The Grand Duo

Author: Roeder, John

Publication details: Presented at the Eastman Theory Colloquium at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, 30 March 2018.

Weblink: https://www.esm.rochester.edu

Abstract: Growing interest in world-music analysis has highlighted the challenges, long recognized by ethnomusicologists, of comparing music from different cultures on the basis of their divergent indigenous conceptions.  Yet, in today’s free-for-all sonic economy, listeners enjoy musics of unfamiliar cultures and histories. What are they hearing? My talk reframes this question in music-theoretical terms: what kinds of insight can a few basic and presumably universal principles of musical listening provide into a ubiquitous musical procedure, “cycling” (persistent repetition)? Most scholars who study musical cycles classify them, or associate them with the general affects they afford, without considering individual examples in much detail.  Recently, though, Agawu and Locke have carried out detailed analyses of cyclic West African traditional music in terms of basic percepts. Their approach seems worthwhile to refine and apply to other repertoires.

Of the many different manifestations of cyclicity, I restrict my inquiry to simple textures featuring constantly repeated rhythms, from isolated traditional cultures relatively untouched by colonizing/globalizing influences. My approach concentrates not on rhythmic “objects,” such as fixed metric states or events, but on the dynamic processes through which listeners acquire and continuously revise their sensations of music continuity, articulation, and event categories. Attention to these processes helps move beyond generalities to describe exactly how cyclic pieces differ, and also to recognize common strategies for making the repetition lively or for weaving large-scale processes out of precisely calibrated variations.  To expose the basic concepts I first examine some proto-musical chanting of Tibetan Buddhist nuns, then I present analyses and comparison of cyclic music from Haida Gwaii (Canada), Gabon, Bolivia, and Vanuatu.  The presentation is intended not only to appreciate the art of these examples, but to advocate for more analytical investigation into traditional sources as a valuable resource for music theory.

Author: Roeder, John

Article: Music Theory Spectrum 40, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 154–159.

Weblink: https://academic.oup.com

Abstract: The author aims not only to scrutinize the continent’s rich musical practices, but also to confound entrenched prejudices and to promote a deeper appreciation of its musicians’ creativity and expression. While he takes measure of African imagination partly in its “astonishing diversity”(3)—a quality that could be attributed to any collection drawn from a wide enough geographical area—he also provides ample evidence for the characteristics cited above: coherence, rationality, principle, abstraction, and distinctive routines. Accordingly, he allies himself with scholars who sense a “connectedness” at a “background level” evident when we “listen beyond surfaces to the shared structures that prop up those surfaces”(3). All these features “set African music apart from other world music”(307), a claim that he intends as “an expression of desire, an article of faith, and a mark of pride”(18) that will inspire African scholars and …