensive then why would 'Forest People' (people of the forest) be considered acceptable? 'San' has been used instead of 'Bushmen' but that's really a linguistic, not an ethnic, category - and has in addition been rejected by some groups as also having negative connotations, since it literally means 'outsider.' Some have gone on record as preferring the term 'Bushmen' after all, taking pride in the fact that they are, indeed, the 'people of the Bush.' The issue has become so contentious that certain scholars avoid all reference to the larger groupings, concentrating their attention only on localized populations with unproblematic names.

Realistically, there may be no practical alternative to the use of certain names firmly embedded in tradition, regardless of how offensive or meaningless they might now appear, at least to some. If the word 'Pygmy' (which, after all, simply means someone of unusually short stature) is regarded as offensive, then what about 'Europe', which, according to one generally accepted etymology (from the Greek), originally meant 'wide face'; or 'Turkey', which in English means either a large flightless bird or a product of poor quality; or 'Slav', which originally meant 'slave'; etc., etc., etc.

3.  A modal profile representing our Pygmy and Bushmen samples can be found in Lomax 1968:26. Compare with the very similar, but less homogeneous, Bantu Africa profile appearing on the opposite page.

4.  For an extensive review and discussion of the evidence, see Grauer 2006.

5.  Two recently published books (Olson 2002 and Oppenheimer 2003) provide thoroughgoing syntheses, with extensive references, of much of the genetic, archaeological and linguistic research referred to above. A less up to date but very important pioneering synthesis of an enormous amount of genetic information from all over the world is provided in Cavalli-Sforza 1994, 1996.

6.  See for example Lomax 1962. In Grauer 1965 I described a Cantometric search I'd designed for the worldwide distribution of this style. Following Lomax's lead, I presented both functional and historical explanations for its very unusual distribution, associating it with highly group oriented, acephalous societies and suggesting that it could be 'a survival of great antiquity.' Neither Lomax nor myself were then in a position to explain the mechanism for such a distribution.

7.  While the entry under 'Panpipes' in Groves Dictionary of Musical Instruments (Sadie 1984) contains meaningful and informative discussions by James McKinnon, Robert Anderson, John Schechter and Mervyn McLean, there is clearly a lot more research to be done on the history and distribution of this very important instrument.

References:

Cavalli-Sforza, Luca, P. Menozzi and A. Piazza. 1994, 1996. The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chen, Yu-Sheng et al. 2000. 'Mitochondrial DNA Variation in the South African Kung and Khwe and Their Genetic Relationships to Other African Populations.' American Journal of Human Genetics, 66:1362-1383.

Grauer, Victor A. 1965. 'Some Song Style Clusters.' Ethnomusicology 9(3):265-271.

Grauer, Victor A. 2006. 'Echoes of Our Forgotten Ancestors.' The World of Music 50, 2006-2.

Lomax, Alan. 1962. 'Song Structure and Social Structure.' Ethnology 1:425-51.

Lomax, Alan et al. 1968. Folk Song Style and Culture. Washington: National Association for the Advancement of Science.

Olson, Steve. 2002. Mapping Human History. Houghton Mifflin.

Oppenheimer, Stephen. 2003, 2204. The Real Eve. Carroll & Graf.

Rouget, Gilbert and Yvette Grimaud. 1956. Bushman Music and Pygmy Music, pamphlet and long playing disc, based on recordings by the Marshall Expedition, Gilbert Rouget and Andre Didier. Washington and Paris: Peabody Museum and Musée de L'homme.

Sadie, Stanley, ed. 1984. Groves Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol 3. Macmillan.

Stock, Jonathan. 2002. 'Is Ethnomusicology Relevant to the Study of British Folk Music?' in Music Traditions, online journal, MT 035. www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/ethnomus.htm

Stock, Jonathan. [date unknown] 'What is Ethnomusicology - A Potted Definition', from Jonathan Stock's web page: www.shef.ac.uk/music/staff/js/EthLink.html

von Hornbostel, Erich. [1905]. 1975. 'The Problems of Comparative Musicology', translated by Richard Campbell, in Hornbostel Opera Omnia, Vol. 1, edited by Wachsmann, Christensen and Reinecke, 247-270. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Zhivotovsky, Lev A., Noah A. Rosenberg and Marcus W. Feldman. 2003. 'Features of Evolution and Expansion of Modern Humans, Inferred from Genomewide Microsatellite Markers.' American Journal of Human Genetics, 72:1171-1186.

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