Novak Critical Review #10

Novak sets out to examine the effects and motivations behind the remediation and repurposing of Asian media, specifically song and dance from Bollywood film. The first example he looks at is the opening credits of "Ghost World," an American film based on a graphic novel, which features the protagonist Enid dancing along to a Bollywood dance sequence, "Jan Pehechan-Ho." This remediation, so distant from its original source material, sets the stage for themes of cultural disconnect and alienation.

Novak finds this example interesting because it showcases the way media creates a distance from authorship. Enid's copy-of-a-copy videotape of a foreign film is an extreme example of the separation that occurs between creator and created at the moment of creation. Novak's best explanation of what is going occurs in this quote: "And recognizing oneself as a part of this process—whether one is invested in nostalgia or newness— requires de-emphasizing the authority of an original media context in favor of its remediations." The varying degrees of irony, nostalgia, and newness that appear occur because of this deemphasis of authorship and and result in a distinct product, a remediation, which can then be interpreted in different ways.

One example of an interpretation gone wrong was the Heavenly Ten Stems' concert and ensuing protest. The key elements to be considered here were intent and the visibility of intent. The band intended to celebrate this music, but that intent was not entirely clear. Power dynamics is the other key issue; interpretation is inevitably skewed when there are expectations based on historically imbedded power relationships, such as that between the US and Asia.

Overall these examinations of remediations reveal a lot about music and media in general, and provide somewhat extreme cases to use as lenses to look at more subtle interactions between authorship and context elsewhere.

Meintjes Critical Review #9

Mientjes addresses the interesting case of collaboration in Paul Simon's Graceland, addressing lots of political issues despite the record itself being largely apolitical/politically ambiguous. She correctly states that this does not absolve the record from having political issues associated with its production. She goes a bit to far in my opinion in writing off the "bourgeois" notion of treating an album as an independent entity; it seems like a threatening line of thought that could undermine her whole point.

She does a thorough job of explaining the spectrum of collaboration on the individual tracks, as well as the complex crossindexing that occurs when two musical worlds that have influenced each other for a long time are explicitly combined.

She also carefully stepped through various involved parties and the different interpretations of the record within those parties. One of her most interesting points was the rhetoric behind a vaguely-pronoun "we," and how different groups used that for their own political and social purposes.

While the depth and breadth of her examination are both impressive, I can't help but think that this whole article can be summed up by simply saying. "Graceland meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people."

Challenge Question Response... Response

Rebecca makes great points about the inaccessibility of ethnomusicological language - overcomplicating the simple, referencing previous definitions, authors not being mindful of their non-ethnomusicological audience. She identifies all the hurdles more casual readers face.

She is spot on about the use of specialized languages among experts, and raises the even more important question about the ends justifying the means, that is the final product of ethnomusicology justifying the use of its language. Her question of the purpose of ethnomusicology to those who aren’t ethnomusicologists is absolutely critical. The best purpose I can come up with is an amassing of knowledge. What that knowledge is used for is sometimes determined by the ethnomusicologist (e.g. those that choose to do serious advocacy work for their subjects) and is sometimes determined by whoever else seeks out that knowledge. The point seems to be mainly that the information is there; it is recorded and can be accessed by anyone looking to satisfy curiosity or do something more significant, as long as their willing to put in the language legwork.

However, I think in a lot of cases, ethnomusicologists let their purpose stop at this amassing of knowledge, believing that it is innately good or useful. I think the next question that ethnomusicologists as a collective needs to ask and answer is “How do we want our work to be used in the end?” If the answer is to inform and educate the greater public, maybe language accessibility should be emphasized. If the answer is to provide a knowledge base for specific interested individuals pursuing larger goals (e.g. popularization/commercialization of a type of music?), then ethnomusicologists need to be mindful over how their final products are being used and how much of a role they would like to play in that process. Either way, I think having a vision of the end result of their work, beyond a paper, will help inform ethnomusicologists’ language choices.

Challenge Question Response

Key to addressing the deviations from the normal ethnomusicological format is identifying the important elements of that norm. Ethnomusicology expects face-to-face interactions, a certain amount of time spent in the field, a group of multiple subjects, and sometimes participation in the music being studied. Additionally, when the groundwork was being laid in the early issues of Ethnomusicology Magazine, those doing the laying had no way of accounting for/addressing the internet. Each of the articles mentioned deviates from one or more of these expectations.

Whether these deviations are a dangerous departure or a positive evolution depends on both their motivation and effect, and really can be only considered on a case-by-case basis. Ethnomusicologists should deviate from the norms only when there is something unique to be gleaned via the deviation, and preferably this information or perspective should supplement a more traditional approach. The fact of the matter is that people mistrust small sample sizes, personal involvement, and interactions over the internet. Hinging an entire ethnography on any of these things is risky, but can be warranted. Sometimes the deviations are only practical ways of accomplishing the fieldwork. Asking Les Back to take a participatory role in White Power music, or for Kiri Miller to reach a large community of Grand Theft Auto players through some means other than the internet, or to discredit Deborah Wong’s work until she could find more Asian-Americans to corroborate the musical history of her subject would be unreasonable. The choices that these ethnomusicologists made were not motivated by laziness or an attachment to comfort zones, but rather practicality. Other times the effect is worth the deviation - Wong’s in-depth analysis of one person’s musical past speaks both to larger cultural trends and provides a mirror with which to examine our own methods and motivations of music consumption.

However, the guidelines of ethnomusicology, while in some ways arbitrary and flexible, are there for reasons. This unique structure of constraints is intended to produce a unique experience, and a unique set of results and perspectives. A part of that experience is a departure from one’s comfort zone and into a position of vulnerability. The process of gradual immersion enables the ethnomusicologist to communicate effectively with outsiders of the musical culture, but at a depth level approaching that of musical insiders. If an ethnomusicologist is deviating from the typical setup to stay within a comfort zone, then he or she is “just plain missing the point.” To some extent, if a researcher wants their work to be considered to be ethnomusicology, he or she must play by the rules of ethnomusicology, or at least make a best effort. If not, that doesn’t make the research not valuable, it just makes it not ethnomusicology.

In some ways, there is room for similar research outside of the realm of ethnomusicology. For example, one could argue that Wong’s article is not ethnomusicology because it is not “the study of people making music” but rather “the study of people (or in this case, a person) consuming music,” which is just as interesting and valid a field. It might even be more useful in a music economy like that of the mainstream of the United States, where there is a relatively small number of well-known artists/bands being consumed by comparatively massive amounts of people. It is just as interesting and enlightening to look at the other side of the equation, even if it means a separate field of research.