The Music-Culture as a World of Music

MUSI 3721YUniversity of Lethbridge, Calgary CampusJohn Anderson

The Music-Culture

• Music is universal but its meaning is not

• By culture we mean the whole way of life of a people, learned and transmitted from one generation to the next

• We use the term music-culture to refer to a group of people’s total involvement with music

• Not all music-cultures have a word for “music”

A Music-Culture Model

• A model rooted in music through performance

• Music• Performers• Audience• Time and space

• Music’s affect is its emotional impact, whatever makes you assent, smile, grimace, nod, sway or dance

• Performance has agreed-on rules and procedures

A Music-Culture Model

• Community is the group that carries the traditions and norms of performance

• Time and space becomes memory and history in our music-culture model

• Musical analysis is finding patterns in the sound by breaking the music into parts and determining how the parts function in the whole

Components of a Music-Culture

• Music and the Belief System

• Aesthetics of Music• Contexts for Music• History of Music

Social Organization of Music

• Social organization refers to how a group of people divides, arranges, or ranks itself

• Sometimes resembles social divisions within the group

• Sometimes goes against the broad cultural grain

Repertories of Music

• Style• Scale, mode, melody,

harmony, rhythm, timbre, dynamics

• Genres• Vocal vs. instrumental?

• Texts• The words to a song

Repertories of Music

• Composition• How does music enter

the repertory?

• Transmission• How is music learned?

• Movement• A whole range of

physical activity accompanies music

Material Culture of Music

• Material culture refers to the tangible, physical objects that a culture produces

• The most obvious example are musical instruments

• Sheet music is material culture too

• Electronic media? • Radio, compact discs,

MP3s, television?

Worlds of Music• Music cultures are

dynamic, not static• Constantly changing to

outside pressures• It changes to suit the

expressive and emotional desires of humankind

• Synergy vs. hegemony

Discussion Questions• What is music?• How can music affect

culture?• How can culture affect

music?• How is music considered

as a behaviour?

Discussion Questions• How can we better

understand different music when we compare them to languages?

• Sincere there are many similarities in musical instruments throughout the world, could there have been patterns of cultural diffusion?

• How might they have operated?