Music and Manipulation

Music, censorship and colonialism

In 1953, the Indian government founded the National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama in New Delhi for the preservation and development of these arts. The main nationalist themes propagated through this institution were unity through diversity and the cultural and moral uplift of the population through art. For the same reason, the Indian government founded institutions like the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and made use of its monopoly over All India Radio (and later state television) to disseminate national music. By broadcasting Indian classical music on the radio, the government not only aimed at improving the public's knowledge of music but also manipulating its taste. The harmonium, for example, was banned from the radio until the early 1970s. In the footsteps of Rabindrinath Tagore and Western ethnomusicologists like A.H. Fox Strangways and Arnold Bake, the Indian government declared that the instrument's fixed-pitch did not confirm Indian flexible intonation and therefore was harmful both to the singer's and audience's perception of musical refinement. Likewise, songs from films that contained elements derived from Western popular music, were banned from radio on moral grounds. Alternately, to breed the idea of unity through diversity, All India Radio frequently broadcasted manipulated sessions of Indian folk music, whereby arrangements of the traditional songs were recorded with studio musicians.

The comparison between India and Pakistan is interesting. Like Christendom, Islam has an ambivalent attitude towards music. The Quran does not mention anything at all about the making of music but it is generally forbidden by the ulema on the basis of the hadith. Even so, though the Muslim clergy solely legitimises the quasi-mystical chanting of the Quran and the call to prayer, music is played in numerous Islamic folk and art traditions. A good example is Qawwali music of South Asia, originally sung and played at the shrines of Sufi saints (which often also serve as music schools): This music, made famous in the West by the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, is based not on the text of the Quran but on Sufi poetry. As in Independent India, it seemed that initially the Pakistani government was going to support the broadcast of classical music. Yet the clergy's opposition to music prevented this, mainly because the texts of many of the classical songs were connected either with Hindu deities or with the separation of lovers. Accordingly, the Pakistani government adopted a more easy-going attitude, with the result that the market for classical music gradually diminished and popular (mainly film) music became utterly dominant. In 1974, however, the government did establish the Institute of Folk Heritage in Islamabad, which among other things did much for the conservation of Pakistani folk music.

Since the late 19th century in particular, music censorship and canonization largely took place under the banner of nationalism. Folk music collection, and on its basis the creation of an authentic national music style, was undeniably crucial to this universal process. While in the West this process generally led to modernist developments in music, (partly because of Orientalist and ethnomusicological scholarship), musical progress in the non-West remained much under the influence of (neo-)colonialism.

The hegemony of Western music in colonised cultures led to the subsequent decline of traditional music making because of its relegation from central ritual and social functions to ‘native' and ‘tribal' contexts, such as entertainment for tourists or celebration of the past. The performances of gamelans(orchestras) on Bali and, as discussed by Helen Rees (2000), Naxi music in China's Yunnan province are only two examples. Alternatively, one of the positive effects of colonialism for instance remains the introduction of the Western violin in South Indian Karnatic music (Meunier 2006; Weidman 2006).

Consensus and conflict

Governmental and religious music censorship is just one of the themes discussed in Music and Manipulation. All contributors consider music as a communication system and take the social production of music rather than music itself as a starting-point for the understanding of the relationship between music and society. Music can create both consensus and conflict as it is ‘a major tool for propagating group ideologies identities, and as such serves as an important device for reinforcing collective actions and for delineating the lines of inclusion for social groups' (p. 2). Importantly, while being part of a trans-national entertainment industry, music today has become a significant economic commodity. On the whole, the role of music in contemporary society raises moral questions in relation to censorship, propaganda, commercialization and globalisation. Following a preface by the editors and an introduction by Steven Brown, the book is divided in two main segments: eight chapters subdivided in three parts on the social use of music ("Manipulation by Music") and five chapters in two parts on the social control of music ("Manipulation of Music").

In the first part "Music Events", Ellen Dissanayake draws parallels between ‘the evolutionary (biological) process of "ritualization" in animal communication and the ritual (cultural) uses of musical behaviour in human rites or ceremonies' (p. 32). Despite the commerciality of music today, she believes that ‘it is still possible in music to set aside, to some degree, everyday knowledge and experience so that... we can enter an "extra-ordinary" state, sometimes even feeling transformed' (p. 51). Peter J. Martin argues that going to a modern classical, jazz, pop or any other concert, shows signs of formalised ritual and reinforces identity. Ulrik Volgsten, then, emphasises that both the language around music, that is culturally internalized by the listener, and mass media provide increasing possibilities for musical manipulation. In part two "Background Music", Adrian C. North and David J. Hargreaves unsurprisingly make clear that ‘it is extremely difficult to predict how customers or staff will react to a particular piece of music because any response to music is determined by three interacting factors, namely, the music itself, the listener, and the listening situation' (p. 117). Steven Brown and Töres Theorell question the validity of the dogma that "good music is good for you". In their opinion, twentieth century music therapists and musical healers of all times and places uncritically ‘ignore social factors such as listening context, personal history, culture, and even species; in other words, all ignore music as a communication system' (p.143). Likewise, the idea (based on experiments with rats!) that listening to the music of Mozart enhances performance of spatial reasoning tasks completely overlooks personal and cultural differences. Undoubtedly, music can ‘produce immediate physiological and psychological effects on people' but ‘the extent to which there is a deterministic relationship between a given musical parameter and its effect, independent of cultural mediation and individual experience' remains to be questioned (p. 143). In part three "Audiovisual Media", the essays by, respectively, Philip Tagg, Rob Strachan and Claudia Bullerjahn consider the manipulative potential of music that occurs in a wide range of mass media - including film, television, commercials and music videos - as well as at music events and as background music.

In part four "Governmental/Industrial Control", Marie Korpe, Ole Reitov and Martin Cloonan focus on religion and government as the two main agents of music censorship. Besides the former Soviet bloc, Nazi Germany, South Africa and the United States (where jazz and rock music have been called the work of Satan), they also refer to the extreme cases of music censorship in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini and in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Afterwards, Joseph J. Moreno discusses the bizarre employment of music during the Holocaust and Roger Wallis deals with the industrial control of music (i.e. the world of music copyright and the recording industry). In part five "Control by Reuse" Ola Stockfelt looks at the moral questions surrounding the re-use of music. Closely related, Ulrik Volgsten and Yngve Åkerberg investigate the pros and cons of music copyright and, for example, ask themselves: ‘who would find it logical to pay a fee to Einstein (or his heritors) every time "his" knowledge would be used for something?' (p. 355). In the epilogue, the editors reconsider the ambiguous relationship between music and morality without giving any definite resolution.

The light of Asia

Music and Manipulation is a timely book that, despite the overtly theoretical and repetitive style of writing, sets a standard for a new field of study and therefore deserves to be read widely. On the whole, disappointingly, the authors do not provide precise explanations about music's powerful effects on people but, even so, their contributions contain fascinating material for further study. Moreover, the issues dealt with solely concern Western musical practice and their treatment in the light of musical developments in Asia would surely extend our knowledge of music as a mode of communication. Much research is still needed in relation to the emergence of music as a commodity in a global market in the Asian context. In fact, perhaps more than in the West, it is the market rather than religion and/or state that controls (and censors) musical life in Asia today. The endless production of illegal CD's, DVD's and video's as part of a global music market certainly stands in clear opposition to the Western feudal vision of property of which music copyright is part. And how to explain the overall success of background music and Karaoke bars in Asia? What are the musical manipulations behind Bollywood music and why is it always played so incredibly loudly in Indian buses? Equally, the controlling developments and changes in musical style and sound, musical behaviour and musical conceptualisation as a result of colonialism merits further scholarly investigation. Recently, Gregory D. Booth (2005) wrote about the (colonial) history and social role of Indian wedding bands. Likewise, for example, a study about the influence of Christian hymnody and the harmonium on north Indian popular music traditions or one about the manner in which Sikh sacred music was canonised under colonial rule would be welcome.

References

Booth, Gregory D., 2005. Brass Baja: Storiesfrom the World of Indian Wedding Bands, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Meunier, Jean Henri, 2006. Violin from theHeart: Biography of Dr. L. Subramaniam (DVD), Living Media India Ltd.

Rees, Helen, 2000. Echoes of History: NaxiMusic in Modern China, New York: Oxford University Press

Weidman, Amanda J., 2006. Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Postcolonial Politics of Music in South India , Durham: Duke University Press.

Bob van der Linden (Ph.D., University of Amsterdam 2004) is a historian of modern South Asia and a practiced musician. His book Tradition, Rationality and Social Consciousness:the Singh Sabha, Arya Samaj and Ahmadiyah Moral Languages from ColonialPunjab is forthcoming with Manohar in New Delhi and his new research project concerns the relationship between music and empire in Britain and India.: vanderlinden.bob@gmail.com