Playing Together – Being Together

 

Is there something unique about the experience of playing music with other people? Is there a deep philosophical and moral lesson to be learned from just banging on some drums with a few friends? I want to say ‘yes.’

 

I’m currently playing caixa (snare drum) in a samba ensemble led by a talented Brazilian musician and academic visiting the United States for a semester. She studied in the oldest samba school in Porto Alegre for three years before beginning to teach samba ensembles at a local college. Here, our ensemble is made up of several music students, musicologists, and other people from the community. And what she stresses is that samba’s main lesson comes from playing together. The music only works when we listen not to our own parts, but those of everyone else. When that happens, when in sync with other people, there is a feeling of unity, and it is this feeling that drove her to want to teach samba to others.

 

 For anyone who has never had the experience of playing music intensely with other people it is quite easy to describe, whether you believe my description or not. In essence, in the process of really ‘grooving’ with other people, in really getting what you’re playing in sync with what they’re playing, the normal self-awareness which we often call ‘consciousness’ falls away and you become one with all the others. Or, to more precisely describe the experience, all awareness of self and other disappears – one simply is with others, there is no perceived distinction. All that exists in the moment is the music. One literally has the sensation that one has become the music itself.  This inevitably comes to an end, often to the mild shock of the individual and the detriment of the music. A sense of ‘where have I been?’ or ‘how much time has passed?’ belies the being-somewhere-else of the experience. But why might this be interesting?

 

In brief, I feel that in these experiences of the loss of the self we glimpse the being-with others that is always already our mode of being in the world. We are not, to contradict Descartes, isolated minds, each our own island. Instead we are only insofar as we are with other people. We think in a language we share with other people. We conceive of ourselves in relation to others. Our world is populated largely by those close to us. The world is not of our creation, but handed to us by others already filled with meaning. And I believe that this ecstatic experience one can have while playing with other people shows us that our being is always together with other people. By presenting an extreme version of our everyday being in the world, playing together shows us the world for what it is, and can help us be better people. At least, that’s what I hope.

 

So, if you can, find someone to play some music with. Join a local ensemble. Look for a choir or a percussion group in your area and see if you don’t then see the world differently: one, and not many. 

Oh, the (parody of) Germans

 

Larry Goldings, Thelonious Monk, and Musical Understanding

 

 

 

This video parody was created by the accomplished jazz pianist Larry Goldings, presumably to express his admiration of Thelonious Monk. While fascinating on many levels I find it particularly interesting for what it demonstrates about musical understanding. In brief, I want to argue that you can only understand Monk’s music if you have already gained some proficiency in listening to jazz of the first half of the twentieth century, such as stride, swing, bebop, and the blues to boot. In turn, the video is only funny if you understand Monk’s music. Thus, at its base, what it represents is a parody of a loving parody. And a simultaneously humorous and insightful one at that demonstrates understanding is never in itself. Understanding is always deferred to something else, that something else further on. And on and on.

What good is musicology?

 

To disclose a musical understanding.

 

This is the answer, in brief, to a question endlessly posed in myriad forms by discerning granting committees, well-intentioned advisors, curious colleagues, befuddled friends and family, and, not least among them, ourselves. Why do we study the musical practices of others and our own? Why do we expose an otherwise enjoyable past-time – in our case – to excruciating dissection? Would the world be any different were we to desist? I have toiled with these questions as much as any other and I wish to suggest an answer. Musicologists, in the catholic meaning of the term, are no different from others in their ability to understand music, to learn to play instruments, or even to recognize the intricate interrelations music has with other spheres of human activity. In fact a stronger argument could be made to the contrary, that musicologists are too often cloistered in their world of theory and abstraction to really get to the heart of the matter as do unreflective musicians, performers, or listeners. Their skill, and hence utility, lies elsewhere. Musicologists make explicit that which we always already knew; they help us see, hear, and feel that which was always already present in experience and practice.

 

Musical understanding, musical being is, I maintain, not something privy solely to a few Bach specialists, sitar gurus, Bird devotees, or the like. It is, rather, a species of experience common to most all humans. Perhaps the Suyá of the Amazon’s Upper Xingo Basin spend more of their time singing than we do, but music as a meaningful experience pervades our lives nonetheless. Were alien anthropologists to live among the people of the cosmopolitan West, to take one example, certainly they would note that, while particular topics rouse the interest of only a few at any given gathering – some talk on the politics of paper versus plastic bags, others the statistics of a certain Cubs sporting team – all seemed possessed of adept knowledge in the realm of what they call ‘music.’ A small majority had some training as practitioners on piano, guitar, or another common instrument; many attended musical rituals called ‘concerts’ on a semi-regular basis – some in large, grandiose halls, others in dark, alcohol-soaked chambers; all were familiar with innumerable performers, historical events of musical import, and the correct behavioral norms specific to various activities. To boot, their daily routines were saturated by mechanically-reproduced music issuing forth from radios and iPods, computers and elevators. Music was everywhere and everyone an expert they would have to conclude.   But if musical understanding is so common a good, then it cannot be in its attainment that lies the distinctiveness of musicologists. Their skill, simply or not so simply, is to allow our musical understanding to disclose itself to us; to aid us in seeing what lies right before our noses.

 

Of course a visual metaphor will not do if the phenomenon is, in the first place, aural. To appreciate what is valuable in the musicological endeavor we must first clarify what is meant by the experience in question. What does it mean to experience music as meaningful? Why do unfamiliar musics often irritate or fascinate us, or at least leave us cold? In short, what does musical understanding consist in? Perhaps two brief tableau will make clear what phenomenon we’re after here. 

 

 

1. Sunday Jam Session

The Velvet Lounge on Chicago’s near South Side, 9:30 pm. The small, dark, intimate interior – last renovated in the 1960s, when wallpaper with large-print flowers in pastel pink, orange, and green was still en vogue – is populated almost exclusively by men is ‘casual attire.’ The house band, a handful of other musicians who have come to sit in, and ten or so familiar listeners are here, chatting and babying a $1.50 Schlitz or a bottle of High Life. No one’s really here to drink  – they’ve come for the music. Kobe, Josh, and Jim (drums, bass, and piano, respectively) take the stage and the already subdued crowd ceases to talk. The altoist Dennis Winslett climbs the three wooden stairs to the stage, inaudibly asks the band if “Cherokee” is ok, and they nod. Dennis closes his eyes, puts his horn to his mouth, taps his foot, and counts quietly, “a-one, a-two, a-one, two, three…,” and they’re off. The audience members smile appreciatively, bop their heads, feet, or hands along to the beat. One furrows his brow as Dennis begins his solo with a clever repetition of one tone in an unpredictable rhythm, waiting anxiously for the pending torrent of notes we all know is to come. Another focuses on Jim’s reserved, but way-out comping style, trying to jive the chord changes in his head with those emanating from the piano’s amplifier. When Kobe’s turn comes, all concentrate on the mixture of Art Blakey’s intensity and Roy Haynes’ inventiveness this ‘young lion’ embodies. People shake their heads in disbelief, but in truth they know exactly what to believe. This is ‘sick’ jazz, as Josh would put it, as good as it gets, and everyone feels it way down inside.

 

 

2.Mom listens to the BaAka

The built-in oak desk in the kitchen of my childhood home in Iowa, 9:30 am. Having cleared away the breakfast things, I boot up the computer at my mother’s desk and open a web site created by the ethnomusicologist Michelle Kisliuk on the BaAka pygmies of the Central African Republic. I navigate to the short video clip of the Mondimba dance and call over to her, “Hey Mom, could I show you something?” wanting to see what her reaction might be. She’s removed her apron and found a lukewarm cup of coffee; she comes and sits at the desk. The footage begins. A couple dozen people in little or no dress dance in a rough circle. Straw huts can be seen in the background on the red dirt earth. In the clearing formed by the short, dark-skinned men and women is a figure covered in a full-body cone-like mask made of leaved branches tied at one end and inverted over the head of the dancer beneath. He or she twirls in one direction, then the other with no discernible regularity. The other dancers sing in seeming disharmony; the song has no obvious structure; the words are indecipherable. The video ends. Mom doesn’t know what to make of it, and, having humored me, goes off to do her morning crossword.

 

In addition to what phenomenon I’m interested in here, I hope these two scenes have provisorily shown the degree to which music is entwined in a ‘web of culture,’ to use the anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s (1926-2006) well-worn turn of phrase. Beginning with something as artless as music the understanding situation quickly thrusts one into cultural domains once thought truly far afield. As though we were ever innocent of its kin, we find ourselves no longer talking just about ‘music,’ but about religion, bodily practice, and sexual mores. In short, in understanding music we may begin with music, but we soon find ourselves concerned with a whole way of life. This strikes me as a fitting metaphor. The existential philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1967, b. Meßkirch), with his passion for etymology, would surely have pointed out that ‘way’ comes from the German ‘Weg’ meaning a ‘path.’ Paths are connections between points created by habit, by wearing down the earth, by impressing the ground with the regularities of our lives. As individuals pass over the same route, one following the other, day after day, the grass – at first merely trampled and sad – recedes and dies, leaving the bare earth. More time passes and the barren path eventually becomes a deep scar on nature’s visage. Thus practice marks the landscape, just as the landscape of human activity is guided by the path, leaving its traces in our talk (“That’s the way to Erlangen.”) and our things (shoes, walking sticks, backpacks). Following the path is much easier than forging one anew. To understand walking begins with the path, but quickly takes us to speech about directions and equipment for the practice. They, in turn, take us to spatial arrangement of villages, forms of instruction, the material bases of leather production, and so forth. To understand means to understand a way of life, to be fluent in a practice.

Notes on Musical Understanding

 

 

1. Over Christmas (2007) I spent many of my morning hours reading and contemplating a seemingly rather obscure topic: what does musical understanding consist in? What is it to ‘get’ a piece of music and what is it to fail. Does it even make sense to ask this question? Must we retreat to the weak multi-culti view that everyone has their own understanding of music and that’s just fine. Philosophers of music – that rare breed – has taken this as one of their central questions over the past twenty years and some progress has been made, but the answers remain inchoate. It is not my purpose here to fill that lacuna – that I’m trying to do in a longer work, which I may share here later – but to ask some of the recurring questions and outline central areas of discourse. These are notes, thoughts, and, ultimately, a request for input.

 

 2. Understanding music is equivalent to getting its meaning. In understanding music we understand its meaning. Thus what understanding consists in is based on a conception of musical meaning. Ethnomusicologists have, in my opinion, the most interesting things to say on this topic as their view of the subject is necessarily so catholic. The historical musicologists and philosophers of music alike seem unaware of music outside the western European art tradition (except for a small cabal young enough to deal with rock music) and this myopia severely limits the scope of their thinking. Musical practices (musics, as many ethnomusicologist prefer) are each so very distinct that any inductive reasoning from such a small sample inevitably gives rise to dubious results. If we restrict ourselves to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms then coming to grips with a form of universal human practice will be as difficult as surmising the basics of human taste by visiting McDonalds, Wendy’s, and Burger King. 

 

The simplest and most reliable entry to this question is dictated by Ludwig Wittgenstein – one of the 20th century’s most significant philosophers – in his statement, Don’t think, but look! Musics are always practices; they are collections of sounds, actions, bodies, habits, instruments, dances, behaviors, and beliefs all mixed together into a multivalent happening and doing that we can see, hear, and experience for ourselves. To withdraw to the study and contemplate the meaning of music is to mistake meaning for thought. Meaning is in the world and so it is there that we must seek it. Now ethnomusicologists may not phrase their thinking quite this way, but their actions speak quite clearly. Still today, after more than two decades of sustained critique of the traditional ethnographic method as colonialist, imperialist, and just plain exploitative, no one has found away around the necessity of living among a musical practice in order to learn its ways. Thus, most scholars spend at least one full year in “the field” observing music making, learning to play an instrument themselves, noting the wider cultural, social, religious, economic, and gender practices, and boning up on the people’s history. The result of this is a fluency with a musical practice – albeit often rather rudimentary – that can be likened to basic fluency with a language. Understanding a music is like being fluent in a language.

 

3. Much has been made over the years of the similarities and differences between music and languages and I have no desire to repeat them here. It will suffice to say that anyone who thinks for more than 60 seconds about the platitude, “Music is the universal language,” can spot a leak or three. But however weak the similarities concerning how music means, the similarity of fluency seems to hold up. The philosopher Jerrold Levinson, to name but one person who comes to mind, has called this musical literacy. That is to say a piece of music doesn’t exist in isolation. Even when I sit down to listen to it by itself it is always heard in relation to other hearings of other pieces from the same tradition or in contrast to other, distinct traditions. But in the former, more usual case, it is by learning what to listen for, how to listen that I can knowingly, understandingly listen.

 

Think of listening’s first steps. Like those of the first words in a new language, they are awkward, one is unsure what is important, what should be attended to, what is considered a move, what a resolution. Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, “Hearing something new is embarrassing and difficult for the ear; foreign music we do not hear well.” And here we are really at the root of the matter. Music, as a human practice, is largely arbitrary – in the sense that it could be otherwise – and largely learned – in that knowledge must be gained through socialization and experience. Thus, to understanding a music one must have spent a sufficient amount of time in the world of that music. One must learn to feel at home, to dwell, to know the way about to understand what a music is.

Rock – Rebellion or Maybe No?

Rebellion is the stuff rock ‘n’ roll is made of. If there is a line between rock and pop – and I think there is – then it is this attitude, this stance of doing the wrong thing that is at its center. Elvis’ voice is too wild, his hips out of control; the Stones’ reference to brown sugar a little too obvious; and, well, Heroin, is about doing heroin. Society at large rightly objected to these public expressions of alterity because they flew in the face of our accepted habitus and dared even to revel in it. The youth are being corrupted, the world is going to hell. (Fade in Led Zeppelin…)

 

Or have we been living in hell all along? Prof. Dr Peter Wicke (Humboldt Universitaet zu Berlin), one of Europe’s leading experts on popular music culture, has suggested that the seeming rebellion of rock music culture is a space in which nascent traits of the dominant society are variously celebrated and decried. In short, rock is the place of social contest, but contest of traits already endemic to the whole of society. Such a proposition might irk our ready-rocker who wants to be called an outlaw, feared and yet respected for his – yes, his – brash disavowal of society’s mores, but it is quite promising for the observer wishing to find more than visceral value in the music culture of rock. Rock is thus transformed into prominent stage for the analysis of new social and cultural formations, thus extending Attali’s argument beyond the economic realm.

 

In Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1999/1984 [1977]) the French economist, politician, and Marxist intellectual argues that the stages of the mode of musical production through European history always foreshadow the analogous change in the economy. The movement from noise to music is the gradual acceptance of societal norms already present. “Music is prophecy. Its styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible, that will impose itself and regulate the order of things; it is not only the image of things, but the transcending of the everyday, the herald of the future. For this reason musicians, even when officially recognized, are dangerous, disturbing, and subversive (p 11).” Attali thus places musical rebellion in this liminal space between revolution and normativity: music is the rebellion of becoming normal.

 

Is the undulating, thrusting fascination of Elvis’ hips truly that radical to America culture of the 1950s? What about the dances of minstrelsy or the Charleston and the risque Josephine Baker? Sexualized dance was nothing new, but Elvis’ faux pas was to lay this bare and present it to a willing audience of teenage girls. Similarly, “interracial” sex and narcotic drug use are practically founding gestures of our great country given the liberties slave owners regularly took with their female property and the tobacco plantations of the colonies which supplied the Old Country. But these aspects of habitus remained proscribed from the dominant discourse, while rock dared talk about it and sell it to the little ones.

 

I will leave it to others to comment or reflect on this suggestion in relation to other examples. Further, I recognize the slight inconsistency of the theoretical position outlined above – is rock a true harbinger of new cultural artifacts or does it merely reveal what was already there? – but both demand a repositioning of rebellion in rock ‘n’ roll. Rock does not have the status of an Act in the Lacanian sense of initiating that which was previously inconceivable; it isn’t true revolution, but rather a ground on which very real, existing traits of the dominant society are contested.