Summary:
Interlude E, the fifth “extra-musical” discussion, explores the myriad and impactful ways that culture—especially our dominant or native culture—intersects with our musical taste. The interlude begins with a few author anecdotes—as a young pianist performing each weekend at his local mall, then as an adult composer of various cross-cultural compositions—to introduce the role that one’s distinct culture plays in shaping one’s musical identity. That vital role of “enculturation” in introduced by first defining those musical universals (properties, perceptions, and functions) that transcend culture. It then jumps directly into those cultural distinctions that help shape our musical taste via discussions that combine sociology, ethnomusicology, and neuroscience. The “enculturation effect” is especially clarified by unwinding, in turn, its effects on our musical / cognitive perceptions of pitch, harmony, rhythm, emotion, and memory. These discussions in turn highlight the differing ways in which we process music of our “native” versus a “foreign” culture—or two cultures equally if one is sufficiently “bi-musical”.
Supplements:
( More on Dr. Gasser’s composition “Irish Easy Pieces” ):
Golf fans will recognize the name Robert Trent Jones as the world-renowned golf architect (Links at Spanish Bay, Chambers Bay, etc.); yet he is also a fine poet. The recording of “Irish Easy Pieces” features singer Dennis McNeil and uilleann piper Todd Denman—with me on piano, as a non-traditional add-on.
( Critical praise for Dr. Gasser’s World Concerto ):
Sue Gilmore of the Oakland Tribune wrote: “[the work] highlighted the unique character of each of three instruments considered ‘exotic’ to Western ears… a sort of whirlwind global tour that yielded rich rewards because the music was so mesmerizing.”
( More background on Dr. Gasser’s V’Samachta ):
Shomrei Torah actually means “keepers of the Torah”, stemming from the synagogue’s possession of an old Torah rescued from a Czech Jewish village destroyed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The arrival of a new Torah to sit alongside the older one on the bema thus warranted a special, music-based commemoration—reflecting the close bond of music and religious ritual.
( More on the changing attitude among ethnomusicologists on the notion of musical universals ):
The drive to uncover musical universals originated in Gestalt psychology—for example, the laws of “grouping” associated with our perception of form and structure. Early attempts to formulate cross-cultural “generalizations” of music perception in turn gave rise to the field of comparative musicology, which flourished in the 1950s and 60s via ethnomusicologists like Blacking and Alan Merriam. By the late 1970s, however, a growing wariness of Western ethnocentrism by scholars like Alan Lomax and Bruno Nettl led to a dismissal of the value of seeking out universals, in favor of highlighting the unique elements of individual musical cultures. In the last 20 years, interest in the subject has resurfaced somewhat—including by Nettl himself, who has helped to establish some current norms of how musical universals may be articulated.
( More on rare examples of non-human demonstrations of entrainment ):
Most notable among those rare animals displays of entrainment are parrots and related birds—as attested, for example, in Ani Patel’s studies on Snowball the cockatoo, and his in-tempo “dancing” (principally by bobbing his head) to “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys; see Lee, Jane J. “”Dancing Animals Help Tell Us Why Music Evolved.” National Geographic , February 17, 2014. So far, only parrots and Ronan the sea lion (at UC Santa Cruz) have clearly displayed this otherwise human-only ability (see the National Geographic article); partial entrainment ability has been suggested for chimpanzees, but only at tempos corresponding to their “normal” or spontaneous tapping pace.
( More on cultures who shun the notion of music as mere entertainment ):
As Bruno Nettl notes (in Music in Primitive Culture ): “The stylistically simple music of a primitive tribe often has a great prominence within its culture because of its prevailing functionality: most primitive music (despite some notable exceptions) serves a particularly purpose other than providing pure entertainment or aesthetic enjoyment.”
( More on studies showing enculturation to violations of native versus non-native scales ):
For example, the ERP-based neuroscience study by Christine Neuhaus showed successful detection by German, Turkish, and Indian musicians of violations occurring in their own native scales, but not in response to those occurring in the other two. Similarly, in studies by Lynch and his colleagues, Western-raised kids (ages 10-13) and adults were better able to identify “mistuned” notes in (Western) major and minor scales than in Javanese gamelan (pelog) scales; see Lynch, “Children’s perception.”
( More on Morrison & Demorest’s studies on memory and enculturation ):
Incidentally, many of Morrison & Demorest’s studies display an improvement in research design, being fully comparative—where, say, two cross-cultural groups evaluate music from both cultures, and perhaps a neutral third as well.
( More on the neurological perspective on memory and enculturation ):
From a neurological standpoint, it is not so much that different parts of our brain are activated when we try to comprehend a non-native as opposed to a native scale or rhythmic pattern. Instead, as Morrison & Demorest have revealed, the same brain structures simply have to work harder : requiring a heavier “cognitive load”, via “stronger and more extensive regions of cortical activity” (“Effect of Intensive Instruction”: 365). From a musicological standpoint, on the other hand, they conclude that culture-specific “contextual” cues (tuning, timbre, etc.), and even rhythmic nuance, have minimal effect on memory; instead it is the basic element of pitch sequences and statistical-based hierarchies by which we remember—and understand—the music we hear.
Principal Bibliography:
Ian Cross, “Musicality and the Human Capacity for Culture,” Musicae Scientiae 12, no. 1_suppl (2008)
John Blacking, Music, Culture, and Experience: Selected Papers of John Blacking (University of Chicago Press, 1995)
Daniel J. Levitin, The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature (New York: Dutton, 2008)
Alan Lomax et al., Cantometrics: A Method in Musical Anthropology (Berkeley: University of California, 1976; first published 1943)
Erin E. Hannon and Laurel J. Trainor, “Music Acquisition: Effects of Enculturation and Formal Training on Development,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 11 (2007): 466–72
Steven J. Morrison, Steven M. Demorest, and Laura A. Stambaugh, “Enculturation Effects in Music Cognition: The Role of Age and Music Complexity,” Journal of Research in Music Education 56, no. 2 (2008)
Thomas Fritz et al., “Universal Recognition of Three Basic Emotions in Music,” Current Biology 19, no. 7 (2009)
Patrick C. M. Wong, Anil K. Roy, and Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, “Bimusicalism: The Implicit Dual Enculturation of Cognitive and Affective Systems,” Music Perception 27, no. 2 (2009)
External Links:
"Ethnomusicology" (Encylopaedia Britannica)
"Culture in Musical Cognition" (Wikipedia)