Trust

I am reading about ethnomethodology these days. Ethnomethodology is a sociological theory originating in the 1960s, and I read about it with a colleague for whom using ethnomethodology as a theoretical background to her doctoral study might be useful. I remember I was totally gripped by ethnomethodology when it was first explained to me, so I am looking forward to meeting it again.

I am not going to give you an introduction into the theory, because I can't. But as I understand it, ethnomethodology shows that the basis of society - of people like you and me sharing a space and a time amongst us - lies not in 'norms and values' which bind us together, nor does it lie in the individual rational choices we make continuously in order to maximize our (material or immaterial) profits.

Society has a much deeper source. Before you can even think of norms and values binding groups of people together, before you can even act strategic in a group of people, there is a basic 'grammar of everyday life' at work which makes communication between people - be it verbal or non-verbal - possible in the first place. This 'grammar' is hidden deep down in us, and the only way we know our way around in it is by living our everyday lives. Therefore, living life is not so much a question of following laws, but rather we grope around our way in life, looking for shared understandings with our fellow members of society (Harold Garfinkel, the inventor of ethnomethodology, insists on calling human beings 'members'), and using all kinds of backwards interpretations to make that incomprehensible life comprehensible (Garfinkel: 'accountable') in hindsight, for example by saying that our social life rests on norms and values or on individual profit maximalisation.

I guess I love ethnomethodology because I feel it captures essentially the way my life is lived by me, as I see it. (Which is an ex-post-facto accountability judgement, of course).

What I like best, however, is that deep in the heart of ethnomethodology lies an idea of Trust. We live our lives Trusting that we can share our lives with others because we try to grope around life as best as we can and assume that others do the same. Because we are groping around, we don't always succeed; but because we Trust, there may be hope. It is Trust on a deep level, deeper than 'norms and values'; it is a sort of existential Trust, I guess, without which society - living together - would be impossible at all. Hence the capital T.

But although it is Trust on a deep and existential level, it is for me a sort of excuse to also believe in trust - lower case t - at the 'superficial' level of everyday life. I like to think that I can trust others; and I guess I hope that others may have some trust in me.

Has this anything to do with music? I don't know. I guess that musicking, as any form of human behavior, is social in essence and based on Trust, helping us groping our way around life. And I guess I see how music, here and now, acts not only as a thing of beauty but also - and often at the same time - as an instrument of power, and I sometimes feel that goes directly counter the idea of trust.

But in the end, sociological theory is just like music: it may touch you, but you will never be able to explain precisely why it does so.

On the Anthropologist Gradus J. Bosklopper

One of my favorite regional artists is Bert Hadders. I promised in my last blog I would write about King's Day. Well, here I go: I heard him play at King's Day in my village. He played with his band De Nozems at the central square. In front of him sat some real fans; they spoke dialect and had fun. On the side, on the cafe terrace, the local elite was looking blase over a white wine. A little bit the John Lennon-idea: "Those in the cheaper seats clap. The rest of you, rattle your jewelry."

But the band was great, as was Bert Haddders. One of his songs I like best is "Elvis, Keuning van de Bunermond", a song about a local hero somewhere in the Wild East of the Groningen province, the place we call Veenkoloniën (literally "the Peatbog Colonies", I guess), also because this song has such an irresistible video clip.

On Culture

If you do not like blog entries about abstractions, skip this one. It is about 'culture'. Soon I will write about King's Day - much more fun, I promise.

Some time ago I was giving a guest lecture in a course on research skills for teaching staff. I do those guest lectures a couple of times per year, and I like it - it forces me to think about my own research and to explain it to others.

On the basis of earlier experiences this year, I had decided that I would focus less on content and more on methodological issues, and specifically on what is called Grounded Theory: a type of research in which you do not test a theory, but develop it on the basis of empirical data.

So in the lecture I was talking about one of the principles of Grounded Theory, which is called theoretical sampling. The fact that you start your research without a theory makes it hard to decide where to begin your sampling of data. So you simply start somewhere, without  fixed theoretical preconceptions.

One of the people present thought long and hard about this and then disagreed with me. In my specific case, I sampled interviewees only within the province of Groningen, which for the person present meant that at least I had a basic preconception of culture - a preconception that my interviewees, varied as they might be, at least shared a culture to some extent.

Dolly Parton - A Review

The music critic has always fascinated me. He is the professional variant of something many people do continuously: talking about their musical experiences in an evaluating way.

I guess the music critic uses three ingredients: descriptions, judgments, and emotions. He describes what has happened: who was where when with whom, why, with which backgrounds, which history, et cetera. Then there are the judgments and the emotions. They are the equivalents of what I elsewhere called "judging talk" and "liking talk". Together they make up the discourse in which we describe our personal relationship to music. Music touches us - hence the "liking talk" with which we describe our emotions. And on that basis we pick the music we like to listen to - which leads to enormous amounts of "judging talk", in which we try to rationalize our musical choices. Of course that rational story is never convincing, precisely because it is the rational counterpart of the emotional process of liking music, a process which remains inexplicable and only expressible through - mostly material (often bodily) - metaphors: "It really entered"; "It touched my heart"; "It shook me"; et cetera.

Music Generations Groningen

After some years of making plans, (not) convincing possible partners and (not) finding money, finally this afternoon the first Groningen version of the Music Generations programme started after all. I was there to take a look, and I was proud.

Music Generations is a programme which aims at making an intergenerational production with amateur singers from the categories "25-" and "50+" (which makes me feel discriminated, but because that feeling will end in a few months I am not too worried).

It calls itself a talent development programme, and maybe it is. As you may know, I am not too big a fan of the Talent-buzzword; but politicians, policy-makers and money-investors are attracted by it, so talent development it is. But what I liked most about the first audition I saw this afternoon was not the talent-thing; it was the fact that people were allowed to do their own musical thing in public. People were allowed to present themselves as the musical persons they are, all their idiosyncrasies included.

They all deserve the workshops and masterclasses offered by the programme; and they all deserve to grow musically and to become even better than they already are. But what I really hope is, that in all that growing and becoming better they do not lose themselves. I hope they grow mainly in becoming even more of the  themselves they already are.

Because that is the great attraction of sessions like the one I witnessed this afternoon: it shows how music potentially is, in the words of my beloved Clifford Geertz, a meeting place to "enlarge the possibility of intelligible discourse between people quite different from one another in interest, outlook, wealth, and power, and yet contained in a world where tumbled as they are into endless connection, it is increasingly difficult to get out of each other’s way".

What It Really Is About

I am working ´in´ music. I teach about it. I talk about it. I write about it. I talk about teaching it. I write about teaching it. I teach about writing about it. I talk about writing about it. I teach about talking to write about it. Et cetera, ad infinitum, and sometimes ad nauseam (all this Latin to show that I am ´not from the street´, as we say in Dutch, or, ´reversely´, that I have ´street credibility´ in doing it).

And then, of course - talking about street credibility - I play it and I sing it.

But the secret of music lies not in the hands that move the pen or pluck the strings, nor in the mouth that sings the songs or speaks the words.

The secret lies in the ears that hear, and in the soul being moved.

At times, I become so tired with those hands and this mouth. It is all so haphazard, so unfruitful, so futile. I might as well do something else - I might be better off, and so might the rest of the world.

But then I return from a rehearsal of my beloved shanty choir. I sit in the car, I put on the stereo and I listen to Dave Rawlings' 'Bells of Harlem'. And I am dumbstruck with what the sounds of music continue to do to me. They uplift me, up to the point of annihilation.

And I realize that after all, there is probably nothing else I am supposed to do than to play it, sing it, speak about it, write about it, teach about it; if only to honor the listening to it.

So, let the dance continue.

Thank you, Dino

So here I am in Sarajevo, again. It has been quite some time - three years, to be precise. I wondered if again it would snow and I would spot a Dipper, but no. But the lovely smell of the charcoal fires needed to make cevabcici was there, as was the lovely sound of the muezzins of all the mosques; the Bosnian football team still plays in lovely blue, and Music Academy Sarajevo - which hosted me so kindly - was as filled with its lovely students and as hot as ever. So although I missed my wife and kids, I felt at home, in a way.

About the sounds of the muezzins - it is music to my ears. But I know that for some muslims, reciting the qur'an and music are two very very different things; we hear the same but it feels different and listens to a different name. Related to this: one of the ethnomusicologists with whom I worked these days told me that people in a village where she did fieldwork answered in the negative when she asked whether there was any music going on in processions; of course they were singing, she discovered much later, but they did not call it music.Thank you for the story, dear colleague - and oh, the power of words and feelings

Never take a word on its word.

And speaking about words: the wisest words these days came from a composer. In a reflective conversation he remarked that what we, human beings, do need amongst us is not so much that European buzz-word 'tolerance' - we need 'acceptance'. I couldn't agree more; I told him that his words would stick with me the rest of my life, and - pathetic as it may have sounded - I meant it.

Thank you, Dino.