In her chapter Moving Deborah Wong states that people invested in “elite western forms of performance are susceptible to certain ideological problems, including… the understanding that performing is categorically different from everyday life.” (Bartz & Cooley 2008, p. 80). In your opinion, is this understanding problematic, and if so, how? Do you feel that this assumption reflects any truths about the nature of performance? Does Wong’s described disconnect between performance and everyday life exist uniquely in western art music, or does it also apply to other musical cultures? Draw from your own experiences and thoughts as well as examples from readings and web supplements.
Wong's
indictment of "elite western forms of performance" is
certainly controversial. Rather than decide immediately whether it is
right or wrong, it is perhaps better to first discuss different
conceptions of what a performance truly is.
Titon
in his textbook Worlds of
Music would argue that a
performance is fundamentally "separate from the flow of
ordinary life" (Titon 2009; p. 15). Indeed, performance often
has significant ritual elements that strive to separate it from
"everyday life" in a number of music cultures. Notably,
normal social dynamics are altered during performance in many
cultures. Certainly, one can see an orchestra performance as an
ornate ritual which prescribes certain roles to the participants that
they may not occupy outside the performance. The concert hall is
silent awaiting the entrance of the conductor, even when many
spectators have come with friends and family with whom they would
normally talk. The conductor is applauded by the audience upon his
appearance, even by world leaders who would command that sort of
deference from the conductor himself outside the context of
performance. Similarly, Agawu describes from his experiences in the
field in Ghana the tradition of "songs of insult" (2003; p.
208). Normally egalitarian African societies that rely on cooperation
between members to function condone the explicit insulting of
individuals in the highly specialized context of musical performance.
Similarly, Peruvian performers of pumpin music began to use musical
performance as a platform for controversial political criticism and
social commentary. The privileged status of music encouraged these
performers to engage in such risky behaviors despite the consequences
for political dissidents in Peru at the time. In these cases, the
rules for everyday life seem to checked at the door to the
metaphorical concert hall. In performances such as these,
participants enter into mutual agreement to behave within a certain
set of parameters. This not to say that all music cultures strive to
establish this boundary which sets performance apart, but it appears
at least to be a goal of many music cultures.
On
another level, however, it may not be possible for any human activity
to exist apart from everyday life. Are not the societal rules that
govern ordinary behavior also the same one's that dictate when
performance is to occur? In this sense, performance is subservient to
everyday life. In Titon's view of performance, a Sacred Harp singing
is separate from everyday live, able to operate under its own code of
conduct, which would demand that all singers be treated and viewed
equally. However, if the Queen of England were to come to a singing,
no participant could truly isolate her relative importance in
everyday life from her equal role at the singing. Even more than
that, all the singers belong to a society which allows the singing to
exist and places value on the context of Sacred Harp performance.
Without the permission of the broader society, the singing could not
exist. This is perhaps the view that Wong is espousing. Performers
and spectators of western art music want to act as though attending
an orchestra concert is fundamentally different from brushing their
teeth or driving to work. However, like those mundane "everyday
life" activities, musical performance occurs in a regular,
predictable way. Every week on Friday night, you can hear the James
Levine conduct the BSO in Symphony Hall, just like every morning at
seven you can see James Levine brush his teeth in his bathroom. It
would be just as inappropriate for him to brush his teeth in a tuxedo
as it would be for him conduct the BSO in his bathrobe.
In this
case, perhaps it is the attempts of the society to separate and
elevate performance, not the inherent separateness of the performance
itself, that helps to define it. Wong's criticism cites this goal of
western art music as problematic, when in fact it is a very common
attitude in music cultures of the world. While this may be a music
culture that is often exclusionary, that perpetuates strict class
structures, and that is used to devalue other musics, it does not
necessarily follow that this elitism is due to the separateness of
performance. Such class dynamics are characteristic of western
society over its long history. Even relatively egalitarian Sacred
Harp or African music cultures strive to establish boundaries between
performance and non-performance. In response to Wong, then, while it
may be problematic for the ethnographer to view performance as
fundamentally separate in his or her efforts to contextualize the
music culture within its respective society, it is not problematic
for music cultures to value such a separation.
Hi Alex! Responding to your response (and getting perhaps more embroiled in theoretical particularities than I had originally intended):
ReplyDeleteYou forward an excellent theory in your response: perhaps performance is exceptional not in its existence as a separate sphere of affairs but in the attempts of many cultures to delineate that separation. You have cited Jeff Titon’s opinion that separateness from ordinary life is part of the definition of musical performance. Titon also states in World of Music, “The point is not that musical performance is predetermined by rules, but that it proceeds according to them.” (Titon, 2009, p. 16) He goes on to explain that “if a listener does not understand the rules, he or she can understand neither the intention of the performer or musician nor the music’s structure.” In this statement, Titon makes precisely the argument that Wong condemns as obstructive to access of music. However, the statement makes sense within the metaphorical concert hall that you describe, in which audiences hang up the usual rules of social behavior with their coats and settle into a brief period of different social norms.
Referring to the first Titon quote that I introduced here: it is true that performance proceeds according to particular rules. As you have pointed out, without rules performance could not exist, because performances exist within the context of human social behavior, which itself is governed by rules. Furthermore, the desired end result of musical performance, in which an audience understands that a performance is occurring and that it is meant for them, requires a rule-bound (and, as Titon points out, expectation-bound) performance framework. However, Titon distinguishes between rule-bound predetermination of performance and rule-bound performance procedure. Do you find this distinction to be important or valid? If rules govern the context of performance, do they interact similarly with the initial conception of performance by the performers?
Kenna, I am glad you found some legitimacy in my response. I think the question you bring up is an important one. One clarification that is necessary before answering is that there are two essential types of rules governing performance. First, there are the broader rules that govern social interactions in the performance setting. These are the rules that I discuss in my concert hall example. The second, more specific category of rules is those rules that govern the organization of musical content. Ultimately, this second category is a subset of the first, but a very significant one, as audience members may not be aware of these more specific rules, while performers are.
ReplyDeleteIt is this second category that Titon considers when he asserts that performance is not predetermined. The degree to which this is true depends on the nature of the limitations around musical organization. In the Western Classical tradition, a large degree of the musical organization is predetermined by the score. An audience member who is very familiar with a Beethoven piano sonata will be able to anticipate every note and expressive marking notated on the score. However, this listener, because of his familiarity with the rules governing this music, will be more inclined to notice errors in execution as breaches in the rules or to appreciate interpretive choices allowed by the rules. And it is the very standards that govern how audiences behave that will allow him to criticize this performance. In a different performance context with different rules, such as a jazz club, the audience may expect a lesser degree of predetermined content, and criticize the performance for not being improvisatory enough. So there are aspects of this performance that are more or less predetermined, but the degree to which this is so is dependent on the social rules that govern the performance context and expectations.