You are on page 1of 15

British Forum for Ethnomusicology

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

You might also like