On (Not) Using the Microphone

I play in two bands. In one of them, I have put a ban on two things: using instruments that cannot simply be carried (like drum sets or pianos), and using amplification. Or maybe a ban is too big a word; I continuously make it clear to my mates that I am radically opposed to both.

And in a way I am. One of the reasons is that the singer in this band is a great communicator with any audience. But using a microphone would, I am convinced, put up a barrier between him and his audience. Using a microphone, one is often tied to a cable; but even when wireless, microphones make that one has to start thinking about singing-through-a-microphone-technique. Also, one can’t sing and wave both hands at the same time (very important), or grab a member of the audience by both shoulders if necessary.

The Beautiful, the Ugly, The Good … ánd the Bad

I promised to write a blog on “dialogic research” and “advocacy” in ethnomusicology. So there we go.

In ethnomusicology, the main concern seems of old to be the music of “the other” – music of non-western cultures rather than western, folk music rather than classical music. Understanding the other, and taking care of the world’s diversity of “others”, are main points on the agenda of ethnomusicology.

With understanding the other comes a connected move: trying to acknowledge that other music may seem strange but is in reality beautiful – as long as you know how to listen. And with taking care of the diversity the world’s musics also comes a connected move: a tendency to protect other musics from abuse, or even extinction. Hence the attention for advocacy (in favor of endangered musics) and of dialogue (with the musickers of the endangered participants, in order to make advocacy a shared – and not a paternalistic-colonial – undertaking).

"What's your music?"

I write this while I am attending a big conference. Several hundreds (!) of ethnomusicologists from all over the world are meeting in Newfoundland, Canada, these days, to present their research to each other, to meet and have fun.

I like ethnomusicologists. I am one myself, but that is not the reason. The reason is that most of them are passionately in love with music. That many of them are not passionately in love with their own  music, but with someone else’s music which has become theirs after some time, makes them even more adorable.

What is it with music in schools

Oh, the endless amazement music leads to.

Last week, on Thursdays, I had organized a workshop on Indian music for our students. Teachers were Ludwig Pesch and Yoga Manickam Yogeswaran (for both of them, see www.aiume.org). For 3 hours they entertained us on high level – explaining how to fill an 8-beat cycle with fixed patterns of 1 to 7 semi-quavers, adding up to a total of 32 semi-quavers; “some percussion players are living computers”, Ludwig said. More important for me were the raga-improvisations Yoga sang – and especially how he sat there, just doing what he had to do, I imagined. And me being kind of part of that.

“Civilization” as a “universe-maintaining conceptual machinery”

Today is the day the “March of Civilization” reaches The Hague. The Hague, for those of you who do not know, is the residency of the Dutch Parliament. Today the budget cuts on culture as proposed by our government will be discussed. And “the cultural world” has organized the “March of Civilization” to protest against the cuts. Democracy at work. Government proposes cuts. Parliament discusses. Members from various societal backgrounds protest. Government decides, or dissolves itself if it has lost support in parliament.  People in many places in the world would love to be able to participate in such processes.

I have double feelings concerning this “March”. I do feel that a budget cut of about 20 percent (200 m€ from a budget of 900) on culture is overdone; I would prefer it if cuts were more evenly spread over the various sectors of our society. Culture seems to be a too easy target for the current government; and feelings of revenge and even of outright hate against the world of culture seem to possess some of the key players in the debate.

On the other hand:

Taste

There is no such thing as good taste, only taste. That’s what I wrote last week. And actually I believe that is true. It is complicated, though. Let me see if I can make my point.

The idea of good taste to me seems to be based on the ability to discriminate between qualities of music: there is better, and there is worse. This discrimination of quality is everywhere in music: Beethoven is better than Delius, and Henryk Szeryng plays Beethoven’s violin sonatas better than I do. The Beatles are better than Herman’s Hermits; Linda Ronstadt is better than Tammy Wynette. Some evenings I play the mandolin better than other evenings. In tune is better than out of tune. Et cetera.

My World Top Ten

I have often been thinking about a Top Ten of artists world wide people should have listened to according to me. I even  started with one some months ago but simply couldn’t make it up. But now I talked with students in a lesson and actually my top ten kind of flipped out naturally. So something like this:

Fela Kuti

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Khaled

Bob Marley