EDITED BY

FRANCESCO GIANNATTASIO
GIOVANNI GIURIATI

PERSPECTIVES ON A 21st CENTURY

COMPARATIVE MUSICOLOGY:
ETHNOMUSICOLOGV OR
TRANSCULTURAL MUSICOLOGY?
 lntersezioni Musicali IM05- 2017

Series editor: Giovanni Giuriati

Editorial board: Francesco Giannattasio, Maurizio Agamennone,
Vito Di Bernardi. Serena Facci

Editing: Claudio Rizzoni

Translation: Ruggero Bianchin {chapter 10), David Kerr (chapters 12-15),

David J. Graham (revision of chapter 1)

On the front cover:

details of Paolo Angeli prepared Sardinian guitar (photo: Nanni Angeli)

NOTA - valter Colle / Udine

nota p.o.box 187
33100 Udine
tel./fax (+39) 0432 582001
info@nota.it
www.nota.it

Graphic design-& e-book authoring

Giuliano Michelini - luckyassociates.com

Print
luce- Udine

ISBN 9788861631502
 EDITED BY
FRANCESCO GIANNATTASIO
GIOVANNI GIURIATI

PERSPECTIVES ON A 21st CENTURY

COMPARATIVE MUSICOLOGY:
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
OR TRANSCULTURAL
MUSICOLOGY?
Contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pag. 6

Francesco Giannattasio
Perspectives on a 21st Century Comparative Musicology:
an Introduction ........................... . ... . ... Pag. 10

Wolfgang Welsch
Transculturality - the Puzzling Form of Cultures Today ... .. . .. . Pag. 30

Timothy Rice
Toward a Theory-d riven Comparative Musicology ....... . . .. . Pag. 50

Lars-Christian Koch
Tonsinn und Musik
Carl Stumpf's Discourse on the Mind as a Condition for the Development
of Ethnomusicology and Erich Moritz von Hornbostel's Proposals for
Music-psychological Examination .............. . ..... .. . Pag. 66

Steven Feld
On Post-Ethnomusicology Alternatives: Acoustemology ... . ... Pag. 82

Jocelyne Guilbault
The Politics of Musical Bonding
New Prospects for Cosmopolitan Music Studies ............ Pag. 100

Jean-loup Amselle
From Metissage to the Connection between Cultures ........ Pag. 126

Giovanni Giuriati
Some Reflections on a new Perspective in Transcultural Musicology:
the Area of Naples as a Case Study .................... Pag. 136
Giovanni Giuriati
The Music for the Festa
dei Gigli in Nola ..... ..... . ... . ... ..... .. ..... ... . Pag. 146

Claudio Rizzoni
Tradition and Reframing Processes in the Madonna deii'Arco Ritual Musical
Practices in Naples........ . ................. .. ... . Pag. 158

Giovanni Vacca
Songs and the City
Itinerant Musicians as Living 'Song Libraries' at the Beginning of the 2Qth
Century in Naples: the 'Posteggiatori' . ......... ..... .... Pag. 176

Raffaele Di Mauro
Identity Construction and Transcultural Vocation in Neapolitan Song:
a 'Living Music' from the Past? ... . ... ..... .. . .. .. ... . Pag. 186

Maurizio Agamennone
Current Research in the Salentine Area: an Introduction .. .... Pag. 222

Maurizio Agamennone
An Historical Perspective on Ethnomusicological Enquiry:
Studies in the Salento ...... . ... . ... ..... .. . .. .. ... . Pag. 226

Flavia Gervasi
Rhetoric of Identity and Distinctiveness: Relations between Aesthetic
Criteria and the Success of Salentine Musicians in the Contemporary
Folk Revival .. . . ... . ... . . ... . ...... .. .. ..... ... . Pag. 248

Notes on Contributors .......... . ................... Pag. 272

5
6 PERSP(CTIY£5 ON A 2.1Sf CENTURY COa.tPA.R.Afl\'E MUSiecJLOOY ttHNOMUSICOLOClY OR tR..,.SCUUURAL M USICOLOGY?
Perspectives on a 2Fh Century Comparative Musicology: Ethnomusicology or
Transcultural Musicology? is the first of a series of volumes, /ntersezioni mu-
sicali published by the Intercultural Institute for Comparative Music Studies
(IISMC) of the Fond azione Giorgio Cini in cooperation with the publisher
Nota.
This volume stems from the ' International Seminars in Ethnomusicology'
that Francesco Giannattasio has conceived within the activities of the IISMC,
and founded while he was directing the Institute. These seminars have been
a fundamemal asset of the activities of the IISMC, a reference in the ethno-
musicological debate in Italy and beyond, a place where generations of young
Italian ethnomusicologists were formed by being exposed to some crucial is-
sues of the discipline, and introduced to a number of scholars among the most
authoritative at an international level.
This book derives from the last three seminars of a series of twenty that be-
gan in 1995. These three seminars were devoted to a wide reflection on aims,
methods and objects ofstudy of ethnomusicology in the light of the profound
changes occurring in this field at the beginning of the 21<h. Titles of the three
seminars, held respectively in 2013, 2014, and 2015, were:
- Perspectives on an 2]'1 Century Comparative Musicology: Ethnomusicology Or
Transcultural Musicology? (2013)
-Living Music: Case Studies And New R esearch Prospects (2014)
-Musical Traditions In Archives, Patrimonies, And New Creativities (2015)

In fact, during all three Seminars a main underlying issue was debated. It
concerns a radical rethinking - at a theoretical and epistemological level -
of the history of the discipline called 'ethnomusicology', up to the point of
questioning its denomination. This radical rethinking becomes unavoidable
in this new Century, due to the contemporary profound transformation of
the object of study in forms, behaviors, and social contexts.
The book contains some selected papers delivered during the three Seminars,
with revisions and rewriting by the authors preceded by an introductory essay
by Francesco Giannattasio derived from a deep revision of the three papers de-
livered as introductions to the Seminars. In aU, this volume has the ambition
of offering, at an international level, new views on what a comparative and
transcultural musicology could do in its enquiry into contemporary music
making processes.
Several distinguished scholars coming from different parts of the world, and
from different fields of study (not only ethnomusicology, but also anthro-
pology and philosophy) contributed to the debate presenting theoretical ap-
proaches as a implicit or explicit reaction to the theoretical issues presented by

7
Giannattasio. Together with them, some Italian scholars present their
thoughts deriving them from research in two contexts identified as case stud-
ies: the area of Naples and its surroundings, and the Salento.
It is not by chance rhar we have decided to inaugurate the series of volumes
lntersezioni musicali with Perspectives on a 2J'h Centur)' Comparative
Musicology: Ethnomusicology or Transcultural lYfusicology ? In fact, this
book well represents some of the aims o f this series. First ofall, it stems from
the activities of the IISMC, and one of the aims oflntersezioni Musit·ali is
that of making known also to a readership rhar does nor part icipate direct-
ly to the activities that take place in San Giorgio, at the Fondazione Cini.
what is done by rhe IISMC. More in general, the series goal is to present
research on living contemporary music on that unfold and develop in cul-
tural con texts increasingly interconnected and complex. With an approach
adopting comparative, transnationaL transcultural perspectives to confront
with repertoires in which the definitions of folk, popular, art, traditional,
ethnic rapidly lose or change their meaning in a global reconfiguration of
music making.

Giovanni Giuriati, director of the IISMC

8 P'ERSPE.~IVES ON 4 '2!st CENftJfn' tOMfiAHAn\'£ MUSlOOLOOV ETHNOMUSJCOLOBY Ofl fRNrfSCUUURAl MU.SICOlOG'O

9
 Francesco Giannattasio

10 P£RSP£CT1¥ES ON • 2 1 ST CEHT\H:n' CONPARAn'IE MUSICOLOGY ETHNOMUSICOLOGV OR TRAHSCULTUA.Al MUSICOlOCY?

What perspectives may a comparative musicology have in the twenty-first
century? This is the highly significant and urgent question that was dis-
cussed in the three seminars (2013-2015) that dosed the series of the IISMC,
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, International Seminars in Ethnomusicology, which I
have directed over the past twenty years. This question seems to be unavoidable
nowadays in our field, reconsidered especially in light of the recent dramatic
changes in the cultural and social scenario that characterize the world in the
new century. One must take into account that the ethnographic revolution,
which allowed reciprocal knowledge ofdifferent societies, different cultures and
also different kinds of music, thanks to ethnomusicology, was mostly achieved
in the last century.
In fact, confronted with such a profound transformation we must ask ourselves
what constitutes the specificity of ethnomusicology today. There seems to no
longer be a need for traditional ethnomusicological research and there is a risk
that our field of study will be considered archaic and obsolete. For this reason,
in this new global soundscape in which we are immersed, it is becoming increas-
ingly urgent to make an assessment on ethnomusicology, its status, fields, tasks
and methods of investigation_ This review is so crucial that it could call into
question the very name of our field of study. Perhaps, as suggested in the title
of this book, the new context is such that we have to ask ourselves if we need to
give a sign of discontinuity with the past; a sign similar to the one that, thanks
to Jaap Kunst in 1950, pointed to a new course of studies, marking a change of
denomination from Comparative Musicology to Ethnomusicology.
Trying to simplify the range of problems as much as possible, I believe that this
issue may be focused on three main points:
1. Are the theories and methods of investigation so far employed by ethnomusi-
cologists still effective and useful?
2. How can ethnomusicology be freed of the myth and ideology of its past his-
tory and its general function in the present reality be redefined?
3. Does the label ethnomusicology still effectively identify our discipline and
the work ahead of us?

Theories and methods

Looking back at the over 130-year history of our discipline, we cannot disa-
gree with what has been observed by Timothy Rice about the fact that:

Ethnomusicology has made extraordinarily important contributions to understand-

ing the nature of music [...] By employing social theory from other fields and con-
necting it to what ethnomusicologists have learned about the n ature of music as a

u
 human behavior and practice in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of particular studies,
we have created a far c:llfferent, and [...] richer picture of the nature of music a nd its
significance for huruan life than that created, until recently, by hiscorical musicolo-
g ists studying "\'\lestern art music (Rice ZO IOb: 110).

It is enough to remember that theoretical and methodological acquisitions in

the field of ethnomusicology have led to conclusive results, such as:
- a great quantity of aural and visual documentation about the different
kinds of music and musical cultures has been collected, particularly in the
second half of the twentieth century (we could say that nearly all the idioms
and musical repertoires that were active in the world before the accelerated
integration of the world's societies have been documented);
- the radical change of the concept of music, which until half a century ago
was considered 'universal language', but today is seen as a universal means of
expression, articulated in various parts of the world as a variety of musical
' languages', behaviours and practices, which are in some cases nearly incom-
patible.
The discoveries made by ethnomusicologists on the functioning of music are
common knowledge today, in the same way that most of the technologies such
as sound recording, spectrographic analysis, various ways of tr,anscribing and
graphically represeming sounds, etc. have now become w idely and easily avail-
able a.s software applications on o ur home computers.
By now, everybody can listen to different kinds of music of the world and
more or less recognize differences related to origin, vocal techniques, instru-
ments, etc.
The distinction between music.: and 'musics' i.s nowad ays also common knowl-
edge, at least in scientific contexts, and it i.s exploited in different multidisci-
plinary studies, which now even involve neuroscience.
We can say that ethnomusicology fulfilled its role in the last century with the
result that all musics of the world are now considered of equal dignity and
may be circulated, appreciated and compared to each other. Twentieth-cen-
tury ethnomusicology did this job with great determination through increas-
ingly d eep studies, from the first Comparative Musicology.
So everything is apparently sorted out now ... but actually things are crucially
different today, for rwo main reasons:
The first reason is rhat the different musics documented by erhnomusicology
- in the years when they began to be k nown outside their cultmal contexts
- gradually and irrevocably became history of the p ast. In fact, they starred
losing most of the functions that made them an expression of the cultures
they belong ro. In many cases they simply no longer existed, just like most of

12 P'ERSPE.::"IIVES ON 4 21st CENftJRY COMPAHAn\'E: MUSlOOLOOV ETHNOM USJCOLOBY Oft fRNrfSCUUURAL M U.SIOOLOG'n
the traditional societies where ethnomusicologists had carried out the:ir field-
work. In this respect the statement made in 2001 by a bushman from Botswa-
na to the ethno-filmmaker John Marshall - who SO years before had filmed
the life and music of a group of hunters-collectors of the Kalahari desert - is
very dear: 'Ehi! I want to tell you something: one kind of film lies, another
tdls the truth. Today films that show us wearing skins and living in the bush
are Lies'. 1

Frame taken from John Marshall's documentary A Kalahari Family ( 2001}

Strictly speaking, ethnomusicological research is still possible and also neces-

sary in areas where musical forms and behaviours are still an organic expres-
sion of traditional social and cultural assets. However, we have to consider
that we are talking about limited temporal and spatial realities. It is also cer-
tain that the possibility of and need for a diachronic study ofdifferent musical
cultures is now a realistic goal, thanks to the materials collected in more than
a century of ethnomusicological research. But ethnomusicology can certainly
not con fine itself to a philology of previously orally transmitted music.
We aUknow that- unlike historical musicologists- ethnomusicologists have
so far been characterized by a prevalent interest in living music and in the
music-making processes rather than specific artefacts. Furthermore, although
it has often been pointed our that our discipline can observe any kind of music
from an ethnomusicological point of view, it is a matter of fact that we have

1 A Kalahary Famtly is a five-part, six-hour series (Kalfam Production, 2001) in which John
Marshall documents 50 years in the lives of the Ju/'hoansi of Southern Africa.

13
been dealing predominantly with a 'certain' rype of music: the music of oral
tradition or of primary orality. In a word, everything that used to be defined
as 'other' mustcs.
.
The second reason is more complex and calls into question the ideological as-
sumptions iliar supported ethnomusicological research in the past century.
1hese assumptions had their legitimacy and usefulness for the investigation
until a few decades ago; but they are no longer applicable. Indeed, with the ad-
vent of global communication, they have irreversibly changed their meaning.
The ideology, progressive and more or less .:xplicidy influenced by Marxism,
was that ofa battle for the preservation of the 'other' cultures and musics, in
many cases considered alternative and opposing themselves to the dominant
culture of the hegemonic classes. What is certain is that rhe 'other' musics
seemed, in the eyes of the erhnomusicologists, to have a distinct 'aura' of au-
thenticity and irreproducibility, to use an expression dear to Walter Benjamin
(1936).

Paradoxically, it is the aura of the 'other' musics that remains in the postmod-
ern collective imagery. There is no doubt that the recordings, discography and
concerts with 'original' musicians, which have been produced by ethnomu-
sicologists, helped create the myth of this aura. This has, in turn, created a
meta-culture of' diversity', i.e. an 'ethnomusicological' music and 'ethnomusi-
cological' aesthetics that we have inherited from the twentieth-century. This
inheritance rook the form of revi~·als, both internal and external to the origi-
nal communities. These became reifications of the 'true' folk music, the 'true'
African music, the 'true• music of Sardinia, and so on, to the point that clones
are more and more perfect, 'classic', and detached from the actual social reali-
ty. Or in other cases, they take the form of new remakes of traditional musics,
as if berwee::n rhe original ones and rhe curn:nr ones rhere was a real conti-
nuity, under the pretext of preserving different and sometime overestimated
cultural identities. It is nor by chance that the meta-culture of 'diversity' is
nowadays fully supported by the tourism industry, by consumers, by ethnic
extremists, by neo-folk revival musicians and by parts of the so-called world
music.
ln this non-encouraging scenario there are some borderline cases such as the
following one. This example is the result of that participative ethnomusicol-
ogy put forward by authoritative scholars, such as the dear colleague Hugo
Zemp.
As we ali know, from 1975 to 1977 Zemp made a comprehensive audio-visual
inventory of the types of music of the 'Are'are people on Malaita in the Solo-
mon Islands, which was conceived with the collaboration of the musicians. 2

2 'Are'are Music, CNRS Audiovisuel, 16 mm, colour, 150 min., 1979, and Shaping Bamboo ,
CNRS Audiovisual , 16 mm, colour, 35 min., 1979.

14 ,.ERSPE::tlVES ON 4 21st CENft.lftY COMfiAHA.nt£ MUSlOOLOGV ETHNOMUSJCOLOBY Ofl fRNrfSCUUURAl M USICOlOGY!

It was a very refined tradition, characterized by the use of different kinds of
bamboo instruments, equi-heptaphonic and equi-pentatonic scales, melodies
built on the overlaying of intervals of a second, etc.
The 'Are'are Council of chiefs decided that this film benefits 'Are'are people
by contributing to the education in their schools.
It must be asked what the effective results of this musical education have been
if we look at one of the various videos of current 'Are'are music and d ance
available on YouTube, 3 where one can see how the 'are'are now use the tem-
pered scale, ronal harmonies of a nineteenth-century European stamp and
sonorities and behaviours of folklore groups.
But the most singular aspect is not the fact that the young 'Are'are musicians
have essentially abandoned the traditional musical language, ad apting their
instruments to Euro-American forms and tonal language and the new mu-
sic of the circum-Pacific area. As Steven Feld clearly showed by starting his
magnificent three disc anthology of twenty-five years (1976-1990) of his field
recordings of Bosavi music4 right from the musical production of new gener-
ations ofBosavi composers and musicians, which originates in recent contact
history, such a change may be considered entirely plausible.5 The really sin-
gular fact is that the young 'Are'are players perform in the same nude look of
their forefathers' traditional costume. The contrast is very clear and, I would
also say, eloquent.

Faced w ith this kind of phenomena we must ask ourselves whether the role of
ethnomusicologists as promoters, sponsors, and protectors of'other' musics is
still legitimate. Why?
To answer these questions, we must first of all understand what happened.

My th and ideology of the p ast: how to redefine the present function of

the discipline

In fact, acting as champions of'other' musical traditions, last century's ethno-

musicologists thought to contribute to the preservation of cultural identities

3 In particular, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2mROeeyaRY

4 BOSAVI - Rainforest music from Papua New Guinea, a 3 CD anthology recorded and
annotated by Steven Feld, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SPW CD 404879, 2001: disc I
- Guitar bands of the 1990s.

5 No less eloquent in this sense is the accurate reconstruction of the many transformations
of calypso, from its remote origins to the present, in relation to the historic, social and cultural
developments of the island of Trinidad, made by Jocelyne Guilbault {2007).

15
tout coul·t. This belief stemmed from the then current anthropological con-
ception of cultures as 'homogeneous islands or enclosed spheres', co borrow a
fitting image from Professor Welsh to which I will return shortly.
Pa radoxically, the instance of sateguarding the diverse cultural identities sup-
ported by anthropologists and ethnomusicologists was endorsed much later
by UNESCO with the 2001 promulgation of a ' Universal Declaration on
Cultural Diversity', which states:6

Art. 2:
In our increasingly diverse societies, it is essential to ensure ha.rmon.ious interaction
among people and groups wirh plural, varied and d ynamic culrural identities as well as
their willingness ro live together. [...]

Art. 4:
The defence of cultural diversity is an ethical imperative, inseparable from respect for
human dign.ity. [...]

And, one of the objectives that defines the 'Main lines of an action plan for
the implementation' of this declaration is the well-known target 13, which
calls on member states to work on:

Formulating policies and Strategies for rhe preservation and enhancement of rhe cul-
tural and natural heritage, notably the oral and intangible cultural heritage, and com-
bating illicit traffic in cultural goods and services.

Now, aside from the indisputable merit of this UNESCO resolution, al-
though late in coming, the main problem is precisely the ·oral and intangible
heritage'. Tndeed, this formulation may he applied to musical forms, reper-
toires and instruments, bur it cannor include the maintenance factor, that is,
rhe forced and unnatural preservation of a primary orality and its process-
es of tradition and thought in a socio-cultural reality that has completely
changed. In other words, preservation cannot cover the functions that made
these types of music vital forms of communication. The consequence is that
UNESCO protection ends up making those intangible musical heritages
classical and unchanging musics. The only possible outcome is their revivaL
Nothing wrong with that: it will mean that, in addition to the current revival
of early music, of New Orleans jazz bands or be-bop, there will be a new sea-
son of the revival ofso-called folk and ethnic music. And this is normal in an
age when, legitimately, each and every organized group can do what it wants.

6 See on the Web: unesdoc.unesco.orgfimages/0012/001271/127162e.pdf

16 I'EJISPE::tlVES ON 4 '2iST CENftJRY tOMfiAHAn\'£ MUSlOOLOOV ETHNOMUSJCOLOBY Oil fRNrfSCUUURAL M USICOLOGY!

Bur what do we ethnomusicologists have to do with this?
It is necessary rather to be aware that archives still remain the only effective
instrument for preserving those musics in the aura and dynamics in which
ethnomusicologists of the last century have known and documented them.
Therefore these places of real preservation of memory have a much greater
importance than in the past.
Not by chance, most of the musical recordings conserved in the archives show,
on a simple listening, a consistency and, I would say, a flavour that is very
different from the same music now re-recorded ' in the fidd' with much more
sophisticated and precise technology. In the best of cases it is a question of a
revival that is now largely lacking the expressive and communication func-
tions that that music had in the past.
Often such revivals now take on the pretentious epithet of'patrimonization', that
is to say of safeguarding the 'cultural heritage'. The so-called 'cultural heritage',
or in our case the 'musical heritage', has become a paradigm of the contemporary
world that, interpreted differently according to context, is generally considered
an antidote to the standardising effects of globalisation.
Nevertheless, the concept of'heritage' is ajlou one that by nature is open to the
most diverse interpretations and, consequently to the most unforeseeable eco-
nomic, political and identitarian manipulation and exploitation. In many ways
it takes the form of a genuine social construction, and the representation, often
manipulated and emphatic, ofa presumed identity: to increase tourism, to assert
an original, individual, cultural pedigree or to reclaim an individual diversity.
Such so-called patrimonization, in being a specific legal, economic and com-
mercial procedure, is made possible by the precise figures of appointed or
self-appointed mediators (experts, intellectuals, politicians, cultural and in-
stitutional bodies), who decide what deserves to be saved and ensure that this
'saving' takes place. The selection of what should be safeguarded as ' heritage'
thus ends up being the result of a complicated negotiation, at rimes a genuine
contest, which takes place on numerous levels: local, national and even trans-
national.
When an ethnomusicologist decides to give his own authoritative opinion
on what should be recognised as 'musical heritage', he must thus be aware of
the fact that, in making this operation, it will then be he personally who cre-
ates such a heritage and arbitrarily defines its confines. It must be asked how
appropriate from a deontological point of view is the shared involvement of
those - ethnomusicologists, anthropologists or folklorists - who put them-
selves forward to 'patrimonize' and to have the material and non-tangible 'as-
sets' of the so-called 'popular culture' recognised at an institutional level.
On the contrary, nothing prevents the current processes of'heritage-making'

17
constituting an interesting field of research and study, both anthropological
and musical, provided though char a sufficient critical distance from them is
maintained.
In Italy as elsewhere, the rush towards parrimonharion began well before the
UNESCO declaration, (I would say starring from the 1970s). But, certain-
ly, requests for UNESCO recognition have multiplied in all regions sine~ in
2005. that organisation recognised rhe Sardinian canto a tenore as having the
status of oral and intangible world herirage. The case of this Sardinian poly-
phonic !iinging is very special and ilio very interesting, because it has end ed
up creating a proliferation of a tenore groups. There are now more than 400 tl
tenore choirs throughout the island, who have even formed their own associ-
ation that self certifies their own level of quality. In sho rt, the canto 11 tenore
seems to have become a kind of party game and, at the same time, an emblem
of true Sardinian identity. In this sense, the phenomenon certai nly deser ves
closer study.
And yet, if it were a matter of not conserving but of appreciati.ng the musical
heritage and taking it as a reference point for its own current music, the ques-
tion would certainly be different. But tbis is counter to the notion of heritage
or patrimony itself, which is closely linked to the idea ofan indivisible property,
and I would say even counter to its etymology (from the Larin patrimonium,
' herirage of the father'): one must thus maintain, increase, never squander rhe
paternal heritage. Therefore, to be recognised as oral and intangible heritage,
one must inevitably reproduce it as such, even if such a herirage is used in an
improper way.
But what signilicance do the promises of heritage have to those who, like us,
according to the tradition ofethnomusical studies, are attract ed by living mu-
sic more than dead and reven11nt music (in short, those of us interested, to say
it with Blacking. in understanding why and how man is music:tl) ?
If we reaJly must concern ourselves with favouring patrimonization, it is in
d efence of rhe archives of sound and audio-visual documents collected over
more than o ne hundred years, of their appreciation and non-privatistic use
that we shou ld perhaps fight.
It must then be asked what the real space-time extension of the concept of
intangible heritage is.

In the UNESCO D eclaration there is also another important issue: the e..-x-
plicit connection between the preservation and enhancement of the oral and
intangible cultural heritage and the defence of cuh:ural identities.
Personally, I think that the time has come to reconsider the notions of identi-
ty and, in particular, of cultural identity. The latrer, as I said, was useful in the

P'tRSPf.~IV!:S Oli 4 'ltst CO.f\.IAY CO:MPAR.t.n\o"t MU5tc0lOQV ETHNOMUSICOlOGY Olt tRANSCULtURAl MUSICOLOGY?
anthropology and ethnomusicology of the past century to define the place of
intersection between culture and community, but it now seems to acquire an
apparently progressive but, in fact, strongly reactionary meaning: identity as
a common destiny and as a heritage to be defended at all costs. It is no coinci-
dence that the worst political and cultural attitudes of those opposed to any
process of transformation and cultural integration are concealed behind the
notion of identity.
Actually, the debate among anthropologists on the notion of identity has been
open for more than twenty-five years. The anthropologist Francesco Remotti
devoted two books to its deconstruction: Contro l'identita (1996) andLosses-
sione identitaria (2010). In the latter Remotti argues that ' identity[...] belongs
to the field of social representations' (Remotti 2010: 103) but does not exist,
it does not belong to the world order and it can't be practically experienced
(because it is imaginary). Nonetheless, it can function well as the ideology
that makes the (spiritual, cultural, economic etc.) 'substance' of a group self
defined as a 'WE', irreproachable and undeniable
Remotti states:

That which has suffered the most for this orgy of identity is the culture of coexistence,
i.e. the attention paid to the development of relationships which are not limited to
satisfying interests of particular groups, of inevitably opposing 'WE's.7 (Remotti 2010:
120).

Each 'WE' seems to be obliged not to look for its own identity, but to pretend it. 8 (120)

Thus Remotti wond ers:

Is this the destiny of anthropology? To get lost in an indescribable multitude of claims

of identity, to search for identities everywhere - looking solely for identities, albeit they
are false or deceptive? 9 (113)

e
7 'Cio che maggiormente ha sofferto di quest'orgia d'identita Ia cultura della convivenza,
vale a dire l'attenzione e Ia cura per lo sviluppo d'interrelazioni che non siano dettate soltanto
dal perseguimento dell'interesse di gruppi particolari, di 'NOI' inevitabilmente contrapposti'.
(Remotti 2010: 120).
8 'Ogni "NO I" sembra [. . .)obbligato non a ricercare, ma a fingere Ia propria identita'. (Remotti
2010: 120).
9 'E: questa il destino dell'antropologia? Un infognarsi nella miriade indescrivibile di rivendi-
cazioni identitarie, un intestardirsi nel volere scorgere dappertutto identita e solo identita, per
giunta finte e illusorie?' (Remotti 2010: 113).

19
Remotti's attitude to the concept of identity and the importance given to it by
social scientists is clear-cut.
In his recent position on the state of our discipline, Timothy Rice (2010a)
questioned this proliferation of studies on 'music and identity' in the last
twenty-five years, suggesting that they should be resized in ~he research pro-
jects of the next twenry-five.
Personally. t who tend to be a little bit categorical in clarifying my thinking.
largely agree with Remotti's radical critique of the current 'orgy ofidentities'. I
think that rh~ emphasis uf erhnumusiculugi~-rs un the notion uf identity is the
last resort of the ideology of preserving diversity, according to which in the last:
century there was a leading advocate of all kinds of 'otherness'. This does not
mean we should no longer deal with musical diversities, and, indeed, we are
the best equipped ro evaluate them from the cultural, historical and system-
atic point of view. And, above all, we are more accustomed to doing so with-
our prejudice. But we must abandon the notion that we associated with that of
'difference' in the last century: the notion of 'otherness', which - observed in
the light of rhe present rime - is becoming even more ethnocentric, racist and
only suitable for feeding and encouraging false' identities'; or, if nor false , at least
transi~ory, given that, as Jean-Loup Amselle has dearly shown in his studies- it
is sufficient to recall what he wrote :in Mestizo Logics, Anthropology ofldentity jn
Africa and elsewhere (Amselle 1998) -identities are fluid and negotiable. People
construct their identity day by day, through exrremely dynamic srrategies built
through categories that depend on the specific situation.
Of course, everyone is frightened by the international economic crisis and the
now unmanageable population growth in the world. Similarly, the Babel of
languages and identities conveyed by the Internet and other powerful means
of mass communication seems to reduce individuals and local communities
to independent variables. But it is also true that the human community has
never been as close as now to the possibility of exchanging and sharing val-
ues, knowledge and symbolic practices, including the musical one. We have to
look forward to this opportun ity now at hand and ask ourselves how long our
discipline should continue to represent itself as a study of the 'other' musics,
those of oral tradition, once defined as folk and ethnic musics.
This issue involves the current status of objectS and contexts that, more by con-
vention 1:han conviction, we still define as 'art music', 'popular music', 'orally
transmitted music', 'electronic music' and so on, or even 'erhnomusicology',
'art musicology', 'contemporary musicology', ·popular musicology', etc. It is
dear that their extent as well as their boundaries should be revised: the histor-
ical routes and geo-anthropic, sociological. and stylistic maps which they were
referred to are now changing more quickly than our ability to grasp them.

20 l"EJISPE.~IVES ON 4 21St CENf1JRY tOMPAHA.nt£ MUSlOOLOGV ETHNOMUSJCOLOBY Ofl fRNrfSCUUURAl MUSICOLOGY!

Jean-Jacques Nattiez and other distinguished 'doubly-immersed ' colleagues
(with one foot in ethnomusicology and the other in musicology) are attempt-
ing a reunification of the musicological field. Nevertheless, the 'unity of mu-
sicology' seems not to be the most urgent question at present. The current
situation requires rather a new and more effective improvement of the specific
theoretical and methodological heritage that ethnomusicology has developed
and enriched over time, i.e. a still fully efficient way of looking at, describing
and analysing living musical forms and behaviours in a cross-cultural perspec-
tive.
To study the music o f today, however, ethnomusicologists should also review
other notions that have always belonged to their toolbox. Beginning with the
concept of 'ethnic music', which is misleading or absolutely useless because,
as already pointed out by John Blacking forty years ago, all music is ethnic.
The concept of'ethnic music' risks to take (or encourage) today a racist con-
notation, deeply at odds with the very same egalitarian principles on which
our discipline is based.
Many ambiguities and much confusion are also generated by the expression
'traditional music'. The notion of musical tradition is an important acquisition
in a research perspective involving the study of cultural dynamics, processes
of change, transmission of knowledge and so on. The notion of 'traditional
music', however, now seems as misleading as that of'ethnic music': on the one
hand, because it implicitly opposes a traditional music to a hypothetical and
non-existent music without tradition; on the other hand, because it leads one
to believe that music is more traditional the more it resists change, i.e., the
more it is ' d ead' (or ' immortal', as lovers of art music may say).
I am of course aware that abandoning the notion of traditional music is prob-
lematic for those who made it the flag of their scientific identity. My question
is for them, but also for us: do we really want to diminish our role as defenders
of parochial musical traditionalism, made of 'traditional' costumes, 'tradi-
tional' instruments and repertoires, based on an unreal aesthetics of the past
(of the ' how we were')?
Especially as 'ethnic' music and 'traditional' music have mainly become flags
of fictitious identities and categories - very effective from a commercial point
of view for ethnic restaurants, ethnic furniture, and traditional cuisine. The
more so when we consider that all this is done in a time when, as was often
pointed out by Umberto Eco (2010), the fruition and consumption of cultur-
al events prevail on their contents and on their specific forms of expression
(lined up with the well-known Marshall McLuhan premonition that 'the me-
dium is the message').
Within the actual context of t ransformation, the oral/written dichotomy has

21
also lost much of its heuristic potential, or, at least, it should be reconsidered
in light of the new forms of orality and writing, primary and second ary, espe-
cially determined by the omnipresence of new mass media. All this also has an
impact on the way of doing research. Not only because the fieldwork should
be extended to new computer networks, but because it forces us to deeply re-
consid er our telations, not only with regard w the so-called traditional cul-
tures and musics, but with the individuals who are currendy the true keepers
of these musics.
To b t clear. iris one rhing m scudy rhe origins and dc::vdopmem of a musical
tradition, and another to believe th at it is, as UNESCO claims, a kind of'in-
tangible heritage', i.e. a sort of erernal future. No, ir is simply the past, or at
least a past 'frozen' to that which we knew in the last century.
All things con sidered, rhe thread that binds us more persistently ro the eth-
nomusicology of the last century is the choice offocusing the investigation on
the living music, not only as musical artefacts or specific forms of representa-
tion through sounds, but also as living processes of expression and communi-
cation. In this regard, it is worth remembering what was stared over fifty years
ago by the well-known American musicologist G ilbert Chase (1958: 7):

The present emphasis [...] is o n the musical study of contemporary man, t o whatever
society he may belong, wh ether primitive or complex, Eastern or Western. The current
trend of ethnomusicology, then, appears to me to provide the answer to our pending
i nquiry: While the historical musicologist is busy questioning the dead, who will ques-
tion the living, who will inquire into the musical habits and products a nd attit udes
and usages of contemporary man, living in rh is 20th-cent ury world where time is anni-
hilating space? The answer, to me at least, seems obvious. This t ask will be perfo rmed,
i ndeed !i being performed, by the ethnomusicologists [...]

The current reality is certainly far more complex, though no less interesting
than what has been investigated by the ethnomusicology of the past: thanks
to the pervasive power of the new media, the most varied st yles. repertoires
and ways of making music resound now, pan-chron ically. in a new im:ercul-
tural and inter-subjective dynamic relationship.

Transcultural dynamics and new creativities: does the ethnomusicology

label still effectively identify our discipline and the work ahead of us?

The term Ethnomusicology still retains it s prestige and, as already mentioned,

can still be used to refer to a hisrorical study of the documents collected in
the past and to rhe research in those few areas not yet touched by rhe inves-

22 l"ERSPE::tlVES ON 4 2iST CENftJRY tOMfiAHA.n\'£ MUSlOOLOOV ETHNOM USJCOLOBY Ofl fRNrfSCUUURAl M U.SICOLOC'n
tigation. In both cases, use of the term ethnomusicology maintains its raison
d'etre and its authority, just as it is legitimate to work in a comparative per-
spective, despite the fact that the original denomination of the discipline as
'comparative musicology' was abandoned in the early 1950s.
However, ethnomusicologists will henceforth have to face a new dimension of
transculturality if they want to deal with living music. I use the terms 'trans-
cultural' and 'transculturality' with the same meaning given to them by the
philosopher Wolfgang Welsch in his article in this volume, 10 when he writes:

[...] t he description of today's cultures as islands or spheres is factually incorrect and

normatively deceptive. Cultures de facto no longer have the insinuated form of homo-
geneity and separateness. They have instead assumed a new form, which is to be called
transcultural insofar that it passes through classical cultural boundaries. Cultural con-
ditions today are largely characterized by mixes and permeations.

Consequently, the concept of transculturality well serves the purpose ofdescrib-

ing today's cultural constitution, which is characterized by intertwinement.
As far as we are concerned, transculturality in music now means, above all, inter-
action between cultural traditions and musical conceptions whose origins were
different from each other. Warning! Not only metissage of musical instruments
and artefacts, but rather new creativity and new, shared musical languages. In
this sense, I am convinced that the ethnomusicological gaze must extend to all
contemporary musics, given that, henceforth, the nature of music-making will
increasingly have to do more and more with material and spiritual elevation of
individuals and communities, regardless of different cultural and musical back-
grounds.
The new processes of musical creation and how they work must also be fully
understood.
Although I previously d efined the concept of heritage as jlou, the expression
'new forms of creativity' is certainly no less so. Not only because every creative
activity is by definition new, bur especially because considering the question of
new forms of musical creativity puts us before a tangle of creative situations and
conditions, in a musical cransculturality marked by interaction, almost always
chaotic and unbalanced, between traditions of language and musical thinking
that were originally different from one another. Bur then, which are the new
forms of music that should primarily attract our attention?
Those that most direcdy reconnect to the musical traditions that were once the
object ofethnomusicological studies?

10 See Welsch, in this volume, pp. 34.

23
Those that in the continuous crossover of musical instru menrs, forms and styles
seem Like the expression of new, shared, musical languages?
Those that are the consequence of new technological conditions for the pro-
duction of music and. therefore, propose and circuJate new ways of making and
using musical communication?
Those that are the expression of new social and cuJrural groupings, these coo
resulting from globalisarion and iliespace-time transformations brought about
by the internet?
As those of us who set about extending the ethnomusicological gaze to all cur-
rent music well know, me question is complex and does not allow any certain
de6 nition of what must be meant by the expression 'new form s of creat ivity'.
The ethnomusicologists of the past defined their own field of research based
on large distinctions mat reflected the gap between different areas of histor-
ical-cultural sedimentation and between different social straca and types of
civilisation - Western/non-Western, cultivated/ popular, written/oral, domi-
nant/subordinate, and so on. Iris likely that, chough chis is only a proposal, the
present research of an ethnomusicologist. or whatever one wants to call him,
must now also consider the changed conditions of economic interaction, social
stratification and new areal interconnections to redraw the map of the scenarios
that typify the current world. These cannot bur also affect music, the functions
attributed to ir, its forms and manners offruition. To offer a mundane example,
are the rap sryles created by the Italian singer Jovanotti, the hip-life musicians
of G han a or rhe desperate young people in a Pa ris, New York or Rome suburb
products of the same genre?
This consideration about the new stratifications of music must be kept in mind,
in my opinion, when evaluating the so-called 'new forms of creativity'. It obliges
us to make a historical-social analysis of the original and current conditions of
the musical forms, products and behaviours we intend srudying.
There is then another, equally important question concerning the need for a
different taxonomy of musical facts based on the new modes and functions that
determine their production: a taxonomy mat is now necessary due tO the Sttb-
Stantial change in the ways of making, listening and producing music, so strong-
ly influenced by new media and information technology.
For example, in Music as Social Lift (2008), Thomas Turino suggests distin-
gu ishing between fou r different ways of making music: n.vo -participatory and
presentationaL - concern performance in real time; the other two- high fidelity
music and studio audio art- concern rather the production of recorded music. 11

11 Briefly defined, participatory performance is a special type of artistic practice in which

there are no artist-audience distinctions, only participants and potential participants perform-

rERSIIf.:tiv£5 0'1 'liST C£.. rURY CCid,AAAn'£ Nll5lCOtOO.'I E'rHNOMUSICOLOCY 0 .. tAANSCUUURAL MUSIOOLOGY'!
Although the intermediate situations that can arise must also be considered,
the taxonomy suggested by T uri no actually includes all the current ways of
producing music. Furthermore, given that each of the four refers to specific
types of interpretation, of values, roles, practices and types of sound, each
one also implies different ways of conceiving music and conveying what it
is or should be.
Other parameters for identifying the music of today may certainly also be
referred to. The thing that matters, though, is that a conventional classifi-
cation by genre, style, form and repertoire is no longer capable, alone, of
withstanding the time-space upheaval of globalised communication; un-
less a conservative approach is assumed, attempting to resist the change.
For example, it is evident that genres, styles, forms and repertoires that in
the eyes oflast century's ethnomusicologists seemed like specifics of partic-
ipatory musical behaviours, have now, even in the case of their being kept
alive, more or less 'patrimonized', become characteristics of presentation,
representation and self-representation music. All in all, today's new forms
of musical creativity can be understood only in their historically processual
nature, w hich imposes careful reconstruction of t he numerous factors that
have determined them.
Thus, the new pan-chronic and transcultural dynamics of music in the world
obliges us above all to extend the range ofour objects ofstudy. In other words,
it is necessary to ask what kinds of music can be profitably studied by us, in
what contexts and under what conditions.
But, at this point, it may then be asked what our discipline is today and wheth-
er the denomination of 'ethnomusicology' still effectively represents it.
In this book Timothy Rice suggests the following definition of ethnomu-
sicology, expounded for the first time precisely here in Venice, at the 2013
Seminar, confirming the effectiveness of our conferences as a stimulus for
updating the international debate: 12

ing different roles, and the primary goal is to involve the maximum number of people in some
performance role. Presentational performance, in contrast, refers to situations where one
group of people, the artists, prepare and provide music for another group, the audience, who
do not participate in making the music or dancing' [...] high fidelity refers to the making of
recordings that are intended to index or be iconic of live performance' (p.26}. 'Studio audio art
involves the creation and manipulation of sounds in a studio or on a computer to create a re-
corded art object (a 'sound sculpture'} that is not intended to represent real-time performance'
(Turino 2008: 27}
12 This definition was published a year later in Timothy Rice, Ethnomusicology: A Very Short
Introduction (2014: 1}.

25
 I define c:mnomusicology as the srudy of why, and how, human beings arc: musicaL
Based on this definition, wc: can say what ethnomusicology is not. It is not the study
of 'em nic music'. It is not rhe srudy of music in ~ural tradition. Iris nor the study of
'traditional music'.lr is not the srudr of'foJk music'. lr is not the )tudy ofsome limited
subset of human musical life. So whar is it? Erhnomusicology is the srudy of aU music.

The breadth of the definition pTOposed by Rice, with which it is difficult

not to agree, makes rhe question of the name even more evident: so why call
ethnomusicology the study of all music? Certainly, in Rice's definicion rhe
prefix 'ethno-' is intended in the Greek sense of cbEpwv eSvo~ (human race)
and not in that unfortunately now recllfring and ever more discriminatory
one of races, ethnic groups, foreign people. There is no doubt char this is
the essential meaning of John Blacking's teaching: 'all music is strucruraJJy.
as well as funcrionaJJy, folk music' (1973: xi). Not by chance did Blacking
used to repeat that he was not an ethnomusicologist, but an anthropologist
formed in the school of Meyer Fortes and thought that ethnomusicology
(whose seven syllables do not give it any aesthetic advantage over the pen-
tasyllabic 'musicology'- 1973: 3) should be considered 'a method, and not
merely an area, of study (1973: 4); a method 'of analysing music and music
history' (1973: 26) and also 'in some respects a branch of cognitive anthro-
pology' (1973: 113).
For this reason, roo, the term ethnomusicology, once emblematic of a broad-
ening of the study perspectives and methodology, perhaps now risks taking
on an ambiguous meaning.
If this is true, then we need to find a designation that can define, in more
general terms, our current field of study and signal our intention to deal
with these new commitments. The term Musikologie, proposed in 1885 by
Guido Adler (Adler 1885) to define comparative musicology, would now of
course be fine, but unfortunately it has already been used and it is not a good
idea to make it the object of a conflict ofidentity. Ethnomusicology, instead,
with its increasingly unbearable prefix echno-, which recalls an era - that
of the discovery of other peoples and their music- is over. If it is true that
in this new era, which I would define the 'Media Age', and in the so-caJJed
'postmodern era', conventional dichotomies like high/low, oral/written,
arc/popular, functional /aesthetic, Western/ non-Western, etc. seem co have
lose most of their meaning, chen it is perhaps appropriate co draw conclu-
sions and give a strong sign of discontinuity.
For this reason in my introductory paper at the 2013 Seminar I suggested
rhat an appropriate term for updating that of ethnomusicology would be

26 rEASI't:tJVES Olrf 4 :UST C£.. TUAY CCidii'AAAnll£ Nll5lCOtOGV nHHOMUSICOLOCY 0 .. fRANSCUUURALMUSIOOLOGY'!

transcultural musicology, adding that, after all, the so-called 'ethnomusico-
logical gaze' has always been in itself transcultural and, fortunately, is no
longer even ethnocentric but polycentric.
Of course, mine was, more than a proposal, food for thought. In fact, adop-
tion of the prefix trans-instead of ethno- is equally ambiguous, inadequate
and, paraphrasing Blacking, does not give it any aesthetic advantage.

But, I think it will be dear by now that the choice is not nominalist but
substantial. The real question on which we must reflect is a new perspective
that allows all of us to continue the journey on the path initiated 130 years
ago by the early research on music as a form of human expression and com-
munication.
In this respect, let me conclude with the well-known aphorism by Gustav
Mahler, which is also the motto of the Giorgio Cini Foundation: Tradition
is the conservation of fire, not the worship of ashes'.

27
References

ADLER, Guido
1885 'Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft',
Vierteljahrsschrift fur Musikwissenschaft, 1: 5-20.

AMSELLE, Jean-Loup
1998 [1990] Mestizo Logics, Anthropology of Identity in Africa and else-
where, Stanford Universty Press, Stanford.

BENJAMIN , Walter
1936 'L'reuvre d'art a l'epoque de sa reproduction mechanisee', Zeitschrift
fur Sozialforschung, V: 40-68.

BLACKING, John
1973 How Musical Is Man?, University of Washington Press, Seattle.

CHASE, Gilbert
1958 'A Dialectical Approach to Music History', Ethnomusicology, II, 1:
1-9.

ECO, Umberto
2010 'Alto media basso', 'La Bustina di Minerva', L'Espresso , LVI , 16: 198.

GUILBAULT, Jocelyne
2007 Governing Sound: The Cultural Politics of Trinidad's Carnival Musics,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

REMOTTI, Francesco
1996 Contra l'identita , Laterza , Bari.
2010 L'ossessione identitaria , LaterzaJ Bari.

RICE, Timothy
2010a 'Disciplining Ethnomusicology', Ethnomusicology, LIV, 2: 318-25 .
201Gb 'Ethnomusicological Theory', Yearbook for Traditional Music, 42:
100-134.
2014 Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University
Press, New York.

TURINO, Thomas
2008 Music as Social Ufe, University of Chicago Press , Chicago.

28 P'ERSPE.~IVES ON 4 '2!st CENftJfn' tOMfiARAn\'E: MU5U::DlOttV EtltNOM USJCOLOBY Ofl fRNrfSCUUURAL M USICOLOGY,.
29