Western ethnomusicology is a philosophical quagmire. Music scholars are not usually well versed in philosophy. Confidence and sometimes intransigence in their views is often demonstrated – but as they say ‘fools rush in …’.
There has always been close connection between philosophy and music. Many modern Western musicologists trace this relationship back to ancient Greece and Plato . Others trace it to Pythagoras. The idea that music and harmony reflect something important about the universe is attributed to Pythagoras. This is quite astonishing given that we know that Pythagoras went to study in Ancient Egypt and that the so called Pythagorean theorem has been found on papyri dated centuries before Pythagoras. An obvious hint is that these ideas of celestial harmony came from ancient Egypt.
What has precipitated this concern as an African? My life long love of classical Korean music has begun to re engage me only for me to discover that this comes under ethnomusicology. I feel I have as much affinity with Korean classical music as I have with Western classical music. But I am listening to ethnic music when I listen to Korean music? I am trying to relate Korean music to ancient Egypt but the model offered is spoke and wheel, where everything is first translated into European idiom and then you translate into your own medium.
But there is a deep philosophical problem. If we start with the ancient Egyptian /Greek idea that music plays a strong moral role in the education and life of people then this will apply to all human beings. It is no more possible to have ethnic music as it is to have ethnic maths or ethnic medicine.
When I listen to some Westerners talk it is as if they believe for music to have a moral effect on your life and upbringing you need to be brought up in European culture. I recall talking to lecturer at an Open University music course, I wanted to explore spiritual aspects of music when he cut me short and said he was not aware that Black people had any spiritual music. I was quite astonished he was able to get the words out of his mouth. Neither Pythagoras nor ancient Egyptian befor e him considered these doctrines to require prior belief or anything other than being human to be effective as the case with medicine. This divine harmony of the universe existed however you were brought up. Sometimes I wonder whether certain Western thinkers, in their mists of the post-Enlightenment, believe that the spiritual is an invention of the Western mind.
Most damaging is the way this ethnomusicology view strands int he way of musical development. This characterization simply makes st harder for musicians from different cultures to share and grow without being pigeon-holed as mixed ethnic productions when no such thing should exist in music.
If we take these philosophical premises seriously then when we come across another society, their music will, whether they like it or not, affect their moral nature and in the same way as it would in our society. If we take this philosophical root seriously there cannot be any ethnomusicology. My classical Korean music will impact my sensibility as it impacted those of the Koreans and any Chinese or other Asians listening to it. More understanding and wider experience may affect my response just as such would affects my response to Mozart. Ethnomusicology is no more possible than ethnomathematics.
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