According to Merriam-Webster, music has many definitions. For starters, it’s defined as “the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity”. It is also defined as “an agreeable sound”. This second definition has a more western conception. But why is that?
Let’s look at the propositions of Michael B. Bakan, a professor of ethnomusicology in the College of Music at Florida State University. He organizes the term in five different ways in to understand it: 1) music’s basic property is sound; 2) the sounds and silences are organized in some manner; 3) this organization of sound is done by people; 4) this sound was made with the intention to be perceived as music and is perceived as such; 5) the term music is intrinsically tied with Western culture and its assumptions.
To expand upon the latter, we can try to define music as accurately as possible and technically not be incorrect, if it weren’t for the fact that most cultures around the world don’t have a word assigned to what we consider music. Because of this, it’s almost inevitable to suffer from some degree of ethnocentrism.
What we call music is usually weaved into the daily lives of different cultures. From the regal beginnings of Japan’s gagaku, to the spiritual connection music has in Native American cultures and different parts of Indonesia; music has had many roles in human history. In ancient China, music was an essential part of education; in Indonesia, types of musical expression like the gamelan beleganjur are traditionally associated with warfare, and can embody conflicts with evil spirits, or rituals for the dead (more recently, it has become an opportunity to be creative with tradition and helding contests ). In India, music would be dedicated to the gods, the seasons, and even celestial bodies.
The Western scale of music is typically confined to a scale of seven pitches and within those pitches, half notes, which are the ones that we’re accustomed to hear. We consider harmonies and melodies to be agreeable sounds, and when we encounter a sound outside of that range it tends to feel “out of tune”. However, non-Western musical systems are riddled with pitches outside of our accustomed scale. These pitches are known as micro-tones.
Usually, micro-tones are impossible to achieve with a piano, unless it’s out of tune. But intentional micro-tones are used in Indonesia’s primary pitch systems for gamelan music: slendro and pelog. Much like a piano, the instruments they use are tuned to a predetermined scale, so if we were to see a performance that used both scales at different moments, two differently tuned instruments are needed; to attempt to tune them at the moment would be impractical and would take days to do properly. While microtones are uncommon in Western music, they’re not completely unheard of. A recent example would be Jacob Collier, who oscillates between micro-tones in subtle harmonies, and it rarely feels out of tune.
We might find some music dissonant, but this is a two way street, meaning that what we consider harmonious, others might hear it as a dissonant sound. For example, gagaku is an elegant sound in Japan, while we might apply this same quality to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The real difference between these two is the cultural and historical context they manifest.
Our Western ideas are not limited to what we consider to be a subjectively good sound, but they are also projected in how we distribute music, regard it as something to own or be copyrighted, how we differentiate between the audience and the performers in a live scenario, and how we classify and organize sound. To understand world music is to understand the culture where it originates. Not only do we get to learn about music, we learn about the people that appreciate it. I found this topic to be a lesson in empathy and a way to broaden one’s horizons from a different perspective. There’s so much more to ethnomusicology than the debate of what is music and I’d encourage anyone who’s read this far to look into it and learn about the world. Many things can bring people together, it could be small things like shared hobbies or it could be big things like history and culture, and I’ve found music to be in that sweet spot where everyone can connect and share.