Download Paul Ayick

Paul Ayick
Survey In Historical Styles MUH 6688
1/24/2007
Developing Contemporary Idioms out of Traditional; Music
By: J.H. Kwabena Nketia
The atonal, 12-tone, and serial techniques of the 20th Century were an effort by
composers to find a new voice, a new mode of expression, a new style if you will beyond
the Romantic and Impressionistic music that dominated the later part of the 19th. Now
that we have had time to listen, absorb, and reflect we find that these attempts, while
certainly innovative, may not have always been totally successful or indeed aesthetically
satisfying for many listeners. Indeed different doesn’t always equate to better. As the 20th
century gave way to the 21st we witnessed more and more composers turning to
indigenous music from all around the world as a source of new inspiration. This the
beginnings of a new musical style which has come to be known as “World Music” This
new emphasis on cultural inspiration does not exist only in the realm of the composer of
music in the European art music tradition but in jazz, pop, and other genres as well. In
fact even the lines that served so well in earlier times to differentiate one genre from the
other have also become blurred. No doubt this world Music phenomena can be attributed
to a globe made increasingly smaller by improved modes of both communication and
travel. Regardless, in this fine article Mr. Nketia illustrates specific ways that these
cultural musical idioms might best be employed by current composers or as he states;
“to approach contemporary music as a cultural
phenomena and to view it’s creative process from the standpoint of
ethnomusicology.”
As Kwabena points out this borrowing of sources from traditional ethnic music is not
anything really new to composers, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Debussy, Bartók and
many other composers used musical devices found in indigenous folk music as
compositional sources in their works. I think Nketia is attempting to re-establish some
limits as a reaction to the total freedom afforded composers over the past century. For
instance when discussing Tradition he says:
It is the usages of the past that provide the moulds for creating and
developing channels of the communication and musical codes that can be
understood by the receptors of music and not just by those who generate
them.”
So just how then is the composer to create something fresh? According to him these three
techniques are the key:
1. Reversal Techniques
2. Syncretic Techniques
3. Techniques of Re-interpretation
It is this point that I feel this paper gets a bit confusing for I think Nketia may be
over-intellectualizing an art form that really needs only to communicate to be
understood on a more instinctive level. For instance in explaining what he means
by the terms “Reversal Techniques” he states:
The reversal technique consists simply of (a turning
the procedures of tonal music around and using the logic of
the reversals as the basis for the major combinations of
sounds and rhythm at crucial points of stress and tension.
(b) employing techniques for making the regular irregular
and vice versa. (c) generally avoiding procedures or
combinations that may suggest unconscious return to
tonality or “root harmony” incompatible with the idiom of
tonal music.”
I can’t help but think that this kind of work jockeying is wasted energy and if Nketia’s
real goal is to compose music that is new and fresh that energy might best be expended in
composing. After all the impetus for this article is in actuality Nketia’s goal is to compose
music that will be received well by his African brethren, music that speaks in a voice
within the constraints of his homeland. He makes that exact point, that in order for a
composer to communicate effectively he must find a voice that speaks within the
constraints of the ethnicity of the audience. In simple terms, what is effective to an
audience in Manhattan may totally miss the mark in Ghana, (his homeland.) Thus is
accomplished according to him by using what he calls a “Syncretic Approach” or;
“going to traditional music or music in oral or partly oral
tradition for creative ideas, sources of sound, themes and
procedures that may be used for expanding one’s modes of
expression.”
Listeners, he says, are usually more apt to respond favorably to music that speaks in the
same way in which their native language flows, each having it’s own peculiar rhythmic
flow or feel. On a personal note, over the years I have worked in many ethnic bands that
played in the musical styles representative of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santa Domingo, and
South America. Each country or region has it’s own unique stylistic parameters
(especially rhythmically) and “gringos” are often hard pressed to as we say, “find the
groove.” Even after 5+ years of playing in one particular Afro-Cuban band I always felt
somewhat inept to a degree interpreting certain conceptual concepts. When one has to
think about whether or not the feel is correct it usually isn’t!
Nketia also talks about the importance on drawing from the past when trying to
create a new musical idiom. Again, this is a concept probably as old as the tradition of
composing music for art’s sake. We have seen over and over again one composer
drawing from a predecessor and this is not a fact that Nketia doesn’t acknowledge:
“In the early phase of the contemporary music
movement, other composer similarly sought out the
medieval church modes and deliberately developed melodic
and harmonic systems out of them that gave the
compositions in which they were used a new character.”
Rather he reminds us that this option, in spite of all the newfound freedoms of the 20th
century, is still a viable one. The underlying theme of this fine article is as I perceive it,
that music can develop in a fresh, new way that does not have to rely on atonalism (which
can alienate many perspective listeners) and by employing these tried and true device
evolve into something viable and progressive. I have seen the adverse, repellant effect
much of the atonal, experimental music played by jazz musicians through the 60’s and
70’s had on potential audiences and I couldn’t agree with him more. There is little future
in playing solely for ones self.