British Forum for Ethnomusicology

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Jeremy Montagu
Reviewed work(s):
Music of El Dorado: The Ethnomusicology of Ancient South American Cultures by Dale A.
Olsen
Source: British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2003), pp. 115-118
Published by: British Forum for Ethnomusicology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036852
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.12/ii 2003
teenth-century Cuba) with its fluid vocal
style and here heard emulating the trio
romdntico with three-part vocal harmony;
canci6n, with danza rhythm from Cuba;
and son. Many of the great classics are
here (they have become classics precisely
through recordings and films since the
early twentieth century), such as Tequila
con limcn and Gema. Some pieces are
from Mexico's most famous composers,
such as Agustin Lara (Se me hizo fdcil),
while others remain anonymous (for
example, San Miguel el Alto), reminding
listeners that the roots of this music and
these ensembles lie deeply in Mexico's
traditional and rural past.
It is also curious that most of the musi-
cians on this recording remain anonymous.
In line with Cano's life-long concern with
gaining respect for mariachi musicians,
naming them as individuals on this record-
ing would be a significant and crucial
gesture. A transcript of the lyrics (and
perhaps a translation into English) would
also be a useful addition.
This recording is a delight to experi-
ence, moving from exuberant excess to
languid lushness. As the popularity of
mariachi continues to grow, this recording
is a salute to the future -i Viva el mariachi!
Organography
guitarr6n large, four- or five-stringed,
round-backed bass guitar.
vihuela five-stringed, round-backed guitar.
bajo sexto twelve-stringed guitar, with
special tuning that can be used to play
bass and chordal accompaniment.
tololoche double-bass, sometimes with
three strings.
References
Clark, Jonathan (1992) "Mariachi Vargas".
Descriptive notes to Mariachi Vargas
de Tecaltitldn: their first recordings:
1937-1947. Mexico's pioneer mari-
achis, 3. Arhoolie Folklyric CD 7015
Jiauregui, Jesus (1990) El mariachi: sim-
bolo musical de Mexico. DF: Instituto
Nacional de Antropologfa e Historia.
Sheehy, Daniel (1997) "Mexican mariachi
music: made in the U.S.A." in K. Lor-
nell and A.K. Rasmussen (eds) Musics
of multicultural America. New York:
Schirmer Books, pp.131-54.
- (1999) "Popular Mexican musical
traditions: the mariachi of West Mexico
and the Conjunto Jarocho of Vercruz"
in J.M. Schechter Music in Latin
American culture New York: Schirmer
Books, pp.34-79
RUTH HELLIER-TINOCO
School of Community and Performing
Arts, King Alfred's College, Winchester
Ruth.Hellier- Tinoco @ wkac. ac. uk
DALE A. OLSEN Music of El Dorado:
the ethnomusicology of ancient
South American cultures. Gaines-
ville: University Press of Florida,
2002. 290 pp., illustrations, music
examples, audio examples, tables,
glossary, bibliography, index. ISBN
0-8130-2440-4 (hbk).
One must begin reviewing this book,
excellent and wide in coverage as it is,
with the remark that the title is somewhat
pre-emptive. Was the lure of El Dorado
confined to South America? Or did Central
America also attract the invaders' lust
for gold? In this respect, at least, the sub-
title clarifies the issue. But even if the
edge-blown instruments, all the various
members of the flute family, were those
predominant in pre-Columbian times, can
their survey represent the ethnomusi-
cology of the region so exclusively as the
coverage of this book would imply? This is
not to decry the value of the book, nor the
thoroughness of its coverage within its
own concept, nor the quality of its schol-
arship, nor its importance to us and to all
interested in the ethnoarchaeomusicology
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.12/ii 2003
of the Andean region. Only that the title
promises a greater geographical and organo-
logical range than the content provides,
and that this may inhibit the possibility of
further studies covering other instruments
in greater detail.
After an autobiographical description
of how and why his research began, the
second part of the introduction is an
interesting discussion of the "Theory and
method of ethnoarchaeomusicology", a
term which Dr Olsen has coined for his
approach to this study. This, first adum-
brated in a paper given to the 1986 confer-
ence of the ICTM Study Group on Music
Archaeology (in Hickmann and Hughes
1988) is well worth reading, for he makes
a number of important points, especially
on the value of related disciplines such
as historical documentation and ethno-
graphic analogy. He has, in his area,
considerable advantages over those of us
working in Europe and the east because his
archaeology is much more recent than
ours, with the results both that a much
greater quantity survives and in much
better condition, and that there is a number
of peoples living there who are still
playing instruments similar to those found
archaeologically. The finds are prolific
enough that they can be acquired by
those interested (even I have a few) and
therefore, of course, they can be played.
They are sufficiently available, and often
made of materials sufficiently impervious
to damage by human breath, that even
museums sometimes allow their examples
to be sounded.
The availability of local performers on
similar instruments can be very instructive
on playing techniques. Olsen stresses
again here the very important detail that
our own playing techniques are seldom
transferable to earlier instruments, citing,
to pick only two examples, a local people
who never lift one finger from the holes of
a flute, but always two at a time, a playing
style that would never occur to an investi-
gator without such local knowledge, and
another that use what bagpipers call closed
fingering, never lifting more than one
finger at a time, so that all other holes
remain closed, making a very considerable
difference to the pitch obtained from any
fingerhole save the lowest.
Stressing the importance of observing
such techniques is unnecessary for ethno-
musicologists who note playing techniques
in the field or who have learned to play
under the tutelage of local master musi-
cians. However, publications of pitches
and intervals obtained from archaeological
instruments are almost invariably those
produced by our own modem playing
techniques, and Olsen's remarks show just
how valuable the interaction of an ethno-
musicologist into archaeological fieldwork
can be.
This interaction is considerably
enhanced by the recordings of all the
printed musical examples, of many of the
instruments illustrated, and of other instru-
ments discussed. These are available from
http://otto.cmr.fsu.edu/~cma/Eldorado or,
if web access is impracticable, a CD can
be obtained from the author at nominal
cost. The audio examples are listed in the
front of the book and cross-referenced
there to the figures and printed examples,
and again from the text and the captions to
the audio examples. This ease of reference
is a great help and, in these days of wide-
spread use of the web, an excellent way
round the common reluctance of publish-
ers to include a CD. The audio examples
are extremely valuable, especially in
connexion with some of the effects that are
very difficult to describe, such as the
multiphonics obtained from the double-
chamber vessel flutes and the results
of sloshing water in the double-chamber
whistling pots. They also show very
clearly, for some of these are demonstrated
here, the differences between "Western"
fingering techniques and the indigenous
ones discussed above.
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.12/ii 2003
Olsen endeavours to dismiss the old
myth that the music of this area depended
greatly on the pentatonic scale. This he
successfully does with regard to what
he calls "the Western pentatonic scale",
which he identifies with the black notes of
the piano. Nevertheless, many of his exam-
ples do show considerable evidence of
pentatonicism in its literal meaning of a
five-tone scale - along with many writers
he seems to forget that pentatonic, unad-
jectivally qualified, means five-tone and
nothing more - any five pitches within
an octave, close-clustered, wide-spaced, or
any combination of the two, irrespective
of the sizes of the interval between any of
the pitches.
We come next to the main body of the
book, with a chapter for each type of
instrument, allying each with descriptions
of what appear to have been their main use
within their cultures: the notch flutes with
life and transcendence, the panpipes with
transfiguration and death, the ocarinas
with call and communication, the various
possible uses of whistling bottles, and
transverse flutes (demonstrating that these
existed in the area, disproving previous
assertions that they did not) with the cult of
the dead.
Details and description have consider-
able importance to any instrument his-
torian, for example that the notch flutes
often have the notch chamfered internally,
whereas modem instruments from the area,
and normally elsewhere, are chamfered
externally, and the mention that one
instrument described has an internal wax
diaphragm, which radically affects its
tuning. The association with the thought of
the culture is equally important to the
anthropologist and is sustained by the
copious iconography of the instruments as
well as by discussion with shamans of the
present day, and reference to the chronicles
and descriptions of the early invaders.
The third section of the book covers
"Musical case studies", and here we do,
however briefly, encounter other types of
instrument during the discussions on
shamanism and curing rituals. There are
descriptions of two types of rattle, the one
single-chambered, the other double, and of
three forms of drum. That described as a
frame drum is a cylindrical tubular drum,
like our side drum, rather than a frame
drum, like our tambourine (the shell depth
less than the radius of the head). There is
a brief discussion of the conch trumpet
("conch shell", as normally used here, is
tautologous) but nothing on why the
Moche should have gone with great skill
and trouble to reproduce the whole exter-
nal and internal form of a common natural
species in ceramic. The various patterns of
pottery trumpet, coiled and straight, are no
more than mentioned, presumably because
this section concentrates mainly on icono-
graphic evidence - rare, perhaps even non-
existent, for these instruments - and on
interviews with contemporary shamans;
later there is an even briefer mention of the
use of a slit drum.
We then return to duct flutes and vessel
flutes (Olsen uses the term globular flutes,
but few are actually that shape), first to the
"magical" duct flutes of the Sinti. For these
we have audio examples but no transcrip-
tions with cents figures (though references
to major thirds and perfect fifths). Finally
to the effigy figurines of the Tairona, all of
which are vessel or tubular flutes, mostly
duct-blown, in zoomorphic or anthropo-
morphic form. The majority of these, as
with the Sind flutes, have four fingerholes,
again encouraging the suggestion of
pentatonicity.
This brief description of the contents of
the book has concentrated, perhaps exces-
sively, on the very valuable organological
aspects and has to a great extent neglected
the other two foci of Olsen's study. One,
that all these instruments had a purpose,
and that mainly connected with magic
or better, perhaps, religion and belief,
whether protective, curative, summoning
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.12/ii 2003
and retaining spirits, or any other aspects
of bringing the immanent into their lives.
This is not an area within my competence,
but his arguments and evidence seem to
me convincing.
The other, with which he concludes
(other than a very comprehensive glossary,
bibliography, and index), and with which
we must all agree, is that the makers of
these instruments were artists who made
and decorated their instruments with great
skill, showing just how highly valued were
the instruments and their sound: "Within
the realm of El Dorado, music was indeed
the most exquisite of all things."
References
Olsen, Dale A. (1988) "The magic flutes
of El Dorado: a model for research in
music archaeology as applied to the
Sind of ancient Colombia." In Ellen
Hickmann and David W. Hughes (eds)
The archaeology of early music cul-
tures, pp. 305-28. Orpheus-Schriften-
reihe zu Grundfragen der Musik, Bd.
51. Bonn: Verlag fuir systematische
Musikwissenschaft GmbH.
JEREMY MONTAGU
University of Oxford
jeremy. montagu @ wadham. ox.ac. uk
LISE A. WAXER The city of the musical
memory: salsa, record grooves, and
popular culture in Cali, Colombia.
Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan
University Press, 2002. 416pp., illus-
trations, maps, musical examples,
appendices. Paperback $24.95.
ISBN 0819564427
One of Colombia's largest cities, Cali is
located in a valley in the middle of the
Andes, much closer to the Pacific coast
than to the Caribbean shores, but Calefios
(people from Cali) have always manifested
a strong attraction for musica antillana
(music from the Spanish Caribbean) and in
particular for Cuban rhythms and sounds.
Popular claims asserting Cali as "the world
capital of salsa" and "the heaven's outpost"
have been widespread sayings in Colom-
bia and perhaps in neighbouring countries
for at least three decades. However, before
Waxer's book, those statements had
received meagre attention in academic
circles and in the ever-growing literature
dealing with salsa. In this book, Waxer
meticulously elucidates why and how a
style of music, originally created by Cuban
and Puerto Rican musicians in New York,
became a keystone of Cali's popular
culture. Although several local journalists
and even fiction writers have kept numer-
ous accounts documenting the city's
obsession with salsa, Waxer's is the most
systematic study on the topic published so
far. Throughout the book she maintains a
"dialogue" with those other accounts,
especially with Alejandro Ulloa's La salsa
en Cali (1992), a breakthrough study on
popular culture's uses and practices, an
almost unexplored topic in the country
before the 1990s. In addition, she fre-
quently establishes links with Peter Wade's
Music, race, and nation (2000), setting up
a compelling framework from which to
appreciate the contradictions and com-
plexity of the Colombian case as a whole.
The book is divided into six chapters
plus a short epilogue, each section describ-
ing a particular aspect of the salsa craze.
The first chapter traces the arrival of
musica antillana in the city with an
impressive level of detail. Waxer carefully
explains not only the mechanical part of
the process, in terms of when and how the
music was brought but, most importantly,
the social, political and economic factors
that fixed it into the life of the city. For her,
the isolation of the region from the
national politics and flow of capital even-
tually crystallized in the formation of a
singular, eminently local, popular culture
set to mark its difference with the national
118