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Some Problems of Theory and Method in the Study of Musical Change Author(s): John Blacking Source: Yearbook of the

International Folk Music Council, Vol. 9 (1977), pp. 1-26 Published by: International Council for Traditional Music Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/767289 . Accessed: 02/10/2011 18:12
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SOME PROBLEMS

OF THEORY AND METHOD IN THE STUDY OF MUSICAL CHANGE by John Blacking

Music, music-making, and musical change The main purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the need for a comprehensive theory of music and music-making, and for studies that seek to distinguish musical change analytically from other kinds of change, and radical change from variation and innovation within a flexible system. The chief problem in developing a theory of music is to find out if it is possible to identify an area of "musical" behaviour that differs qualitatively from other kinds of social behaviour. The common-sense view in many different societies is that music-making is a special kind of behaviour, and that it is more likely to be emotionally rewarding, and even transcendental (cf. McAllester 1971), than many other social activities. Ethnomusicological method requires that all "ethnic" perceptions be taken seriously in defining the parameters of music in any theory of music making, and so the special qualities assigned to music-making and musical experience make its symbol systems sociologically and anthropologically problematic. It is therefore inappropriate either to analyse musical structures independently of the fact that some sets of musical symbols are more emotionally effective than others, or to analyse their use in society without attention to the patterns of the symbols chosen in the course of social interaction. Analysis of the social situations in which music is effective or not is crucial for understanding the properties of musical symbols, because it is in these contexts that the non-musical elements of creation and appreciation can be separated from the essentially musical; and an adequate theory of music and music-making must be based on data that cannot be reduced beyond the '-musical'. Although there is not yet conclusive proof that there are special kinds of behaviour that are "musical", it is a useful assumption to adopt in examining musical change. Music-making should be treated as problematic, and we should resist attempts either to reduce it to a purely sociological phenomenon or to regard it as an autonomous cultural sub-system. Music is a social fact; but it is not necessarily like any other set of social facts. On the other hand, the operation of purely "musical" socio-cultural processes could not be expected to explain completely the various activities and products that musicologists and people in many different societies describe as "musical" or "music" because of their association with special uses of rhythm, tonality, melody, and timbre of sound as symbols in communication. Political, religious, or social meanings may be assigned to musical codes, in such a way that they cease to have musical significance and can be analysed in much the same way as any other social activity.

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What is strictly musical about musical change cannot be treated in exactly the same way as other kinds of socio-cultural change, and current sociological and anthropological theories of change cannot be freely adopted and adapted. Inevitably, 'musical' activities overlap non-"musical" activities, but they are not wholly interchangeable. If they were, and if all "musical" activities could be reduced to sociological principles, there would be little point in musicology and ethnomusicology, let alone the study of musical change. We must start with the assumption that music involves certain unique characteristics at the level of intentional social action, if not at the level of motor behaviour. That is, even if it is not accepted that there are specific musical capabilities common to all normal members of the species, at least we should look for special kinds of action that are distinguished by members of different societies as "musical". Many analyses of so-called musical change are really about social change and minor variations in musical style, if viewed in terms of the system affected. If, for example, features of a society's musical system are that every sect or corporate group has its own associated music and that novelty of any kind is welcomed, then the addition of new styles and items through social contacts cannot be regarded as cases of musical acculturation. They may have no more significance than the introduction of foreign words into a language. Admittedly, the social change may eventually be followed by changes in the musical system, but they would have to be demonstrated by more than an accumulation of new sounds. In my analyses of Venda music, I did not treat the incorporation of some new styles of music as examples of acculturation or musical change, because they are regarded by the Venda as parts of their musical system. There were changes in the Venda social system, but no radical changes in their musical system, when they adopted girls' and boys' initiation schools and possession dance cults from their neighbours (Blacking 1971). On the other hand, there were musical changes when some Venda adopted Christianity: drums and sounds associated with traditional religion became taboo to a section of the population, who adopted a new musical system. Imported European music was regarded as different and was not fully incorporated in the same way as earlier styles. As result of this, there has been a significant musical change in Venda society resulting in the production of at least three concurrent musical traditions, which might be called "traditional", "syncretic", and "modern". Any analysis of musical change in Venda society must consider all three traditions together, because the lives of their practitioners overlap in many respects, both within and outside the context of music-making. The study of musical change must be concerned ultimately with significant innovations in music sound, but innovations in music sound are not necessarily evidence of musical change. If the concept of musical change is to have any heuristic value, it must denote significant changes that are peculiar to musical systems, and not simply the musical consequences of social, political, economic, or other changes. Major political changes, such as the revolutions in Russia and Cuba

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and the independence of African states, seem not to have been accompanied by significant musical change. On the other hand, a new idea about music, or a new social formation, may have profound consequences on musical structures, if attitudes to music and social formations involved in its performance are an integral part of the musical process in a society. Thus Wachsmann (1958) showed that the introduction of the bugle in the 1860s and of a band of European instruments about 1884 did not 'start a musical revolution' in Buganda as might have been expected; and the lyre, which was introduced from Busoga at about the same time as the band, and the tube-fiddle, which appeared in 1907, were incorporated into the musical system. The influence of Western music became felt, not directly through its sounds, but through the Churches' view "that music itself must be spiritual in order to be suitable for things eternal", and Wachsmann suggested that this attitude to music influenced African musicians and "has continued to affect the development of their music ever since (Wachsmann 1958: 55)." A crucial problem in the study of musical change, therefore, and one that reinforces its claim to be a special category of action, is that changes in music do not necessarily accompany the changes of mind that affect institutions related to music-making. Truly musical change should signify a change of heart as well as mind, since music is a "metaphorical expression of feeling (Ferguson 1960: 88)", which can explore the structures of emotion and express values that transcend and inform the passing scene of social events. Since "affects are the primary motives of man" (Tomkins and Izard 1966: vii)", musical composition and performance are intricately linked to motivation and patterns of decisionmaking. Musical change may epitomize the changing conditions and concerns of social groups, perhaps even before they are crystallized and articulated in words and corporate action; but it may also reflect an affection for novelty and changing intellectual fashion. Conversely, an absence of musical change may reflect a retreat from challenging social issues, or a determination to face them and adapt to them, while maintaining essential social and cultural values. The retention of traditional music can be enlightening and positively adaptive as it can be maladaptive and stultifying: the meaning of musical change or non-change depends on their structural and functional characteristics in the particular context under review. There is some justification in the traditionalists' argument that musical non-change can signify a successful adaptation to the threat of anarchy by the retention of essential cultural values, as there is to the opposing view that musical change expresses a vigorous adaptation of musical styles to the challenge of changing social conditions. But the traditionalists (or "purists", as I call them in the next section) have neglected the dead weight of traditional routines, as the modernists (or "syncretists") have seemed unaware of the superficiality of merely fashionable changes, and both have failed to distinguish the varieties of musical change and the levels at which they operate, or to relate them to other changes that are taking place in the society, especially changing relationships between classes and changing patterns in the allocation of power. It can, in fact, be

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argued that all evaluations of musical change tell us more about the class and interests of the evaluators than about the real nature of musical change. This objection can certainly be made to my own arguments, as well as the work of the "purists" and the "syncretists", and to the efforts of Ministries of Culture and other agencies to promote the performance of traditional music. In so far as music is in itself nonreferential, almost any meaning or value can be assigned to it, and because it can easily be internalized through participatory movements of the body, these meanings and values can become invested with special value through pleasurable association. Music can be, and is, used in society for all kinds of purposes, good and bad; and so the ultimate decisions about what to do with it rest with performers and audiences, and not even with indigenous music researchers, who are scarcely less biased than foreigners. The processes of music-making and their musical products are consequences of individual decision-making about how, when, and where to act, and what cultural knowledge to incorporate in the sequences of action. But in music-making there are behavioural consequences of action that cannot be dismissed analytically as "happenings", because they have an effect on subsequent action. Performers and audiences do not, in fact, have complete control over musical situations and their interpretation. Although in theory, any pattern of movement could have any meaning, and there could be an infinite number of permutations and combinations of signifier and signified, as in language, in the movements of music-making there are important differences. Once people have agreed to participate in a musical event, they must suspend a range of personal choice until they have reached the end of the sequence of action that was determined by their original decision. Whatever the meaning of that decision was to the participants when they made it, whatever meaning they attributed generally to the music they decided to perform, and whatever meanings attach to isolated movements to parts of the music in other contexts, once the performance is under way the intrinsic meaning of the music as form in tonal motion may affect the participants. Many sequences of body movement are not entirely neutral, in that they have physiological consequences and evoke a specific range of somatic states, feelings, and corresponding thoughts. It is for this reason that a number of composers have emphasized that the nonverbal communication of music can be more precise than language, and Susanne Langer (1948:191) has written that "music can reveal the nature of feelings with a detail and truth that language cannot approach." Moreover, because of the basic biological and psychic unity of the species, a decision to perform music can lead people to share emotion through the link of their common participation in sequences of movement and its relation to what Manfred Clynes calls "essentic forms." "The emotional gestures .. .have precise representations in the brain (Clynes 1974:52)." In this way the collective movements of musical performance can generate collective feelings and collective thought, which is the basis of cultural communication. But music is not only adaptive through its power to link the biological and cultural

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aspects of human experience and reinforce the affective bases of social life: by releasing the brain from the task of immediate attention to environmental stimuli, it stimulates creative thinking by allowing the "memory-surface" of the brain to deal with information for its own sake (De Bono 1969:130, Blacking 1976b:7). These two complementary and adaptive functions of music, conservative of basic human values but creative in their cultural application, are epitomized in the approaches of the "purists" and the "syncretists", and appear to be represented to a greater or lesser extent in most societies. That is, there is music that must be performed in the same way on every occasion, and there is music whose performance is expected to vary from one occasion to another. The former is particularly true of ritual music, but even within a corpus of ritual music, the same distinction may be made. For instance, in the music of the domba rites, the Venda distinguish between Ngoma songs, which ought to be performed in exactly the same way at every initiation, and Mitambo songs, which vary from one initiation to another according to the tastes of the master of initiation and the performers. At all events, the most important decision made in musical situations are the decisions to make music, because the music itself may generate experiences and thoughts that transcend the extra-musical features of the situation. Musical change must be given a special status in studies of social and cultural change, because music's role as mediator between the nature and the culture in man combines cognitive and affective elements in a unique way. The only other comparable human activities are dance and ritual. Music is the best-equipped of the performing arts to express both the ever-changing realities of biological and social life and the continuity of the concepts on which human societies depend for their existence. (It can be more specifically "real" than dance, because it can incorporate verbal language, which is the most widely used and readily understood form of cultural communication. It is more "super-real" than drama, because it can transcend the restrictions of dialogue in time and space: for example, musical communication is declamatory and does not expect direct answers from participants, but drama generally requires some nexus of communication; call-response and antiphonal structures in music are not like conversations.) The laws of nature require that an organism, to survive, should constantly adapt to its changing environment, and determine that almost every human being is genetically unique; and music obeys these laws, in that it has to be re-made at every performance and it is felt anew inside each individual body. The laws of human nature lay down that man can only become human through association with fellowman (Blacking 1974) and that the human organism's basic adaptive tool is culture, which is possible only in so far as genetically unique organisms can transcend individual sensations and share sentiments and concepts. Essential features of culture are the repetition, replication, and transmission of ideas and sequences of action, as seen in the widespread uniformity of the Acheulean material culture of the Stone Age. The extension of the capacity for culture and the development of technologi-

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cal mastery have depended on man's ability to halt or control natural change. Music therefore obeys the laws of culture, and so through bodily experiences enables man to come to terms with the natural and cultural grounds of his being: it is a kind of adaptive ritual behaviour that by the special nature of its means of production combines the creative conditions of objective technological mastery and subjective human experience. In so far as music-making is a technique of the body (cf. M. Mauss 1936) that by repetition can halt change in a predictable way and transcend time and place, but only for as long as its makers are involved and experiencing it, it has special expressive power that routine technological processes lack. This is why musical changes cannot be properly related to technological developments, even though they may give a superficial impression of being progressive. Each apparently new idea in music "does not really grow out of previously expressed ideas, though it may well be limited by them. It is a new emphasis that grows out of a composer's experience of his environment, a realization of certain aspects of the experience common to all human beings which seem to him to be particularly relevant in the light of contemporary events and personal experiences (Blacking 1973: 72-73)." A bridge or a Jumbo Jet cannot be built with the emotional freedom of a performance of a Mahler symphony, and yet the symphonic performance requires similar precision and expertise. In this respect music is more true to life than technology: it expresses the fact that although cultural artifacts can provide permanent adaptations to the external world, the organism cannot halt its own propensity to change and decay. Music halts change temporarily by harnessing time through the non-utilitarian repetition of events. We should not be surprised by innovation, acculturation, and superficial changes in musical performance. They are to be expected, given the adaptive nature of the organism. The most interesting and characteristically human features of music are not stylistic change and individual variation in performance, but non- change and the repetition of carefully rehearsed passages of music. (It should not be necessary to emphasize that rehearsal and accuracy of performance are features of orally transmitted "folk" music as well as of written "art" music.) This is why truly musical changes are not common and why they reveal the essence of music in a society. What is constantly changing in music is that which is least musical about it; and yet these micro-changes are the raw material out of which the changes are made, and in the context of performance they are evidence of the meanings that participants attach to the music. For example, the meanings that the sounds of different drum-row compositions have for Igbo audiences vary according to the social context that generates them (Nzewi 1977). Studies of musical change should focus on change that is specifically musical, and change that really is change. The kinds of music that are made are an obvious focus of musicological interest, but they are the products of processes in the behaviour of the species and the action of groups and individuals. In my view, musical changes can only be use-

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fully defined as radical changes in the organization of these primary elements. That is why the reasons for some of the heated exchanges in "folk" music circles have been sound, but the categories over which the battles have been fought are essentially social, rather than musical. "Purists" and "Syncretists" in "folk" music studies Studies of "folk" music have invariably been concerned with musical change, but have attended to musical products more than musical processes. Even if they have not been motivated by the explicit aim to record music that is disappearing or being "contaminated", they implicitly invoke the notion of historically ancient, pre-industrial or preurban musical traditions. Classifications such as "folk", "art" and "popular" reflect the concern with identifiable musical products, rather than similar or contrasting musical processes. Changes of musical process have been generally taken for granted as a concomitant of changes in the product, and discussion has focussed on non-musical processes. Thus, both "purists" and "syncretists" among folk music researchers have attributed non-musical significance to musical sounds. The "purists" assume that radical changes in the sounds of orally transmitted music reflect some sort of moral decay, and that restoration and promotion of the "authentic" music of the people will help to re-animate the life of the community, but they do not explain how this could be so, or whether music has any more significance in the process than gymnastics or the Boy Scouts. Nor do they explain why "folk" music is supposed to be preserved without change, but a twentieth-century composer, whose music sounds like Tchaikovsky, is dismissed as unoriginal and irrelevant. The "syncretists" do not seem to have questioned the moral state of the community, except in cases where the immorality of their exploiters or oppressors may be a stimulus to musical production: they assume that the vigorous production of new sounds indicates that the community is adapting successfully to changing circumstances. Like the "purists", they may be correct in their deductions, but they do not explain the connection between musical creativity and social welfare, or consider the possibility that an increase in musical creativity may accompany a decrease in political status. How, for instance, do we compare the moral value of the syncretic South African Freedom Songs and Jurry Mfusi's Shaka with the equally syncretic "all-Black" musical Ipitombi, which White South African promoters brought to London in 1976? Ifjudged by its music, it was not unreasonable of a London critic to write, "Happiness is a musical called Ipitombi." The music alone, or even the story as presented in the theatre performance, does not disclose that Ipitombi is a monstrous piece of propaganda for South African racist policies and a source of great profit for its white promoters. The "purists" have been curiously ambivalent in their attitudes to continuity and change in music. They have lamented departure from what they conceive to be traditional practices and have invoked concepts such as authenticity to distinguish between what is and what is not

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good and worthy of study; but they have also applauded the creative musicianship of outstanding individual performers, whose originality must, by definition, threaten the stability of any "authentic" tradition. These contradictions are partly the result of a legitimately sentimental attachment to the good things of the past and a sense of outrage at the widespread social and cultural destruction that follows political, religious and commercial exploitation; and partly a consequence of some muddled thinking about the nature of culture (in the anthropological sense of the word) in general, and of music and music-making in particular: for unchanging cultural tradition is dead and of no use to man except perhaps as an inspiration to do something else, and music without social situations, which by definition can never be identical, ceases to be music as a performing art. The evidence of anthropological field research shows clearly that even in those societies that were once thought to be survivals of our prehistoric past, customs were changing before the arrival of missionaries, traders, colonial administrators and settlers, and people were flexible in their use of social and cultural systems. Inflexibility is more noticeably a characteristic of technologically advanced societies, in which a highly developed division of labour enables elites and closed groups to wield authoritarian power and reinforce it with religious and ideological dogma (Blacking 1970:238). The "syncretists" have emphasized that in many "folk" music traditions innovation and change are valued and applauded, but they have not followed up the logic of their approach and considered in their analyses all that is heard by the groups whose music they study, on television, radio, and in films, as well as in live performance. Modern listening habits have been the concern only of radio stations and a very few sociologists, but they are an essential feature of any orally transmitted music tradition, particularly if music is consciously and systematically excluded from consideration for musical and/or political reasons. If Mozart, Gershwin, the Beatles, Ellington, Indian classical music, Country and Western, and Lutheran hymns, are all available for listening, we cannot ignore the positive or negative influence on "folk" music of Mozart because his is "art" music, or of Gershwin because his is not "ethnic" music. A sociology of music may legitimately confine itself to studying the groups that use music and the different meanings that they assign to it, without analysing music structures. But musicology cannot account for the logic of musical systems without considering the patterns of culture and of social interaction of the music-makers. Even if music is treated as an autonomous activity with its own rules, systems of tonal and rhythmic organization are cultural products, and sound structures are perceived and selected by individuals interacting in social contexts. The forms and functions of music cannot be entirely reduced and explained as extensions of social phenomena; but a musicologist's legitimate concern for the music in musical activity cannot ignore the fact that, if it is to belong to a tradition at all, even the most original musical invention will to a greater or lesser extent draw on remembered sounds. It is therefore

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essential to take into consideration the range of sounds available to any musician, whether or not the social context of hearing them is considered significant (i.e., whether or not one regards music as an autonomous activity). What both the "purists" and "syncretists" in folk music research have in common is a central concern for certain types of music, and for certain moral values that are associated with the music and its uses and functions. Paradoxically, the "purists" are more concerned with the morality and the "syncretists" with the music, while both make assumptions about relationships between musical and non-musical structures which they seldom state or explain. There may indeed be relationships between the state of music and the state of society; but how shall foreign or indigenous folk music researchers be able to judge this without either more precise evidence of the connections between musical and non-musical structures, or a coherent theory of man as musicmaker? Unless music in itself has more than the often arbitrary significance assigned to it by the social groups that perform it and listen to it, it must be treated as morally neutral, and musical change can be neither deplored nor welcomed: it can only be described and related to other changes in the society of the music-makers and consumers. As Nattiez (1975) has argued, the music is the "niveau neutre", and its morality is essentially the morality of who and what goes with it, of its performers and of its listeners. Evaluations of musical change cannot be made independently of a point of view or a theory that takes into account more than the musical structures, and so they must always be accompanied by a clear statement of their epistemology. Culture-based approaches to the study of musical change Early writers on musical change, and especially Hornbostel and Sachs, worked with a theory of music that flowed logically from the origins of their discipline, comparative musicology. Broadly speaking, they saw musical changes as the results of discoveries and inventions in the realm of sound, and of the diffusion of styles brought about by the contact of different cultures. They paid some attention to the cultural context of music, and they thought of the world history of music in much the same way as the evolution of culture and technology, but they rarely pursued the implications of Alexander J. Ellis's original dictum (1885) and sought explanations of musical change in terms of changes in the organization of societies and in ideas not primarily concerned with music. A global, culture-based theory of musical change has been pursued in detail by Alan Lomax (1968, 1972), but although the basic idea underlying his correlations between folksong style and culture is acceptable, his method of analysis and some of his conclusions are open to question (see Maranda 1970). Lomax's theory of musical change is based on the assumption that musical variations are related to variations in culture, and that there are correlations between musical and cultural change.

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The chief difficulties in applying the theory arise from (a) the notion that musical changes reflect changes in culture, and (b) a somewhat restricted concept of cultural evolution. Lomax compares the surface structures of music without questioning whether the same musical sounds always have the same "deep structure" and the same meaning: thus an apparent correlation between a particular folksong style and a particular pattern of culture in a number of societies may not be valid. Moreover, a correlation does not necessarily mean that the music reflects the ethos or eidos of the culture; it may well be counteracting social trends, and this could be especially important in calculating the significance of musical changes. This leads into the second main difficulty about Lomax's scheme: it does not allow for flexibility in estimating what kinds of social and cultural change are the most significant as catalysts for musical change. There seems to be too much emphasis on the means of production and largely technological changes, and too little on the modes of production, which are concerned ultimately with the structures and quality of human relationships. Moreover, even the mode of production is not always in itself the decisive factor in shaping the pattern of change: institutional interadjustments and social change can rarely, if ever, be attributed to a single source, as Marx and Weber are said to have claimed, and "no single form of social behaviour can be conceived to be ultimate or basic (Martindale 1962:38)." Although "only the individual can initiate or stop change and . . . any individual is a potential source of change, social conditions often place the primary burden on a special stratum of individuals, turning them into the innovators or conservers of their times (op. cit.:2)." Inventiveness therefore flowers in certain sections of societies according to the "requirements" of the time, and whether or not music is affected at a particular period may depend upon its place in the sociology of the knowledge of the society. Lomax's scheme (1968:/ passim) does not allow for variations in patterns of social and cultural change such as occurred in ancient China, India, Palestine, and Greece. It also raises, but does not address, a crucial issue in the study of music and musical change: the status of music in biological and cultural evolution. Is music a conscious human invention, with a determined (though inevitably unknown) time span, arising out of certain social and economic conditions and utilizing biologically given capabilities that had originally evolved for other purposes? Or is it a species-specific behaviour, partly like language, based on certain irreducible biological capabilities that have evolved specially for music (whatever that may be) and present in every normal human organism? In either case, music-making can be seen as adaptive behaviour in an evolutionary context, though clearly in the latter, no society would really have the option of including music in its culture: to exclude the development of musical capabilities would be the same as not using language, and would restrict the full development of human potential. If music is a human invention rather than a discovery, a product of

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cultural evolution as Lomax implies, it could be an action autonomous with its own independent rules (cf. Nadel 1951:87-90), like the rules of a game or an action system whose rules are consciously and unconsciously influenced by other action systems within the society of the music-maker(s). This distinction could be crucial for estimating the motivation for and significance of musical changes at any given time and place, but it is not an absolute distinction that has to be made for all music. In some societies music, or at least the music of certain groups, may be assigned the status of a game, with arbitrary rules, while in others it may be inextricably bound up with extra-musical factors. Again, there may be periods in a society's history when music is treated like a game, alternating with periods when its structure is supposed to express and evoke extra-musical rules and meanings. This raises the problem of interpreting one musical style in a period when different canons apply, as well as problems for the student of musical change: if performers and critics reinterpret the music of a former era, is it legitimate to talk of musical change, even though there may be little apparent change in the sounds produced? Furthermore, could there really be no change in the sounds produced, if there were a radical change of approach to the music? Whatever view is taken of the status of music in biological and cultural evolution, neither Lomax's scheme nor the earlier theories of comparative musicologists consider the full range of behaviour that can be described as "musical change". Furthermore, they do not always distinguish between behaviour, or motor events that happen to individuals, and action, events that are intended to have consequences: it is particularly important to distinguish changes in musical composition or performance that are not labelled or intended as such by musicians, from changes that are intentional and recognized. Finally, they do not provide a satisfactory explanation, except in terms of cultural diffusion, commercial simplification, or the emulation of technical proficiency, of the concurrent phenomena of so-called "folk", "popular" and "art" musics, and the crucial role of oral transmission of performance practice even in traditions of written music. In contrast to Lomax's global approach, other writers have described processes of musical change that are less clear-cut. In a paper on the variety of music in a North Indian village, Edward 0. Henry (1976) questions some of Lomax's general conclusions and shows, for example: "that the groupy, antiphonal style is as important as the elaborate solo style in India, and that the non-participatory music, although encompassing the elaborate solo style, is much more diverse than that characterization suggests (op. cit.:62)"; "the stylistic diversity of the region's music has resulted from a cultural or subcultural admixture, and . . . understanding the diversity in song style of the region requires reference to the temporal processes of immigration, diffusion and retention (op. cit. :64)." He concludes that the coexistence of integrated and individualized styles in India and in many other parts of the world emphasizes "that song sessions may be organized along quite different

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lines than economic or political relations (ibid.)"; but in spite of such inconsistencies, the relationship between music structure and nonmusical aspects of culture remains a basic problem in ethnomusicology. Decision-making in musical change Music structures cannot be explained with reference to other cultural phenomena, however, unless it is understood that the relations between them are not causal. Musical change, for example, is not "caused" by "contact among people and cultures" or the "movement of populations" (Nettl 1964:232): it is brought about by decisions made by individuals about music-making and music on the basis of their experiences of music and attitudes to it in different social contexts. The importance of intentionality in group expression is well illustrated by Ruth Katz's (1970) careful analysis of the singing of Aleppo Jews in Israel, where the younger generation developed "mannerisms" in their performance of traditional music: "dedicated to the preservation of a minority tradition" and "resistance to acceptance of majority group culture", they exaggerated and embellished "those elements of traditional culture by means of which the majority [identified] the minority and the minority [came] to identify itself (Katz 1970:469)." Similarly, because of the variety and complexity of situations in which people make decisions about what and how they will sing, several assumptions about innovation and acculturation must be questioned. For example, it cannot be assumed that the more complex styles generally influence the simpler ones. Not only may factors of political domination and social resistance be critical, but the notion of "complex" and "simple" in the assessment of musical styles is meaningless unless we know what and who exactly has been involved in their production (Blacking 1973:33 ff. and 116). Again, if Helen Roberts found the greatest internal variation in melody in one culture, whilst Kolinski found that melodic changes are most striking in a situation of culture contact (Merriam 1964:309-310), we have no grounds to assume that melody is less resistant to change than, say, tempo and pitch, unless we know the social contexts in which those decisions were made. Melody is a product of human decisions about the selection and use of acoustic and physiological elements, and the significance of the musical variations cannot be assessed without knowledge of their conceptual base: "different" melodies may be regarded by singers as the same, or their differences may arise from non-musical factors, such as changes in words or social function, and their intervals be selected according to their relationship with other music in the society (Blacking 1967). But knowledge of the conceptual base alone is not enough to explain the choice of melodies in a given number of performances: the knowledge is relevant only in so far as it is used in the course of social interaction, in which different goals and values are brought into play. Because every case of musical change presupposes a critical moment of cognitive change, it becomes necessary to locate when the change takes place. This poses a special problem for the analyst, because the

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moment of conscious change, in which individuals make a decision to move in a different direction, may have been preceded by a period of latency, in which there is a gradual feeling towards change, and so it may be necessary to study musical events over a considerable period of time, in order to get the right perspective. From a purely practical point of view, there are conflicting needs to study a musical system both intensively in its social context and at various stages of its evolution. This is well illustrated by Irvine and Sapir's excellent article (1976) on "Musical Style and Social Change among the Kujamaat Diola." I am not sure whether or not this is an example of musical change or a description of part of a period of latency, especially as the authors state that changes in scales and voice range "are only quantitative changes in statistical frequencies, rather than qualitative changes (op. cit. :77)," and that one musical form discussed is so "susceptible to fashion and innovation" that "a new rhythmic line" may become "popular for a month or two, but never for more than a year (op. cit.:69)." But for the sake of argument I shall take it as a case of musical change and ignore a number of other problems that arise from their analysis, in order to focus on the problem of locating the change in musical decision-making. The authors describe how "informants" notions of "old-fashioned" and "new" song styles correspond to actual musical changes perceptible to the analyst (op. cit. :81)" in a series of recordings made in 1960 and 1964-65: "these musical changes are similar in kind, indicating a consistent trend toward differentiation and individual display," and "this trend can be related to ongoing changes in Kujamaat social structure (ibid.)," and in particular to changes in the relationships between participants in a musical event. If there was musical change, how can the analyst find out precisely when and how the crucial decisions were made? Might it only have been possible by continuous fieldwork between 1960 and 1965? Were they, in fact, made before 1960 and only beginning to take effect in that year? Or had they not even been made by 1965, so that any changes were at the level of behaviour, rather than action? This last possibility is not ruled out by the informants' statements, because their concepts of "new" and "old-fashioned" may have been a function of a particular time-perspective in relation to ideas about fashion in music: what might their judgements of the same or similar music have been in, say, 1956 and 1969? The problems inherent in the study by Irvine and Sapir recall that any analysis of musical change depends on hindsight and historical perspective. (As soon as the "purists" were able to perceive a lamentable change in a music tradition, there was really nothing they could do about it!) Wachsmann's understanding (1958) of the processes of musical change over a hundred years in Uganda, depended on a careful analysis of past events as much as Rhodes's study (1958) on the diffusion of the opening peyote song and B6hague's account (1973) of twenty-five years of "change" in Brazilian urban popular music, though Behague's study is primarily concerned with variations of text and timbre within a broad musical style. The initiation of the process, however, can be described as a musical change and given a date: bossa nova emerged in 1958-59, it

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"revolutionized" the Brazilian popular music scene (Behague 1973:211) by transforming the samba, and the release of the first major bossa nova album, Joao Gilberto's "Chega de Saudade", in March 1959, set in motion a chain of musical, social and literary events. The significance of some of these events was not always clear at the time even to the participants, but a distance of nearly a decade allows Behague to put them in perspective (op. cit.:214). The year or two that is normally allowed for fieldwork in ethnomusicology rarely provides opportunities for observing musical change and the sequences of decision-making that lead to it, and yet studies of music history can be misleading without the microscopic data that can only be obtained by intensive study of the cultural and social context of music-making. Frank Harrison (1972), explores the implications of this dilemma in his wide-ranging essay on "Music and Cult: The Functions of Music in Social and Religious Systems." He shows how a long view of musical history can give different estimates of musical significance and change: for example, Palestrina became the victim "of an historical dead end", if we think "of what actually happened in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, not of the retrospective evaluations of musicologists and pedagogues (op. cit. :323-4)," who later used his music to teach counterpoint. At the same time, the long view can distort analysis of the processes of musical change: thus Harrison argues:
"At no time in the course of the liturgical controversies of the Reformation and Counter Reformation were questions of musical usage discussed on the basis of such criteria as suitability, adaptability, or availability. They were treated only in the light of nonmusical sanctions of a religious or social character. This raises the question of the meaning and usefulness of common historical stylistic terms like Renaissance, mannerist, and Baroque. Are these true entities, or are they merely concepts imposed much later, as the result of incomplete study of behavior whose criteria were primarily social and religious (op. cit.:310)?"

Non-Musical Factors and Folk Views in Musical Change We return full circle to the perennial problems, in studies of musical change, of the analyst's perception of events and the importance of the non-musical in the search for the essentially musical. There will always be some distortion of past events-and every case of musical change is by definition a past event-because they are perceived in the light of the exigencies of the present. The distortion is legitimate in so far as research into the past is relevant only for the making of the future, and provided that its ultimate concern is for humanity and not only a limited section of mankind. Even if the analyst cannot exactly share the experience that he studies, at least he can remember that it is experienced with the same kind of body that he possesses. Intuitive scientific thinking is particularly appropriate in matters musical, because music reflects what Gregory Bateson calls the "algorithms of the heart (Bateson 1973:112; see also Clynes 1974 and 1977)." It may be possible to tune into an alien musical expression without having to acquire all the cultural clutter of which it is a part, and perhaps through the music to gain a deeper understanding of some of the principles on which the social and cultural experience of its makers is founded.

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Intensive studies of decision-making and of non-musical factors related to musical performance may reveal more of the processes of musical continuity and change than historical studies that can only pinpoint trends and significant dates rather than the antecedent social processes. Many studies of musical change are not really about music or change, though they are about aspects of social and musical life that may ultimately bring about, or have already brought about, musical change. In a recent number of Ethnomusicology, Douglas Midgett writes on "Performance Roles and Musical Change in a Caribbean Society." I agree with his conclusions, but consider that he is not describing musical change. Nevertheless, this kind of study may lead to a better understanding of musical change. Midgett concludes from his examination of the La Rose performance
"that the issues of continuity and change in this tradition are not opposed; not contradictory phenomena requiring some tortured explanation. For when one examines the structure of performance and the role of the shatit,el, it becomes clear that regular and consistent change, through the inventive integration of various musical influences, is indicative of the continuation of the tradition (1977:71)."

The innovations reported as changes strike me as being completely within the traditional structure of the musical system, and therefore not examples of change but of innovative variation. A "dialectical relationship between continuity and change" (ibid.) is not the characteristic of musical change, but of music itself. Music is the art of flexible nonchange: when Robert F. Thompson observes that "call-and-response is a means of putting innovation and tradition, invention and initiation, into amicable relationships with one another (Thompson 1966:98, quoted by Midgett, ibid.)," he is not writing about musical change, but about a feature of African music that epitomizes the essential characteristics of the art as a dynamic link between the biological and cultural attributes of the species, and apprehends the role of music and dance in its evolutionary adaption. Judith Hanna is surely making the same point when she writes of "the continuity of change" in African dance (1973), as is also Lawrence McCullough, when he concludes that
"style in traditional Irish music, though guided by certain conventions, is not perceived by traditional musicians as a rigid, static set of rules that must be dogmatically or slavishly followed. It is, instead, a flexible, context-sensitive medium through which an individual's musical expression can be given a form and substance that will invest his performance with communicative values (1977:97)."

What Midgett defines as musical change, McCullough describes as changing features of a style. "Styles of traditional Irish music are continually undergoing change", but a "new" style, though distinct, is "never entirely divorced from its predecessors or contemporaries (op. cit.:96)." Thus, it might be argued that the differences between the innovations described by Midgett and the changing styles of traditional Irish music are matters only of degree and not of kind, and in a sense this is correct. Nevertheless, until we know more about the nature of music, a line has to be drawn somewhere between continuous change within a style and a change of style, provided that these distinctions are considered significant by those who participate in the music. It seems that Midgett's informants consider that the La Rose singing tradition has not

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changed significantly for 150-200 years (Midgett 1977:56), whereas Irish musicians consider that their styles have changed. The difficulty of reconciling folk views of change with what might be established as a statistical norm was emphasized to me recently when a distinguished Irish fiddler insisted that the performance of any traditional music on electronic instruments was a far more fundamental, and quite unacceptable, change than the introduction of the fiddle in Ireland might have been over three centuries ago. Such judgements are critically important, because they reveal concepts of music and of change that make it possible to distinguish what changes are specifically musical in a society and how they may be related to other kinds of change. Folk views can, and should, be compared with the kind of objective measurements that can be made with melographs (cf. Katz 1970) and aural transcriptions of tape recordings, particularly when different ethnic groups or classes make different judgements about what seems to be the same music, or the same judgements about different music. If folk views are to be taken as primary data in determining the boundaries of music whose change is said to constitute musical change, then the social boundaries of the folk who hold the views are as significant as the musical categories that they are assessing. This dimension is missing from Mark Slobin's comprehensive study of Music in the Culture of Northern Afghanistan (1976): although he takes Barth's work on ethnic boundaries as a point of departure and emphasizes the "ethnic perspective", he does not always accept that folk views represent social or musical reality. For example, he writes that "a certain confusion about the identity of Turkestan can be detected among native informants, some of whom group Turkestan together with Katagan against Badaxsan, while others see Katagan and Badaxsan as a unit distinguished from Turkestan (1976:18). This is exactly what one would expect, and I suggest that there may be no "confusion" among the author's informants, that their different responses depend on who they are and in what situations they are responding to the question, and that "this problem" is a problem for Slobin and ethnomusicologists, but not his informants (Blacking 1976a). Similarly, the boundaries of music traditions must be established if change is to be assessed in the musics of Ireland and St. Lucia. If we consider Irish traditional music and its practitioners in the context of Irish society, they constitute one of a number of classes of music and music-making, and can then be compared to the La Rose tradition in the context of St. Lucia society. The different styles of Irish music could be given the same status as the innovations in the La Rose tradition. Sociologically, I find this more acceptable, and musicologically it is supported by the fact that the styles of traditional Irish music share very much the same repertoire of melodies and may be regarded in the same way as the dialects of a single language. The analogy from language may help us to understand the comparative autonomy of musical changes, though I do not suggest that they operate in the same way as language. New dialects can develop with remarkable speed, and the mass media have rapidly ironed out many of

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the variations in speech that depended on class or area of origin, but languages generally change much more slowly than other cultural phenomena, and there are no necessarily one-to-one relationships between languages and cultures, as is illustrated by the variety of cultures of English- and German-speaking peoples and the common cultures shared by the speakers of different Chinese languages. Furthermore, the analogy of dialect emphasizes the variety that is acceptable within the boundaries of a single language without resort to the notion of change, and raises the problem: when does a dialect become a different language? The musics of Bartdk, Sibelius, and Kodaly (who to my ears often sounds very like Vaughan-Williams) are like local dialects, but they did not change the musical language to the same extent as Debussy or Webern. Similarly, the development of the concerto and symphony involved a number of musical changes, but each of Beethoven's symphonies does not constitute a musical change-though perhaps a good case can be made for the Ninth. In fact, one of the interesting features of the "new" works of most composers is that they do not change, so much as explore and extend ideas with the original set of rules that bore the stamp of the composer's personal style. Finally, one of the criteria of language distinction is mutual comprehensibility, as recognized by the speakers themselves rather than the grammarians, and a similar criterion may be borne in mind for music. In 1959, I found it significant that rural Zulu farm-workers should respond positively to Venda songs in the modern idiom, though they did not know the language and had not been to school, while they were totally indifferent to Venda traditional music. Similarly, South African Freedom Songs had an appeal to people who did not understand the words, because the music "spoke" of a new South African Society. (Cf. the way in which Brazilian popular music cuts across ethnic lines, as described in Behague 1973:209.) Towards a Comprehensive and Definitive Study of Musical Change I hope I have made it clear why musical change deserves serious attention as a comparatively autonomous area of study. The concept of change requires further clarification, and we may indeed ask why we should study a normal and natural process, particularly when the most remarkable feature of culture is non-change-in fact, a subject for urgent research in modern industrial societies is the almost lethal conservatism of institutions and retention of discredited ideas. Since there is no such thing as a truly static society, any model of society, let alone of change, must of needs be a processual model. Thus if we are going to distinguish an analytic category of "change", it really must be something more than flexible variation, though a radical change does not necessarily have to be synonymous with a revolution. To qualify as musical change, the phenomena described must constitute a change in the structure of the musical system, and not simply a change within the system. This does not mean that musical change may be studied only at the grosser, macro-level. On the contrary, careful attention to the constant micro-variations within the system is essential, because these may

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reveal the germs of change. But although the preparations for change may be gradual and spread over a whole community, the observable change itself will probably be sudden and must be precipitated by individual decisions. For example, the first locomotive was considerably slower than a horse-drawn carriage, but its appearance marked a radical change in transport that had far-reaching implications and could not be regarded simply as an extension of the carriage. I hope that it is now clear why I consider that most changes of repertory, many examples of changes of style, and even cases of acculturation, may not be significant as musical change. It should be apparent that I want a more restricted concept of musical change than Bruno Nettl (1964:230-238), but I also want to apply it more widely. I do not wish to regard change "in traditional music" as "a phenomenon substantially different from change in a high culture (Nettl 1964:230)," but seek a theory of musical change that may be universally applied. Although studies of musical change must inevitably focus on observable phenomena that are regarded as musical by different groups of people, the aim of such studies must be to understand the musical processes that generate these music products. Thus we should perhaps select as areas of study not particular musical styles but the musical and social experience of communities who make and hear music. Even if musical styles are selected for study, the social context in which musical change is being analysed must first be specified. The categories and intentions of music-makers and audience, and their social groupings, provide the first clues to discovering whether what the observer hears is considered musical, and whether it is really changing. The first considerations must be: Who makes the music? With whom and for whom is it made? What other music do people make and regard as their own? What do people hear, and what meanings do different individuals and groups assign to it? The first stage in any study of musical change, therefore, requires a synchronic perspective, in which the activities and boundaries of the musical community are investigated, in order to ascertain the norms of the practitioners and to determine what aspects of action are regarded as "musical". The accounts of changes in music in St. Lucia and Ireland (Midgett 1977 and McCullough 1977, resp.) illustrate the need to consider folk views of the social context of music-making before comparing different processes of music change, and show how it is possible, by relating musical variations, innovations and changes to the scale of the societies in which they occur, to include "folk" and "art" music in a single theory of musical change. The different styles of Irish music can be given the same analytical status as the innovations in the La Rose tradition. No study of musical change is possible without a diachronic perspective. Every case of musical change presupposes a historical process and a critical moment of cognitive change, but because the moment of conscious change, in which individuals decide to move in a different direction, may have been preceded by a period of latency, in which there is a gradual feeling towards change, it may be necessary to study events

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related to music over a considerable period of time. From a purely practical point of view, there are the conflicting needs to study a musical system both intensively in its social context and at various stages of its evolution. This problem was illustrated by the work of Irvine and Sapir (1976) on the influences of social changes on musical style among the Kujamaat Diola of Senegal. All cases of musical change must be considered from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and always in their social context. Partly as a summary of the argument in this paper, and partly as a basis for further discussion, I propose a list of some situations in which musical change may be found. This is designed as a focus for investigation, and is not intended as a series of definitions. To ascertain whether they are changes of the musical system, or innovations and acculturations within the system, folk views on the music must be related to people's definitions of the musical community. For example, if a young Venda is confronted with two items of "new" music, one of which is a beer song in Venda and the other an urban song with Zulu or Sotho words, her categorization of "new" must be correlated with her identification of social context and her own relationship to it. (It is assumed that by "new" is meant "new in a known context".) If she regards both items as part of her social world, then the former is an innovation and the latter a case of musical change. If she regards only the latter as part of her social world, then it is an innovation. In order to identify musical change, it is necessary to distinguish between innovations within a musical system and changes of the system. Such distinctions can only be properly made by relating variations in musical processes and products to the perceptions and patterns of interaction of those who use the music. Musical change cannot take place in a social vacuum. These provisions apply to all instances listed below: 1. An audible change in the norms of performance that is recognized as such by performers and audience, and is not merely a variation or a new item in an established style, or a new style in a tradition that incorporates stylistic variation. Such changes are precipitated by a variety of factors, most of which are extra-musical. For example: a. New music is developed by a member or an associate of a performing group. (A composer can be described as "an associate" in that he usually has types of performing groups in mind, if not known performers.) b. A new social institution is adopted by members of a group, and with that institution comes a special style of music associated with and necessary for the continuation of the institution. c. New music is borrowed from outside and incorporated in or adapted for members of a performing group. d. Social change brings contact with other groups, who have different music. Depending on the nature of the contact situation and/or responses to the new sounds, music will be borrowed, reproduced, or syncretized with existing forms, or musicians will be hired to play it.

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e. A combination of social factors, such as a tradition of professional musicians, the expansion of radio programmes, and a growth of national feeling, can precipitate a burst of individual creativity. See, for example, Baily's account (1977) of the rapid development of the fourteen-stringed dutar and the increase of musical activity in Herat, Afghanistan, and Merriam's account of the Flathead ceremonial dancers (Merriam 1967:140-46). 2. An audible change in the norms of performance that is not categorized as such by performers and audience, and is not classed as an exceptional variation, but is considered significant by an external observer, chiefly as a result of objective measurement. This may be due to the performers' wish to classify new sounds in a traditional way, or to listening habits which make people deaf to changes (as with ethnomusicologists' first transcriptions of an unfamiliar musical idiom). For example, Venda Christians said they were singing European hymns in the European way, and the German Lutheran missionaries were convinced that they were being sung exactly as taught, but in fact the Venda frequently applied transformations of traditional Venda techniques of harmonization to the German melodies. 3. A technical development in a musical instrument or musicproducing device, which may be made for purely technical or commercial reasons and even without concern for any musical consequences. 4. A change in the technique of producing music that is not heard in the musical product. As with (5) and (6) below, this may be the first step towards audible changes in the musical product. For instance, a musician may finger a passage in an unconventional way, and this may suggest extensions of the same idea to the point of producing new music and a new performance style. (Wachsmann's case of changed technique in playing the Sebei lyre [ 1958:54-44]belongs to [ 1] because it is audible.) 5. A change in the conceptualization of existing music which may or may not be accompanied by a change of technique, but is not necessarily accompanied by any noticeably audible change. This is most frequently encountered in the reinterpretation of written scores. I suspect that, on closer analysis, any change in the conceptualization of music will prove to be reflected in performance. For example, Horowitz's interpretation of Liszt's B minor Piano Sonata in 1977 took three minutes longer than the 1932 version. 6. A change in the social use, but not in techniques of performance, of a particular musical style or genre, which may or may not be accompanied by changes in attitude to the music and in recruitment of performers and audiences (e.g., Merriam 1967:156-57). 7. A transformation of the music-making process. This is similar to (5) but goes beyond the realm of action to behaviour, and thus incorporates biological and psychological factors that are not yet fully understood. Thus I can give no concrete examples, but only conjectures. Supposing certain musical activities involve the right hemisphere of the brain more than the left (Critchley and Henson 1977, especially Ch. 9), a change to predominantly left-hemisphere musical activities could either precipitate or be precipitated by changes in other non-musical activities,

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or by a surfeit of predominantly right-hemisphere musical activities. Three basic behavioural concepts are assumed: (a) that adaptive behaviour of organisms promotes homeostasis and a balance of parts; (b) that the innate capabilities available for music-making, which may or may not be specific to music, are rarely, if ever, fully used; and (c) that transformations of emphasis and in application of musical abilities are possible. These three concepts can be reformulated from the level of action (cf. 5 above), and as such can be used either in conjunction with or independently of their behavioural analogues. Thus (a) human communities come into being, and survive as communities, by sharing patterns of thought and interaction (that is, cultures) and striving for homeostasis and balance between their interrelated institutions and ideas; (b) the culturally given processes of thought and interaction available for the production of music are rarely, if ever, fully used in a single composition or style of music; and (c) the use of music-making processes, as cognitive sub-systems in a culture, is not necessarily restricted to making music, and in turn other cognitive sub-systems more commonly associated with, say, kinship, economics or certain games, may be used to make music. I prefer to consider the levels of both behaviour and action, but I appreciate that many researchers may wish to exclude the behavioural, on the grounds that too many biological unknowns are involved, and that although music uses the body and often moves it deeply, it is at the cognitive/conceptual/mental level that it is given meaning in human society. Examples of transformations of the music-making process would be: application of the processes of music-making (as systems of cognitive procedures) to producing poetry, painting, religious ritual, architecture, or weaving, and vice versa. This seventh situation invokes a third perspective, which hitherto has not been considered, and which links analyses of synchronic and diachronic action by seeking the behavioural constraints that may motivate action, or in relation to which action is taken. This third perspective is biological. All musical behaviour and action must be seen in relation to their adaptive function in an evolutionary context, whether this is limited to their functions within the adaptive mechanisms of different cultures, or extended to their functions in biosocial evolution. I maintain that music comes into being as a situational extension of the maturational ritualization found in many social animals. It emerged as a distinctive form of human behaviour when the biological processes involved in its production were selected because of their superior efficiency as nonverbal communication to promote cooperative and exploratory behaviour. Song and dance preceded speech in the evolution of homo sapiens by tens of thousands of years, so that musical processes provided some of the earliest and most basic elements of human systems of thought and action. Music is not, therefore, an optional relish that can be afforded only when there is an economic surplus: it is one of the essential foundations of human society. Though in many cultures music has been part of the superstructure of society, and in some sections of modern industrial

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societies, its production has become almost entirely mental labour, the biological foundations of music are always there as part of the infrastructure of society. Thus, the forces of the musical process inherent in any human provide a basic motivation for both social and musical change. Music can bridge the gulf between the true state of human being and the predicament of particular human beings in a given society, and especially the alienation that springs from the class struggle and human exploitation. One might therefore expect that musical change would be best understood in Marxist terms; and indeed, as an object for use and at the level of action, a Marxist framework provides a useful approach. But a strictly Marxist analysis cannot penetrate the subjective nature of music as a special form of nonverbal communication, and of the musical process as a means of generating special forms of human cooperation and conceptual thought that are presupposed by cooperation in economic production (See Blacking 1976b and 1977.) This is why even in industrialized societies, the changing forms of music may express the true nature of the predicament of people before they have begun to express it in words and political action. In South Africa Black consciousness was expressed in music many years before it emerged as a serious focus of political activity. The music of the South African Freedom Songs of the early 1950s, for example, was well ahead of the political action of the time. The music was black music, and it resonated with all rural and urban Africans, regardless of ethnic group and language, but the politics of the time were liberal and multi-racial. It was not for many years that black South Africans appreciated the fact that they could not hope for justice from whites, and that to be political and effective in the South African situation it was necessary to be anti-white. Changes in the cognitive and social organization of musical activities and attitudes may signify or herald far-reaching changes in society that outweigh the significance of the musical changes. Musical change is important to watch because, owing to the deep-rooted nature of music, it may precede and forecast other changes in society. It is like a stage of feeling towards a new order of things. Wilfred Owen said that all a poet can do is to warn. Music is the supreme poetry of the heart, and the algorithms of the heart may tell us more than any words about the conscience and consciousness of a nation or a community. People's gropings towards real change happen first in the arts, provided they are not controlled, and music in particular (as distinct from and words that may accompany it) can be a most powerful indication of where a society is going. As language changes reflect changes in the conscious interaction of people and changing thoughts about with whom to communicate and about relationships to the environment, so musical change may both reflect and affect changing areas of collective feeling. Music is a primary adaptation to environment: with music, mankind may feel across boundaries; while with language, decisions are made about boundaries. In an article on the diffusion of the opening peyote song, Willard

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Rhodes invoked a number of generalizations about music which, though not yet substantiated, go to the heart of the matter. He claimed:
"2. The ready acceptance and popularity of the songs are in part a result of the nature of music and man's psycho-physical receptivity to it. 3. This psycho-physical receptivity is associated with what, for lack of more knowledge, we call an aesthetic impulse and man's curiosity or interest in novelty. 4. The same psychological principles operative in the re-creation of secular music are found also in the singing of peyote songs . . . 8. Music, though one of the most intangible,fluid and malleable artistic expressions of man, is one of the most persistent elements in his culture and least subject to change in its basic structure andforms (1958:48; italics mine)."

Most of my paper has been no more than a re-emphasis of these and other points made by Rhodes over twenty years ago. And yet such fundamental issues in the study of musical change have not been followed up with detailed analyses of social and musical data. Moreover, we need much more data on the cognitive processes involved at all levels in both the social and musical aspects of music-making, before we can locate the critical moments of cognitive change that constitute musical change. We have studies of unique cultural processes, such as Anderson's (1968) analysis of modes in Ganda music. And we have attempts to understand the universal nature of music as a unique product of the human mind by Lindblom and Sundberg (1970), Nattiez (1975), Harwood (1976), Laske (1975 and 1976), and others. Until the particular and the general can be satisfactorily reconciled in a theory of music and music-making that identifies the specifically musical processes and their patterns of interaction with other processes in the production of music, it will not be possible to understand the nature of musical change. But at the same time, changes in the patterns of music sounds and people's perceptions and evaluation of these changes, are vital evidence in developing a theory of music and music-making. The study of musical change is not only interesting because music reflects the deeper sources and meanings of social and cultural continuity and change; it is of vital concern to the future of individuals and societies because, it may reveal not only how people have changed their music, but also how, through the medium of music, people can change themselves in unexpected ways.
[Note: I am most grateful to Bruno Nettl and Alexander Ringer, and to colleagues in my department, for constructive criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper. They are in no way responsible for its failings, but have contributed to any improvements that might be perceived.] PUBLICATIONS CITED Anderson, Lois Ann 1968 The Miko Modal System of Kiganda Xylophone Music. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation (University of California at Los Angeles). Baily, John 1977 "Movement Patterns in Playing the Herati Dutar", in John Blacking, ed., The Anthropology of the Body (London: Academic Press), pp. 275-330.

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