The Past in Music: Introduction

Abstract

In this introduction to a selection of case studies on the theme “the past in music” I offer a few thoughts on the nature of the past and the role of memory in constructing historical narrative, with reference to the way in which these concepts have been theorized by historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and ethnomusicologists. In reviewing the different ways in which echoes of the past can still be heard in the music of the present, I consider the capacity of music to evoke, embody and transform the past and, by so doing, to act as a medium for history and its interpretation.

Keywords:

• The Past
• History
• Collective Memory
• Archaeology
• Musical Heritage
• Musical Performance
• Oral Tradition
• Ritual
• Fieldwork
• Early Music

Acknowledgments

The articles brought together in this volume all began life as papers read at the annual conference of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology hosted by the University of Wales, Bangor, in May 2003. Wyn Thomas, Jochen Eisentraut, David Wong and Jonathan Stock were key players in the preparation, organization and smooth running of the conference, which also benefited from the generous support of the Archive of Traditional Welsh Music. A highlight of the gathering was the keynote lecture given by Kay Kaufman Shelemay, a version of which is also included here. I am grateful to all of my co-authors for their enthusiasm for this project and for their good-natured cooperation during the lengthy process of preparing their contributions for publication; it has been an honour to work with each and every one of them. Thanks are also due to the journal's general editors, Tina K. Ramnarine and Rachel Harris, to the referees of the individual articles for their meticulous readings and invaluable feedback and to Martin Clayton for the formulation “The Past in Music”.

Notes

1. I am not suggesting that any such notion is implied by Nettl. In his prelude to The Study of Ethnomusicology, from which my opening quote is taken, he proposes that “the value and contribution of ethnomusicology” are “essentially and very broadly historical” (1983, 11). Ethnomusicologists have long been interested in processes of change, attempting to understand how, and why, the present differs from the past. The extent to which an understanding of historical processes is crucial to an appreciation of why music has developed in a certain way and what it has come to mean has been expertly demonstrated in a number of ethnographies (e.g. Waterman 1990, Rice 1994, Erlmann 1996, Rees 2000, Turino 2000, Jones 2004).

2. This past – later referred to as “a third aspect of the past” – is culture-specific and “consists of a set of norms whose sole purpose is to regulate the inherent debatability of the past in the present” (Appadurai 1981, 218). See, further, note 3.

3. This is not to say that the choice is an entirely free one. As early as 1981, Appadurai had already challenged the anthropological assumption that “the past is a limitless and plastic symbolic resource, infinitely susceptible to the whims of contemporary interest and the distortions of contemporary ideology” (1981, 201) in his paper “The past as a scarce resource” (referred to above), where he argued that “there is a minimal set of formal constraints on all … sets of norms [about the past]” (ibid., 203). These constraints – implicated in the notion of debating the past – are constituted by the four “dimensions” of authority, continuity, depth and interdependence, which typically involve “cultural consensus” over the requirements for “minimal credibility” (ibid., 203). This normative framework “permits an orderly symbolic negotiation between ‘ritual’ pasts and the contingencies of the present” ensuring that “when change does occur, it is not entirely at the cost of cultural continuity” (ibid., 218).

4. Shelemay is alluding here to Jeffery's Re-envisioning Past Musical Cultures: Ethnomusicology in the Study of Gregorian Chant (1992).

5. To give an example of the way in which, in the musical realm, written records can be supplemented by unique testimony from oral tradition, Widdess observes that “in India … musical treatises rarely concern themselves with performers as individuals, about whom there is however a rich oral history” (1990, 220).

6. The literature on memory across the social sciences did, of course, continue to snowball throughout the 1990s. Notable contributions include Lipsitz (1990), Middleton and Edwards (1990), Schudson (1993), Pennebaker et al. (1997), Nora (1997), Bal et al. (1999), Misztal (2003), Radstone and Hodgson (2003), Ricoeur (2004) and Erll and Nünning (2004). Two classic texts by Halbwachs (1925, 1950) were also republished in new editions (in 1994 and 1997 respectively). For an analysis of the reasons for the upsurge of interest in memory over the past two decades, see Nora (2002). On the relationship between memory and history, see Nora (1997, 2002) and Hutton (1993). Musical ethnographies in which memory is a central theme include Shelemay (1998), Romero (2001), Emoff (2002) and Harris (2004). (I am grateful to Gerda Lechleitner for drawing my attention to Nora (2002) and Erll and Nünning (2004).)

7. I do not mean to imply here any kind of essentialized conception of style. As Emoff observes, within any given culture different styles can be “differentiated … and connected to dissimilar pasts” (2002, 169). See also my own discussion in Bithell (2005).

8. The wave of ritual escalation across Europe in the 1960s and 1970s has been well documented in the anthropological literature: see, for example, Boissevain (1992).

9. A fascinating variation on the theme of re-establishing continuity with a past of one's own choosing is presented by cases where the past is not simply selectively remembered but is actively misremembered, as, for example, de Jong argues in her discussion of the comback party adopted by Afro-Curaçaoans as a means of enacting their self-identification as Cuban (de Jong 2003).

10. The Bridge of Bosnian Blues was broadcast in the UK on BBC 4 in December 2004.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caroline Bithell

Caroline Bithell (PhD Wales) is Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at the University of Manchester, UK. Drawing on her research into Corsican music, she has published a number of journal articles and book chapters spanning a range of thematic and theoretical areas, including oral traditions of vocal polyphony, the revival and reconstruction of traditional repertoires, the commercialization and professionalization of traditional music, music and gender, music and nationalism, and the politics of fieldwork and ethnography. Her book Transported by Song: Corsican Voices from Oral Tradition to World Stage is shortly to appear in Scarecrow Press's series Europea: Ethnomusicologies and Modernities