A Primitive and a Modern Technology in Music

Jose Maceda

Science, Technology and Music

In recent years science and technology have been criticized in Europe and America. It is recalled that science has its limitations, and that an excessive use of modern technology has led to extremes of luxury, poverty, pollution and wastes . In Germany, a growing technology that started in the 1950's has brought about the rise of "artificial cities" which destroy the environment. "The consequences are changes in climate, lowering and poisoning of ground water, pollution of surface water, and changes in the plant and animal world." (Otto 1 977.) At the University of California in Los Angeles, in order to diminish wastes, Professor David Conn suggests the need for "a major shift in life styles of the industrial countries, and a very significant shift in the way which we view material products and material goods". (The UCLA Monthly.) A dim view of science and a machine tech­nology is expressed by Lewis Mumford (1 964) in the following words: "No outward-tinkering will improve this overpowered civilization, now plainly in the final and fossilized stage of its materialization; nothing will produce an effective change but the fresh transformation that has already begun in the mind."

A technology has its effects in music, especially in popular music which is exploited for profit wherever it may be heard- in long-playing records, cassettes, movies, radio and television. Journals, magazines and comic strips about pop music increase the sales of recordings. In remote villages in Indonesia, the Philippines and other parts of South-east Asia, pop tunes in English or the vernacular are to be heard everywhere- in restaurants, hotels, homes, parks, public places and all kinds of transportation. They are as popular as the cheapest consumer goods, like tooth-brushes, soaps, combs, ball pens, slippers and nail clippers. They have also become symbols connected with affluence. Combos or jazz bands are played in big hotels and night clubs. Music commercials advertise the most expensive cars and luxury items. Consumer goods are advertised by the music, and, in turn, the music is popularized by consumer goods. People in opposite ranks of society have come to like this music.

Unfortunately, it is doubtful whether all this excessive living and a music which supports it really benefit mankind. In cities, created by modern industry, slums abound and increase. Like the rich, the poor are att racted to pop music, but without being too aware of it they suffer its adverse effects . The music they listen to makes it appear as if they are a part of progress and of the comfortable living that surrounds them,

Mass production of the "higher" form of western composed music, from the classical to the avant garde, has not reached the proportions attain-

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ed by popular music, but this music that caters to the intelligentsia is also a victim of commercial exploitation. (Attali 1 976.) It has also been used to sell manufactured products, promote services, and project a comfortable style of life, way beyond the standards and concepts of traditional living in Asia. Electro-magnetic apparatus and lately the computer are being used to produce another kind of music. A "hardware" of technology is being humanized by applying to it a "software" or a mode of thinking that contri­butes to an artificial musical product, rather than to financial gain or work advantage. However, in Asia, computers and other complicated electronic apparatus are expensive, and they provide less work for people. The logic and reasoning applied to produce this music is hardly suitable for the life of mystical thinking and ritual in village cultures. Many sounds in the tropical environment need not be coursed through a loudspeaker. They can be heard directly in the open air, as natural sounds, without having to pass through wire and tape . Music in Asia, with its thoughts, functions and rela­tionship to the world, is different from and even in contrast with the motiva­tions that underlie computer or pop music.

Village Music in South-east Asia.

Villages in Asia, previous to the onset of a technological society, led a simple cohesive life related to a natural and physical world from which the people derived their food and shelter, and to which are intimately related a belief in magico-religious phenomena, a folklore, and a certain view of the cosmic order. There is a balanced relationship between material and spiritual needs, and an accommodation to the laws of nature, rather than an opposition to or a disregard of its forces. This view among many village peoples may be exemplified in the way of life among the Dunsun of North Borneo: "Dusun values, with reference to judgements of worthwhileness of behavior concern­ing relations between man and nature, appear dominated by a convic~ion that men must submit to most natural events, rather than seek means of control or prevention. Nature is believed a force beyond human power, especially in matters of fortune, life, health and natural events. Men are believed to be able on o~asion to work with nature in those specific c~!lditions of daily life concerned with personal illness, agriculture, hunting and property. In these instances the fortunes of men result from a continual striving to do proper things to maintain harmony with nature." (Williams 1 966 . )

The natural world of the tropics governs also the music and musical technology of these peoples. All musical instruments are primary products of nature. They are made of bamboo, wood, shell, vine , leaves, vegetables and seeds. Gongs made of bronze, tin and other alloys are used in rituals or ceremonies. They are related to the material and social life of the people. Songs deal with the environment or its flora and fauna . (Maceda 1974.) Music functions in relation to spiritual beliefs, life cycles, and calendric events. Some musical instruments are sacred and carry a spiritual power. Among the Modang, a Dayak group in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, group-singing by women may form part of an evening celebration to honor the child of a rich man, or a procession to end rice ritual festivities, or a social gathering to welcome visitors from another village. In this singing, important personal-

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ities, names of rivers, villages and sites are recalled, and the listeners huddle around the singers for a whole night session. In rituals to cure the sick, a medium while in a trance contacts good spirits to get them to enter a sick person's body and replace the evil spirits. The musical technology in this singing has its hardware and software. The hardware may be taken as the women's voices, their qualities, melodic contour, scale, text content and enunciation. The software is the motivation behind the rituals, the satisfaction of spirits, the cure of the sick, or a social equilibrium which must be main­tained between families that have poor harvests and those that have good harvests.

In instrumental music, the hardware may be taken as the instruments themselves - ·the gongs and drums, their rhythms, sound color and their instrumental combinations. The software is the occasion for music-making­the rice harvest ceremony, the sanctity of the day's rituals or a sacrifice of animals. Among other groups in South-east Asia- in Luzon, Bali , Java, Sarawak, Thailand, Malaya, Vietnam- similar situations relate musical

technology to a cultural tradition. (Bali 1 960; Condominas 1 964; Kartomi 1 973; Maceda 1974.)

Nevv Musical Techniques Employed by Villagers

A new musical technique applied to village music may not disrupt a native cultural tradition if it is adopted by the villagers themselves, accord­ing to their own judgement, to suit needs to which the new musical tool would

apply . For example, among the Hanunoo of Mindoro, in the Philippines,

Udlot-Udlot (music by J. Maceda) * Udlot-Ud!ot __.

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courting songs in a psalm singing style constitute a traditional way of sing­ing, but it is interspersed with new instrumental interludes, played with harmonic chords on a crude five-string guitar. Only two or three chords are employed, and they serve to divide lines or stanzas of the song . This new music, as part of a courting ceremony, is thus integrated with the village life. (Maceda 1 955.)

In Mindanao, gongs, in a row called kulintang, are usually played, together with an ensemble of three or four instruments, in a slow rhythm, as in old Magindanao music, or as in Sarawak and in North Borneo. However, in one village called Datu Piang in Mindanao, the kulintang has come to be treated as a solo ir:"~strument. Playing became faster, and young boys vie with each other in dexterity, speed, and precision of playing. The kulintang is transformed into a virtuoso instrument . This is a native development without any outside influence, and the musical function of entertainment and village recreation has remained the same. There is no disturbance to a musical thinking, nor. a misapplication of music for extraneous village activities.

Another example refers to the ketchak of Bali. Recently, this dance ritual has been condensed to exactly one hour, with borrowing of dances and episodes of the Ramayana, for the satisfaction of tourists . Without desecrating the music or the dance, the new musical-theater form, a creation of the Balinese themselves, is applied to an entirely new social situation, and becomes another ritual. The original form has been altered, but the musical thinking has not been tampered with. In central Java, new presenta­tions of the Ramayana, in the wide open space of the Prambanan ruins, are developed by Javanese artists, with dance elements borrowed from Sunda and Bali. (Humardani 1 970.) In Jakarta, several dance presentations at the cultural center, Taman Ismail Marzuki, are inspired by a native choreo­graphy and the gamelan. The insertion of borrowings from a western style of dancing elicited criticisms that showed a certain resistance (o an adulteration of native dance traditions. Local adaptations by Javanese experts, using elements from movements of self-defence or ideas from dances in Kalimantan and Sulawesi, reinforce rather than destroy the native music-dance tradition. (Parani 1 974; Adriansyah 1 974 .)

In India, the choreography of Singhajit Singh employs dances of the

Kathakali to a simple drum accompaniment. The artist is inspired by dances and music of a village tradition, and applies a local technology to change

a native dance style.

Some Injurious Elements of Musical Technology

A musical technique foreign to a native culture sometimes tends to adulterate and weaken musical practice. For example, in the Javanese gamelan, the use of cipher notation, counterpoint, and harmony diminish rather than augment the musical qualities of this music. Music notation discourages improvisation and a triple meter destroys the time dimensions and proportions that give the music a quality of continuity and timelessness .

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In radio broadcasts, performances of the ~ourt gamelan in Jogjakarta 9re copied in small villages, thereby preventing an originality that these villagers can pursue on their own initiative. (Becker 1 972.)

In Europe, the use of the orchestra or of the tempered scale to imitate the sounds of the gamelan falls far short of the sounds, colors and aesthetics of the Javanese gamelan. In different cities of Asia, a Chinese instrumental ensemble is expanded in range and volume of tone to imitate a European orchestra, thus losing a delicaten~ss, and the clear separation of lines in the original ensemble. Some native musicians who have played on the stage outside of the village setting, including those who have travelled in western countries, alter their performance styles. They shorten a musical develop­ment, simplify it, or emphasize virtuoso traits to a greater degree than they normally do in their villages. (Tran Van Khe 1 976.)

The introduction of new musical techniques in traditional forms is not always successful, and it may serve to destroy inner qualities in the original music. Similarly, in a larger area of thought, it would seem that an outright transplant of technology and industry to create sudden cities of concrete does not necessarily mean progress. Supermarkets destroy certain traits of communal life and the personal relationship between store­keepers and buyers in small stores. The lure of industry in cities increases the urban population beyond all proportions and disrupts the balanced life of a village. An unchecked sale and use of motor cars create a chaotic traffic maze in cities not originally conceived as centers of manufacture and trade. A reading and writing of literature unrelated to local life disorient the thinking of thousands of people, whose lives differ greatly from the lives they read about in such books. Sometimes, the use of a new technology in native agri­culture or an adoption of a new religious practice in place of a native belief can bring in relationships as absurd as the use of dissonances, syncopation, crescendi and an orchestral treatment in native music. The use of foreign techniques in different aspects of village life cannot be introduced without affecting native traditions.

Village Thinking as" Software" Technology

A re-thinking of old village civilizations requires an examination of native ways of life, and an overall progress would require a long process of change, such as the one that transpired in Europe, and which had its begin­nings in the Renaissance . A humanistic movement revived the pagan learn­ing of Greco-Roman antiquity, an interest in earthly things, and a more sensuous attitude towards life and nature. These were combined with a prE!­occupation with Greek and Latin literature, in opposition to the dogma, absolutism and feudalism of the Middle Ages. In South-east Asia, a parallel transformation occurred when each of the great traditions- Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity- infused a native life with their own precepts, modes of behaviour, traditions and systems. (Hall 1964; Le May 1 954.) Today other factors of change affect this life, and foremost among these factors is the great influence of science and technology which have been a

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source of well-being, and at the same time of unhappiness among peoples in this part and in other parts of the world .

Most scholars study native cultures through the discipline of the social sciences, including ethnomusicology, and these studies are a source of much of the present knowledge of village cultures in South-east Asia (Bali 1 960; Geertz 1 964; Hall 1 964; ~~charer 1 963; Srinivas 1 965). and all over the world. Other students are interested in the effects of technology, commercialism, and trade in these cultures; but a further and perhaps a more urgent task would be to show how science and technology can be adapted to and integrated with local situations, instead of allowing the reverse process, that of directly and forcibly applying their latest developments to the village. In this case, the aims of technology come under question, for they strive to promote constant and increasing production, in contrast to a primitive think­ing which seeks to minimize the use of technology and to emphasize a life of accommodation with the forces of nature. In this notion of accommodation, the use of machines may be looked at from a frame of mind different from the thinking which designed their use. In seeking a new principle for the use of machines, the idea of a maximum number rather than a minimum number of people benefiting materially and culturally from their use may be taken as one way of spreading the advantages of the machine to a larger group of people .

For example, these advantages may be thought of not so much as a labor-saving device, but as a labor-employment system which gives work to a maximum number of people. The task of the scientist-inventor would be to find the simplest system of work for many people in order to produce a maximum amount of primary goods, or a maximum mechanical advantage. In lieu of high-skilled techniques to promote a special product for the benefit of a few, the initial idea would be to find a technique that would give the greatest number of services . Eventually, through a slow gradual process, a point of high-skilled techniques of production would be reached. At that level, the product, which could be a system, a service or a complex machine, would be within the reach of everyone. A maximum use of man-power would distribute the gains of the machine or the product in as wide a use as possible . In the involvement of a great number of people, a new kind of ritual is developed,

and through a built-in equilibrium of production, a certain balance between human life and the use of natural resources would be preserved. The general idea is a quest for a new development of man, using technology, and not renouncing it, by applying to it a different thinking (not super-production, not merely a labor-saving device, not profit), based mainly on the wisdom of village peoples, on their innate sense of balance, or a living related intimately and harmoniously with nature and the universe.

In music, this notion may be transmitted through the employment of a maximum number of performers to create music. The musical product is a joint endeavor of all participants, without whose co-operation the results would not be satisfactory. The greater the number of participants, the ·more effective is the result. An increasing skill in and knowledge of the musical techniques would lead, step by step, to other more complex musical results.

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Although the musical structure is symbolic of a use of the machine or a work advantage, the effect of the music itself, as sound, surpasses that use and the work advantage it symbolizes. The music can inspire and generate another form of ritual, an inner feeling, a sense of the "spiritual", without which the work advantage becomes lifeless. In this music, the musical software are the modern ritual, national and regional celebrations, expositions, village and family affairs. The hardware are the musical instruments, vocal techniques, scales, drones, time patterns and other musical elements . A search for a multiplicity of these musical characteristics does not differ essentially from a technique of splitting sounds in the electronic studio. However, the problem in Asia is less a mastery of techniques, and more a question of adapting music tu local social conditions, which would provide new notions of aesthetics and beauty. Whether it be in the technique of the .Javanese gamelan, the Mon group, the Burmese orchestra, or an entirely different organization of sounds, what matters is to preserve an equilibrium in life and a smooth com­munication with nature. This music acquires a new social ritualistic use when it is performed or heard in the market, shopping center, house temples or a big city plaza. (Maceda 1 974b; 1 976.)

In this manner, music composition veers from the usual purposes of making music. It is less concerned with musical techniques or of mixing musical elements of different cultural backgrounds. Although it tries to capture the mysticism inherent in native music, it relates that search to modern society, and especially to its technology. It analyses and even questions the very concept of invention or scientific research that brings about this technology . For scientific research is not wholly objective, in that it is conditioned by the cultural thinking of people. The researches that led to the discovery of electricity, the engine and the computer were motivat­ed by a concept of man as benefiting from such discoveries. Now, it is being discovered that these material benefits tend to restrict man's actions, thoughts and freedom rather than enlarge them. It is the task of man today to look for an attitude of mind and a course of action other than that which imprisons him in his own creations.

A change of "lifestyles" is indeed necessary in all cities affected by technology and development . A musical idea of a new lifestyle can be expressed in other ways, and the source of that expression can be found in other civilizations not engulfed in technological over-development that men of thought are complaining about. Village thinking is a source of wisdom for modern living and of a more beneficial or philosophical use of technology It is a view of life to which modern man can look up to in order to extricate himself from the gigantic system of present living which tends to destroy the very essence of man, whose spirit far exceeds what a computer society can possibly give him .

References :

Ardiansyah, Anang 1974. "Mengenal garis gerak tari Ka)imantan Selatan" Pesta Seni (Dewan Kesenian Jakarta, Taman l s m<~il Marzuki) December pp . 228-232 .

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Attali, Jacques 1977, Bruits. Paris : Presses Universitaires.

Bali: Studies in Life, Thought and Ritual 1 960. The Hague, Bandung : van Hoeve .

Becker, Judith 1972. Traditional Music in Java (PhD diss.) Ann Arbor : University of Microfilms.

Condominas, George 1964. Nous avons mange Ia foret. Paris : Mercure de France .

Geertz, Clifford 1964. The Religion of Java. London : Free Press of Glencoe.

Hall, D.G.E. 1964. A History of Southeast Asia. 2nd ed . London : Macmillan.

Humardani . S.D. 1970. "Drama Tari Ramayana Gaj~ Surakarta ." (typescript) Surakarta .

Kartomi , Margaret 1973. "Music and Trance in Central Java," Ethnomusicology Vol. 27/2, pp. 163-208.

Le May, Reginald 1954. The Culture of Southeast Asia. London : Allen and Unwin .

Maceda, Jose 1955. " Hanunoo Music from the Philippines," Notes in an album of a LP record. New Yor k : Folkways, pp . 1 0-21 .

Maceda, Jose 1974. "Southeast Asian Peoples, Arts of," section " Music," Encyclopedia Britan-nica, 15th ed . pp. 237-241 .

Maceda, Jose 1974. UGNAYAN, a music for 20 radio stations . Maceda, Jose 1976. UDLOT-UDLOT, a music by hundreds or multitudes of people.

Mumford, Lewis 1970. The Myth of the Machine, Vol. 2. New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p . 434.

Otto, Frei 1977. "Building cities and turning nature to stone," Kulturbrief, Vol. 7, No. 10, pp. 21-22.

Parani, Yulianti _1974. "Pengembangan tari daerah Jakarta bertolak dari unsur-unsur seni gerak

tradisionil yan masip hidup," Pesta Seni (Dewan Kesenian Jakarta, Taman Ismail Marzuki)

December, pp. 263-267 .

Scharer, Hans 1 963. Ngaju Religion. The Hague : Nijhoff.

Srinivas, M.N. 1952. Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India. New York :· Asia Publishing House.

The UCLA Monthly 1977. Vol 7, No. 6, p .4 .

Tran Van Khe, 1 976. " The Preservation and Presentation of Traditional Music and Dance in Asia," Paper read in a conference of the International Music Council, Manila, August 27-28 .

Williams, Thomas R. 1966. The Dusun, a North Borneo Society. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston .

* * * * Udlot-Udlot (music by J . Maceda), showing performers for pairs of sticks. ·The composition,

realized in Bangkok, March 17, 197B, on the occasion of the 5th Conference-Festival of the Asian Composers ' League, has three instrumental parts: pairs of sticks, m ixed instruments (tubes, buzzers, flutes) and voices. Performers are located in different parts of a square in the Chulalangkoran University.

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