Social Power, Expressive Practices and

Group Formation
-Assignment 5-
Dimitrije Vasiljevic

The article from Ethnomusicology Ive chosen to use for the

examination and analysis of power and politics is Binding and Loosing
in Song: Conflict, Identity, and Canadian Mennonite written by
Jonathan Dueck. Here, the author talks about his paired ethnographic
case study on Canadian Mennonite musical practice while trying to
shed a new light on the definition of identity and conflict in
ethnomusicology. He argues that there are important continuities
between the current meanings of conflict and identity and is trying to
develop this analytic perspective by reading a worship service jointly
held by three Canadian Mennonite congregations.

There are three practices of church singing in three different

congregations and each of them represents a different position on the
Mennonite musical gamut.
Therefore, First Mennonite Church, a historically General Conference
congregation, practices hymnody and Western art musics; Holyrood
Mennonite Church, a historically Mennonite Church congregation,
practices a blend of hymnody and popular musics; and River West
Christian Church, a Mennonite Brethren congregation, practices mostly
popular musics.

The author interviewed the members of these different streams and

they all expressed negative feelings about the others customs and
ideas of church repertoire and the way of singing. However, these
negative comments were expressed in a way that suggested a
tolerance and a constructive aspect of the critique. This can be clearly
seen in the statement: Rather than defending or critiquing
characteristic features of contemporary worship music or traditional
church music, these comments index the range of acceptable musical
practices of Holyrood, seen as a place of tolerance, versus what is seen
the musical partisanship of other local Mennonite churches. Another
interesting, and somewhat unexpected thing in these, so-called,
worship wars is the synergy and mutual connection between the
congregations for Good Friday in the sign of creating a common ground
for the higher ideology that brings together these opposed sides.
Therefore the author says: the congregations gathered on Good
Friday because they were affirming a larger, inter-Mennonite identity
expressed through corporate worship, through different and contested
repertoires of music that were juxtaposed, bound together, in the ritual
of the Good Friday service. Harold Isaacs in his work Basic Group
Identity: The Idols of the Tribe talks about group identities bending and
shaping themselves under the pressure of political change. In the case
of uniting Mennonites congregations for purpose of Good Friday, it
seems that we could say that the original conflict has been shaped into
what becomes a union. The political power of collectiveness and
striving for a higher ideal, managed to reshape the original differences
between these three congregations, and point them towards the
common, higher goal.

Max Weber defines power as the chance of a man or of a number of

men to realize their own will in a communal action even against the
resistance of other who are participation in the action. That is, power
exists when one actor can enforce his/her will on another actor. If we
look back at the case of Good Friday union, we can see that the
possible use of power has been ignored by all of the congregations.
This is especially interesting from the perspective of the one that
Dueck says to be consisted mostly of intellectual and highly educated
members (the highest class of the three). It seems that this
congregation could have easily force their singing practice into the
other congregations, but they have chosen not to do so. Therefore
Dueck says: As I hope I have suggested, the way in which inter-
Mennonite musical conflict was constructed through mutual labeling
suggests that Mennonites in Edmonton at the most basic level shared a
concept of Mennonite worship linked to singing. The Edmonton
Mennonite congregations did not challenge this identificatory triad
(Mennonitesworshipsinging); instead, they embraced it when they
came together on Good Friday to worship and to sing together. Even as
the grounds for loosing, for dispute and alterity, were laid and
negotiated in it, the ritual frame of the service bound its body of songs
and participants together, and in that ritual an inter-Mennonite
community was imagined and performed.

When talking about power it is very hard not to mention a factor of

violence at some point. But violence can also be reshaped into a
powerful constructive force that forges and maintains common ground
between the opposed sides. So Dueck points out that in David
McDonalds article from 2009, he outlines an ethnomusicology of
violence emerging from his study of Palestinian-Israeli interaction,
examining
cultural performances, self-presentation at checkpoints, and finally
mediated
representations of those whom the Palestinians claim as martyrs.
Violence, he
suggests, is fundamentally performative and aesthetic, aiming to
reshape relations
of power by drawing on a shared set of meanings (for violent,
performative
acts)

So the vision of conflict as a socially productive force can contribute

ethnomusicological theory in terms of expanding the range of of
analytic possibilities for studies of conflict and identity by complicating
the divide between identity and conflict, problematizing the celebration
of resistance and opening it to criticism. Dueck says that the works of
Pettan, Avorgbedor, Scales, McDonalds, as well as his research on
Menonnite communities, suggests that presenting conflict as a kind of
social relationshipa bondalso attunes us as analysts to the richly
textured expressive cultural flows between sides that can characterize
relationships of conflict.

So in his article, Dueck suggests that conflict relationships that

induce social power dont have to be a factor of discord, but they can
also produce (musical) identities and actually strengthen social
networks.