P. Allen Roda, Ph.D. candidate Music Dept., NYU
Organologists (those who study musical instruments) have generally focused on instrument design, classification, and the use of instruments in ‘traditional’ settings. In so doing, they have tended to take the relationship between humans and instruments for granted, rather than investigate the myriad ways in which this relationship is manifest in human – instrument encounters. This point of view lead Margaret Kartomi to assert that “musical instruments are fixed, static objects that cannot grow or adapt in themselves” (2001:305). In this overview, I adopt a point of view best expressed by Nicholas Thomas, that “objects are not what they were made to be, but what they have become” (1991:4).
 Fig. 1:
golf club sheath or didjeridu? |
I propose that by studying the intimacy of their sonic relationships, the physical experience of bodies interacting, and the cultural and intellectual knowledge that musical instruments embody and transfer; the musical instrument – human relationship could be a unique realm of analysis for a new organology that both draws from and contributes to an interdisciplinary approach to the human/non-human relationship. In order to understand the relationship between humans and musical instruments it will be necessary for organologists to use tools and methodologies from other disciplines such as the anthropology of material culture, actor network theory, and phenomenology.
The study of material culture has a long history in the social sciences dating back to what Germain Bazin (1967) has termed 'the Museum Age', a period starting in the 19th Century, in which the material artifacts of a given society were organized and displayed for the purpose of showing the social evolution of primitives en route to European Civilization. Distance in space was conflated with distance in time as 'foreign' or 'primitive' items were presented as emblematic of Europe’s past (Miller 1987). Later anthropological studies focused on the role of material objects in exchange and exchange itself as the foundation of social relationships. Building upon these works, anthropologists and sociologists began to think of about the role of material objects in post-industrial society – a role that many see as constituted by consumption.
Daniel Miller defines consumption as work which “translates the object from an alienable to an inalienable condition; that is from being a symbol of estrangement and price value to being an artefact invested with particular inseparable connotations” (Miller 1987:190). For Miller, consumption is a productive process of cultural, social and self creation. He refuses to let the consumer be reduced to the status of the commodity. Drawing upon Hegel’s notion of 'objectification' as the process through which subjects and objects are mutually constituted, Miller concludes that our very self awareness is dependent upon our ability as subjects to interact with the external world. Neither subject nor object exists independently; subsequently neither should be analyzed independently.
This strategy for analysis has been adopted by a branch of sociology called Actor Network Theory which has pointed out that all encounters between humans, between non-humans, or between humans and non-humans are mediated by social relationships (Latour 2005). The internet, our computers, and the social history of their production all mediate my relationship with you as readers as well as our more abstract joint interest in material culture. Rather than focus on the actor, whether it be human or non-human, Actor Network Theory argues for a focus on the network of relations that are forged between various actors in social interaction. According to this logic, organologists would cease to study musical instruments at all as it would be impossible to isolate 'the instrument itself' from any social encounter. Though I support this line of reasoning, I do not wish to discredit the valuable organological research undertaken through more traditional methods.
Fig. 2:
author playing his DIY didjeridu |
Now I would like to draw your attention to Figures 1 and 2. Once I learned from Dennis Havlena’s web site (Havlena 2007) that 'ready made didgeridoos' were for sale at Kmart for 97 cents in the sporting goods department where they are called 'golf club sheaths', I set out immediately to find one – and indeed found one in my late grandfather’s set of golf clubs in my parents’ basement. Now it is a didjeridu. Listen to a sound sample by:
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I want you to think about the significance of this event. What does it mean for me, a white male representative of the Academy to proclaim ‘this is a didjeridu’. What power relationships are being enacted? Who agrees or not with my proclamation? Who might contest my authority to define didjeridus in this fashion? How did this object and I come to relate to each other in this particular way? Why do I not call it a mini-alphorn, a lur, or von Hornbostel-Sachs? If I leave this on a train accidentally and someone else finds it, what will it be for them? How might it affect them? How might it change if I ceremoniously present it to a future grandchild or encase it in glass at a prestigious institution? As I briefly review the various complex and overlapping relationships between musical instruments and humans which can be: sonic, commercial, physical, and/or museological – that is to say mediated by practices of classification and display.
The Sonic Relationship - Listening
In general, musical instruments are primarily dedicated to producing or modifying sound – a characteristic which separates them from other entities that also make sound (such as alarm clocks, refrigerators and medical equipment). This distinction is created primarily by the intimacy of the sonic relationship between musical instruments and humans. One example is didjeridu healing as practiced in various ‘new age’ communities around the world in which the sound of the instrument is thought to ‘envelop’ or ‘open’ the patient. Some patients believe that the sound waves emitted by the instrument penetrate their body and align their energy centers to facilitate healing. In describing his practice, Hans Schuldheiss says, “The didgeridoo creates a sound bubble around the client, creating a sense of well-being and relaxation” (Ellis 2005). Perhaps for Schuldheiss and his patients, the golf club sheath is a piece of medical equipment. For me, it's a musical instrument; for my grandfather it was a golf club sheath; for the Federal Transit Authority it is a potential weapon. What something ‘is’ depends on our relationship with it.
Drawing on extensive studies of the relation of music to language, Steven Feld and Aaron Fox demonstrate that music, even instrumental music, can convey emotion and has communicative capabilities (Feld & Fox 1994). Roman Jakobson’s ‘Poetics’ articulates numerous ways in which we can communicate information without the use of referential speech, many of which are found in music (Jakosbson 1995). The sound of musical instruments can make people laugh, cry, scream – or even surrender (Cusick 2007).
Don Ihde writes of the ‘voices of objects’, claiming that the sounds different objects make reveal something about their material nature, their interiority, and the space in which they make sound. He rightfully points out that most objects do not make sound on their own, but in duets or complex polyphonies – that is to say that it is not just the sound of the drum skin that we hear but also that of the stick or the hand and the room in which we are present (Ihde 1986).
The sound of musical instruments reveals more than just their physical characteristics and their relationship with acoustic space, however. In describing the inseparability of hearing from listening, David Sudnow (1979) points out that the human mind makes associations and judgments at the moment of perception. We do not hear in the same way that tape recorders do, though sometimes we imagine that we do. Subsequently, the sounds of musical instruments also invoke a variety of connections in the ears/minds of the listeners. These connections are related to each listener’s familiarity or lack thereof with the sound of any given musical instrument.
These sounds are frequently connected to particular places or cultures in the ears of listeners. Max Peter Bauman lists 59 instruments which are commonly thought to be ‘national icons’ (Baumann 2000). I would argue that all instruments invoke some sense of cultural significance whether it is related to a specific region, a national identity, or simply a sense of Otherness. I like to think of them as sonic ambassadors. For example, musical instruments are frequently brought home by tourists in an attempt to sonically invoke their tourist destination. Some work on the global trade in tourist art exists, though it focuses primarily on visual art and the tourist ‘gaze’ (Urry 2002). Perhaps future work in organology could present a study of the tourist 'ear'.
The flow of musical instruments as commodities of international trade has significant theoretical ramifications for organologists, because it helps to articulate the various types of human relationships these instruments have as they encounter different individuals over the course of what has been termed their ‘social life’. For instance, Igor Kopytoff (1986) writes of the process through which objects (specifically slaves) transform to become commodities. These changes do not occur instantly, or overnight, but are part of a process that is to be understood as dynamic, in flux, and intangible. This work could serve as a model for organological investigations into the way in which musical instruments enter the marketplace, especially when combined with Miller’s theory of consumption. An example of this type of research is Sean Murray’s paper on pianos and the 19th Century Ivory trade (Murray 2007).
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