Music on the Move

Front matter

Danielle Fosler-Lussier

DANIELLE FOSLER-LUSSIER

Copyright © 2020 by Danielle Fosler-Lussier

Preface

In this book I aim to work out some of the ways in which human connections made through migration and media have shaped music-making. Arjun Appadurai has observed that “any book about globalization is a mild exercise in megalomania,” and I am well aware that this project can never be complete.' I do not have a “god’s-eye view” of the world or its music; I have not even been to all the places discussed in these pages. Yet in an age where the movement of people and music is evident all around us, it seems important to try to think about music in a connected way, tracking not only music that stays in one place but also music that moves.

Although this book undoubtedly reflects my perspective as a college teacher from the United States, I have tried to make the viewpoint inclusive—to frame the discussion so that people who come from many backgrounds will find something here they might relate to. The broad scope of this book means that no topic is treated in full: there is always more to the story than I can tell here.

My training in the United States and Europe concentrated on concert music and, to a lesser extent, jazz. My subsequent growth has been shaped by engagement with many friends and scholars and the music they love and study. This is personal work: I have drawn on the enthusiasm of my colleagues as well as their expertise. The National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Ethnomusicology and Global Culture, led by Eric Charry, Mark Slobin, Sumarsam, and Su Zheng in June 2011, taught me a great deal and helped me begin to turn my Music on the Move course into this book. When Emily Erken, Alison Furlong, and Austin McCabe Juhnke taught the course, they too made improvements, as did guest lecturers Tracie Parker and Nicholas Poss. The undergraduate students who took the course between 2005 and the present have also assisted in the development of this project—most of all, by bringing me music they cared about and asking me to listen.

I owe a great deal to generous people who have shared their perspectives viii Preface and corrected many errors along the way. Nathaniel Lew, Marianne Lipson, Joanne Lussier, Benjamin Tausig, and one anonymous reader offered valuable criticism on the whole manuscript. Hyun Kyong (Hannah) Chang, Brigid Cohen, Eric Drott, Luis-Manuel Garcia, Petra Gelbart, K. E. Goldschmitt, Sandra J. Graham, Jeremy Grimshaw, Lynn Hooker, Mark Katz, Ryan Thomas Skinner, Kendra Salois, and Henry Spiller kindly offered their extensive subject matter expertise and vastly improved various sections of the book. To Lynn Hooker I owe particular thanks: without her research and teaching, chapter 2 could not have been written, and her willingness to use this book with her students helped me refine it. Courtney Bryan, Samantha Ege, and Asha Srinivasan were generous in sharing insights, scores, and recordings with me; Soojin Kim allowed me to use a photograph from her research. Louis Epstein’s innovative thinking and technical knowledge about digital mapping has shaped this work. Jane Harrison, Dan Jurafsky, Lijuan Qian, Ali Sait Sadikoglu, Johanna Sellman, Henry Spiller, and Janet Yu graciously helped with selection, translation, and interpretation of sources. I appreciate Julian Halliday’s assistance with the images. And conversations with Gabriel Solis and Olivia Bloechl, who are bringing a global music history into being, helped me adjust my frame of reference.

For partnership in this work I am deeply grateful to Eric Fosler-Lussier, who not only authored the digital maps but also urged me to think about my data in new ways and helped me secure the practical conditions necessary for a phase of intensive writing. His confidence and his sacrifices of time and energy made this book possible. My writing and teaching are further sustained by a network of wonderful colleagues, many more than I can name here. In addition to those listed above, they include Carolyn Abbate, Emily Abrams Ansari, Harmony Bench, Joy Haslam Calico, Maribeth Clark, Daniel Goldmark, Anna Gawboy, David Hedgecoth, Erika Supria Honisch, Lisa Jakelski, Jennifer Johnson, Marian Wilson Kimber, Hannah Kosstrin, Beth Levy, Morgan Liu, Dorothy Noyes, Hye-jung Park, Chris Reynolds, Peter Schmelz, Anne Shreffler, Leslie Sprout, Steve Swayne, Juliet White-Smith, and Reba Wissner.

Funding from the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State University helped me acquire the rights to images and audiovisual materials, and a sabbatical in 2017-18 allowed me to finish writing the text. For a subvention that allowed the University of Michigan Press to publish this as an open-access book, I am grateful to the Ohio State University Libraries and the TOME initiative (Toward an Open Access Monograph Ecosystem), a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses,

Preface ix and the Association of Research Libraries. A Course Enhancement Grant from the Ohio State University Libraries also supported early development of these materials. Many thanks to Sara Cohen, Susan Cronin, Jon McGlone, Kevin Rennells, Charles Watkinson, and Lanell White for shepherding the book to publication; Joe Abbott for copyediting; and Mary Francis for believing in the possibilities for this book on the Press’s digital platform.

Maps

Trading Area of the Dutch East India Company 21 Migration of Romani People into Europe 45 Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Voyages 69 Concert Tours of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, 1871-80 88 Superpower Interventions during the Cold War 130 Internet Usage Rates by Region, 2018 181

Korean Population of the United States 207

Media Chronology

1877 Edison phonograph invented

1910s 78 rpm records widely available (not the only recording speed)

1925 Electric recording available (via microphones)

1930s Magnetic tape used by German government for propaganda recordings

1946 Only o.5 percent of US households have television sets

1947 Magnetic tape available for commercial recordings; can be spliced to edit

1948 33 1/3 rpm long-playing (LP) records available

1949 45 rpm “singles” (1 song on a side) cheaply available

1954 More than 55 percent of US households have television sets

1958 Stereophonic sound, multitrack magnetic tape

1966 Compact cassette tape in wide circulation

1983 Compact discs introduced

1980s Internet access available to consumers

1998 First music stores appear on the internet

2001 Apple begins selling the iPod. More than 98 percent of US households have color television sets

2002 Streaming begins to become widespread

2018 Apple announces it will phase out downloadable music files

Introduction

Most people encounter some kind of music in their daily lives. Some people actively seek out music by making it themselves, attending concerts, purchasing or downloading audio recordings, or using media such as radio or the internet. But music finds even those who don’t go looking for it. Music is a persistent backdrop in public places, from the quiet ambient sound in shopping centers to the booming of a loud car radio as it goes by. A friend shares a beloved song; a parent hums a lullaby; a busker plays the saxophone on a street corner. In all these ways, whether requested or not, music is an integral part of our social world.

Take a moment to consider the music you have heard in the past week or so. How much of the music was already familiar, and how much was new to you? How much of the music you heard was chosen by you and how much by other people? When you did choose, what factors helped you decide what to listen to? Each of us will answer these questions differently, and the answers help us sketch our particular social and musical networks. For example, some people find most of their music through direct social contact, like the recommendations of relatives or live performances at religious institutions. Some find their music through the media, at a remove from their personal social contacts; this might happen through television shows or the tips provided by music sellers on the internet: “if you liked this song, try that one.” Some might choose a favorite café for its excellent playlist. In any case the music you hear points to a variety of connections in your life, and these connections can support, direct, or even limit your access to musical experiences.

The music you hear may also tell you something about who you are as a person: you may choose particular kinds of music for particular purposes or to make yourself feel a certain way. Some people listen to music because it feels calming, or energizing, or challenging, or fascinating. Workout music differs from the music that accompanies a romantic dinner for two. Many people enjoy musical experiences that help them feel connected to others, like joining a large crowd to sing a traditional song at a college sporting event. Likewise, songs your family has always chosen for weddings or funerals might inspire a feeling of connection with an entire family network and its history.

Some of these effects are internal to one listener, but most of them are also social effects: they take place at least partly in the listener’s relationship to social networks. Individuals might prefer music that makes them feel “cultured” or refined, hip or cutting-edge—that is, music that confers social status in some way. Throughout history, groups of people have defined some kinds of music as more important or beneficial than others. For example, European Americans in the United States treated classical music this way in the early 1900s. Collectors, too, take pleasure and pride in having a lot of one kind of music and demonstrating expertise about that music. And some people like to be central players in their musical networks: they like to be the ones to hear a new song first or recommend it to others. In these cases music helps people define their relationships to one another. You can probably name some examples from your own experience.

We might ask, too, about the origins of the music you have heard. To what extent does your music come only from your home country? To what extent is your listening international? Your answers to these questions may depend on your family’s history and traditions. If you or your parents are recent immigrants to your country, you might have strong ties to the music from your place of origin and to the communities that support this music. Even families that have been settled in one place for a long time sometimes hold on to special kinds of music from another place, like wedding music or holiday music, that are passed down through generations.

Some people are simply more likely to come across music from far away because of where or how they live. In densely populated places such as Toronto, New York, or Los Angeles, many people cross paths as travelers and immigrants. In places that rarely host foreign visitors, this process happens more slowly. When people move to faraway colleges, undertake church missionary work, or go on vacation, they often encounter music they haven't heard before, and they might bring music with them into their new contexts.

How you get your music might also depend on your access to media. Many people in North America are fans of Japanese animé soundtracks or Jamaican reggae; they may have encountered these cultural forms through travel, but their primary encounter with them more likely comes through radio, television, the internet, or audio or video recordings. Of course, this process is not separate from the process of in-person contact. A friend’s recommendation may lead to intense engagement with a particular kind of music through the media, and people who share a passion for a particular music may meet in an online forum, then make contact offline as their common interests grow.

Depending on who you are, some networks that are right in your part of town may be entirely invisible to you. When the Chinese American pop star Wang Leehom (1976-) performed at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, he filled the venue to capacity with some 17,000 enthusiastic fans. Wang is a major celebrity in East Asia. He has produced 16 albums in Mandarin and Japanese, and he has appeared in several films and dozens of commercials. Yet many white or Hispanic Angelenos have never heard of him, and his concert held no significance for them. The population Wang reached in Los Angeles was primarily a Chinese and Chinese American network, people who live in the United States and follow the East Asian popular music scene.' Our networks not only expand our view; they also limit our view according to language or interest so that we fail to cross paths with some people, even our neighbors. What we see through our networks is never all that exists but only a fraction.

Thinking about how music is transmitted within and among communities can help us understand our own places in the musical world and how those places have come to be as they are. Thinking about music this way helps us see that music is not an object: it is an activity, something people do. It exists not only in our imaginations, in performances, and in recordings but also within our social relationships. It runs along the lines of human connection to new places and links people to one another—even when those people are not together in one place.* Music can also define our relationships with one another. We are makers, givers, or receivers of music; we assess others based on their favorite music; a fondness for certain music can help us become friends. The transmitters and users of music are all part of this ebb and flow of relationships.

Music in the Global Network

It is a commonplace these days to hear that music, or the music business, is “global.” When you think about your own social network, you may notice many threads of connection to music from elsewhere, even though your personal network doesn’t literally blanket the globe or connect you directly to every person on Earth. Even the internet, the “World Wide Web,” reaches only a little over half of the people in the world.? Our media do provide us with a feeling of connectedness—of being able to see everything that’s going on or access all the music that has been created. But that feeling is an illusion: some people do not have any access to this form of interconnection, and only a small fraction of the world’s music is audible through our network.‘

Still, this illusion is powerful. Without a doubt we feel as though we are connected. It might fit our intuition better if we think of the “global” not as a blanket covering the world but as a changing network of connecting threads that may extend over distance, with some places and peoples more thickly connected than others. John Tomlinson has called this situation of “complex connectivity” globalization. Others have defined globalization as a collection of “flows” of people, goods, and ideas.’ The anthropologist Anna Tsing has proposed that the idea of the “global” is a way of imagining one’s place in the world—a “dream space” that has shaped human ambitions since the mid- 1900s. Musicians, environmentalists, human-rights activists, religious groups, marketers, and governments have used this idea to envision controlling the world, making money, or moving societies toward justice and equality.®

People have also used the words global and globalization to describe this sense that music and ideas are moving far and fast. Many commentators say that since the 1980s we have been living in an “age of globalization.” Sometimes the use of these terms is an attempt to describe the feeling of living in our times. From the 1960s to the present, air travel has become available to more people, and communications networks are expanding and becoming more comprehensive. Jet-setting business professionals and government offcials move among grand international hotels that are nearly the same regardless of location. These developments have led some observers to describe a “time-space compression,” in which the ease of travel makes it feel like distances have shrunk. Likewise, advances in communications technology have allowed music, images, and ideas to come at us ever faster, providing more and more information for us to process, which sometimes makes it feel as though we have less time, or the time is too full.’ If we take the internet as a point of origin for this feeling of time-space compression, we might decide that the era of globalization started in 1989.

The “global” has not always been defined in terms of this feeling, though. Some commentators have emphasized economic globalization, an increased interdependence of financial markets that began in the early 1980s. International corporations, including music and media corporations, operate more and more across borders, hiring workers distant from their headquarters. They even seek to influence the laws of many countries to smooth their path in global operations. Large media companies have pressed governments to increase protections for copyright and intellectual property by enforcing laws against illegal copying of music; this combination of state and corporate power is profitable for the owners of music. Yet economic globalization is not only for the powerful. Disadvantaged low-wage workers migrate to seek better incomes but also send money home and listen to music from home, building economic and social ties between their places of employment and their places of origin.*

More recently, scholars have turned to political definitions of globalization. The world is not united by globalization: we have not come together under one world government, nor is there full agreement among nations. But we have developed institutions like the World Bank (established 194.4) and the United Nations (1945) that attempt to operate in a truly international way, setting ground rules that apply to all countries. (Of course, the playing field is still not level: many commentators have criticized these institutions for being biased in favor of larger and economically powerful countries.) Furthermore, during the 2oth and 21st centuries national governments have vastly extended their reach, establishing permanent military bases, placing information into foreign news media, and using international institutions to govern the behavior of peoples outside their borders. Countries began developing national brands by choosing which music to export as propaganda, and the United Nations initiated programs that protected musical traditions that might otherwise disappear. Those who define globalization politically might mark its beginning during the Second World War.”

The word globalization as it is used in everyday conversations attempts to capture some or all of these relatively recent trends of interconnectedness. As we have seen, looking at globalization through the different lenses of political, economic, or musical evidence yields different definitions and different historical accounts of what it is, what caused it, and when it started. The term invokes a wide variety of experiences, and it is therefore fuzzy rather than specific. One idea that is common to many theories of globalization is the idea that activity is happening at different scales. Worldwide trends can affect local experiences and habits, and local practices can be absorbed into national, regional, or global action. Music in a neighborhood in the United States may reflect a holiday defined for the whole nation-state—like the fife and drum in an Independence Day parade—or even celebrate a holiday originating on the other side of the globe, like a parade in New York for the Chinese New Year.'°

Rather than using the terms global and globalization, | will try to use more specific terms to describe how and why music moves. Still, it is hard to get rid of these words altogether: they are the commonly used shorthand for all this activity and connectedness that feels different from what came before.

In spite of this feeling, music did not start moving around recently. Music has been in motion ever since there were human beings to make musical sounds. Migration, or the moving of populations of people from place to place, has been a persistent factor throughout human history, and it has become a pressing concern in our own time. Part 1 of this book describes situations in which music has moved with its makers to new places. When peoples move, they establish new connections as individuals and groups, and these connections have lasting effects on music-making, not only for the migrants but also for those who receive new neighbors. For example, the Romani people, whose ancestors migrated to Europe and the Middle East hundreds of years ago, are not completely integrated; yet their music-making has become a part of European music, and they have changed their playing to adapt to new situations.

Part 2 highlights political, social, and technological changes during the 2oth century that brought new possibilities for moving music, including long-playing records, film, television, cassette tape recorders, and digital media. A musical performance is always mediated by the various factors that help the music get from its makers to its listeners. Media need not be new or high-tech: a musical instrument is a medium, as is printed music. Sometimes people think of mediation exclusively as a means of transmission, bringing music or messages easily from one place to another—and this form of mediation has become important in communication and commerce. But mediation is also built into the very nature of music, for all music requires some kind of making or performance process.

Just as important as the technological development of audio recording was the developing sense of a “smaller world.” The United States and the Soviet Union actively solicited political and economic alliances with peoples all over the globe; to support these alliances, the superpowers purposefully increased communication among the peoples of the world. During this period, music was both “pulled” and “pushed” across international borders—in person, on recordings, and by broadcasting.'' The channels of communication built through these efforts formed a foundation for our time, when music moves quickly across international borders.

When the idea of globalization became popular in the 1990s, people liked to think that in the new era people, money, goods, information, and ideas would zip around in a global network at very high speeds, without obstacles. Nonetheless, as Anna Tsing has pointed out, there is friction in the network: our interconnections across distance are “awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative.” !* Some music moves easily through the network, while other music gets lost in the shuffle. Some routes of travel are encouraged, others discouraged. Some people have access to the network as creators, others as listeners, others not at all.

In part 3, therefore, we look at some of the ways global interconnection supports the flow of music, and we focus on some of the points of friction that impede or direct that flow. We will see that some music-makers have been empowered by access to distant music, using it to craft musical identities for themselves that do not depend on the heritage they received through their families or ethnic groups. We will observe the music industry as it creates and fulfills the musical desires of niche markets, and we will see how constraints built into the global marketplace remain a key factor in the music business. We will also see how migration and mediation work together in the lives of people who have moved: they continue to use both travel and media to maintain contact with faraway homelands.

The conclusion brings together recent assessments of these “flows” and their effects. Some scholars describe the ethical dangers of globalization in more practical terms: loss of local or regional identity, economic exploitation of the poor by the rich, and conflicts over what parts of a musical heritage are worth preserving. Some scholars have mourned the loss of stable identities that results from the movement of people and ideas. These matters remain controversial, partly because different outcomes are observed in different places. The anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (ah-PAH-do-rye) argues that the genie cannot be put back into the bottle; that is, despite these dangers, it may not be possible to go back to a world in which cultures seem distinct from one another. He suggests that the best solution may be to embrace the multiplicity of selves and values that results from globalization.

Tradition, Heritage, and Boundaries This book makes reference to many groups of people—that is, people who consider themselves to be groups and people who are called a group by others. Boundaries between groups are meaningful to insiders and outsiders alike:

they are an important part of how human beings think about themselves. These boundaries are, in some sense, imaginary: they exist in people’s thoughts about themselves in relation to other people. Yet they are also real in that they shape human behavior. Boundaries between groups can be used to create a spirit of solidarity, where each member of a group feels a strong sense of loyalty and belonging. They can also be used to divide people, to promote one group and diminish another.

It is common in conversation and scholarly writing to refer to “a culture,” meaning a set of behaviors or beliefs that distinguish one group from another. In the words of Seyla Benhabib: “Whether in politics or in policy, in courts or in the media, one assumes that each human group ‘has’ some kind of ‘culture’ and that the boundaries between these groups and the contours of their cultures are specifiable and relatively easy to depict.”'* Once people define and give names to certain groups, they treat those groups and their “culture” as real; naming them seems to nail down those boundaries.”

Yet observation of real-world situations reveals that the boundaries between groups are usually movable and often loosely defined. These boundaries are human-made: they are produced through transactions, arguments, and negotiations. In addition to setting political boundaries between nations, people also choose what behaviors they consider “inside the lines” for members of their group and what is clearly outside: what music is good and what is not, who is acceptable to marry and who is not, or which words to choose and which to avoid in particular conversations. According to the music scholar Stephen Blum, “We begin to understand something of what people mean by ‘culture’ when we hear them arguing about it—comparing one culture with another, or with something they refuse to regard as culture.”!° The philosopher Frantz Fanon argued that separating people into groups may lead us to see the “other” group as a fixed object, incapable of change, with “phrases such as ‘I know them,’ ‘that’s the way they are.” 7

How we think about groups of people matters. Throughout the 2oth century and into the 21st, some countries with multiethnic populations have witnessed vicious acts of genocide: attempts to wipe out an entire group, usually identified by ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, or sexual or gender orientation. According to Gregory H. Stanton strong group identity is a necessary precondition of genocide. In the cases Stanton has studied, a large population first defines a minority population by name, drawing a distinction between “us” and “them.” The majority then use hate speech against the defined minority, usually claiming that members of the minority group are not really human. Then they organize the power of the state or military to harm the people in the minority group.'* In recent decades, as majority populations have experienced political and economic uncertainty and migrants have moved to seek refuge from violent conditions, attacks of this kind against minority groups have increased."

Obviously, not every case of dividing people into groups ends in genocide. Yet it is clear that human beings experience groups as a social reality. The perception of groups shapes human behavior, and in some cases the drawing of a boundary between groups can cause harm. In this book we will watch people drawing these lines and using them for purposes of bonding their groups together or excluding people from their groups.

One way that people mediate music is by telling stories about how their music is different from other music—drawing boundaries that define the music.” The idea of tradition is one important story people tell to identify a group. Tradition is that which is handed down from one person to another. Sometimes people believe that a song has to be very old to be traditional, but that’s not necessarily the case. Along with the handing down—the teaching of a song—come the stories about why we sing this song, who the teacher learned it from, and what it has meant in the past. The tradition is not just in the song but also in the story: traditional music “teaches, reinforces, and creates the social values of its producers and consumers.””! Saying that music is “part of our tradition” usually increases its value, giving it a pedigree that is justified by history and connects today’s musician to people in the past.

Another kind of story that delineates who can be part of a group is heritage. Heritage is a tradition passed down among a family or kinship group. People often say that heritage means cultivating and preserving musical or other practices as they have existed in the past.” It is useful to recognize, though, that the stories we tell today about heritage define the heritage: even though heritage is about the past, people can change ideas about it in the present.” Unlike tradition, heritage requires a sense of kinship: it defines the group by pointing to a shared set of historical experiences and, usually, to ethnic or genetic ties. The sense of jazz as a particularly African American heritage, for instance, relies on that sense of kinship.

‘The act of acknowledging heritage in the present often helps to strengthen belief in those ethnic and genetic ties, using ideas about history to demonstrate the existence of a group. Repatriating Native American artifacts by taking them out of museums and giving them back to the tribes where they originated is an action that is based on the idea of heritage. The individual recipients of the artifacts are not the same individuals they belonged to originally, but both the museums and the recipients perceive that these recipients have a claim on these objects because of their belonging in a particular Native American tribe, ethnically and historically.