Cooked by Culture: Ever Beware the “Experts”
Ethnomusicologists are the cultural equivalents of crime-scene investigators. They are usually a few steps behind the curve, showing up too late, and after the fact. Academics attempt to catalog what is constantly in flux, as if their recognition and documentation sets it permanently in place, a benediction whereby the music seemingly gains significance due to their blessed presence, music which then from that point onward, becomes theirs. An unintentional irony is the degree of straight-up puritanicalism that so many bring to cross-cultural affairs.
A primary danger is when “developed” countries position themselves along a timeline and regard themselves as ahead and other nonindustrialized nations as behind. In reality, the past is the future. There are no cultures better suited to deal with global warming than the ancient ones—Venetians, Sahara dwellers, and any that use their feet or other nonmotorized transport as well as those who have to haul their own water. Little adjustment is needed for them to cope with lessening access to mechanized energy sources, as these populations continue to do things much as they always have. They don’t need to learn to cut back on what they never had. If a bomb wiped out Paris or Tokyo, their lives would change little.
Ethnomusicologists like to try to box things up in trim packages. But it is never that simple. Bob Marley does not represent all Jamaicans, nor Fela all Nigerians. And Bob Dylan is far from a humdrum Minnesotan. They transcended their origins, and thereby helped lead all mankind forward.
Habitually, the studious mistakenly attempt to define individual expression as tradition. I instead have little interest in the heritage (or not) of what someone is doing. My concern is the present—the most textured voices, the most sinewy songs. Not where the music has been. Nor even where it’s going, but, instead, where it is. By the time musicality can be diagrammed and analyzed, the life and breath have moved elsewhere, seeking fresher expression.
Ingenuity is a vagrant. Veritable flair, a rover.
My concern is not cultural authenticity, but emotional truth and uncloying performances. Purity, without baggage. And, every song should be viewed with the same tough-mindedness and standards as “the best,” regardless of its origin.
One of the follies of most anthropological research is failing to factor that those most willing to provide information about their own “native” culture . . .
1. Might not be the brightest and most insightful of the bunch.
2. Could be downright mentally unstable (hence, their willingness to speak so freely to outsiders).
3. Possibly are pulling the leg of the researcher by providing deliberately false, fantastical, and/or arcane information.
4. Just because someone is there where they are currently does not mean they are “natives.” We are a wandering species, and anywhere you go there are a good percentage of people present who are also foreigners, even if they are the “right” color. They, too, might just be visitors, minorities, and/or immigrants. Often, what ends up happening is a bit like asking a tourist from the bayou for directions in lower Manhattan. Every “foreign country” has foreigners living in their midst.
5. Much accuracy might be lost and/or disfigured in the translation from one language to another. Not to mention that in many such cases, the translation itself might require being passed through a third or fourth intermediary language, usually one that neither the sender nor receiver are particularly fluent in.
a) Plus, all translators also work as editors. The protracted and heated exchanges that I’ve sat through, that then get comically reduced down to a curt “yes/no” answer, have always reminded me of this prevalent fact. It is made bluntly clear that what I am receiving back is a summary, at best.
6. They may feel compelled to make up an answer rather than admit that they do not know whatever information has been requested.
The fallacy of authority by proximity is very real. Just because someone is from somewhere, that in no way means that they know everything or much of anything about the topic at hand or, furthermore, that they even possess semi-decent judgment.
You can try this test in your own country: Ask any three random acquaintances to refer you to the “best” music and/or food. Odds are you will be amazed by the ineptitude or ignorance of most responses from your guides.
The thing is, locals anywhere cannot really be expected to be a refined resource culturally. The majority of people in the United States would direct you to pap like Michael Bublé and the latest Adam Sandler kiddie-pic sequel, not Elliott Smith or P. T. Anderson.
How many, “I like everything . . . except country and/or opera,” and, “Whatever is on the radio,” answers can you receive without it becoming clear that for most people music is not life-and-death, but convenient wallpaper.
To even have a prayer of being shepherded in the right direction, we have to be ultraspecific. What is the “best” food is far too open to interpretation. Inquiring if someone knows of a “good, independently owned, pescatarian Pakistani place with some ambience, but reasonably friendly staff,” you just might be sent somewhere that even vaguely resembles what you are searching for. Otherwise, a vegan is going to end up sent to a churracscaria (Brazilian meat grill).
Even with “professionals,” bias plays a huge role. My epiphany back in my teens was once having the nerve to ask yet another callously indifferent or openly hostile college-station music director what kind of music she liked to listen to. When I came to realize that it was a Goth metal teenager who was rejecting my acoustic folk, and not someone who loved or even knew who Townes Van Zant was, the personal sting of it all somewhat softened. It is too easy to assume that others share our same sensibilities.
Another mistake of anthropologists is not accounting for the liberal bias of most artists. Just because a local songwriter drinks a certain herb or sports a bonkers haircut or sartorial ensemble, that in no way means that the majority in the same society do, would do so, or even approve. In my limited experience, wherever you travel in the world, most musicians and artists are as much outsiders to their own culture, as in the west. (And, many of those who might at first glance appear Zen are simply stoned.)
I am far from a preservationist. Blends and drift are not only necessary for health, they are inevitable. Those who attempt to catalog culture are largely chasing their own tail.
For, no time or place is simply of one era, but instead is dotted with layers of nostalgia. And, yes, even faux-vintage things actually do age and turn old eventually, potentially gaining a certain luster (as Los Angeles did in a matter of a generation, due to its relative youth as a city). When nearly everything is new, almost anything older will seem dignified. Scads of sightseers refer to elements as either “old” or modern, but in fact cities like Prague and Paris have differing ages juxtaposed millennially, and are not all of one single category.
Care should be given to how things might age. Creative integrity demands that the concern is not foremost with how someone feels before or even during an event, but after it has concluded, once the initial intoxication of its own novelty has lapsed.
Most folkloric performing outfits more or less portray staid cartoons of the past for the comfort of tourists. It ventures toward a politically correct freak show or human zoo. The real vernacular pulse of any region is to be found in what clothing the performers are wearing beneath their traditional garb; it is revealed by the sounds they make offstage and/or listen to on their mobile phones in the taxi home.
In misguided attempts to be accommodating, people will often make assumptions about what it is that you really want, and then play the things that they think that you want to hear. Some of the worst miscommunications occur when the person responding over-interprets and adjusts their answer in the belief that the speaker has made an error in the question, rather than the receiver just accepting it at face value.
I decided years ago to ask staff at far east Asian restaurants if I could try any tea that they drink in the back, if it is different than what they serve. Almost always they’ve seemed shocked that could truly be what I desired, usually cautioning me that I “wouldn’t like it” because “it’s too strong,” but then later becoming bemused by the fact that it was tolerable at all, and even more so that I actually enjoyed it.
From this revelation, I routinely ask artists to play their “unfinished” and “stupid” songs. And my motto is to request that people help us find, “the worst music you have. Not the professionals, but the amateurs. Not the people with ‘good’ voices, but interesting and strange.” Those with character, but without caricature.
The best direction to give any performer is: “Play badly. (And have fun.)”