JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. Learning to perform as a Research Technique in ethnomusicology has many advantages. The author's experiences of learning to play dutar and rubab in Afghanistan during the 1970s are described in some detail.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. Learning to perform as a Research Technique in ethnomusicology has many advantages. The author's experiences of learning to play dutar and rubab in Afghanistan during the 1970s are described in some detail.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. Learning to perform as a Research Technique in ethnomusicology has many advantages. The author's experiences of learning to play dutar and rubab in Afghanistan during the 1970s are described in some detail.
Learning to Perform as a Research Technique in Ethnomusicology
Author(s): John Baily Source: British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2001), pp. 85-98 Published by: British Forum for Ethnomusicology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3060663 Accessed: 06/01/2009 19:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=bfe. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. British Forum for Ethnomusicology is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to British Journal of Ethnomusicology. http://www.jstor.org JOHN BAILY Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology* This article starts with a brief discussion of Hood's notion of bi-musicality and considers several reports in the literature of learning to perform as a research technique. The author's experiences of learning to play dutar and rubab in Afghanistan during the 1970s are described in some detail. The article con- cludes with a discussion of the many advantages of learning to perform as part of the fieldwork enterprise. Mantle Hood's article "The challenge of bi-musicality" was a source of inspi- ration to many contemplating ethnomusicological research in the 1960s. I first came across his paper in 1968 as a postgraduate student in experimental psychology at Sussex University. Having just discovered ethnomusicology in the form of Bruno Nettl's Theory and Method in the university library, it was exciting to find that ethnomusicology had this practical dimension as well as more orthodox modes of scholarship. Hood did not advocate learning to perform as a technique to be employed in ethnomusicological fieldwork. His argument was simply that training in basic musicianship is fundamental to any kind of musical scholarship. The training of ears, eyes, hands and voice and fluency gained in these skills assure a real comprehension of theoretical studies, which in turn prepares the way for the professional activities of the performer, the composer, the musicologist and the music educator. (Hood 1960:55) Hood argued that the student of non-Western music should not bypass basic musicianship in the music culture in question, and specifically mentioned acquiring the capacity to hear intervals correctly and developing memory span *This article was originally published in Lux Oriente. Begegnungen der Kulturen in der Musikforschung, a Festschrift for Robert Gunther edited by Klaus Wolfgang Niemoller, Uwe Patzold and Chung Kyo-chul, and published by Gustav Bosse Verlag in 1995. The Editors of BJE have decided to reprint this important article without change in order to ensure its wider dissemination, and they wish to thank Gustav Bosse Verlag for permission so to do. Only one addition has been made to the references, the notations of naghmahc-ye kashil published in Baily (1997). BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL. 10/ii 2001 pp. 85-98 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.10/ii 2001 in learning pieces aurally. His paper described the intricacies of a number of Asian art music genres (Javanese and Balinese gamelan and gagaku, and Indian drumming) from the practical point of view, and provided ample evidence of the importance of learning to move properly in relation to the instrument to produce the correct sounds. All these examples were drawn from kinds of music available for practical study in the Institute for Ethnomusicology at UCLA. In retrospect, certain questions might well be raised about Hood's term bi-musicality (with a hyphen), modelled as it obviously is on the word bilingual (without a hyphen). Bilingual simply means "1. Having, or characterized by two languages 1862. 2. spec. Of inscriptions, etc.: Inscribed simultaneously in parallel versions in two languages" (The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1968). But applied to verbal behaviour the term bilingual suggests an equal fluency in two languages, especially when acquired together in early child- hood, before the age of about five. By analogy, Hood's implied term bi-musical suggests an individual who as a child has become fluent as a performer in two distinct musics. Hood certainly accepts this notion, for he quotes Robert Garfias writing about gagaku court musicians of Japan: [They] have undergone rigid training since child-hood, not only in the Gagaku dances and instrumental techniques, but also in the performance of Western music of the Classical period. In their capacity as official court musicians, they are required to perform both Gagaku and Western classical music. (Garfias 1959, quoted in Hood 1960) Nevertheless, Hood extended the term bi-musicality to cover the acquisition of ability in a second music culture later than childhood. The students at UCLA who faced the "challenge of bi-musicality" certainly did so during their careers as undergraduate and graduate students in music - i.e. as young adults, not as children. Further interesting questions are raised by the term bi-musicality. Familiar problems soon arise concerning the "distance" between two kinds of music for the word to be applicable. What about the person who combines competence in European art music and rock music? Baroque music and Minimalism? North and South Indian art musics? Hood clearly recognized the terminologi- cal problems that appear with people who are competent in three, four, or even more "musics", and ended up suggesting that it is all basically a question of "musicality". To avoid these terminological problems, I propose not to overuse the term bi-musicality but will speak of "learning to perform". The art of ethnomusicological fieldwork was less developed at the time when Hood introduced the notion of bi-musicality, and from present perspectives one might argue more specifically that learning to perform should be a crucial part of research methodology because of the potential insights it provides into musical structure. The argument here is that only as a performer does one acquire a certain essential kind of knowledge about music. Learning to perform has quite a long history in ethnomusicology. In 1934 A. M. Jones tackled the problem of African rhythm, which Hornbostel (1928) had described as "syncopated beyond belief'. Jones argued that to understand the apparent complexity of African 86 Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology rhythm one must "join an African band and learn to take one's part". Once that step is taken one discovers that "the apparent inextricable complexity" of African rhythms is false. The individual parts are perfectly simple: It is the combination of these simple rhythms that makes the glorious African harmony, which to the listener often sounds beyond analysis. In this field a phonograph is useless. (Jones 1934) John Blacking was another of a long list of students of African music who extended the idea of learning to perform as a technique of field research. Three examples come to mind from his Venda fieldwork. First, Blacking learned to sing children's songs: I decided to begin my general study of Venda music with a detailed study of the children's songs. I thought that it would be a good plan to learn Venda music by the same process as the Venda themselves, and that by singing children's songs I might also improve my pronunciation and vocab- ulary of the Venda language. My pronunciation was never very good, however, but I found that my subsequent ability to sing the children's songs correctly was a great asset in establishing friendly relations in areas where I was not known. (Blacking 1967:28) My teachers were patient and insisted on correcting my mistakes, so that I began to learn what was expected of a singer and what tolerances were allowed. I learnt the songs both from adults and from children. On some occasions I made deliberate mistakes, and was therefore especially inter- ested if I was not corrected: this would mean that I had sung an alternative melody which, though not that which my teacher knew, was perfectly acceptable according to the canons of Venda music. (Blacking 1967:33) Second, Blacking participated in Venda possession trance sessions as a drummer: The effectiveness of the music depends on the context in which it is both performed and heard. But ultimately it depends on the music, as I found out once when I was playing one of the drums. Dancers take turns coming out into the "arena", and at first there were no complaints about my efforts. Very soon, however, a senior lady began dancing, and she was expected to go into a trance because the music was being played for her cult group. However, after a few minutes she stopped and insisted that another drummer should replace me! She claimed that I was ruining the effect of the music by "hurry- ing" the tempo - just enough, I suppose, to inhibit the onset of trance. (Blacking 1973:44-5)l l Blacking later modified his ideas about the role of music in inducing spirit possession along the lines suggested by Gilbert Rouget (1985). 87 BAILY BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.10/ii 2001 Third, Blacking sometimes participated in tshikona, the national dance of the Venda: By joining the dance, I was able to experience what the Venda claimed: to play one's part in the pipe melody correctly whilst moving in harmony with others in a large crowd of performers and spectators, generates individuality in community, and so combines self with others in a way that is funda- mental to the existence of Venda culture and society ... The experience was often ecstatic: not only did we dance; we were sometimes danced. (Blacking 1977:38) Further insights into Blacking's ideas about learning to perform are pro- vided in a letter he sent me in May 1972. I had written to him about my interest in ethnomusicology, in Hood's notion of bi-musicality (was the idea "still in fashion"?), and my proposal to study Persian classical music. He replied: Far from being out-of-date, learning to perform and play music is a basic field technique in ethnomusicology. We are still trying to establish it as a necessary methodological tool, because several field studies are being carried out without it even today... However, I am not too happy about your plan to study under "masters of the tar" [double-chested long-necked lute] in Teheran ... I do not think it at all necessary for you to learn how to play the instrument superbly (which would involve intensive study with one or two players, as you suggest), unless you plan to become a concert artist. But I do think it very necessary for you to discover how the average tar player learns and transmits his skills, by spending some time with several different players both in the cities and rural areas. If I were going to make a special study of Irish fiddling, I would not first take a course at the Belfast or Dublin academies of music; I would take lessons with Tommy Gunn and others who have and follow "folk theories" of music. This would tell me much more about the cultural realities and deep structures of the music than the sophisticated teaching of the academies... I am assuming that you plan to become an ethnomusicologist first, and a tar player second, third, or fourth. If I am wrong, what I have said will be irrelevant. (Baily 1994:5-6) Learning to perform Afghan music I did study music in Tehran, when I was working as an English teacher there in 1973, and not the tar but the sehtir, for several months with Dariush Tala'i and Jamshid Zolfonun. I found it very difficult, especially rhythmically. One cannot play advz without a good knowledge of Persian poetry. My subsequent attempts to learn to play Afghan music were altogether more useful and reward- ing. In order to examine the challenge of bi-musicality in more detail I give some account of my experiences in learning to perform on two Afghan instru- 88 Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology ments, the dutar, a term used for several kinds of long-necked pyriform lute, and the rubab, a short-necked lute. Most of my work was carried out in the city of Herat, in western Afghanistan, over a two-year period between 1973 and 1977. I started to learn the three-stringed dutar when working in Tehran. I paid a brief visit to Herat, recorded three amateur dutar players, observed their performance techniques closely and purchased a dutar. Back in Tehran I tran- scribed some of the music and practised playing along with the recordings. Later I discovered that this was not altogether unlike the traditional way of learning the dutar - that is, by imitation, watching someone closely and later trying to reproduce what has been observed. Most dutatr players claimed to be self-taught, and were proud of being so. They were reluctant to acknowledge their betters, saying "Well, if I'm no better than X, then I am no worse than him either". All of this affirmed their shauqi (amateur) status. One big differ- ence between us was that, whereas they knew the tunes they learned to play by hearing them as part of their urban soundscape, I needed the tape recorder to create an aural score from which I could learn to play. When I began my fieldwork proper in the autumn of 1973, I started learning the fourteen-stringed dutar with one of the leading exponents of the instrument, Gada Mohammad, originally an amateur who later turned profes- sional. In retrospect I see that my fieldwork was focused from the start on performance; my first step was to find a teacher as that was the way in. As I have said, duttr players were generally self-taught, though players like Gada Mohammad undoubtedly learned a great deal later in their playing careers from the hereditary professional musicians (sazandeh) with whom they regu- larly worked in urban bands (singer with harmonium, tabla, rubab and dutar). Gada had picked up a lot from his band leader, Amir Mohammad, a singer from Kabul resident in Herat. For example, Amir Mohammad had taught him to play shakl, the introductory section in free rhythm (cf. taqsim, alap), in a number of rags (melodic modes), and Gada had written these combinations down using Indian sargam notation. Unlike most professional musicians, he was fully literate. Gada used to come regularly to my house. In the early days I paid him. Later on, when we became good friends, this was no longer appropriate. Certainly the learning process was under my control. In our first two sessions I recorded a number of items from his large repertory so that I could choose pieces I wanted to learn. I then worked alone with Gada's dutar, which he lent me while I had my own instrument constructed, trying to work them out. Once we had two dutcrs we were able to play together - he leading, I following, phrase by phrase. He had no trouble in repeating particular phrases, a signifi- cant fact. Sometimes I recorded these lessons. He would also make recordings of the pieces I was trying to learn, played slowly and simply. Both kinds of recordings were labelled "Teaching Material" in my fieldnotes and tape cata- logues. I found my task difficult and frustrating. The fourteen-stringed dutar is a large and rather cumbersome instrument, difficult to hold in the proper play- ing position without tiring. In retrospect, I also see that I was trying to start with what to outsiders would be the most difficult part of the dutar repertory, 89 BAILY 90 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.10/ii 2001 the genre called chaharbeiti, the melodies for the singing of quatrains in free rhythm, a rhythmic problem like that posed by Iranian dvaz. The fact that I used a tape recorder to record these demonstrations was not unprecedented in Herat, where the radio/cassette machine was quite common in the early 1970s. For example, Gada had a friend, Abdul Ghani, whom he helped by teaching new pieces. I had the opportunity to observe a "teaching session" once. Abdul Ghani, an amateur musician with a job as a clerk in the civil service, got Gada to play a number of pieces, either suggested by himself or volunteered by Gada. When Gada played something he liked and wanted to learn he switched on the tape recorder, and accompanied Gada on the zirbaghali (pottery goblet drum). What he was doing was recording a set of tunes that he wanted to learn by ear from the tape, just as I did. I continued practising the three-stringed dutar throughout my first year of fieldwork and recorded many Herati musicians playing the instrument. I was also able to recreate an earlier version of the dutar, which had two gut (or nylon) strings and an idiosyncratic system of fretting, giving a scale with certain neutral second intervals (Baily 1976:32). I had to reconstruct its distinctive performance technique, particularly for the right hand, which uses the bare fingers and thumb rather than a plectrum. This instrument had gone out of favour in about 1950, to be replaced by the three-stringed instrument with metal strings and played with the metal thimble-plectrum of the Afghan tanbur (Baily 1976:60). Familiarity with the three kinds of dutdr provided important insights into how performance techniques had changed with the successive morphological transformations of the instrument (Baily 1977). A second instrument I learned to play in Afghanistan was the Afghan rubab, a double-chested, short-necked plucked lute with drone and sympathetic strings. In 1973 I had an opportunity to start learning the rubab with Ustad Mohammad Omar, one of the outstanding musicians of mid-twentieth century Afghanistan. Originally a vocalist, trained in Hindustani music, he had been deputed to become principal rubab player at Radio Kabul when the former incumbent (Ghurban Ali) retired. I attended his regular class for amateur musi- cians, which was held during late afternoons in the guest room of his house in the musicians' quarter (Kucheh Kharabat) of Kabul. This provided what I later realized was an excellent insight into this side of Ustad's musical activities. His training of amateurs was very different to that experienced by male children brought up in sdzandeh hereditary musician families. Typically, the class consisted of eight to twelve students at varying stages of progress. Ustad Mohammad Omar took each pupil in turn. He would listen to what the pupil was working on, comment, and, if appropriate, give another composition. He taught by sargam notation, speaking or singing the names of the notes. The pupil wrote them down and then tried to play them from the written notation. He also demonstrated pieces on the rubab and explained technical problems like right-hand stroke patterns. No tape recorders were allowed in Ustad Mohammad Omar's class! The atmosphere was informal but very respectful. Pupils would arrive and depart, staying for a while to observe the teaching of the others. In this way, and over a six-week Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology period, Ustad Mohammad Omar taught me two complete compositions of the naghmeh-ye kashal (extended instrumental piece) type, in Rag Bairami and Rag Yemen, regarded as the two basic melodic modes by Afghan musicians. Once I had started my fieldwork in Herat in the autumn I hardly saw Ustad Mohammad Omar again and received no more teaching. He did not approve of my studying the Herati dutdr, which he considered too close to Iranian music and the domain of "opium smokers". I took no lessons for rubab in Herat dur- ing that first year of fieldwork, but I made "test recordings"2 of several rubab players, including the outstanding virtuoso Rahim Khushnawaz. Some of his recordings have now been released on CD (Baily 1993), including examples of mahali (local "folk" music), naghmeh-ye kashal (extended instrumental piece), and naghmeh-ye klasik (classical instrumental piece).3 I continued practising the rubab. Back in Belfast in 1974 for a long period of data analysis and report writing, I put in a lot of time transcribing and analysing these recordings and trying out the results on the instrument. As a result, I was able to attain a certain degree of proficiency and also to look at the problems encountered when one tries to transfer rubab pieces to the dutar and vice versa. In 1975 I paid a six-week visit to Herat and started lessons with Amir Jan, father of the above-mentioned Rahim Khushnawaz whose recordings I had been working on. Amir Jan was the outstanding master musician in Herat at that time, a singer and harmonium player with a good knowledge of Kabuli and Indian art music, as well as mahali and kiliwali (popular music). He had previ- ously refused to take me on as a student, probably due to the (well-grounded) fear that too much contact with a foreigner, even one with a research permit issued in Kabul, might arouse the unwelcome attentions of the police. The cir- cumstances of the breakthrough merit some description. I was invited to a musical soiree at Amir Jan's house, a guest evening for friends and patrons, when he and his family played for their guests' entertain- ment. Late on, and after playing a solo naghmeh-ye klasik in Rag Bihag on the rubab, Amir Jan asked me to take the instrument, remarking to the gathering that I was the student of Ustad Mohammad Omar. Knowing the protocol I declined, saying that I could not play "in front of him". He was delighted with this evidence of understanding and sensitivity to the local culture, and persisted with his request.4 I finally capitulated and played a piece I had learned from a recording of his son Rahim, a naghmeh-ye klasik in Rag Puria Kalyan. It went down well. The success of this performance in a sense endorsed the results of my efforts, based on the initial training by Ustad Mohammad Omar and then on recordings and transcriptions of recorded rubab performances. Rahim was not there or he might have pointed out the source of the composition, not that 2 The term "test recording" signifies a recording made out of context for the purposes of collecting a performance of a specific item for transcription and analysis. This contrasts with the "in-context recording", made of a performance which occurs without consideration as to whether it will be recorded or not by the fieldworker. 3 Further information about these genres can be found in Baily (1988:66-80). 4 I later observed that failure to ask permission of the senior musician present before playing could lead to long-term disputes and disagreements. 91 BAILY 92 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.10/ii 2001 it would necessarily have made a significant difference. Following this success, I visited Amir Jan a number of times and he taught me about what he called Rag Todi.5 He showed me some shakl combinations, fixed compositions (nagh- meh) and some quasi-improvised melodic passages called paltas. He also revealed certain specialities of right-hand technique, such as playing chapeh (Baily 1987, 1991). These lessons continued in 1976-77, during my second year's fieldwork in Herat. Amir Jan was officially recognized as my teacher by the Herati office of the Ministry for Information and Culture. I had to take him there for officials to reassure him that I had the necessary permits from Kabul and he would not be put in jeopardy. I now set out to learn the repertoire of naghmehad-ye kashal, the "extended instrumental pieces", which constitute a corpus of material of great interest. They are played as solo items on rubab and other instruments, and as group instrumental pieces as overtures at the start of an evening's performance (Baily 1988:66-74). Although some of these pieces were quite well known, others were very rare, and only ever collected from Amir Jan. In the course of the year I learned examples of this genre from him in the following rags: Bihag, Kumaj, Kausieh, Pilu, Kesturi, Bairami, Panri, Asa, Asawari, Des, Bagheshri, and Yemen Kalyan, with shakl combinations for each. Notations for these unique compositions are being prepared for publication elsewhere, while the shakl combinations have been communicated in Baily (1981). We would meet at his house a couple of times per month, except during the month of Muharram (the month of mourning), when he preferred to respect his neighbours' notions on abstinence from worldly pleasures like music and come to my house. Such an encounter would be a day-long affair, from ten or eleven in the morning to four or five in the afternoon, with soup and bread for lunch and time to explore other avenues of inquiry and listen critically to tapes, espe- cially of North Indian classical music, which he admired greatly. This revealed his knowledge of Indian music, of musicians, music history and rags. Like Ustad Mohammad Omar, Amir Jan taught me by the medium of notation, and was not usually prepared to be recorded playing these compositions. Some of them he had not played for many years and only remembered (and perhaps par- tially recreated) them with some difficulty. It would have been a lot of work for him to practice them up in turn to make definitive archive recordings. It is worth examining his teaching method in some detail because of the light this throws on his underlying cognitive skills. More or less uniquely amongst Herati musicians, Amir Jan had control of sargam notation, using the note names Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Da Ni.6 He had acquired this skill from his own teacher, an ustdd from Kabul, with whom he had studied in the 1930s. This gave him a precise labelling of pitch and enabled him to analyse rags as heard in terms of their scales. It also allowed him to dictate compositions with spoken or sung note names; normally he would sing 5 In fact, I later learned that this was much more like Rag Multdni, with its strong emphasis in the fifth (Pa). 6 The Kabuli usage of this notation differs in small details from the Indian, using the note names Sa Ra Re Ga Ge Ma Me Pe Da De Na Ni. Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology the note names at their appropriate pitches rather than speak them. In teaching a composition he would first give me its shakl. He would dictate a phrase, I would write it down, then play it from the sargam notation. Then on to the next phrase: he dictated, I notated and then played it. Once the shakl was done we would move on to the composition, each in several parts. He would dictate the first part, the astdi, and I would write it down; then he would have me play through it a number of times while he worked out the next section, singing quietly to himself. Once he was ready he would have me stop playing and get me to write down the next section - the first antara, then the second antara, and so on. In the case of three of these modes the tonic is a note other than Sa. In Kausieh and Pcri it is Ma, up a fourth, and in Kesturi it is Pa, up a fifth. I fully expected Amir Jan to transpose the sargam up a fourth or a fifth. When teach- ing me the first of these, Kausieh, he tried to do this but found it very confusing (Baily 1981:12). This implies that he had the layout of note positions on the rubab very much in mind in his representation of pitch. This may be because these are instrumental rather than vocal pieces, but the result is still rather unexpected. Through his dictations Amir Jan revealed the underlying models which in performance become buried beneath a welter of rhythmic patterns. Ethnomusi- cologists often find themselves trying to abstract such models from specific performances, but here the underlying model was volunteered by the informant as part of the musical communication. This also encourages me to try to abstract underlying models from other recorded performances on tape, knowing that such models are there and recognized as such in the folk view. Conclusions What general conclusions can be drawn from this experience of learning to perform music in Afghanistan? According to a recent handbook of ethno- musicology: Ethnomusicologists are more fortunate than anthropologists and sociologists because the private feelings we study are publicly expressed in musical per- formance. Cultural barriers evaporate when musicologist meets musician. There is no substitute in ethnomusicological fieldwork for intimacy born of shared musical experience. Learning to sing, dance, play in the field is good fun and good method. (Myers 1992:31) Learning to perform may indeed be "good fun", but we need to show in rather more detail how and why it is also "good method". The following points are offered for consideration. 1. The acquisition of performance skills by the researcher Learning to perform in order to study performance is arguably the most direct solution to "Seeger's dilemma" (Hemdon 1974); it is the best way of "music- ing music" as part of the process of data collection and analysis in ethnomusi- 93 BAILY 94 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.10/i 2001 cological research. The importance of this as a research technique, for direct investigation of the music itself, must be emphasized. One understands the music from the "inside", so to speak. This means that the structure of the music comes to be apprehended operationally, in terms of what you do, and, by implication, of what you have to know. It is this operational aspect that dis- tinguishes the musical knowledge of the performer from that of the listener without specific performance skills. The technical problems that arise in learn- ing to perform may also be very revealing about the "ergonomics" of the music, showing how it fits the human sensori-motor system and the instru- ment's morphology. My efforts to learn the dutar and rubdb indicated how certain characteristics of the traditional repertoire for each instrument were adapted to the morphology in question (Baily 1977). The researcher who uses this research technique will probably become something of a composer, too, generating new compositions or variations of known compositions that can then be tried out on one's informants, as Blacking (1967:33) suggested. This approach eventually leads to "dialectical ethnomusi- cology", most successfully employed in the field by James Kippen in his study of tabla playing in Lucknow (Kippen 1992:72-98). 2. The study of musicality, learning, and musical cognition Learning to perform provides potentially crucial insights about methods and institutions for musical training, such as apprenticeship in the society in question. My two main teachers7 represent two rather different modes of acquisition. Gada Mohammad, the amateur turned professional, was originally self-taught. He learned by imitation, watching others closely and later trying to reproduce in the privacy of his home what he had observed. Amir Jan had had a teacher, who taught him by oral and written notation. Amir Jan had thus acquired proficiency in sargam and a considerable knowledge of composi- tions, musical forms, and strategies for melodic improvisation. Arguably, the two men had developed rather different kinds of musicality, one "intuitive" and the other "analytical". This is also shown by their use of music theory. Gada's knowledge of music theory, acquired later in his career, seems to have been what I call a representational model, systematizing a body of knowledge that he had acquired without the theory. For Amir Jan, in contrast, music the- ory was an operational model. He had learned the music via the theory, and it is probable that these musical cognitive processes were built up around it, so that in musical performance he invoked the theory at the cognitive level. This distinction is discussed in greater detail by Baily (1988b). The way a musician teaches is likely to reflect the way that person learned in the first place, in the case of these two teachers "by ear" and "by notation". Gada Mohammad and Amir Jan also exemplified two contrasting kinds of musician status within Herati society - the amateur (turned professional) and the hereditary professional. Both displayed some contradictions between the 7 Gada Mohammad and Amir Jan were not my only two music teachers in Herat, but they were the principal ones. Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology ideal method of teaching and the method actually employed. Dutar players like Gada readily understood that playing two dutdrs together was a more efficient and successful method than listening to and watching another player and later trying to reproduce what had been done. It was just that there were certain social impediments to learning by that method. So the way he taught me - or perhaps I should say the way I got him to teach me - though not the usual method for duttir players, was quite acceptable. Amir Jan had four musically gifted sons, also professional musicians; one played rubab, two played tabla, and the fourth was a singer and harmonium player. Amir Jan complained that though each had "a good hand" they had "no science". They had not learned from him in the way he would have liked to have taught them - systematically, through notation. He explained this was because they were "proud", implying that they did not want to acknowledge a debt to him. I had various opportuni- ties to observe his superior knowledge of music theory. 3. Role, status and identity Learning to perform has a number of social advantages for the researcher. It can provide one with an understandable role and status in the community, and it can be very useful in early orientation. It explains why you are there and what you are doing. The question of identity was perhaps more apparent in my second year in Herat, when I was known as the student of Amir Jan. He was a local ustcid, like Ustad Mohammad Ali the calligrapher, or Ustad Mash'al the miniature painter, and, like them, he could reasonably have "students". My status was validated by the local office of the Ministry for Information and Culture.8 Being his student gave me a window into his daily life. When I went for lessons I was there for most of the day in his guest room, and so I would meet his visitors and hear the latest news and gossip. Sometimes he would show me off to others to demonstrate how quickly one could learn through the use of written notation. This of course reflected well on him as a teacher. A love of this music was the basis of our friendship. Through being his student I gained access to the social world of professional male musicians in Herat, and was invited to many of their own rites de passage, such as wedding parties, circum- cisions and other gatherings of musicians. Of course, problems can arise if you become too closely associated with one person, and issues of rivalry between informants can also raise difficulties (see, for example, Baily 1988a: 115-16). Perhaps unfairly, outside the Herati community I usually describe my rubab-playing self to Afghans as the student of Ustad Mohammad Omar, whose name and music are familiar to everyone. This confers instant prestige. Among non-musicians only Heratis are familiar with the name of Amir Jan, though he was well known among the hereditary professional musicians of Kabul, from whom his knowledge ultimately derived. 8 I never became his official student in a gorbandi ceremony, with a string of seven colours tied round the wrist. 95 BAILY BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETH NOM USICOLOGY VOL.10/ii 2001 4. Participant observation There can be no doubt that music making provides opportunities for a kind of participation that is generally denied to anthropologists using the methodology of participant observation. It is not so much that "bimusicality emphasizes participation at the expense of observation" (after Myers 1992) but that partici- pation leads to improved opportunities for observation. Being able to perform to a reasonable standard provides privileged access to the actualite, as I have just discussed. It also gives direct entry into the performance event, a central issue for study in ethnomusicology. This advantage is well illustrated by Veronica Doubleday's experiences as a member of a women's band in Herat (Doubleday 1988). Going out for 24 hours at a time to play at women's wedding parties provided extraordinary insights into the relationship between performance and social context, and into the lives of working women. I person- ally did not become a member of a Herati band on a regular basis, but there were many occasions when I was required or volunteered to play before small gatherings of cognoscenti. Some years later, when making a film about Afghan refugee musicians in Pakistan, this ability to perform Afghan music was an enormous advantage. It was not so much that I understood the music as a per- former but that being able to play it gave me an immediate and large area of common experience with people to whom I was a complete stranger. We were all heirs to a common musical tradition. Again, it was a matter of musical rela- tionships forming the basis for social relationships. 5. The post-fieldwork period The person who uses learning to perform as a research technique is unlikely to stop once fieldwork is over. On the contrary, you tend to take on the music as your own. After twenty years of playing Afghan music, with many private and public performances in Europe and the USA, Veronica Doubleday and I have become "Afghan musicians", accepted as such by the various Afghan communi- ties with whom we have been in contact. This also has thrown up some curious contradictions. There is a tendency to become a "living fossil" because you continue to perform the repertoire you learned at the time of fieldwork and to ignore processes of musical change. When the Afghans want "traditional Afghan music" - at least as performed in Herat - they send for us. How things work out in the post-fieldwork period will depend on a number of factors, including the specifics of the musical culture in question and what happens to it after the researcher has left the field. The civil war which prevented my return to Afghan- istan after 1977 was responsible for many Afghans coming to Europe and the USA as refugees; these included a number of musicians, some of whom I knew from before the war, such as Ustad Asef Mahmood, the tabla player in London, or Aziz Herawi, the duttr and rubab player in San Francisco. In this changed situation the researcher becomes a resource, the archive of field recordings invaluable remnants of a cultural heritage, the fieldwork part of the informants' own music history. Learning to perform someone else's music becomes part of the wider acculturative process of "transfer and retransfer" of music and music theory from one socio-cultural environment to another (Gtinther 1987:74). At the end of the day, the researcher becomes the researched. 96 Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology References Baily, John (1976) "Recent changes in the dutar of Herat." Asian Music VIII(1):29-64. (1977) "Movement patterns in playing the Herati dutar." In John Blacking (ed.), The anthropology of the body, pp. 275-330. Academic Press, London. (1981) "A system of modes used in the urban music of Afghanistan." Ethnomusicology XXV(1): 1-39. (1987) "Principes d'improvisation rythmique dans le jeu du rubab d'Afghanistan." In L'Improvisation dans les musiques de tradition orale, Bernard Lortat-Jacob (ed.), SELAF, Paris. English version of this paper published as "Principles of rhythmic improvisation for the Afghan rubab" in International Council for Traditional Music UK Chapter Bulletin 1989:3-16. (1988a) Music of Afghanistan: professional musicians in the city of Herat. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. With accompanying audio cassette. (1988b) "Anthropological and psychological approaches to the study of music theory and musical cognition." Yearbook for Traditional Music XX: 114-24. (1991) "Some cognitive aspects of motor planning in musical performance." Psychologica Belgica XXXI(2): 147-62. (1993) Afghanistan. The rubab of Herat. Played by Mohammad Rahim Khushnawaz. CD of field recordings made in 1974 by John Baily. Geneva: Archives internationales de musique populaire. (1994) John Blacking: dialogue with the ancestors. The First John Blacking Memorial Lecture, European Seminar in Ethnomusicology, Geneva, 1991. London: Goldsmiths College. (1997) "The naghma-ye kashal of Afghanistan." British Journal of Ethnomusicology 6:117-63. Blacking, John (1967) Venda children's songs. A study in ethnomusicological analysis. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. (1973) How musical is man? Seattle: University of Washington Press. (1977) "An introduction to Venda traditional dances." Dance Studies 2:34-56. Doubleday, Veronica (1988) Three women of Herat. London: Jonathan Cape. Garfias, Robert (1959) Gagaku, the music and dances of the Japanese household. New York: Theatre Arts Books. Gunther, Robert (1987) "Reciprocal effects of music-culture contacts: theoretical aspects and practical references." In Geoffrey Mood (ed.), Transplanted European music cultures. Adelaide studies in musicology. Miscellanea Musicologica 12:74-9. Herndon, Marcia (1974) "Analysis: herding of sacred cows." Ethnomusicology XVIII(2):219-62. Hood, Mantle (1960) "The challenge of 'bi-musicality'." Ethnomusicology IV(2):55-9. 97 BAILY BRITISH JOURNAL F ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL . 1 0/i 2001 Hombostel, Erich M. von (1928) "African negro music." Africa 1:30-62. Jones, A. M. (1934) "African drumming." Bantu Studies 8:1-16. Kippen, James (1992) "Tabla drumming and the human-computer interaction." World of Music 34(3):72-98. Myers, Helen (1992) Ethnomusicology. An introduction. London: Macmillan. Nettl, Bruno (1964) Theory and method in ethnomusicology. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Rouget, Gilbert (1985) Music and trance. A theory of the relations between music and possession. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Note on the author John Baily is Reader in Ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He holds doctorates in Experimental Psychology (Sussex, 1970) and Social Anthropology (Ethnomusicology) (Queen's University Belfast, 1988) and is also a graduate of the Documentary Film section of the National Film and Television School (1986). His ethnomusicological research career has focused mainly on music and musicians in Afghanistan and in the Afghan transnational community. Address: Department of Music, Goldsmiths College, New Cross, London SE14 6NW; e-mail: j.baily@gold.ac.uk. 98
Mazurkas, Piano, B. 134, A Minor (London (No. 229, Regent Street, Corner of Hanover Street) Wessel & Co., Importers and Publishers of Foreign Music Between 1848 and 1856)