Music Connects with Culture

When Music Connects with Culture

Knowing music involves two kinds of understanding. First, there is the music itself—how musicians form the composition, organize the melody, write lyrics, blend harmony and create the rhythm. In other words, one might use musical notation to write out the different parts of a song and describe how they relate. Of course, all that requires a certain degree of technical knowledge and some background in performing music. Second, music reflects much about who we are as humans, which is what I want to focus on in this lecture.
 

II. Music and Human Culture

Mules simply cannot rap worth a hill of beans. I am pretty sure all of you agree with that statement, which implies that music is a human activity and part of human culture. Humans are highly social for a good reason. Mutual cooperation within a group of people helps get things done. In other words, when people get together and combine their talents, knowledge and skills, the group can achieve much. For instance, no one individual alone has the wherewithal to construct a rocket, land on the moon, and then return. America realized that opportunity through the cooperation of large numbers of people.

With that in mind, the relationship between music and culture can be simplified somewhat. Culture works to ensure people’s survival, and music contributes to that function by bringing people together.

Yes, music brings people together, except when you are alone in your car and listening to a CD. Keep in mind that prior to the invention of the phonograph in the 1880s, the only way to here music was to attend a live performance. So back then, the idea of music bringing people together, reinforcing communal bonds, and nurturing a communal spirit or ethos held more weight. With modern technology, listening to music alone has become a major way in which we use and consume music. Technology will probably never replace a good, ole’ live musician, but sometimes I wonder.

III. How Music and Culture Work

Remember that culture functions to ensure a group’s survival. Think of it as one vast body of shared knowledge that includes a common language for communication, ways of subsistence (growing food), ways of governing, and so forth. All those represent the basic components of culture that ensure all the needs of a group are met in order to continue and prosper.

Look at Figure 1 and the different components of culture that are commonly found in all cultures around the world, including small villages and hunting and gathering tribes still struggling to survive in rural Africa and a few other parts of the world.  

If you think about it, music connects in some way with each of the domains of culture. For instance, an obvious example is music having lyrics representing a group’s language. In America, music and economics are huge. Corporations, which control about 70% of the music industry, measure success in dollar amounts. How does that affect music? Musicians perform music they believe will entertain the largest number of people possible. Sometimes, that formula results in music that some (the minority of listeners) may consider trite, bland, watered down, and void of any relevant social message.  

A third example is music in religion. Before modern technology, throughout the world’s cultures, the biggest use of music in culture was to accompany religious ceremonies. Today, in America, the two biggest uses of music are found in entertainment and advertising.  Music works well with religion. Like God or the spiritual realm, music is unseen, yet it can evoke a powerful presence deep inside our being. The right music in the right setting takes people out of their mundane awareness and helps them to be more receptive to the divine.

IV. Colonial and Post Colonial Views of Culture (Cultural Relativsim)

In modern times anthorpologists view different cultures as relative to one another (cultural relativity). This means no one culture is superior to another. In many ways, all cultures are the same. Culture provides the basic essentials--e.g., food, clothing, shelter, religion, economy, government, education, marriage, and so forth--that people need in order to survive and prosper in the world. What remains different is the manner in which a particular culture goes about doing these things. For instance, all cultures are inclined to deal with the supernatural and ask questions about existence and death. We in the west adopt Christianity to answer these questions, whereas other cultures might seek these answers through Islam or Buddhism.

The essential idea in looking at cultures as relative to one another is the notion that no one culture is superior to another. They are just different and seek to address human needs that all people on the planet share in common. This is a more enlightened perspective than the perspective that dominated during the colonial times beginning around the 1700s and lasting through the early part of the 20th Century. These were times when major powers such as Britain colonized parts of the world, including India, China, Singapore, and others. For instance, Britain gave India a central government, a legal system, a national railway and other things that helped India to develop. In exchange, Britain plundered many of India's resources. America took part in colonialism as did other nations as well. The attitude that encouraged colonization was the notion that each of these nations believed it was culturally superior to the country it colonized. Hence, these nations felt justified, especially since they believed they were helping those countries which they colonized to modernize and westernize.

 
V. Listening to World Music

"That sounds like a cement mixer needing grease." That might be a typical reaction you may have to some of the music you will listen to this week, which includes music examples that come from a variety of different cultures outside the Americas. For most of you, these styles of music may seem "weird," unfamiliar, and outside your comfort zone. Here are a few things I want you to keep in mind when exploring these styles of music and their relationships to the cultures from which they come.

Humans all across the world have the same need to express themselves creatively. They just do it differently from one culture to another. Sometimes music sounds different due to the materials they use to make their musical instruments. Among the Kalinga living in the Philippines, musical instruments are made from bamboo, which is easy to work with and in earlier times was found in abundance. Different cultures approach rhythm, melody and harmony in different ways, which makes the study of world music very fascinating.

With all that in mind, listen to this week's music examples with objective ears, rather than ears that are biased by your own preferences and tastes in music. There is nothing wrong with having or enjoying your own tastes in music. However, one of the goals of the course is to help you to gain a deeper appreciation for music in general by developing an appreciation for styles of music other than what you are commonly exposed to. So keep an open mind and remember that music is all about human expression. Perhaps then you might begin to see how fascinating humans become when listening to and understanding the diverse music they make.