Sociomusicology

Abstract

Sociomusicology emerged in the middle decades of the twentieth century in the wake of recording and broadcasting technologies that enabled new forms of music and international reach. As a discipline, sociomusicology operated for decades on the fringes of academic respectability before moving into the mainstream. The subdiscipline has long suggested that music, with its profound emotional and intellectual impact, is best approached (and studied) as a social phenomenon, that is, one that transcends, defies, and ultimately renders ironic and unworkable traditional cultural, economic, and ethnic identities.

Overview

In the most fanciful and elegant arguments, music is often envisioned as the creation of something called the soul, an energy that animates the composer's imagination and that is, in turn, manifested in the careful transcriptions of musical notation. That music is then shared with an eager and receptive audience that is motivated in its response by the soul. Soul to soul-that is the romantic conception of the essence of music. But the reality is that music is the expression of a single person, the creator, and that creator is a part of a social and cultural context. In addition those who respond to music's allure are, in fact, also parts of a wider social and cultural context.

The study of sociomusicology begins with a framework of questions. Does music play a role in the shaping of specific cultures? Does the creation of music itself reflect the cultural context in which that act of creation takes place? Is music itself part of a national character, does music run like some kind of genetic code through the very cultural system that produces it? Do the Irish listen to music differently from, say, the Brazilians? Is rhythm different in Iceland than, say, in South Africa? More importantly, does knowing the economic, cultural, social, religious, and historic context of, say, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony help understand its symbolic, even its musical import? Does that symphony ultimately "belong" to the German people and to their identity? Does it, should it be read as a cultural document, an expression of a national identity and national character? Had Beethoven been living in, say, Finland or the Ukraine or Peru, would he have been able to create that same piece of music? Project Beethoven ahead a century-would he have worked the same musical protocols during the political and military ascendancy of the Third Reich? Do the values, the cultural sway of an individual era in turn not only support but create the music that comes to define it? Do certain eras lend themselves to the production of certain musical types, from dance music, to opera, to symphonies? How is the apparent cultural chasm between folk music of uneducated blue collar classes work with the more advanced musical constructions of the educated upper-class-what is the relationship between, say, drinking songs and chamber music both produced during the same era in the same country?

For close to two centuries, academics have postulated about the importance of music within ethnic identities and as part of the processes of nation-constructs. Begun initially as a result of European academics discovering the complexities of non-Western musical notation in the mid-nineteenth century, ethnomusicology sought to define the complex relationships between music, music creation, music consumption, and the economic and cultural context that produced it. The assumption behind early ethnomusicology was simple. A European ear, although engaged by the dense harmonics of music composed during China's Ming Dynasty, could never entirely comprehend the musical system itself as that culture was simply not part of that European ear. Beethoven, in turn, remained for the most part a distinctly denned and restricted ethnic phenomenon, available for and defined largely by white, upper-class, European-rooted cultures.

By respecting individual cultural constructs rather than individuals and by investigating music as a product of that construct, ethnomusicologists gained respectability within the academic mainstream community across more than a century of increasingly more complex theoretical work that sought to link sounds, musical components, audience competencies, and even the development of particular musical instruments to the ethnic context. "I" did not respond to Beethoven, "we" responded to Beethoven. Such conservative theoretical work by and large reflected the dominant Western thought of the same historic era-the great era of nationalism and the cultivation (and preservation) of ethnic identity.

The theoretical premise behind such academic work was that music can help define ethnic identity and establish certain elements of national character, which can be consistently cataloged and become part of the community expectation of its music. Cultural identity was defined like any scientific phenomenon. Definition, it was believed, would provide a stable basis for understanding a culture's emotional and intellectual character and the interaction of its people.

Of course, in a post-postmodern world of rich cultural diversity and dramatic cultural change captured from media and through social media, a world in which music itself has become an ever evolving global expression in which artists from one culture, taking advantage of the reach of digital technologies, international travel, and the wide reach of social media and the Internet, seek the influence of a wide variety of musical styles, genres, and traditions, ethnomusicology has evident shortcomings and, indeed, can even be regarded as limited, and even backwards thinking in its conservative privileging of music's particular ethnic and cultural context.

Norman Stanfield, a pioneer in sociomusicology and the chair of the Department of Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies at the University of British Columbia, has argued that "ethno-anything" supports those divisions emanating from the concept of "Other." Ethnomusicology drew sharp divisions, boundaries often defined by simple geography. Sociomusicologists are wider in their perspective, broader in their theoretical conjecturing. Music creates communities wider than cultures. Music strikes emotional and intellectual bonds between peoples, not within a certain people.

In the metaphor of Charles Keil (1998), music is like a carrier DNA; it is a "gesture language" that transcends traditional cultural boundaries. Far more compelling from a theoretical standpoint, this concept holds that music is not merely the byproduct of a culture. Because of its genetic-deep power that draws on a multicultural identity and energy, music can actually impact social constructs, participating in their evolution by

de-forming and then re-forming them. According to sociomusicologist Steven Brown of the University of Bergen in Norway, music is not an isolated manifestation of culture but is rather intrinsic to other cultural events and meanings and a "powerful manipulator" of social behavior (2000). Sociomusicologists suggest that music creates an international energy that is as joyous as it is mysterious, as scientific as it is intuitive.

Applications

The roots of sociomusicology are often traced to the rock and roll phenomenon of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Rock music was propelled by an international system of linked radio stations and the nascent emergence of television to become a global rather than locally defined cultural phenomenon. Sociomusicology, however, actually can be traced more profitably to a cluster of late nineteenth century German rationalist philosophers who, hard on the heels of the pervasive influence of Immanuel Kant and his investigations into the airy realm of the ideal and the transcendent, sought to return philosophy to a practical endeavor grounded in the changing realities of the everyday. These philosophers, most prominently for the development of sociomusicology, Georg Simmel (1858–1918) and later Alfred Schiitz (1899–1959), who both investigated culture as changing forms, transient models whose structural integrity changed in reaction to historical pressures, economic realities, religious enthusiasms, political upheavals, and military events (Etzkorn, 1964). Cultural identity could not retain integrity. Such theorizing suggested a counterforce to the rise in nationalism and the presumed integrity of a national self, a mindset that would pitch the world into a series of increasingly cataclysmic wars.

The emergence of contemporary sociomusicology is often dated to two simultaneous events: the explosive impact of The Beatles and the rise in academic ranks of baby boomers, those born in the fifteen years after World War II. Boomers found in the music of their childhood and adolescence a source of profound emotional bonding. Such attachment was not difficult to explain. Given the promulgation of popular music on the radio, wide exposure to a particular song was severely limited in time-a song would be a hit and would be looped into repeated radio play (a phenomenon termed "burst period"). The availability of relatively cheap vinyl pressings of the song would guarantee even more playing. Exposure would not last long, however, usually no more than a few months. (The titanic works of classical music a century before measured audience exposure in decades rather than weeks). Thus as the person grew up, that song would be radically identified with a particular emotional moment or experience.

Academics emerging in the late 1960s and 1970s were convinced of an emotional impact of music itself that had little to do with economic, political, social, or religious context. Music was seen at once as an intimately personal response, the "I" maintaining its integrity within a larger social construct. "I" remember, for example, The Beatles's "Let It Be"; the song speaks years after its appearance to particular events in "my" life. "I" participate in a network of responses, influences, emotions, and recollections spanning a wide variety of cultures, ethnicities, even languages; the song bonds a global community.

Much of the foundation work in sociomusicology looked specifically at songs that maintained a public agenda, such as "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" (from the dark times of global economic catastrophe in the 1930s); "We Shall Overcome" (the stirring gospel-tinged spiritual that emerged during the global struggle for civil rights during the 1960s and 1970s); and "We Are the World" (the massive recording effort of dozens of major artists in support of raising money for African hunger relief that became an international anthem). These were global music events. Music resolved conflicts, created consolation, forged international networks. Music elicited participation that could not be defined by geography or culture.

Sociomusicology was by definition radical-establishment academics frowned on the initial theoretical work as it rested largely on grand, often visionary arguments that lent themselves to simplification and even to parody. Music, sociomusicologists declaimed, is a universal language. The response to music is part of a human, rather than an ethnic, identity. Rhythm and tempo are seen as part of the genetic wiring that reveals humanity's evolutionary emergence from the sea and its churning rhythms. Investigations of global musical traditions, however, did begin to result in hard data to measure the similarities in compositional models and notational system and the shared emotional responses among audiences.

With the advent of digital music libraries and the sheer reach of the Internet, music itself quickly abandoned the hard divisions and cultural integrities assumed by ethnomusicologists. Sociomusicology no longer seemed to be a parody of academic study but rather a cutting-edge investigation into the truest roots of musical expression. The academic discipline seldom presented itself as the same sort of sociological discipline of traditional university curricula. Its proponents are largely digital natives, a generation comfortable with the implicit multicultural (or perhaps a-cultural) reality of digital environments. They brought to the field a sense of self-deprecating humor and a gift for irony, and their theoretical work has often found its greatest forum in YouTube videos and websites (see, for instance, the MUSE website of Charles Keil). Major universities with well-funded music programs have begun to invest in developing the discipline, recognizing its appeal to students keen to understand the fullest cultural and sociological implications of the digital world.

Viewpoints

Music itself is essentially in its first generation of redefinition in the digital age. Sociomusicologists fear the very technology that created a new conception of music's social context, ultimately, may undo music's very identity. As music proliferates, as rhythms and beats, melodies and tonalities become universal, as cultural expressions begin to adapt and adopt other musical signatures, as technology recreates music into a global creation, unique and traditional forms of music lose their identity. This so-called homogenization of music results from cultures losing touch with their essential musical expression and distinctive musical signatures as, within the irresistible realm of the Internet, music becomes one monolithic expression.

Sociomusicologists, however, are committed to investigating that process in the hopes of maintaining the roots of music's sociological contexts. By privileging an awareness of the impact of social media and the Internet, and by factoring in rather than ignoring the technologies of music production and dissemination, sociomusicologists hope to be at the forefront of understanding the rapid evolution of music in the digital age. In recognizing the intense emotional impact of music, an impact that cannot be contained much less defined by cultural boundaries, sociomusicologists work from the premise that the interactivity prompted by music—such as dancing or concert going or using anthems to bring about social change—is itself an abiding and distinct social context. This context is as real and as powerful as any cultural context studied a century ago by traditional ethnomusicologists.

Terms & Concepts

Burst period: A period of time, usually measured in weeks, in which a piece of popular music finds a massive audience and enjoys saturation playing before losing ground to newer pieces.

Culture: The economic, political, religious, and ethnic constructs that define and bind peoples into social units that share beliefs and customs in a specific time or place.

Digital natives: Those born after 1980 who have a familiarity with computers from childhood and usually an accompanying ease and competence with digital technology.

Ethnomusicology: The study of the music produced by cultures.

Homogenization: The minimization and even loss of elements of cultural diversity—ideas, customs, religions, ethnic traditions, and the arts—as a result of globalization and the pressures of global interactions.

Kantian idealism: The philosophical inquiry into the transcendent realm beyond the reach and definition of the senses.

Bibliography

Brown, S. (2000). Evolutionary models of music: From sexual selection to group selection. In Perspectives in Ethnology: Evolution, Culture, and Behavior. New York, NY: Springer: 231–281.

Bhatara, A., Trivolas, A., Levy, B., Duan, L., & Letivin, D. (2011). Perception of emotional expression in musical performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology 37: 921–934. Retrieved March 22, 2015 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://searchebsco-host.com/loginaspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=85478661&site=ehost-live

Etzkorn, K.P. (1964). Georg Simmel and the sociology of music. Social Forces, 43: 101–107.

Keil, C. (1998). Call and response: Applied sociomuiscology and performance studies. Ethnomusicology 42: 303–312. Retrieved March 22, 2015 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebsco-host.com/loginaspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=926961&site=ehost-live

Phalen, S. (2015). Making music as embodied dialogue. Qualitative Inquiry, 21(9), 787–787. Retrieved December 7, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=110541978&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Stanfield, N. (2011). Sociomusicology. Retrieved April 1, 2015 from http://blogs.ubc.ca/normanstanfield/future-courses/applied-sociomusicology-and-ethnomusicology/

Suggested Reading

Korczynski, M. (2014). Songs of the factory: Pop music, culture, and resistance. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.

Rice, T. (2013). Ethnomusicology: A very short introduction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Roberts, B. A. (2008). The beginnings of the sociology of music education. Canadian Music Educator/Musicien Educateur Au Canada, 50, 28–29. Retrieved March 22, 2015 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://searchebscohost.com/loginaspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=35050354&site=ehost-live

Shepherd, J., & Devine, K. (2015). The Routledge reader on the sociology of music. New York, NY: Routledge.

Turino, T. (2008). Music as social life: The politics of participation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Wong, D. (1998). A response to Charles Keil. Ethnomusicology. 317. Retrieved March 22, 2015 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=926963&site=ehost-live