British Forum for Ethnomusicology

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Kevin Dawe
Reviewed work(s):
The Passion of Music and Dance: Body, Gender and Sexuality by William Washabaugh
Source: British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 6 (1997), pp. 206-211
Published by: British Forum for Ethnomusicology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3060841
Accessed: 06/01/2009 20:08
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
206 British Journal
of Ethnomusicology,
vol. 6 (1997) 206 British Journal
of Ethnomusicology,
vol. 6 (1997)
engagement
with a
range
of
topical
themes and
theoretical concerns and the author's laudable
attempt
to
propose,
in the
light
of these, fresh
ways
of
looking
at the flamenco
phenomenon.
References
Manuel, Peter (1989) "Andalusian, gypsy,
and
class
identity
in the
contemporary
flamenco
complex." Ethnomusicology
33.1: 47-65.
Mitchell, Timothy (1994)
Flamenco
deep
song.
Yale Univ. Press.
Taylor, Roger
L. (1978) Art, an
enemy of
the
people.
Atlantic
Highlands,
NJ: Humanities
Press.
Woodall, James (1992)
In search
of
the
firedance.
London: Sinclair-Stevenson.
CAROLINE BITHELL
Dept. of
Music
University of Wales, Bangor
cab@tycasa.demon.co.uk
engagement
with a
range
of
topical
themes and
theoretical concerns and the author's laudable
attempt
to
propose,
in the
light
of these, fresh
ways
of
looking
at the flamenco
phenomenon.
References
Manuel, Peter (1989) "Andalusian, gypsy,
and
class
identity
in the
contemporary
flamenco
complex." Ethnomusicology
33.1: 47-65.
Mitchell, Timothy (1994)
Flamenco
deep
song.
Yale Univ. Press.
Taylor, Roger
L. (1978) Art, an
enemy of
the
people.
Atlantic
Highlands,
NJ: Humanities
Press.
Woodall, James (1992)
In search
of
the
firedance.
London: Sinclair-Stevenson.
CAROLINE BITHELL
Dept. of
Music
University of Wales, Bangor
cab@tycasa.demon.co.uk
WILLIAM WASHABAUGH (ed.),
The
passion of
music and dance:
body, gender
and
sexuality.
Oxford:
Berg,
1998.
201pp., photos, bibliog.,
index. ISBN 1-85973-909-1
(pb).
This is a
very
ambitious book. It aims to show
how nationalism, sexuality, identity
and
authenticity
intersect in the formation and re-
creation of three
popular
forms of music and
dance, namely: flamenco, tango,
and rebetika.
It
goes
some
way
towards
achieving
this
goal
and is a useful addition to the literature on
popular music, dance and
gender.
The fact that
it
attempts
at
every
turn to treat
performance
as a site where the
politics
of culture are
sounded, danced and
played out,
is to its
credit.
Analyses
of
performances
on film are
also included, and some of the most fruitful
insights
into how elements of
performance
interact come from Carlos Saura's recent
flamenco film, tango films,
and "the Zorba
factor" in re-constructions of Greek rebetika.
Indeed, it is
encouraging
to see the kind of
rigorous, in-depth performance ethnography
carried out
by anthropologists
such as David
Gilmore,
Michael Herzfeld and Jane Cowan
heavily informing
a book on
popular
music
and dance,
and
finding
their
way
into multi-
media studies. But even in the areas where the
constituent elements of the title
begin
to
coalesce and
provide potentially greater
insight,
one wonders if a much better
synthesis
of ideas has not
already
been achieved
WILLIAM WASHABAUGH (ed.),
The
passion of
music and dance:
body, gender
and
sexuality.
Oxford:
Berg,
1998.
201pp., photos, bibliog.,
index. ISBN 1-85973-909-1
(pb).
This is a
very
ambitious book. It aims to show
how nationalism, sexuality, identity
and
authenticity
intersect in the formation and re-
creation of three
popular
forms of music and
dance, namely: flamenco, tango,
and rebetika.
It
goes
some
way
towards
achieving
this
goal
and is a useful addition to the literature on
popular music, dance and
gender.
The fact that
it
attempts
at
every
turn to treat
performance
as a site where the
politics
of culture are
sounded, danced and
played out,
is to its
credit.
Analyses
of
performances
on film are
also included, and some of the most fruitful
insights
into how elements of
performance
interact come from Carlos Saura's recent
flamenco film, tango films,
and "the Zorba
factor" in re-constructions of Greek rebetika.
Indeed, it is
encouraging
to see the kind of
rigorous, in-depth performance ethnography
carried out
by anthropologists
such as David
Gilmore,
Michael Herzfeld and Jane Cowan
heavily informing
a book on
popular
music
and dance,
and
finding
their
way
into multi-
media studies. But even in the areas where the
constituent elements of the title
begin
to
coalesce and
provide potentially greater
insight,
one wonders if a much better
synthesis
of ideas has not
already
been achieved
elsewhere, for
example,
in Cowan 1990,
Stokes 1994 and
Washabaugh
1996.
The book
grew
out of a
panel
session on
"The Politics of Passion" at the 1996
meeting
of the American
Anthropological Association,
and the
grouping
of
papers
in the book reflects
this. There is an imbalance in the
chapter
layout:
three
chapters
on flamenco (two by
Washabaugh),
followed
by
three
chapters
of
varying length
on
tango,
then one
long
and one
short
chaper
on rebetika and a
chapter
on
"social dance" in
early
twentieth
century
North America (in which
tango
is mentioned).
The introduction
(Washabaugh)
and the con-
cluding chapter (Gerhard Steingrass)
are
attempts
to situate the rich
ethnographic
fieldwork of the articles into a
comparative
historical framework. In fact, the editor makes
an
attempt
to fuse the
chapters together
-each
of which stands
up
in its own
right
as meritori-
ous-into a
theory
for all
popular
music. The
added
layers
of
theory cloud, rather than
clarify,
one's
understanding
of the
chapters.
The texts demonstrate how
body, gender
and
sexuality
are
contingent upon
music and dance
performance,
but
they
are not
going
to revo-
lutionise
popular
music studies.
The collection of
papers
does
provide
useful
information on flamenco, tango
and rebetika
as local and international constructions, as
politically charged, morally nuanced, as texts
where the
potential
to edit
history according
to
an
agenda
exists.
Popular
culture is
open
to
manipulation, especially by
forces which
control the industries
responsible
for
casting
it
broadly. However, it has become
abundantly
clear that
performers
are active
agents
not
only
in the music
industry
but in
shaping
culture
itself. Performance
genres
will
always
be
concerned and imbued with the ideals of the
society
that breathes life into them, as liminal
areas where one can
push
at
normally limiting
boundaries, play
with rules,
and where the
politics
of the
everyday
can be
challenged
and
explored.
In
trying
to
sharpen
this
approach,
Washabaugh
asks that "we defer
answering
poorly
framed
questions
about music, authen-
ticity,
and
identity.
We
argue
that no music
springs from, and
speaks for, the soul of a
community
in
any simple way
.... music and
dance are on the move .... flux is what enables
one to
hope
for a
way
out of the otherwise
unresolvable contradictions of
contemporary
social relations. Music and dance, after all, are
always
about
changing
the world" (24).
elsewhere, for
example,
in Cowan 1990,
Stokes 1994 and
Washabaugh
1996.
The book
grew
out of a
panel
session on
"The Politics of Passion" at the 1996
meeting
of the American
Anthropological Association,
and the
grouping
of
papers
in the book reflects
this. There is an imbalance in the
chapter
layout:
three
chapters
on flamenco (two by
Washabaugh),
followed
by
three
chapters
of
varying length
on
tango,
then one
long
and one
short
chaper
on rebetika and a
chapter
on
"social dance" in
early
twentieth
century
North America (in which
tango
is mentioned).
The introduction
(Washabaugh)
and the con-
cluding chapter (Gerhard Steingrass)
are
attempts
to situate the rich
ethnographic
fieldwork of the articles into a
comparative
historical framework. In fact, the editor makes
an
attempt
to fuse the
chapters together
-each
of which stands
up
in its own
right
as meritori-
ous-into a
theory
for all
popular
music. The
added
layers
of
theory cloud, rather than
clarify,
one's
understanding
of the
chapters.
The texts demonstrate how
body, gender
and
sexuality
are
contingent upon
music and dance
performance,
but
they
are not
going
to revo-
lutionise
popular
music studies.
The collection of
papers
does
provide
useful
information on flamenco, tango
and rebetika
as local and international constructions, as
politically charged, morally nuanced, as texts
where the
potential
to edit
history according
to
an
agenda
exists.
Popular
culture is
open
to
manipulation, especially by
forces which
control the industries
responsible
for
casting
it
broadly. However, it has become
abundantly
clear that
performers
are active
agents
not
only
in the music
industry
but in
shaping
culture
itself. Performance
genres
will
always
be
concerned and imbued with the ideals of the
society
that breathes life into them, as liminal
areas where one can
push
at
normally limiting
boundaries, play
with rules,
and where the
politics
of the
everyday
can be
challenged
and
explored.
In
trying
to
sharpen
this
approach,
Washabaugh
asks that "we defer
answering
poorly
framed
questions
about music, authen-
ticity,
and
identity.
We
argue
that no music
springs from, and
speaks for, the soul of a
community
in
any simple way
.... music and
dance are on the move .... flux is what enables
one to
hope
for a
way
out of the otherwise
unresolvable contradictions of
contemporary
social relations. Music and dance, after all, are
always
about
changing
the world" (24).
British Journal
of Ethnomusicology,
vol. 6
(1997)
While the editor
acknowledges
the
impor-
tance of
hybridity
as a result of music and
dance being "on the move", there is no
mention of how
hybridity
relates to the con-
struction of difference in each
ethnographic
context.
My
worst fears are confirmed
by
Steingrass
when he
puts
forward the view that
the "actual transcultural
manipulation
of
originally regional,
ethnic musical
styles
as
merchandise on the
global
market of world
music has reduced
considerably
their value as
objects
of national and ethnic identification"
(170).
In fact, the
chapters
in the book show us
that this isnot the whole
story; popular
musics
remain as
potent
and as forceful as
they
ever
were and, if
anything,
are
increasingly impor-
tant sites for the
working
out of local, regional
and national identities. The "world music"
scene has stimulated interest in flamenco,
tango
and rebetika. It cannot be
disentangled
from the
processes
that lead
many people
to
seek a
greater understanding
of these forms,
often
through
active and serious
participation
and
scholarship-I
note the rise of flamenco
clubs
throughout
the world. In her
chapter
on
rebetika, Gail Holst-Warhaft notes, "like
many
other
styles
of
popular music, including tango,
fado, blues and flamenco, the rebetika are
commercially
successful
popular song.
How-
ever much
they are,
or once were, the
expres-
sion of a
marginalised group, they
are listened
to, exploited
and
analyzed by people
who are
not
part
of the
goup"
(112). Yes, there is the
problem that, at times, these forms are treated
as fantastic touristic creations,
but we are not
given any
clue as to how the
images
and
practices imposed by
a
supposedly
Machia-
vellian international music
industry
are
appre-
hended in local terms as the
chapters suggest.
Is there such a
thing
as a
"global
market of
world music", or are there economies of scale
which are networked in localised contexts? Is
this not the reason
why flamenco, tango
and
rebetika are still
meaningful
and relevant to
Spaniards, Argentines
and Greeks
respective-
ly?
Flamenco means
something
different to
enthusiasts in London, Glasgow,
Los
Angeles
and Cordoba. Greek rebetika is
meaningful,
in
different
ways,
to different
generations.
The
recasting
and
reworking
of music and dance
forms is
surely part
of a
process
with "music
and dance on the move"?
With the cultivation of national identities in
the 19th
century,
we are told,
"musical
commodities", i.e.
packaged
music and dance
forms, were used "to
effectively
underwrite
state-level
politics",
and this
politicking
was
radically shaped by notions of
gender (6).
Flamenco, tango
and rebetika were "emotional
music
styles
most
closely
associated with
women", developed
out of women's
practices,
and were
adopted by men who
sought
to
portray
themselves as
heroic-mythic figures
living
on the
edge
of
acceptability.
These
performance genres
moved from
poverty-
stricken
neighbourhoods
into national con-
sciousness and
appropriation
as
symbols
of
national
identity,
as sites where the inter-
section of state-level and
gender politcs
remain a
potent
and
explosive cocktail, shaken
by
the movement of
popular
cultural forms
into
internationally
mediated contexts.
Music and dance remain emblematic of
carefully negotiated identities, where tensions
and contradictions, protests,
not revolutions,
are
played
out and contained. In
Retuning
culture (1996, edited
by
Mark
Slobin) we
come across music cultures in Central and
Eastern
Europe
which are
being
used to resist
and redefine
imposed identities, shaping
emerging
forms of cultural
identity. Popular
music is indeed
dependent upon
socio-
economic motors driven
by
the status
quo,
but
its
power
lies in its
ability
to act as a broad-
casting
medium for a broad
range
of ideas and
meanings,
the
potential empowerment
of all
classes of
society,
and the democratisation of
culture.
One must also recall that there are a
range
of
popular
musics in
Spain,
Greece and
Argen-
tina
beyond
or
intersecting
with flamenco,
rebetika, and
tango,
which are
representative
of
differing
worldviews and slices
through
the
cake of
centre-periphery, local, regional,
national and international relations. We cannot
accept
that the
particular
form of
analysis put
forward for
flamenco, tango
and rebetika be
treated as a
template
for the
sudy
of all
Spanish, Greek, Argentine,
"Mediterrane-
an" and "Latin"
popular
musics. I am not
encouraged
to stretch Mediterraneanist anal-
yses
into Latin America or vice
versa, or
even to treat
comparable gender
relations in
Spain
and Greece as the basis for an
argument
on the
universality
of human
gender
relations.
Comparative
studies and
introductory surveys
are useful when used to illuminate
problems-
see the
exemplary
work of Manuel
(1988),
Gilmore
(1990)
and Stokes
(1994)-and
where authors come clean about the
limitations of their work. The
passion of
music and dance
engages
with
many
of the
problems
involved in
comparative
studies of
popular
music and dance, but it does
not, as
207
208 British Journal
of Ethnomusicology,
vol 6 (1997)
claimed
by
the editor, make
"giant
strides
forward" (vii). However, some of the
chapters
do
thankfully
tease out and turn the theoretical
trajectories
of the clouded introduction into
sunlit
paths.
William
Washabaugh's
two
chapters
look
at flamenco as an
engendered
art form
captured
first on film and then in dance.
Washabaugh
discusses Carlos Saura's film
Flamenco in which, in his
opinion,
the "old
cultural
politics"
of
Spanish misogyny
reappear despite
the director's efforts to create
a
de-politicised presentation.
I found the
discussion of the
appropriation
of women's
vocal
style by
men in this
chapter fascinating
and how, in Saura's film, surprisingly,
it is
women who are
given
the "strident" role to
play. Yet, in this web of
intrigue,
women end
up singing
in a
manly style, merely placing
their bodies into
already engendered spaces.
This
complex gender politicking
is taken
forward into
Washabaugh's
next
chapter
on
"Fashioning masculinity
in flamenco dance",
where he discusses the movements of flamen-
co men at dance and how their calculated
gender bending
adds to the rich ironies
inherent in flamenco. In the final
chapter
on
flamenco, Timothy
deWaal
Malefyt
notes
convincingly
that "the domestic, the
private,
and women ... form an effective model of
identity
that leads flamenco
concepts
and
practices among
aficionados and strentr'ens
their
unity against
the
increasingly diveigent
and
competitive
world of outside flamenco
representations" (62).
He looks in some detail
at the
politics
of
authenticity
that inform the
pena
culture of Andalusia.
The next three
chapters
look at the
construction of "authentic" and "authenti-
cated" heroes
focussing
on the work of
tango
singer
and
interpreter
Carlos Gardel
(who
died in 1935). Donald Castro
begins,
"the
tango lyric
is a
commentary
on
personal
irresponsibility. [W]hen
this view of the
world ... is
expanded
into broader social,
political,
and economic interactions,
the
message given
is that the individual, or the
body politique,
each of which is
largely
defined as
being
male and child-like,
needs
protection
from the outside world". He
goes
on to show how the
message
of the
tango
lyric,
and Gardel himself,
became linked to
the themes of
government
and
political
mission of Juan and Evita Peron. Gardel is
credited as
being
"the creator and defender of
a
purely Argentine
national cultural form"
(66), tango cancion,
and as someone who
"personified
the dreams and
aspirations
of the
Argentine people" (ibid.), his
songs
a means
of
escape
from the
despair
of
grinding poverty
and an uncertain future. This
rags-to-riches
superstar
came to
embody
all the idealised
notions of
Argentinian
manhood: machismo,
control, fidelity
and
loyalty, materially
suc-
cessful, demonstrating
a sense of alienation/
vulnerability, "exuding
an air of smugness
and
superiority" (68). Gardel's
personalisation
of
many tango songs, through
alteration of the
lyrics
or modulation of the voice, plays
with
themes and the vivid
imagery
evoked
by
the
words. He
pulls
out the tensions inherent in
tango themes, love and
betrayal,
murder as an
act of
passion (and thus
pardonable),
life in
prison, creating
an aura of
mystery
and
suspense
around himself as much as in his
songs. Today,
Castro notes, propagandist
commentators "have added a further
refinement of
equating
Peron with Gardel and
Gardel with Peron so that the
myths
of these
two men have
merged" (76).
The tensions of
the
tango
aesthetic are still
played
out in
connection with Gardel and his
continuing
role
as the
epitome
of
Argentine masculinity.
Jeffrey
Tobin discusses the debate
raging
in
Argentina
about Gardel's
sexuality
and
tells us how
scholarly publications
about
tango
dance also deliberate about how to "sex" it.
Tobin notes, "most
tango-practitioners
and
tango-scholars
are more or less
open
to read-
ing tango
as
transgressive
in terms of
gender,
class, race or morals, but the
costuming
and
posturing practices
of the international
tango
scene
usually
remain
safely
heterosexual.
Meanwhile, homosocial
tango-dancing-
common at
tango's primal
scenes and in its
comtemporary practice-is studiously
dis-
associated from the famous eroticism of
tango" (98).
Two
images
dominate
tango
shows: one the
image
of the brothel where
two men
fight
with knifes over a woman,
the other a street comer where men dance with
each other, "playfully competing
to
display
the
fanciest
steps" (80).
The author describes
scenes from his fieldwork in Buenos Aires
where
many
men
spend
time
dancing
with
other men, despite
the
availability
of female
partners.
He notes that "most of the
strictly
straight Argentine
men I know are
quite
playful
about their
hyperbolic displays
of
masculinity,
and that
they
are
quite
com-
fortable
talking
about latent homoeroticism"
(101). Clearly,
one must
proceed
with caution
and not make
any hasty judgements
about the
relationship
between
sexuality
and dance in
British Journal
of Ethnomusicology,
vol. 6
(1997)
tango,
and the author calls for "a theorization
of sexualities that
partakes
of
queer
theories
and the cross-cultural awareness of ethno-
graphic
research" (ibid.).
Marta
Savigliano
takes cautious
steps
into
the world of
tango
club culture. She wants to
know what it is that
tango
dancers look for,
night
after
night,
in these clubs or "milon-
gas". They
search for the
tango "high",
"a
paradoxical
state of abandonment and full
control, of
body
awareness and mental dis-
engagement" (104).
The club is a
place
of
fleeting relationships,
where no
loyalties
or
commitments can become established-
dances are
personalised, relationships
are
not. This
pragmatism
informs the
"tango
food
chain" and the construction of an
industry
dedicated to the
pursuit
of the
tango "high".
Savigliano
describes the
strategies
and
ploys adopted by aspiring professional tango
dancers to
gain
a foothold in the
tango scene,
and how the
milongas
become a showcase for
talent.
Foreign
female dancers are
sought after,
providing
contacts for
touring
and
teaching
abroad, and hard cash in
exchange
for lessons.
Established women dancers
hardly
venture
onto the scene, thus
many
man are left
seeking
partners.
She details the
qualities
women need
"to move from wallflower to
goddess
of the
milonga" (109),
a
process
that
they
have to
go
through
at
every
dance event. These
"Goddesses of the
milonga"
take on the role
of femmes fatales, combining intelligence
and
dancing
skills with a
mastery
of the
body's
seductive
powers.
Gail Holst-Warhaft is
probably
the best
known writer on rebetika. Her book The
road to rebetika
(1977)
remains the most
accessible tome on the
subject.
Holst's
chapter
is therefore a welcome addition to this
selection and also to the literature on Greek
popular
music. In her discussion of "the
double-descended
deep songs
of Greece",
by
which she means the Eastern and Western
origins
of and elements in
rebetika,
she
provides
an outline
history
of the
genre,
tracing
how it has been
engendered by
notions
with
origins
back into the nineteenth
century.
The film "Zorba the Greek" and its
depiction
of "a world where men could
express ecstasy,
sure of their manhood"
(111), is,
the author
notes,
"a world as exotic to the Greek
intellectual as to the
European
or American"
(ibid.). Greek intellectuals
play
a fundamental
role in the
history
of Greek
popular music,
and
Holst-Warhaft charts the
interplay
between
these
figures
and the
waxing
and
waning
of
rebetika from the late 19th
century.
At this
time
European-style cafe-chantant was
championed by Western-leaning
Greek intel-
lectuals, rather than Oriental
stylised laments
(a "grieving"
and "maternal
inheritence"),
their choice
reflecting
a
long
tradition of
beliefs about the Orient in Greece which are
discernable in
contemporary
Greek
reality.
The defeat of the Greek
military
forces in
Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey)
in
May 1919
brought
about the end, not
only
of Greek
dreams of
regaining
a substantial foothold in
Asian Minor, but of a rich multi-ethnic
society
of with the Greeks
forming
a substantial
part
of the
population.
The wave of
refugees
from
Smyrna
settled in Greece, their music, popular
in Asia Minor Greek communities, "adding
additional
poignancy" (114) after the
exchange
of
populations
between Greece and
Turkey
in 1922. In the late 1920s, spurred
on
by
an
accumulating
wealth of talent, cafe
aman
songs
were recorded in Athens, showing
women
singers
to be as
popular
as the men and
amanes
songs,
whether
performed by
women
or men, to be "a formulaic
cry
of
anguish"
(116). Against
a rich and varied instrumenta-
tion, the amanes were
sung
in a
tight-throated,
high-pitched,
melismatic vocal
style, taking
the form of a
stylised
women's lament
linked to Greek rural traditions. The amanes
and other
popular
music forms tuned into the
psychological
state of mind of the Greek
people
at this time: defeated, poor
and misera-
ble. Proto-rebetika
songs featuring
women
often
expressed
a
"devil-may-care
attitude"
(117)
and the woman's resistance to conven-
tional male-female
relationships
that are often
gestures
of
protest, "setting
the woman outside
conventional boundaries, a hard luck tale"
(118).
This was a fictional tale of an
indep-
endent-spirited
woman who talks
tough
like a
man, offering
an
escape
from the constraints
of
society.
Piraeus-style
rebetika of the 1930s featured
male
singers, accompanied by bouzouki, with
a
rougher
and
tougher quality
to their voice.
This established "a new male
ethos, not
overtly political
but
proletarian
and street-wise
.... the
lifestyle presented
in the
songs
...
consciously exaggerated
and
presented
to a
bourgeois public
as a fiction"
(119).
The
bouzouki and the male dance came to
sym-
bolise the
essentially
male character of
rebetika. In the
post
war
period
rebetika was
discovered
by
intellectuals like Tsitsanis.
However, in Holst-Warhaft's
opinion,
"the
"oriental
pain"
of the amanes still
lingers
in
209
210 British Journal
of Ethnomusicology,
vol. 6 (1997)
the macho
swagger
and
wry
humour of the
later rebetika. Much debate surrounded the
form in the '40s, '50s and '60s about the value
of such music, whether rebetika could be
considered emblematic of the Greek
people,
and whether the
songs
were ethical. Sotiria
Bellou, one of the few successful female
singers
of the
post-war period
to rival men in
popularity, sings
with a voice that is
deep
in
pitch
and with little ornamentation and is "the
voice of a woman
singing
like a man". It
became clear in the 1960s, before the Metaxas
dictatorship,
that men were the inheritors of
the rebetika tradition, the male voice an
expression
of the
pain
of the downtrodden
kosmaki (the
little
people
of Greece).
Angela
Shand reveals how
problematic
and
complex
the
relationship
between dance, body,
gender
and
identity
can be in her discussion of
its role in a Greek
community
in
upper
Midwest America. An Orthodox
priest
had
sposored
a
party
at a local restaurant, encour-
aging
all his
congregation
to attend. A band
played
both
popular
Greek music and rebetika,
and there was much
dancing
and merriment.
But the
presence
of a
belly
dancer was the
subject
of the
priest's
next sermon. He told the
congregation
how
betrayed
he felt and that this
type
of
dancing,
he believed, led to sin. The
tsifte-teli dance
(the belly dance)
was a dance
of Turkish
origin,
not to be danced or
enjoyed
by any self-respecting
Greek. Shand notes the
approaches
to
bodily display
found in both
Christian and Eastern Orthodox
theologies,
where the Church does not teach that
bodily
display
and
dancing
is
inherently
sinful. In the
Eastern Orthodox Church, "the
body
is called
to salvation and sanctification
along
with the
soul ... the
bodily
senses are seen as sites of
holiness as well as
temptation
...
incorporated
into
worship: sight, through
the use of
icons;
hearing, through
the
chanting
of
hymns; smell,
through incense; taste, through
the Eucharist;
and touch, through
the
sign
of the Cross"
(128). Bodily
movement does, of course, play
a
large
role in
worship, protestations
and
processions.
Although
some
priests
would dance at
parties, they
restrained themselves
during
Lent,
and would
certainly
frown
upon any
dance
performed
to entice someone to sin. The
priest's
sermon reinforced these rules even
though,
in the case of the
party
in
question,
he
did not attend and therefore was in no
position
to
judge
the extent to which the dancer or
congregation
had sinned. It became clear to
Shand that the
priest's objections
reflected
Greek
objections. (But was this at all nuanced
by
the
placement
of the Greek
community
in
American
society?)
To elaborate, there is a
deep
resistance to tsifte-teli which is cultural
and
highly gendered
rather than
purely
religious:
in the case of the
priest,
"masculine
officialdom had been
challenged by
feminine
practices" (130). The
priest, apparently,
never
criticised
performances
of the zeibekiko
dance, with roots in the Ottoman East, but also
a men's dance. As Shand
explains,
"For
many
Greeks, the tsifte-teli remains an oriental
dance of a woman without restraint ...
placing
the dancer on the
pedestal
of the taverna table
... also restricts her movements and allows
others to
keep
an
eye
on her. Her
potential
danger
is thus averted, and the tsifte-teli is
made safe for Western civilisation"
(132).
In the next
paper,
Susan C. Cook
provides
an
absorbing
account of the
growth
and wide-
spread popularity
of the
"ragtime
social
dance" movement and its most
popular per-
formers, Irene and Vernon Castle, in the five
years preceding
the
entry
of the United States
into the First World War.
Relying
on
improvisatory spontaneity
and social informal-
ity, placing
its devotees in
increasingly
familiar circumstances in
public halls, this
music and dance form came to
embody
"the
purported
freedoms and
vitality
of the modem
age" (132).
It was also seen as a threat not
only
to the conservative dance establishment
but also to "white America". This dance craze,
at first
passed
off as a
pathological condition,
"came to mark out a kind of
middleground
between the
informality
of
working-class
dance halls and the constrained
rigidity
of the
Dancing Masters, a
middleground
that decon-
structed and reconstructed the notions about
male and female dancers"
(141).
This was
largely
due to the work and talent of the
Castles, and careful
marketing
and
powerful
connections on the
part
of their
agent. They
showed the
country
how to dance "white",
how
dancing
could be
healthy fun, enforced
by
"their
grace,
cool
composure,
the
passionless
nature of their
dancing,
even their
platonic
rendering
of the
tango" (ibid.).
African American band leader James Reese
Europe
acted as the musical director at the
Castle's dance school and club and accom-
panied
them on tour. He was an established
figure
in the New York
City
entertainment
world and
helped
ensure the success of the
Castles' New York ventures; yet
he was never
given
credit for this
by
the Castles. As Cook
notes, "the
relationship
between the Castles
British Journal
of Ethnomusicology,
vol. 6
(1997)
British Journal
of Ethnomusicology,
vol. 6
(1997)
and
Europe
was a
clearly complex one, play-
ing
out the racism of American society."
Later
she notes the
great irony
that "while the
Castles
might
have been able to
discipline,
refine and sanitize dance movement and
attendant behaviour, ultimately they
could not
discipline
or erase the black male bodies that
made their music" (147).
A successful collection of
papers then, not
particularly
aided and abetted by
the intro-
ductory
and concluding chapters.
The other
chapters
are well written, well informed and
revealing.
One final
point.
John
Blacking's
name is not even mentioned in the book. This
is a serious and
glaring
omission in a work that
claims to be
setting
standards in
exploring
the
connections between body, gender, music,
dance and
politics; Blacking
was a
passionate
advocator of the
study
of the
interrelationships
between them, and of how each is
contingent
in
performance.
He made
pioneering
studies in
these areas from the 1950s onwards,
and
many
of these
early
works contain ideas
pertinent
and relevant to current studies (see,
for
example, Blacking
1964 and
1967).
References
Blacking,
John (1964)
Black
background:
the
childhood
of
a South
African girl.
London/New York: Abelard Schuman.
(1967)Venda
children's songs.
Witswatersrand Univ. Press.
Repr. 1996,
Univ. of
Chicago
Press.
Cowan, Jane (1990)
Dance and the
body
politic
in northern Greece. Princeton Univ.
Press.
Gilmore,
David (1990)
Manhood in the
making:
cultural
concepts of masculinity.
Yale Univ. Press.
Holst, Gail (1977)
The road to rembetika:
music
of
a Greek sub-culture.
Songs of love,
sorrow and hashisch. Athens:
Anglo-
Hellenic
Publishing.
Manuel, Peter
(1998) Popular
musics
of
the
non-Western world: an
introductory survey.
Oxford Univ. Press.
Slobin, Mark (1996) Retuning
culture: musical
changes
in central and eastern
Europe.
Duke Univ. Press.
Stokes, Martin (1994) Ethnicity, identity
and
music: the musical construction
of place.
Oxford/Providence: Berg.
Washabaugh.
William (1996)
Flamenco:
passion, politics
and
popular
culture.
Oxford / Washington,
D.C.:
Berg.
and
Europe
was a
clearly complex one, play-
ing
out the racism of American society."
Later
she notes the
great irony
that "while the
Castles
might
have been able to
discipline,
refine and sanitize dance movement and
attendant behaviour, ultimately they
could not
discipline
or erase the black male bodies that
made their music" (147).
A successful collection of
papers then, not
particularly
aided and abetted by
the intro-
ductory
and concluding chapters.
The other
chapters
are well written, well informed and
revealing.
One final
point.
John
Blacking's
name is not even mentioned in the book. This
is a serious and
glaring
omission in a work that
claims to be
setting
standards in
exploring
the
connections between body, gender, music,
dance and
politics; Blacking
was a
passionate
advocator of the
study
of the
interrelationships
between them, and of how each is
contingent
in
performance.
He made
pioneering
studies in
these areas from the 1950s onwards,
and
many
of these
early
works contain ideas
pertinent
and relevant to current studies (see,
for
example, Blacking
1964 and
1967).
References
Blacking,
John (1964)
Black
background:
the
childhood
of
a South
African girl.
London/New York: Abelard Schuman.
(1967)Venda
children's songs.
Witswatersrand Univ. Press.
Repr. 1996,
Univ. of
Chicago
Press.
Cowan, Jane (1990)
Dance and the
body
politic
in northern Greece. Princeton Univ.
Press.
Gilmore,
David (1990)
Manhood in the
making:
cultural
concepts of masculinity.
Yale Univ. Press.
Holst, Gail (1977)
The road to rembetika:
music
of
a Greek sub-culture.
Songs of love,
sorrow and hashisch. Athens:
Anglo-
Hellenic
Publishing.
Manuel, Peter
(1998) Popular
musics
of
the
non-Western world: an
introductory survey.
Oxford Univ. Press.
Slobin, Mark (1996) Retuning
culture: musical
changes
in central and eastern
Europe.
Duke Univ. Press.
Stokes, Martin (1994) Ethnicity, identity
and
music: the musical construction
of place.
Oxford/Providence: Berg.
Washabaugh.
William (1996)
Flamenco:
passion, politics
and
popular
culture.
Oxford / Washington,
D.C.:
Berg.
KEVIN DAWE
The
Open University
k.n.dawe@open.ac.uk
KEVIN DAWE
The
Open University
k.n.dawe@open.ac.uk
RICHARD WIDDESS, The
rigas
of
early
Indian music: modes, melodies, and musical
notations from the
Gupta period
to c. 1250.
Oxford
Monographs
on Music. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995. xvii +
429pp.,
photos, maps, tables, transcriptions, appen-
dices, glossary, references, index. ISBN 0-
19-315464-1 (hard).
Richard Widdess did not invent historical
ethnomusicology,
but he has had an
important
hand both in
identifying
it as a
subdiscipline
(1992)
and in
advancing
the field. The
ragas
of
early
Indian music is historical in both the
chronological sense, dealing
with materials
from the distant
past,
and in the
disciplinary
sense that in
being critically interpretative
of
materials from the
past,
it informs our under-
standing
of
present-day
Indian musical
practices.
The
subject presents
an enormous
challenge,
and Widdess has met it
impres-
sively.
The book is
organized
into three
large
parts:
the first is in two sections
-
a
conspectus
of the nature of the evidence on which the
study
is based,
that is, the
documentary
sources,
and a
large
theoretical
chapter
on
"modes",
in which Widdess sorts out the
early
meanings
of
jdti
and
raga.
The second
part
combines an introduction to the
study
of
musical notations in India with several case
studies, including
the famous
Kudumiyamalai
Inscription.
The third
part analyzes
the data
produced by
the first two
parts,
in terms such
as the
dynamics
of
raga
and the function of
alap.
So far,
it doesn't sound much like
ethnomusicology,
in which we have come to
expect
at least interaction with informants and
consideration of context. But it is
striking
how
the sources
speak
to Widdess in
ways
similar
to informants: the material is
incomplete,
misleading, contradictory,
unclear and
tantalyzing,
not to mention
complex, frag-
mented and sometimes
corrupt.
It is often
difficult to make even
conjectural
sense of the
data,
and Widdess does a
remarkably
sane
job
under the circumstances. I find his deductive
process
not dissimilar in kind from that which
Paul Berliner, working
with
living informants,
followed in his
study
of mbira
(1978).
RICHARD WIDDESS, The
rigas
of
early
Indian music: modes, melodies, and musical
notations from the
Gupta period
to c. 1250.
Oxford
Monographs
on Music. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995. xvii +
429pp.,
photos, maps, tables, transcriptions, appen-
dices, glossary, references, index. ISBN 0-
19-315464-1 (hard).
Richard Widdess did not invent historical
ethnomusicology,
but he has had an
important
hand both in
identifying
it as a
subdiscipline
(1992)
and in
advancing
the field. The
ragas
of
early
Indian music is historical in both the
chronological sense, dealing
with materials
from the distant
past,
and in the
disciplinary
sense that in
being critically interpretative
of
materials from the
past,
it informs our under-
standing
of
present-day
Indian musical
practices.
The
subject presents
an enormous
challenge,
and Widdess has met it
impres-
sively.
The book is
organized
into three
large
parts:
the first is in two sections
-
a
conspectus
of the nature of the evidence on which the
study
is based,
that is, the
documentary
sources,
and a
large
theoretical
chapter
on
"modes",
in which Widdess sorts out the
early
meanings
of
jdti
and
raga.
The second
part
combines an introduction to the
study
of
musical notations in India with several case
studies, including
the famous
Kudumiyamalai
Inscription.
The third
part analyzes
the data
produced by
the first two
parts,
in terms such
as the
dynamics
of
raga
and the function of
alap.
So far,
it doesn't sound much like
ethnomusicology,
in which we have come to
expect
at least interaction with informants and
consideration of context. But it is
striking
how
the sources
speak
to Widdess in
ways
similar
to informants: the material is
incomplete,
misleading, contradictory,
unclear and
tantalyzing,
not to mention
complex, frag-
mented and sometimes
corrupt.
It is often
difficult to make even
conjectural
sense of the
data,
and Widdess does a
remarkably
sane
job
under the circumstances. I find his deductive
process
not dissimilar in kind from that which
Paul Berliner, working
with
living informants,
followed in his
study
of mbira
(1978).
211 211