Music on the Move

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Music moves through human social networks via migration and media, shaping and being shaped by the boundaries people draw around groups, traditions, and identities in ways that are constantly negotiated rather than fixed.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Music as social activity: Music exists not as an object but as an activity embedded in social relationships, transmitted through networks that connect people across distances.
• Multiple scales of movement: Music moves at different scales—local, national, regional, and global—with migration and mediation as two primary mechanisms.
• Boundaries are negotiated, not fixed: Groups, traditions, heritage, and musical styles have boundaries that people actively draw and redraw through stories, choices, and social transactions.
• Common confusion: "Globalization" and "hybrid music" suggest clear boundaries and recent phenomena, but music has always moved and blended; what feels "global" today is actually uneven connectivity with friction points.
• Why it matters: Understanding how music moves reveals power dynamics, access inequalities, and how people use music to define identity, belonging, and relationships.

🌐 How music moves through networks

🕸️ Personal musical networks

• Most people encounter music daily—some actively seek it, others encounter it passively in public spaces.
• Your music reveals your social connections: family recommendations, religious institutions, media platforms, café playlists, online algorithms.
• Networks both expand and limit what you hear: a Chinese American pop star can fill a venue in Los Angeles yet remain invisible to other communities in the same city.
• Example: Wang Leehom performed to 17,000 fans at the Hollywood Bowl, primarily reaching Chinese and Chinese American networks, while many other Angelenos had never heard of him.

🎯 Music and social identity

Music helps people define who they are and their relationships to others:

• Internal effects: calming, energizing, challenging
• Social positioning: feeling "cultured," hip, or cutting-edge; conferring status
• Network roles: being the first to hear new music, recommending songs to others, demonstrating collector expertise
• Connection to groups: singing traditional songs at sporting events, choosing family wedding or funeral music

🗺️ Geographic and media access

How you encounter music depends on:

• Family history: Recent immigrants may maintain strong ties to music from their place of origin
• Population density: Toronto, New York, Los Angeles have more cross-cultural contact than less populated areas
• Travel and migration: College, missionary work, vacation expose people to unfamiliar music
• Media access: Radio, television, internet, recordings bring distant music (Japanese animé soundtracks, Jamaican reggae) without physical travel

🔄 Globalization and interconnection

📡 What "globalization" means

Globalization: A collection of "flows" of people, goods, and ideas; "complex connectivity" rather than a blanket covering the world; a "dream space" for imagining one's place in the world.

The term captures multiple phenomena:

• Feeling-based: "time-space compression" from easier travel and faster communications (1960s–present)
• Economic: Increased interdependence of financial markets, cross-border corporations (early 1980s)
• Political: International institutions (World Bank 1944, United Nations 1945), extended government reach, national branding through music

Don't confuse: The term is fuzzy, not specific—different lenses (political, economic, musical) yield different definitions and starting dates.

🧱 Friction in the network

The network is not frictionless:

• Some music moves easily; other music gets lost
• Some routes are encouraged, others discouraged
• Access is uneven: some people create, some listen, some have no access at all
• The "World Wide Web" reaches only slightly over half the world's people
• What you see through your networks is never all that exists—only a fraction

⚖️ Scales of activity

Worldwide trends affect local experiences and vice versa:

• A neighborhood parade in the United States may reflect a national holiday (Independence Day fife and drum) or a holiday from across the globe (Chinese New Year parade in New York)
• Local practices can be absorbed into national, regional, or global action

🚶 Migration as music transmission

🧳 Historical context

• Music has moved since there were humans to make musical sounds
• Migration has been persistent throughout human history: Polynesian seafarers 4,000 years ago, Jewish exile, Greek colonization
• Environmental crises, economic ambitions, political conflicts, or exploration drive migration—by choice or by force

🎵 Music moves with people

When populations move, they establish new connections with lasting effects:

• Migrants bring music to new places
• They adapt their music to new situations
• They influence the music of those who receive them as neighbors
• Example: Romani people migrated to Europe and the Middle East hundreds of years ago; their music-making became part of European music while they changed their playing to adapt

🎬 Mediation and technology

📻 What mediation means

Mediation: The various factors that help 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
• Mediation is built into the nature of music—all music requires some making or performance process
• Transmission: Bringing music or messages from one place to another

🎞️ 20th-century developments

Political, social, and technological changes brought new possibilities:

• Long-playing records, film, television, cassette tape recorders, digital media
• United States and Soviet Union actively increased communication globally to build alliances
• Music was both "pulled" and "pushed" across borders—in person, on recordings, by broadcasting
• These channels formed a foundation for today's rapid cross-border music movement

🔗 Migration and mediation together

People who have moved use both travel and media to maintain contact with faraway homelands.

🏛️ Boundaries, tradition, and heritage

🧩 How boundaries work

Boundaries between groups are meaningful to insiders and outsiders:

• They are imaginary (exist in people's thoughts) yet real (shape behavior)
• They create solidarity and belonging but can also divide and diminish
• They are movable and loosely defined, produced through transactions, arguments, negotiations
• People argue about what behaviors are "inside the lines" for their group

Warning: Defining groups can lead to seeing the "other" as fixed and incapable of change ("I know them, that's the way they are"). Strong group identity combined with hate speech and state power has been a precondition of genocide.

📜 Tradition

Tradition: That which is handed down from one person to another, along with stories about why we do this, who taught it, and what it has meant.

• The tradition is in both the song and the story
• Traditional music "teaches, reinforces, and creates the social values of its producers and consumers"
• Saying music is "part of our tradition" increases its value by connecting today's musician to people in the past
• A song need not be very old to be traditional

🏺 Heritage

Heritage: A tradition passed down among a family or kinship group, requiring a sense of kinship through shared historical experiences and usually ethnic or genetic ties.

• Stories told today about heritage define the heritage—people can change ideas about it in the present
• Acknowledging heritage strengthens belief in ethnic and genetic ties
• Example: Repatriating Native American artifacts to tribes is based on heritage—recipients have a claim because of belonging in a particular tribe, ethnically and historically
• Nation: A very expansive kinship group imagined as coherent across a territory, united by customs, language, shared musical heritage, or history

🎭 Stereotypes and reality

• We imagine "nations" or "cultures" as unified wholes, yet they are not
• Example: Céline Dion songs play a vital role in Ghanaian popular music; some Slovenians enjoy salsa dancing

Stereotypes: Simplified versions of reality used as "good enough" approximations; the hazard is inaccuracy leading to errors in judgment.

Principle: "What you see is not all there is."

🌱 Why "hybrid" is problematic

Some scholars write about "hybrid" musics (combining two or more source musics), but this biological analogy is flawed:

• It assumes source musics have clear boundaries, but musicians freely imitate and adopt from others constantly
• Blending is the norm, not the exception—like borrowing words between languages
• Musicians choose styles self-consciously for the stories or group membership they suggest
• Choices can stretch or redraw boundaries of musical styles and groups

Better approach: Describe musicians who mix or blend musics, recognizing their purposeful choices rather than treating it as genetic accident.

🖊️ Borders are negotiable

• Scholars, makers, and listeners all draw borders around types of music to name and discuss them
• These borders are human-made and negotiable, not fixed
• Where people draw boundaries reflects evaluative categories: good/bad, ours/not ours
• Music changes with every performance and over time; it gains new meanings as new listeners interpret it differently

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Migration—whether voluntary, forced, or colonial—creates musical contact zones where people adapt, borrow, blend, and invent music in response to new environments, audiences, and power structures.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Migration is ancient and constant: people have moved for thousands of years due to environmental crises, economic ambitions, political conflicts, or exploration, carrying their music with them.
• Borders are human-made and contested: musical boundaries (like national or ethnic categories) are negotiable and reflect evaluative choices, not fixed realities.
• Colonialism shaped global music networks: European colonial powers imposed institutions, hierarchies, and musical styles on colonized peoples, creating lasting transnational connections.
• Common confusion—state vs. nation vs. culture: a state is a legal/administrative system; a nation is a group with shared heritage; citizenship blends legal rights with cultural identity, but music often crosses these boundaries.
• Diaspora and adaptation: when people spread from their origin (voluntarily or by force), they adapt their music to new economic conditions, audiences, and social constraints, sometimes creating entirely new forms.

🌍 Migration and musical movement

🗺️ Why people migrate

• People have migrated for millennia: environmental crises, economic ambitions, political conflicts, or the urge to explore.
• Migration can be voluntary (settlers, explorers) or forced (exile, slavery, refugees).
• Example: Polynesian seafarers built trade routes four thousand years ago; Jewish people were forced into exile by famine and persecution; Greek colonies spread around the Mediterranean.

🎵 Music travels with people

• Migrants carry customs and music when they can.
• Upon arrival, migrants encounter other groups—sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile—and these contacts lead to acquaintance with new music, borrowing, or adoption.
• Migrants often shed customs that are difficult to practice in the new environment (e.g., stop building instruments for which raw materials are unavailable, change food ways).
• They may adapt performance styles to fit a new lifestyle or to sell music to new audiences.

🚧 Borders then and now

• Early history: borders were fluid and easy to cross; the Roman Empire had no fixed boundaries, and edges of territories were not always marked or policed.
• Modern era: crossing borders is now carefully regulated—easy for some, difficult or impossible for others—because states control who enters their territory.
• Don't confuse: the ease of travel in the past with the difficulty of crossing administrative borders today.

🏛️ States, nations, and citizenship

🏛️ What a state is

State: an organization that creates a system of laws and boundaries, tracks people within those boundaries, defines their rights, and issues passports to control entry.

• A state is a legal and administrative structure.
• Some states are nation-states, founded on the idea of a coherent group (a nation) defined by ethnicity, heritage, or shared features occupying a particular territory.

🪪 What citizenship means

• Citizenship can mean:
  • Legal status and possession of rights/privileges.
  • Economic advantages.
  • Collective identity, sentimental attachments, a sense of belonging, or "cultural" ties (shared ways of being).
• Example: being French might mean pride in cooking traditions (nation) and the right to a 35-hour workweek (state).
• About 3.7 million people worldwide are "stateless"—they have no citizenship anywhere and lack the protections citizenship provides.

🧩 Migrants and the nation-state

• Migrants face practical challenges: transportation, supporting themselves, gaining the right to stay (dealing with the state), and being perceived as foreign (dealing with the nation).
• The presence of minorities is often seen as a threat to national unity; the majority emphasizes differences.
• Example: Muslim immigrants to Europe face fears (whether fact-based or not) that they will refuse to adopt European customs, increase crime, or incite terrorism—fears that encourage citizens to keep migrants out.
• Saskia Sassen's insight: one way to define citizenship is to notice who is excluded and how the line is drawn.

🎶 Music and borders

🌐 Music crosses state boundaries

• Music does not always acknowledge the administrative borders of nation-states.
• Example: along the US-Mexican border, arts, information, and money move freely among community members who cross regularly.
• Transnational forces (forces acting across nation-state borders) can make the nation-state less important, interacting with local and regional music-making.

🎧 Transnational music strategies

• Example: In 1999, the Nortec Collective of Tijuana, Mexico, wanted to break into the worldwide electronic dance music market. They included samples of identifiably Mexican regional music in their tracks, creating a distinctive "local flavor" that was easier to market in distant places.
• Here, the desire to make music available transnationally affected the sound of the music itself.
• Don't confuse: defining music by its place in a national system is important, but there are always broader (transnational) and narrower (local) fields of view.

🏴 Colonialism and music

🏴 What colonialism is

Colonialism: the practice of institutional control by one people over another people, their territory, and their resources.

• From about 1500 until the mid-1900s, European principalities sent expeditions worldwide, conquering peoples and territories to form colonies.
• Examples: Spanish presence in Latin America; British presence in the United States, India, Canada, Australia, and Africa; US occupation of the Philippine Islands.
• European powers competed to control trade routes and sources of wealth (indigenous people, precious metals, sugar cane).

🎼 Colonial musical institutions

• Colonists faced the usual migrant challenges but from a position of military and political might.
• They imposed new state administration, social hierarchies, and musical institutions aligned with the occupying nation's vision.
• Example: Spanish occupation of the Americas (beginning 1492):
  • Spanish militias brought African slaves and imposed new ways of life.
  • They destroyed indigenous religious sites, replacing them with Catholic churches and missions.
  • They brought musicians, set up church choirs and orchestras, and required Aztec people to attend churches and sing in the European style.
  • Manuel de Sumaya (early 1700s), a composer of mixed Spanish and indigenous ancestry, mastered the European style (independent vocal lines, lush harmonies, Latin text).
  • Outside the church, musicians could make European, indigenous, or African music, or blend them.

🌊 Long-term colonial impact

• As travel became easier, composers and performers trained in the European manner routinely traveled to Europe or the United States, creating international networks that ensured music circulation across the Atlantic.
• Colonialism has had a dramatic impact on the lives and music-making of both colonized and colonizers, continuing to the present day.
• Example (from the book's structure): Chapter 1 examines Indonesia, where Indonesians hired to make music for Dutch rulers changed their music to suit Dutch tastes; Indonesian music traveled to Europe and influenced composers there; and traditions invented by visiting Europeans still attract tourists to postcolonial Indonesia.

🌍 Diaspora and adaptation

🌍 What diaspora means

Diaspora: the spreading out of a population away from its place of origin.

• Diaspora can be voluntary or forced.
• Example (from the book's structure): Chapter 2 covers Europe's Roma ("Gypsy") populations in Hungary, who adapted to local performing conditions and made choices reflecting their economic circumstances; their music became a vital part of European culture.

🎤 African American diaspora

• Example (from the book's structure): Chapter 3 covers the African American tradition.
• During three centuries of the slave trade, African communities were disrupted; Africans lost the freedom to choose where and how to live.
• Historians have traced "survivals": African approaches to music-making maintained after arrival in the New World.
• African Americans were one of many overlapping populations in North America; their music both reflected and influenced the music of other populations.

🔄 Music changes in new places

• Through these examples, the practice of music changes as musicians meet new audiences and encounter social constraints in new places.
• Musicians may adopt the majority's music, the majority may adopt the minority's music, or entirely new types of music may be created for new situations.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Colonialism in Indonesia created lasting musical traditions through forced contact between Dutch colonizers and Indonesian populations, shaping both local practices and European music while establishing pathways that continue to influence how Indonesian music moves globally today.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Colonial relationships created new music: Dutch colonizers forced enslaved people to play European instruments, leading to new Indonesian traditions like tanjidor that blend Western instruments with local styles.
• Power imbalance shaped musical exchange: Europeans displayed Indonesian gamelan at exhibitions to define themselves as "modern" versus "primitive," yet gamelan influenced European composers like Debussy.
• Invented traditions serve economic needs: Kecak was created in the 1930s for tourists but is marketed as ancient, using strategic essentialism to access tourism income.
• Common confusion—authentic vs. invented: What tourists perceive as timeless tradition (kecak) may be recently created for their benefit; "traditional" does not require ancient origins.
• Colonial legacies persist after independence: Decolonization ended political control, but social, economic, and institutional relationships established during colonialism continue to shape which Indonesian music gains global visibility.

🏛️ Colonial power and musical transformation

🏛️ What colonialism means

Colonialism: institutional control by one people over another people, their territory, and their resources.

Empire: a hierarchical combination of a ruling state and its ruled provincial territories, in which different populations are granted different rights and subject to different laws.

• Colonialism is not just political domination but encompasses all social consequences of that domination.
• Unlike a nation-state (relatively homogeneous population under same rules), an empire treats different populations differently.
• The Portuguese (1498+) and Dutch (1602+) used military force to establish trading colonies, plantation colonies, and colonial settlements in Indonesian islands.
• The Dutch East India Company (private, 1602–1798) ruled ~50,000 civilians and 10,000 soldiers; after bankruptcy, territories became Dutch national colonies until WWII.

🎭 Music as social division

• Colonial officials used music to maintain separation between ruler and ruled.
• Master could demand music; servant must play what master chooses.
• This power relationship transformed existing practices (gamelan) and introduced new ones (European orchestras).
• Example: Augustijn Michiels (late 1700s) owned estates with 117 house slaves and 48 free servants; enslaved musicians played both gamelan and European orchestras for his entertainment.

🎶 Gamelan and Tanjidor: blended traditions

🎶 What gamelan is

Gamelan: a set of percussion instruments struck with hammers or beaters, including large and small bronze gongs and instruments with metal keys; may also include singing, drums, bowed fiddle, flutes, zithers, and xylophones.

• Organized in layers with mathematical precision:
  • Largest gong plays slowest, punctuating cycles
  • Middle-register gongs play melody several times faster
  • Higher xylophone-like instruments play embellishments twice or four times faster
• Music organized in repeating cycles: largest gong announces the next cycle.
• Used at royal courts, village ceremonies, weddings, and to accompany dance or shadow puppetry.
• The "real melody" emerges from the whole layered effect, not from any single part.

🎺 How tanjidor emerged

Tanjidor: a kind of music traditionally made by Javanese people using Western instruments and Western musical forms, believed to originate from slave orchestras.

• Origin: Enslaved people were forced to play European dance music (pavane, quadrille, waltz, mazurka, polonaise) on European instruments for Dutch colonists.
• Enslaved musicians who could play fetched higher prices than those who could not.
• After slavery ended (1800s), tanjidor became an Indonesian tradition: musicians played for tips at weddings and New Year celebrations.

Instrumentation: European brass band base (clarinet, trombone, tenor/alto horn, helicon, snare drum, bass drum) plus Javanese percussion (gongs, kecrek—clashing metal strips).

Musical character:

• Some pieces retain European forms (e.g., "Was Pepeko" keeps waltz's 1-2-3 rhythm).
• Other pieces sound nothing like European models but use gamelan-like layered, interlocking rhythms.
• Borrows from gamelan repertoire, Chinese music, and Indonesian popular songs.

🔄 Localization vs. origin

Localization: a musical practice from elsewhere has been altered to fit local conditions and become part of local traditions.

• Tanjidor is not European music (first made in Indonesia) but also not indigenous (instruments and some forms are European).
• It is traditional: Indonesian people hand it down because they value it.
• Don't confuse: "traditional" ≠ "ancient" or "indigenous"; traditions can emerge from contact and unequal power.

🌍 The 1889 Universal Exposition: displaying the colonies

🌍 What the Exposition was

• Six-month extravaganza in Paris; ~30 million visitors.
• Displayed technical innovations (telephone, Edison gramophone, Eiffel Tower) and achievements of nation-states.
• Colonial Exposition section: living museum dioramas with imported indigenous people performing daily activities, including music.
• Javanese village display attracted 4,000–5,000 visitors/day (weekdays), nearly 10,000 on Sundays.

👁️ Exoticism and orientalism

Exoticism: fascination with the unfamiliar, fueled by the knowledge that the observer has more power than the observed "other."

Orientalism: a particular kind of exoticism that focuses on an imaginary East.

• Visitors treated displayed people as specimens exemplifying their "type," not as individuals.
• The Exposition allowed visitors to imagine themselves as "modern" and "civilized" versus "primitive" colonized peoples.
• Example: souvenir plate mocked Javanese dancers' "bizarre" hairstyle, comparing them to "primitive firefighters."
• Anthropology (studying customs of groups) stemmed from the need to regulate and control colonial populations.

🎹 European responses to gamelan

Difficulty capturing the sound:

• French listeners tried to write down gamelan using European music notation.
• European notation could not capture: non-Western tuning, rhythmic complexity, special resonance of metallic instruments.
• Julien Tiersot met privately with musicians to have them play slowly; wrote verbal descriptions.
• Louis Bénédictus published "Bizarre Musics at the Exposition," remaking gamelan for piano—reduced complexity, eliminated metallic sound, changed melodies to fit French tunefulness.

Contrasting attitudes:

• Émile Monod: heard gamelan as evidence of primitiveness ("Javanese gamelan… of great interest from the point of view of the history of music… these instruments have not changed for centuries. Conversely, European music has progressed constantly").
• Claude Debussy: admired gamelan for new, complex sounds; reversed Monod's claim ("if we listen without European prejudice… our percussion is like primitive noises at a country fair").
• Both disdain and fascination are elements of orientalism.

🎼 Debussy's appropriation

What Debussy borrowed:

• Layered rhythmic activity: different levels moving at different speeds (slow, twice as fast, four times as fast).
• Unison flourishes for dramatic effect.
• Low notes imitating largest gong strokes.
• Example: "Pagodas" (1903) imitates gamelan texture on piano.

How the imitation differs:

• Piano and gamelan tuned differently.
• Debussy often uses groups of six notes (not four), creating "imprecise wash of sound."
• Not organized in cycles; follows European form (introduce ideas → move away → return).
• Like a "reminiscence" translated into French style.

Debussy's later dissatisfaction:

• Felt Western versions of folk music "seemed sadly constricted: the additions of all those weighty counterpoints had divorced the folk tunes from their rural origins."
• Wanted to leave Javanese music "untouched" in its "natural state"—a romantic idea of indigenous authenticity (belief that music has been played the same way since ancient times and should not be altered).
• This thinking treats groups as specimens from another time, characteristic of colonialism's rigid social divisions.

🔁 Colonial mimicry

Colonial mimicry (Homi Bhabha): the colonizer makes an imitation of the Other that reforms it but keeps it recognizable, creating "a difference that is almost the same, but not quite."

• Appropriating music can show power over colonized people.
• Yet creating an imitation requires engaging with colonized people, which introduces foreign elements into colonizer's culture.
• Creates new, blended artifacts; shows colonizers and colonized locked in uncomfortable but unavoidable relationship.
• Example: Debussy's six-note effect (originally imitating gamelan) was absorbed into French style and no longer audibly Asian—a trace of colonial relationship.

🎭 Kecak: tradition invented for tourists

🎭 What kecak is

Kecak (ke-chock): a form of dance and drama accompanied by vocal chanting on the syllable -cak, performed by a male chorus in Bali.

Performance structure:

• Male chorus (dressed in checkered sarongs) sits in concentric circles on the ground.
• Chanting uses short syllables in interlocking rhythms, creating "busy complexity."
• Sometimes unison, sometimes interlocking patterns (see diagram in excerpt).
• Chorus takes various roles: monkey army, ogre, wind, garden.
• Solo dancers perform intricate gestures recalling Balinese royal court traditions.
• Includes narrator, solo singers, beat keeper imitating gong sounds.
• Typically dramatizes scenes from the Ramayana (ancient Hindu epic).

Two forms:

1. Sacred: sanghyang dedari ritual trance chant (not drama; includes female chorus).
2. Secular: theatrical entertainment for tourists (male chorus only; no trance).

Balinese performers view these as separate; both still performed, but secular form much better known.

🏗️ How kecak was created

1930s origin:

• German musician/artist Walter Spies (lived in Bali since 1927) wanted dramatic performance for his film The Island of Demons.
• Spies suggested combining sacred kecak chant with dramatic scenes from Ramayana.
• Worked with Balinese dancer I Wayan Limbak; village elders collaborated.
• Spies determined theme and timing; insisted kecak was a Balinese creation.
• First time the ritual was presented in non-religious context.

Balinese refinement:

• Musician I Gusti Lanang Oka and businessman I Nengah Mudarya brought version to village of Bona.
• Refined formal structure; established "The Abduction of Sita" as favorite scene.
• Ramayana already a thousand-year tradition in Bali (Hindu majority).

🏝️ Dutch "Balinization" policy

• Dutch colonized Bali late (1840s–1908) through violent military campaigns.
• European press coverage embarrassed Dutch, who wanted to seem benevolent.
• 1920s: Dutch forbade modernization in Bali, encouraged restoration of arts as practiced in destroyed kingdoms.
• Produced self-consciousness among Balinese about their artistic life.
• Outsiders viewed Bali's arts as untouched by West, but traditions had been revived and altered under Dutch influence.
• Spies's activities part of growing tourist industry supported by Dutch steamships.

📈 Kecak's evolution through political changes

Period	Political context	Effect on kecak
1930s	Dutch colonial tourism	Performed exclusively for tourists arriving on steamships; no record of Balinese attendance
1945–67 (Old Order, Sukarno)	Independence struggle, violence, communist/capitalist conflict	Tourism declined sharply; Balinese nationalists dismantled tourism industry
1967–98 (New Order, Suharto)	Authoritarian stability, need for income	Tourism actively encouraged; 1969 international airport opened; kecak standardized
1970s+	Standardization	Only certain Ramayana scenes; more complete story; uniform costume (checkered sarong, red sash, white dots); innovations spread quickly

Market pressures:

• Troupes pay guides and tourist agencies to bring visitors.
• Agencies can refuse to send tourists to performances that don't adapt.
• ~20 troupes regularly perform kecak today.
• Income goes to community goals (water supply, temple restoration), not personal needs.

🎭 Invented tradition

Invented tradition (Eric Hobsbawm): traditions constructed for the needs of the present but made to seem valid by using symbols, rituals, and ideas from the past.

Why traditions are invented:

• More frequent in times of rapid change.
• Help people feel part of a group.
• Convince people of new ideas by couching them in familiar terms.
• Provide "flags, images, ceremonies, and music" that help individuals feel part of a nation.

How kecak seems ancient:

• Tells story known to be 1,000+ years old.
• Retains resonance of ritual (though religious elements removed).
• Solo dancers' costumes look courtly and from another time.
• 1930s staging: dark temple courtyard lit only by torches.
• Chorus wears little clothing, chants rapidly on single syllable—conforms to visitors' stereotypes of indigenous peoples.

Tourist perception:

• Tourists overwhelmingly experience kecak as "authentic": long-standing heritage, practiced by entire population, handed down from time immemorial.
• No way for them to see it is produced for their benefit and always made for tourists, not Balinese people.
• 1996 National Geographic narrator: "man becomes the animal of its origins… primeval sounds… Over a hundred men portray an army of chattering apes."

🎯 Strategic essentialism

Strategic essentialism: playing to other people's insulting stereotypes as a tactic to access resources.

• Kecak allows visitors to see themselves as "modern" versus "primitive" performers (who are actually their contemporaries).
• Similar to 1889 Universal Exposition dynamic.
• Tourism constitutes ~30% of Balinese economy; cultivating stereotypes has been a resource for postcolonial Indonesians.
• Don't confuse: saying kecak is invented tradition does not make it less valid or meaningful; it is purposefully created and sustained.
• Kecak is traditional: taught performer to performer, enables group cohesion, earns money for community.

🔍 Partial perspectives

• What we know from watching a performance is only part of what is really going on.
• Historians read contextual clues: letters, photographs, interviews, observations about social relationships and money flow.
• Every standpoint (bystander, tourist, interviewer, YouTube viewer) provides only partial perspective.
• What looks ancient to outsider may be staged for outsider's benefit.

🌐 Gamelan's global spread

🌐 Deterritorialization

Deterritorialization: unlinked from the place where it originated.

• Active gamelan groups exist in: Netherlands, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, USA, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Poland, Australia, New Zealand.
• Most groups flourished not because of Indonesian migration but because people with no heritage ties experience affinity for the music.

🏫 Institutional adoption

Why gamelan, not other Indonesian music?

• Treated as "classical" (court) music by scholars; researched since 1920s (sometimes with Dutch government support).
• Could be taken seriously in West as tradition analogous to European classical music.
• 1964: Indonesia exhibited gamelan at New York World's Fair; sold 10 sets to US colleges/universities.
• 1970: New Order regime sent gamelan/dance to Osaka World Exposition as emblem of Indonesia.

Educational appeal:

• England/Wales: included in National School Curriculum for Music.
• Lesson in civics: "you have to be responsible to everyone else in the group, no matter which part you play."
• Large enough to accommodate whole class; varying difficulty accommodates different abilities.
• Seems egalitarian (few Indonesians in Britain, so doesn't belong to some more than others).

What didn't spread:

• Contemporary Indonesian popular music (much more popular in Indonesia than gamelan) struggled under government regulations about broadcast.
• Officials believed it was undignified, unfit to represent Indonesia; found little support for international visibility.

🔗 Colonial legacies persist

Decolonization: the process by which colonies become independent and sovereign nations.

• Early 20th century: 500+ million people lived under colonial rule.
• Over 1900s, many colonies declared independence, but long-established relationships could not be erased overnight.
• Social and economic relationships created by colonialism often remain active even after political independence.
• These relationships provide pathways along which music moves.

Institutional preferences reflect colonial values:

• East Asian, European, North American institutions prefer: "classical"/courtly music over popular; established tradition over newer; music that seems like ritual over transparently commercial.
• These priorities were imposed by Europeans and carried on by postcolonial Indonesian governments.
• Musicians' and listeners' choices reflect contemporary circumstances but are rooted in layers of practices and values from the past.

🧩 Complex inside-outside relationships

• Sumarsam (Javanese American ethnomusicologist): "the colonial legacy has brought about a complex society in which individuals' and institutions' viewpoints cannot be sorted in terms of a simple inside-outside dichotomy."
• Colonial and postcolonial governments' efforts to establish/publicize gamelan gave it support within Indonesia and made it seem centrally important to outsiders.
• Outsiders' positive view then encouraged Indonesians to maintain that tradition.
• Example: what music means to generations of people of many ethnicities + ways colonizers and colonized interacted to shape tradition over time.

🔚 Key takeaways

🔚 Music moves with power

• Colonialism moved music through: forced labor (slave orchestras), exhibitions (1889 Paris), tourism (kecak), institutional support (gamelan in schools).
• Musical exchange was never equal; power imbalances shaped what moved, how, and where.

🔚 Contact creates new traditions

• Tanjidor: European instruments + Javanese percussion + local conditions = new Indonesian tradition.
• Debussy's music: gamelan influence absorbed into French style, no longer audibly Asian but still a trace.
• Kecak: sacred ritual + Ramayana drama + tourist market = invented tradition that is genuinely traditional.

🔚 "Authentic" is complicated

• Authenticity is often a matter of representation and perception, not objective age.
• Invented traditions use symbols from the past to seem legitimate.
• Strategic essentialism: playing to stereotypes can be a resource for less powerful groups.
• Localization: practices from elsewhere become local through adaptation.

🔚 Legacies outlast empires

• Decolonization ended political control but not social/economic/institutional relationships.
• Colonial values (preferring "classical" over popular, ritual over commercial) persist in global institutions.
• Pathways established by colonialism continue to shape which music gains visibility and moves globally.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The scattering of Roma people across continents demonstrates how diaspora populations create and maintain meaningful musical connections that span distances and cross national borders, even when displacement is involuntary.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What diaspora means: a whole population or ethnic group that moves out of one place of origin, usually scattering to different places—most diasporas are involuntary or semivoluntary.
• Who the Roma are: a diasporic minority group of Indian descent, with about 15 million in Europe, several million in the Middle East, and about one million in North America.
• Why this case matters: the Roma serve as a case study for how the scattering of people affects music-making and sparks musical interchange when populations come into contact.
• Key insight: even in diaspora, people can create and maintain meaningful connections across distances and national borders.

🌍 Understanding diaspora

🌱 What diaspora means

Diaspora: a whole population or ethnic group that moves out of one place of origin, usually scattering to different places.

• The word comes from "spore"—seeds in the wind, a "scattering" of people.
• The term is often applied to Roma, Jews, and Africans who have been displaced from their original homelands for a variety of reasons.
• Important characteristic: most diasporas are involuntary or semivoluntary, not a happily chosen option.
• Don't confuse: diaspora is not simply migration by choice; it typically involves displacement and scattering to multiple locations.

🔄 How diaspora affects music

• The movement of people and their practices and habits from one place to another has sparked musical interchange.
• This interchange happens as populations come into contact with one another.
• The excerpt frames this as a two-way process: "mutual influences" in the chapter title suggests that both scattered populations and host populations affect each other musically.

👥 The Roma people

🗺️ Geographic distribution

The Roma are spread across multiple continents:

Region	Estimated Population
Europe	About 15 million
Middle East	Several million
North America	About one million

• Population figures are uncertain—exact counts are difficult to establish.
• This wide geographic spread illustrates the concept of diaspora: one ethnic group scattered across many different places.

🏛️ Origins and identity

• The Roma are a minority group of Indian descent.
• There are many different language and cultural groups of Romani people—the diaspora is not culturally uniform.
• The term "Roma" comes from the Romani language and means "people."
• In recent years, some European Roma have adopted this term (the excerpt cuts off here, but indicates evolving self-identification).

🎵 Why Roma as a case study

• The chapter uses the Roma as a case study to explore how the scattering of people affects music-making.
• The focus is on understanding how diasporic populations maintain connections and create musical interchange despite being geographically separated.
• Example: When Roma communities settle in different countries, their musical practices both influence and are influenced by the music of surrounding populations, creating networks of musical exchange that cross national borders.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The kecak dance and gamelan music illustrate how colonial relationships and postcolonial governments shaped which Indonesian traditions gained international visibility, creating lasting institutional preferences that favor "classical" court music over popular forms.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Kecak as invented tradition: The kecak "monkey dance" was created in the 1930s to appeal to tourist stereotypes of "primitive" Bali, yet it functions as a real, meaningful tradition that supports local economies.
• Strategic essentialism: Balinese performers deliberately play to insulting stereotypes to access tourist dollars (tourism = ~30% of Balinese economy).
• Gamelan's global spread: Gamelan has been deterritorialized—adopted worldwide not by Indonesian migrants but by people with no heritage ties, supported by colonial-era scholarship and postcolonial government promotion.
• Common confusion: "Invented" does not mean "fake"—a tradition need not be ancient to be real; kecak's recent creation doesn't diminish its validity or social function.
• Colonial legacy in institutional preferences: Western and Indonesian institutions favor gamelan (courtly, "classical," ritual) over contemporary Indonesian popular music, reflecting colonial-era values that persist today.

🎭 Kecak: Creating Tradition for Tourism

🎭 What kecak is and how it was invented

• Kecak is known as the "monkey dance," performed by over a hundred men portraying an army of apes from the Hindu epic Ramayana.
• The excerpt notes it was created in the 1930s specifically to appeal to tourists.
• A 1996 National Geographic narrator described it as "primitive" sounds where "man becomes the animal of its origins."

🎯 Strategic essentialism as economic tactic

Strategic essentialism: A tactic of deliberately playing to other people's insulting stereotypes for one's own purposes.

• Balinese communities use this tactic to access tourist dollars.
• Tourism constitutes approximately 30% of the Balinese economy.
• The cultivation of "primitive" stereotypes has become a resource for postcolonial Indonesians.
• Example: Performers present kecak as ancient and primal, even though it's a 20th-century creation, because tourists expect to see "authentic" ancient traditions.

🔄 Why "invented" doesn't mean "invalid"

• The excerpt emphasizes: saying kecak is an invented tradition does not make it less valid or meaningful than any other tradition.
• Kecak is a traditional music in the functional sense:
  • Taught from one performer to another
  • Enables group cohesion
  • Earns money for community projects
• A tradition need not stretch back to the dawn of time to be real.
• Don't confuse: "Invented" vs. "fake"—kecak would not fulfill its social purpose if tourists didn't believe it was old; giving that ancient impression is itself part of the tradition.

👁️ The limits of perspective

• What we can know from watching a performance is only part of what is really going on.
• Different viewpoints (bystander, tourist, someone who talks to performers, YouTube viewer) provide only partial perspectives.
• What looks like an ancient practice to the outsider may merely be staged for the outsider's benefit.
• This question of perspective is especially important for understanding the legacy of colonialism.

🎵 Gamelan's Global Journey

🌍 Deterritorialization: gamelan unlinked from Indonesia

Deterritorialized: Unlinked from the place where it originated.

• Ethnomusicologist Maria Mendonça identified active gamelan groups in many countries:
  • Expected locations: Netherlands (colonial ties), Singapore, Taiwan, Japan (trade routes)
  • Unexpected locations: United States, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Poland, Australia, New Zealand
• Most groups have flourished not because of Indonesian migration but because people with no heritage ties to Indonesia experience an affinity for this music.
• Since Debussy's 1889 encounter with gamelan in Paris, it has become part of educational and musical institutions, not just a one-time exotic curiosity.

🏫 Gamelan in education

Why educators adopted gamelan:

Reason	Explanation
Civics lesson	"You have to be responsible to everyone else in the group, no matter which part you play"
Practical size	Large enough to accommodate a whole class of schoolchildren
Varied difficulty	Different parts accommodate different musical abilities within the group
Perceived equality	In Britain, few Indonesians live there, so gamelan doesn't "belong" to some members more than others

• In England and Wales, gamelan was included in the National School Curriculum for Music.
• It has become a beloved institution at many North American colleges and universities.

🔍 Why gamelan succeeded globally (and other Indonesian music didn't)

Anna Tsing's "friction" concept: Some kinds of music move easily and gain a foothold in new places; others do not.

Factors favoring gamelan:

1. Treated as "classical" music: Researched since the 1920s, sometimes with Dutch government financial support; analogous to European classical music as a court music with long history
2. Government support: After the 1964 World's Fair in New York, Indonesia sold 10 sets of gamelan instruments to U.S. colleges and universities (inspired by need for hard currency but also propagated gamelan in academic institutions)
3. Colonial-era validation: The colonial legacy made gamelan seem like a tradition of central importance to outsiders
4. Postcolonial promotion: New Order regime sent Javanese and Balinese gamelan to represent Indonesia at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka

In contrast: contemporary Indonesian popular music

• Much more popular than gamelan with listeners in today's Indonesia
• Struggled since the 1970s under changing regulations about what could be broadcast on government-controlled radio and television
• Indonesian officials believed this "less dignified" music was unfit to represent Indonesia
• Found little support for international visibility

🔗 Colonial Legacies and Institutional Preferences

🏛️ The persistence of colonial values

According to Javanese American ethnomusicologist Sumarsam:

"The colonial legacy has brought about a complex society in which individuals' and institutions' viewpoints cannot be sorted in terms of a simple inside-outside dichotomy."

How colonial efforts shaped gamelan:

• Colonial and postcolonial governments worked to establish, reestablish, or publicize musical traditions
• This gave gamelan support within Indonesia
• It also made gamelan seem like a tradition of central importance to outsiders
• The outsiders' positive view then encouraged Indonesians to maintain that tradition
• Example: Echoing the 1889 Exposition, the regime continued using gamelan as an emblem of Indonesia at international events

📊 Institutional preferences reflecting colonial priorities

East Asian, European, and North American institutions demonstrate preference for:

Preferred	Over	Colonial connection
"Classical" or courtly music	Popular music	European values of high/low culture
Established tradition	Newer traditions	Colonial-era scholarship focus
Music that seems like ritual	Transparently commercial music	Colonial romanticization of "authentic" practices

• These preferences accord with priorities imposed by Europeans and carried on by postcolonial governments of Indonesia.
• Musicians' choices to innovate or preserve tradition and listeners' preferences reflect contemporary circumstances but are rooted in many layers of practices and values from the past.

🌐 Colonial relationships don't end with independence

Key insight from the excerpt:

• The administration of any colony alters social and political norms, moving people around geographically and creating unequal power relations.
• After a colony breaks off the political relationship with a colonizer, the social and economic relationships created by colonialism often remain active.
• Even as they change, these relationships provide a network of connecting threads, shaping the pathways along which music moves.

What shapes gamelan's meaning today:

• What the music means and has meant to generations of people of many ethnicities
• The ways in which colonizers and colonized people have interacted to shape and reshape the tradition over time
• The institutional legacy of colonialism is still present in the widespread adoption of gamelan

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Kecak, a Balinese performance created in the 1930s for tourists, demonstrates how traditions can be purposefully invented and shaped by market forces to appear ancient while serving contemporary economic and community needs.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Kecak's origin and function: created around 1930 for tourists; income supports community goals like water supply and temple restoration rather than personal needs.
• Standardization through market pressure: tourist agencies and guides enforce conformity by refusing to send tourists to performances that don't adapt; innovations spread quickly and become standard.
• Invented tradition vs. authenticity: tourists perceive kecak as ancient heritage, but it has always been made for tourists, not for Balinese people—yet this does not make it less valid as a tradition.
• Common confusion: "authentic" does not mean "ancient"—a tradition can be real and meaningful even if recently created and purposefully designed to seem older than it is.
• Strategic essentialism: performers appeal to stereotypes (e.g., "primitive," "primeval") to access tourist dollars, turning insulting perceptions into economic resources in postcolonial Indonesia.

🎭 Kecak as community-based performance

🎭 What kecak is today

• About 20 troupes regularly perform kecak in Bali.
• It is community-based: people from a village work together to sustain regular paid performances.
• Income goes to community goals (water supply, temple restoration) rather than personal needs.
• Performers maintain close contact with hotels, restaurants, and tourist agencies; some troupes have permanent hotel contracts.

🌍 Historical context and political forces

Kecak has been shaped by larger political and economic forces over its 90-year history:

Period	Events	Impact on kecak/tourism
WWII–1945	Japanese occupation, war crimes	Tourism declined
1945–67 (Old Order)	Independence conflicts, religious/political violence, mass killings (500,000–1 million people)	Tourism declined sharply; Balinese nationalists dismantled tourism industry
1967–98 (New Order)	Stable authoritarian regime, new international airport (1969)	Tourism actively encouraged; increased attention to revitalizing Indonesian music including kecak

📐 Standardization and market control

📐 How kecak became standardized

Early kecak (1930s):

• Presented fragments of the Ramayana epic, not the full story; major characters could be omitted.
• Could perform stories from other sources.
• Chorus wore everyday clothes.

Since the 1970s:

• Only certain standardized scenes from the Ramayana are included.
• The story is presented in more complete form.
• Costume has become uniform: checkered sarong, red sash, white dots on temples and forehead.
• Differences among performances are less about artistic vision and more about whether well-trained soloists are available.

💰 Market enforcement of standards

• Tourists arrive on recommendations from travelers, guides, guidebooks, or hotel employees.
• Kecak troupes pay guides and tourist agencies to bring people to performances.
• Tourist agencies and guides can and do refuse to send tourists to performances that do not adapt.
• When one troupe makes an innovation, it spreads quickly and becomes standard across all troupes.
• Don't confuse: this is not organic artistic evolution—it is market-driven conformity enforced by economic gatekeepers.

🎭 The illusion of authenticity

🎭 What tourists perceive

Foreign tourists typically have no idea of market pressures and experience kecak as "authentic," meaning:

• Part of long-standing heritage of people on the island.
• A tradition practiced by the entire population.
• Handed down from generation to generation from time immemorial.
• Tourists cannot see that kecak is produced for their benefit and has always been made for tourists, not for Balinese people.

🎨 How the illusion is created

Multiple strategies cultivate the sense of ancient mystery:

Story and style:

• Tells a story known to be more than a thousand years old (Ramayana).
• Retains the resonance of ritual even though religious elements have been removed.
• Solo dancers' costumes look courtly and from another time.

Staging and atmosphere:

• In the 1930s, visitors descended into a dark temple courtyard lit only by torches.
• Performers gave the impression that every male from the neighboring village participated and that this was a regular social ritual.

Visual stereotypes:

• Chorus wears relatively little clothing and chants rapidly on a single syllable.
• Conforms to visitors' stereotypes of indigenous peoples.

Example: A 1996 National Geographic narrator described kecak as "man becomes the animal of its origins," "primeval sounds," portraying performers as "primitive"—even though performers are contemporaries of the tourists.

🧠 Virtual reality for tourists

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett proposes that this kind of performance is a form of virtual reality: it lets tourists see what they want to see by creating it for them.

• The performance allows visitors to understand themselves as "modern" people in contrast to what they see.
• This mirrors the Universal Exposition of the 1880s (mentioned in the excerpt).

🔑 Invented tradition concept

🔑 What "invented tradition" means

Invented tradition: traditions constructed for the needs of the present but made to seem valid by using symbols, rituals, and ideas from the past.

According to Eric Hobsbawm:

• Invented tradition is largely a matter of representation.
• Appropriating older symbols helps create the sense that the new practice is "authentic" or legitimate.
• It can help people feel part of a group.
• It can help convince people of new ideas by couching them in familiar, traditional terms.
• Traditions are invented more frequently in times of rapid change.
• They frequently remind individuals of citizenship, providing "flags, images, ceremonies, and music" that help them feel part of a nation.

⚠️ Common confusion: invented ≠ invalid

• Saying kecak is an invented tradition does not make it less valid or meaningful than any other tradition.
• A tradition need not stretch back to the dawn of time to be real.
• Kecak is a traditional music: taught by one performer to another, enabling group cohesion, earning money for community projects.
• Kecak would not fulfill its social purpose if tourists did not believe it was an old tradition—giving that ancient impression is itself part of the tradition.

💡 Strategic essentialism

💡 What strategic essentialism means

Strategic essentialism: a tactic of playing to other people's insulting stereotypes for one's own purposes.

• Balinese communities have used this tactic to access tourist dollars for their own purposes.
• Tourism constitutes about 30 percent of the Balinese economy.
• The cultivation of stereotypes (e.g., "primitive," "primeval") has proven to be a resource for postcolonial Indonesians.
• Don't confuse: this is not passive acceptance of stereotypes—it is active, purposeful use of them as an economic strategy.

🔍 Perspective and partial knowledge

🔍 What we can know from watching

The excerpt emphasizes that what we can know from watching a performance is only part of what is really going on.

Historians of the arts read many kinds of contextual clues:

• Letters and photographs.
• Interviews with musicians and bystanders.
• Observations about social relationships and the flow of money.

🌐 Multiple perspectives

No matter where a person stands in the scene, they will have access to only a partial perspective:

• As a bystander.
• As a tourist.
• As someone who talks to the performers.
• As a viewer of YouTube.

Key insight: What looks like an ancient practice to the outsider may merely be staged for the outsider's benefit.

🌍 Legacy of colonialism

This question of perspective is especially important for understanding the legacy of colonialism:

• Early in the 20th century, more than 500 million people lived under colonial rule.
• Over the course of the 1900s, many colonies declared independence and became sovereign nations (decolonization).
• But long-established colonial relationships could not be erased overnight.
• Our present-day world bears the scars of these relationships.

🌏 Indonesian music beyond Indonesia

🌏 Gamelan's global spread

Ethnomusicologist Maria Mendonça has identified active gamelan groups in many places:

• Expected locations (due to colonial or trade ties): Netherlands, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan.
• Unexpected locations: United States, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Poland, Australia, New Zealand.

🔄 Deterritorialization

Deterritorialized: unlinked from the place where it originated.

• Most gamelan groups abroad have flourished not because of Indonesians migrating to these places.
• Instead, people with no heritage ties to Indonesia experience an affinity for this music.
• Since Debussy's encounter with gamelan in Paris, gamelan has become not just a one-time encounter with an exotic curiosity but a part of education and cultural life in many countries.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Colonial relationships and diasporic movements shape which musical traditions gain global visibility and institutional support, creating pathways that persist long after formal colonial rule ends.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Perspective matters: what looks like ancient tradition to outsiders may be staged for them; observers only access partial views depending on their position.
• Deterritorialization: gamelan has spread worldwide not primarily through Indonesian migration but through non-Indonesians' affinity for the music, becoming unlinked from its place of origin.
• Colonial legacy shapes musical hierarchies: Western institutions favored gamelan as "classical" court music over Indonesian popular music, reflecting colonial-era priorities that postcolonial governments continued.
• Common confusion: colonial relationships don't end with independence—social, economic, and institutional networks created by colonialism continue to shape how music moves globally.
• Diaspora defined: a population or ethnic group scattered from one place of origin, usually involuntarily, creating connections that span distances and borders.

🎭 The Problem of Perspective

👁️ Partial views and staged authenticity

• No observer—whether bystander, tourist, interviewer, or YouTube viewer—has access to the complete picture of what's happening in a performance.
• What appears to be ancient practice may be staged specifically for outsiders' benefit.
• Example: The excerpt mentions kecak in the 1930s, where the impression of tradition is itself part of the tradition.

🔍 How historians read context

Historians use multiple sources to understand performances:

• Letters and photographs
• Interviews with musicians and bystanders
• Observations about social relationships
• Tracking the flow of money

⚠️ Why this matters for colonialism

• Understanding perspective is especially important for grasping colonialism's legacy.
• Early 20th century: over 500 million people lived under colonial rule.
• Decolonization: the process by which colonies declared independence and became sovereign nations throughout the 1900s.
• Long-established colonial relationships could not be erased overnight; the present-day world bears their scars.

🌍 Gamelan's Global Spread

🗺️ Where gamelan exists today

Ethnomusicologist Maria Mendonça has identified active gamelan groups in many places:

Expected locations	Reason	Unexpected locations
Netherlands	Former colonial relationship	United States
Singapore, Taiwan, Japan	Trade routes	Great Britain, Czech Republic, Poland, Australia, New Zealand

🎵 Deterritorialization of gamelan

Deterritorialization: when music becomes unlinked from the place where it originated.

• Most gamelan groups abroad have flourished not because of Indonesian migration.
• Instead, people with no heritage ties to Indonesia experience an affinity for the music.
• This represents a shift from Debussy's one-time encounter with gamelan in Paris to gamelan becoming part of educational and musical institutions.

🏫 Why gamelan succeeded in education

Practical reasons for adoption in schools and universities:

• Civics lesson: players must be responsible to everyone else in the group, no matter which part they play.
• Accommodates whole classes: a gamelan can be large enough for all students.
• Variable difficulty: different parts vary in difficulty, accommodating different musical abilities within the group.
• Perceived egalitarianism: in places like Britain with few Indonesian residents, gamelan doesn't belong to some group members more than others.

🏛️ Colonial Legacy and Musical Hierarchies

🎼 Why gamelan, not other Indonesian music?

The excerpt uses Anna Tsing's concept of "friction": some kinds of music move easily and gain a foothold in new places, while others do not.

Gamelan's advantages:

• Treated as "classical" or court music by scholars since the 1920s.
• Received financial support from the Dutch government for research.
• Could be taken seriously in the West as analogous to European classical music.

🏢 Institutional support mechanisms

Key moments of support:

• 1964 World's Fair in New York: Old Order Indonesia successfully exhibited gamelan.
• Instrument sales: Indonesian government sold 10 sets of gamelan instruments to U.S. colleges and universities (inspired by need for hard currency but also supported propagation).
• 1970 World Exposition in Osaka: New Order regime sent Javanese and Balinese gamelan and dance to represent Indonesia.

📺 What didn't get support

Contemporary Indonesian popular music faced obstacles:

• Much more popular than gamelan with listeners in Indonesia itself.
• Struggled since the 1970s under changing regulations about what could be broadcast on government-controlled radio and television.
• Officials believed this "less dignified" music was unfit to represent Indonesia.
• Found little support for international visibility.

🔄 The inside-outside complexity

According to Javanese American ethnomusicologist Sumarsam:

"The colonial legacy has brought about a complex society in which individuals' and institutions' viewpoints cannot be sorted in terms of a simple inside-outside dichotomy."

• Colonial and postcolonial governments' efforts to establish or publicize gamelan gave it support within Indonesia.
• This made gamelan seem centrally important to outsiders.
• Outsiders' positive view then encouraged Indonesians to maintain that tradition.
• Don't confuse: this is not a one-way influence but a circular reinforcement between internal and external validation.

🎯 Institutional Preferences and Colonial Values

📊 What institutions preferred

East Asian, European, and North American institutions demonstrated preferences for:

Preferred	Over	Reflects
"Classical" or courtly music	Popular music	Colonial-era hierarchies
Established traditions	Newer traditions	European priorities
Music that seems like ritual	Transparently commercial music	Postcolonial government values

These preferences accord with priorities imposed by Europeans and carried on by postcolonial governments of Indonesia.

🧬 Layers of meaning and practice

Musicians' and listeners' choices reflect:

• Contemporary circumstances
• Many layers of practices and values from the past
• What the music means and has meant to generations of people of many ethnicities
• Ways colonizers and colonized people have interacted to shape and reshape tradition over time

🌐 Lasting Colonial Networks

🔗 Why colonial relationships persist

Colonial relationships do not end when the colony becomes independent.

How colonialism creates lasting effects:

• Alters social and political norms: moves people around geographically.
• Creates unequal power relations: among different groups.
• Social and economic relationships remain active: even after political independence.
• Provides connecting threads: shapes the pathways along which music moves.

⚠️ Don't confuse

• Political independence ≠ end of colonial influence
• Even as relationships change, the network of connections created by colonialism continues to shape cultural movement.

🚶 Understanding Diaspora

🌱 What diaspora means

Diaspora: a whole population or ethnic group that moves out of one place of origin, usually scattering to different places.

• The word comes from "spore"—seeds in the wind, a "scattering" of people.
• Often applied to Roma, Jews, and Africans displaced from original homelands.
• Most diasporas are involuntary or semivoluntary, not happily chosen.

🎶 Diaspora and musical interchange

• Movement of people and their practices from one place to another sparks musical interchange.
• Populations come into contact as they scatter.
• Even in diaspora, people can create and maintain meaningful connections that span distances and cross national borders.

🌍 Roma as case study

• The Roma are a diasporic people, a minority group of Indian descent.
• Estimated 15 million in Europe, several million in the Middle East, about one million in North America (population figures uncertain).
• Many different language and cultural groups of Romani people.
• Roma: comes from the Romani language and means "people."

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Colonial and postcolonial institutional preferences have shaped which Indonesian music travels globally, with gamelan gaining worldwide support while popular Indonesian music remains marginalized, demonstrating that colonial relationships continue to influence music circulation long after political independence.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Gamelan's global spread: Indonesian gamelan has become institutionalized in schools and universities worldwide, while other Indonesian music forms have not traveled similarly.
• Why gamelan succeeded: Western institutions favored gamelan because it resembled "classical" court music, aligning with European values about serious, traditional, ritual music over commercial popular music.
• Colonial legacy in action: Dutch colonial research, postcolonial government promotion, and Western institutional preferences created mutually reinforcing support for gamelan as Indonesia's representative music.
• Common confusion: The global popularity of gamelan does not reflect its popularity within Indonesia—contemporary Indonesian popular music is far more popular domestically but lacks international visibility due to government and institutional gatekeeping.
• Friction concept: Anna Tsing's idea of "friction" explains why some music moves easily across borders while other music does not—institutional values and historical relationships create or block pathways for musical movement.

🎓 Gamelan in educational institutions

🏫 Adoption in schools and universities

• In England and Wales, gamelan was included in the National School Curriculum for Music.
• After the 1964 World's Fair in New York, the Indonesian government sold 10 sets of gamelan instruments to U.S. colleges and universities.
• Gamelan has become "a beloved institution at many North American colleges and universities."

🤝 Educational appeal

Educators are attracted to gamelan for practical and pedagogical reasons:

• Collaborative learning: Playing interlocking parts requires working together; one teacher described it as "a lesson in civics: you have to be responsible to everyone else in the group, no matter which part you play."
• Accommodates whole classes: A gamelan ensemble can be large enough for an entire class of schoolchildren.
• Variable difficulty: Different parts have different levels of difficulty, so students with varying musical abilities can participate in the same group.
• Perceived egalitarianism: Because few Indonesian people live in Britain, gamelan "does not belong to some members of the group more than others."

🏛️ Colonial and postcolonial institutional support

📚 Treatment as "classical" music

Gamelan has been treated as a "classical" (or court) music by scholars.

• Gamelan has been researched since the 1920s, sometimes with financial support from the Dutch government.
• As a court music with a long history, gamelan could be taken seriously in the West as a tradition analogous to European classical music.
• This classification gave gamelan institutional legitimacy that other Indonesian music forms lacked.

🌍 Government promotion

Old Order Indonesia (1964):

• Successfully exhibited gamelan at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.
• Sold 10 sets of gamelan instruments to U.S. institutions (motivated by need for hard currency but also supported propagation abroad).

New Order regime (1970):

• Sent Javanese and Balinese gamelan and dance to represent Indonesia at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka.
• This action "aimed to satisfy world opinion with a music that had proven recognition and appeal, as cultivated during the colonial period."

🔄 Inside-outside feedback loop

According to Javanese American ethnomusicologist Sumarsam:

"The colonial legacy has brought about a complex society in which individuals' and institutions' viewpoints cannot be sorted in terms of a simple inside-outside dichotomy."

• Colonial and postcolonial governments established, reestablished, or publicized gamelan, giving it support within Indonesia.
• This made gamelan seem to outsiders like a tradition of central importance.
• The outsiders' positive view then encouraged Indonesians to maintain that tradition.
• Example: The New Order regime continued supporting gamelan as an emblem of Indonesia, echoing the 1889 Exposition.

🚫 What didn't travel: Indonesian popular music

📻 Domestic popularity vs. international invisibility

• Contemporary Indonesian popular music is "much more popular than gamelan with listeners in today's Indonesia."
• However, this music has "struggled since the 1970s under changing regulations about what kinds of music and dance could be broadcast over government-controlled radio and television."

🎭 Institutional gatekeeping

• Indonesian government officials believed this "less dignified music was unfit to represent Indonesia."
• As a result, popular music "found little support for international visibility."
• Don't confuse: What is popular within a country is not necessarily what travels internationally—institutional decisions about "dignified" representation determine which music gains global pathways.

🧲 Why gamelan moved: institutional preferences

🎼 Western institutional values

East Asian, European, and North American institutions demonstrated preferences for:

Preferred	Over	Why it matters
"Classical" or courtly music	Popular music	Aligns with European notions of serious, legitimate art
Established tradition	Newer traditions	Long history confers authenticity and research value
Music that seems like ritual	Transparently commercial music	Ritual appears more culturally significant

• These preferences "accord with the priorities imposed by Europeans and carried on by the postcolonial governments of Indonesia."

🌪️ Friction: why some music moves and other doesn't

Anna Tsing's idea of "friction": some kinds of music move easily and gain a foothold in new places, and others do not.

• Gamelan is "a good example" of this concept.
• Musical values of European and Euro-American listeners "garnered this music institutional support."
• The colonial legacy created pathways that made gamelan's movement easier while blocking other Indonesian music.

🕰️ Lasting colonial relationships

🔗 Colonial relationships beyond independence

"Colonial relationships do not end when the colony becomes independent."

• The administration of any colony alters social and political norms.
• Colonialism moves people geographically and creates unequal power relations.
• After political independence, "the social and economic relationships created by colonialism often remain active."

🗺️ Shaping musical pathways

• Even as colonial relationships change, "these relationships provide a network of connecting threads, shaping the pathways along which music moves."
• Musicians' choices to innovate or preserve tradition and listeners' preferences "reflect contemporary circumstances, but they are rooted in many layers of practices and values from the past."
• These layers include:
  • What the music means and has meant to generations of people of many ethnicities.
  • The ways colonizers and colonized people have interacted to shape and reshape the tradition over time.

🌐 Contemporary implications

The widespread adoption of gamelan shows "the institutional legacy of colonialism is still present":

• Institutional preferences established during colonialism continue to determine which music is valued.
• Postcolonial governments inherited and perpetuated these preferences.
• The result is a system where "classical" court music circulates globally while domestically popular music remains invisible internationally.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Colonial and postcolonial institutional priorities shaped which Indonesian music gained global visibility, and diasporic movements create networks through which music travels and transforms.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Gamelan's global spread: gamelan became a worldwide phenomenon because colonial and postcolonial institutions treated it as "classical" court music, giving it academic and governmental support.
• What moves and what doesn't: gamelan gained institutional footholds abroad while contemporary Indonesian popular music struggled, illustrating how some music moves easily ("friction") and others do not.
• Colonial legacies persist: colonial relationships do not end at independence; social, economic, and institutional networks created during colonialism continue to shape music's pathways.
• Common confusion: "inside-outside dichotomy"—colonial legacy creates complex societies where viewpoints cannot be sorted simply as insider vs. outsider; outsiders' positive views can reinforce insiders' maintenance of traditions.
• Diaspora as a network: diaspora (involuntary scattering of populations) creates connections across distances that enable musical interchange and influence.

🎵 Why gamelan spread globally

🎓 Institutional support from colonial and postcolonial governments

• Gamelan was researched since the 1920s, sometimes with Dutch government financial support.
• As a court music with long history, gamelan could be taken seriously in the West as analogous to European classical music.
• After the 1964 World's Fair in New York, the Indonesian government sold 10 sets of gamelan instruments to U.S. colleges and universities.
• The New Order regime continued to support gamelan as an emblem of Indonesia, sending Javanese and Balinese gamelan to the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka.

🏫 Educational appeal in Western institutions

• In England and Wales, gamelan was included in the National School Curriculum for Music.
• Educators valued the sense of working together required to play interlocking parts; one teacher called it "a lesson in civics: you have to be responsible to everyone else in the group, no matter which part you play."
• Practical advantages:
  • A gamelan can be large enough to accommodate a whole class of schoolchildren.
  • Different parts vary in difficulty, so different musical abilities can be accommodated.
  • Because few Indonesian people live in Britain, gamelan seems egalitarian—it does not belong to some members more than others.
• Gamelan became a beloved institution at many North American colleges and universities for similar reasons.

🎭 "Classical" vs. popular music preferences

Music type	Institutional treatment	Result
Gamelan (court music)	Treated as "classical" tradition; received colonial and postcolonial support; exhibited at world fairs	Gained international visibility and academic adoption
Contemporary Indonesian popular music	Struggled under changing broadcast regulations; considered less dignified and unfit to represent Indonesia	Found little support for international visibility

Don't confuse: popularity within Indonesia vs. international visibility—contemporary popular music is much more popular with Indonesian listeners than gamelan, but gamelan received far more institutional support for global spread.

🌐 The concept of "friction" in music movement

🧲 Why some music moves and others don't

Friction (Anna Tsing's concept): some kinds of music move easily and gain a foothold in new places, and others do not.

• Gamelan is a good example: it became a worldwide phenomenon while other kinds of Indonesian music did not.
• Musical values of European and Euro-American listeners garnered gamelan institutional support.
• Institutional preferences shaped which music could travel:
  • Preference for "classical" or courtly music over popular music.
  • Preference for established traditions over newer ones.
  • Preference for music that seems like ritual over transparently commercial music.
• These preferences accord with priorities imposed by Europeans and carried on by postcolonial governments of Indonesia.

🔄 Complex feedback loops

• According to Javanese American ethnomusicologist Sumarsam: "the colonial legacy has brought about a complex society in which individuals' and institutions' viewpoints cannot be sorted in terms of a simple inside-outside dichotomy."
• Colonial and postcolonial efforts to establish or publicize musical traditions gave gamelan support within Indonesia but also made it seem to outsiders like a tradition of central importance.
• The outsiders' positive view then encouraged Indonesians to maintain that tradition.
• Example: The 1889 Exposition established gamelan's appeal; the New Order regime continued to send gamelan to world expositions (like Osaka 1970) to satisfy world opinion with music that had proven recognition and appeal cultivated during the colonial period.

🕰️ Colonial legacies and ongoing networks

🔗 Why colonial relationships persist after independence

• Colonial relationships do not end when the colony becomes independent.
• The administration of any colony alters social and political norms:
  • Moving people around geographically.
  • Creating unequal power relations among them.
• After a colony breaks off the political relationship with a colonizer, the social and economic relationships created by colonialism often remain active.
• Even as they change, these relationships provide a network of connecting threads, shaping the pathways along which music moves.

🎼 Layers of practices and values

• Musicians' choices to innovate or preserve tradition and listeners' choices about which music to prefer reflect contemporary circumstances, but they are rooted in many layers of practices and values from the past.
• These layers include:
  • What the music means and has meant to generations of people of many ethnicities.
  • The ways in which colonizers and colonized people have interacted to shape and reshape the tradition over time.

🌍 Diaspora and musical interchange

🌱 What is diaspora

Diaspora: a whole population or ethnic group that moves out of one place of origin, usually scattering to different places.

• The word diaspora comes from the word spore—seeds in the wind, a "scattering" of people.
• The term is often applied to Roma, Jews, and Africans who have been displaced from their original homelands for a variety of reasons.
• Most diasporas are involuntary or semivoluntary, not a happily chosen option.

🎶 How diaspora affects music-making

• The movement of people and their practices and habits from one place to another has sparked musical interchange as populations come into contact.
• Even in diaspora, people can create and maintain meaningful connections that span distances and cross national borders.

👥 Roma as a case study

Roma: a diasporic people, a minority group of Indian descent.

• Scholars believe there are about 15 million Roma in Europe, several million in the Middle East, and about one million in North America (population figures are uncertain).
• There are many different language and cultural groups of Romani people.
• The term Roma comes from the Romani language and means "people."

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The Roma, a diasporic people scattered across Europe, have both adapted their music to local cultures and profoundly shaped those cultures' musical identities, even as they faced persistent persecution and struggled for recognition of their creative contributions.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What diaspora means: a population scattered from one origin to many places, often involuntarily; the Roma are a diasporic people of Indian descent now numbering ~15 million in Europe.
• Integration vs. separation shapes music: Romungro (integrated, urban, Hungarian-speaking) Roma developed professional "Gypsy music" for Hungarian patrons, while Vlach Roma (rural, Romani-speaking) preserved distinct vocal traditions for their own communities.
• Mutual influence, not one-way: Roma adopted local instruments, languages, and styles to survive economically, but they also defined what "Hungarian music" or "Spanish flamenco" became—yet credit and belonging were often denied them.
• Common confusion—who owns the music?: Hungarian nationalists claimed "Gypsy music" was purely Hungarian (Roma were just hired performers), while others vilified it as corrupted popular music; in reality, the style emerged from centuries of Roma-Hungarian interaction.
• Persecution persists: from enslavement in Wallachia/Moldavia, to forced assimilation policies, to the Holocaust (two-thirds killed, no reparations until the 1970s), to ongoing discrimination in housing and education.

🌍 Who are the Roma and how did they scatter?

🌍 Origins and migration

Diaspora: a whole population or ethnic group that moves out of one place of origin, usually scattering to different places (from the word spore—seeds in the wind).

• The Roma are a minority group of Indian descent (North Indian origin).
• Unclear how the diaspora began: some histories suggest thousands of Indian musicians were deported into the Sassanid Empire (now Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan) to provide entertainment; other accounts point to Arabic invasions of India causing outward migration.
• Over generations, Roma moved through the Byzantine Empire into the Balkans, Greece, and Slavic regions; during the 1400s–early 1500s, small groups reached Spain and Scandinavia.
• Don't confuse: "diaspora" does not mean voluntary migration—most diasporas are involuntary or semi-voluntary, driven by persecution or economic necessity.

🛡️ Survival strategies and persecution

• Roma found creative ways to stay safe as newcomers: acting as Christian penitents or pilgrims, using forged letters from nobles or the pope.
• Europeans wanted Roma services (musicians, herbalists, fortune-tellers, horse-traders, metalworkers, weapon manufacturers) but viewed them as criminals, intruders, or untrustworthy because of their dark skin and distance from their origin.
• Sometimes accused of witchcraft and murdered without trial.
• In eastern Europe, some rulers valued Roma services and paid them in food (increasing dependence); in Wallachia and Moldavia, lords enslaved almost all Roma as skilled laborers.

🏛️ Forced assimilation

• European governments enforced assimilation—requiring Roma to act like the people around them.
• Spain (1640s onward): king attempted to force Roma to adopt Spanish customs.
• Habsburg Empire (1740s onward): Empress Maria Teresa required Roma to settle, pay taxes, marry only non-Roma, and prohibited them from setting themselves apart by clothing, language, or professions (trying to dilute their racial identity).
• Result: Most Roma did not entirely give up their traditions; they continued using Romani language alongside local languages (German, Slovak, Spanish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, French). Integration had effects (Romani language includes many borrowed words), but efforts to extinguish Romani traditions largely failed.

🕯️ Modern persecution

• Holocaust: almost two-thirds of Roma in Nazi-occupied Europe were killed; Roma received no postwar reparations from Germany, and the killing was not fully acknowledged until the late 1970s.
• Forced child removal: policies taking Romani children from families to encourage assimilation persisted in Switzerland until the 1970s and were prominent in communist East Bloc countries.
• Ongoing discrimination: forced sterilization, police brutality, routine denial of access to education; Roma have sought redress in the European Court of Human Rights.
• Despite centuries in Europe, Roma have not always been offered a sense of belonging.

🎻 Romungro music: integration and the "Gypsy music" style

🎻 Who are the Romungro?

• The Romungro are Hungarian Roma who have historically been integrated into Hungarian society, mostly urban.
• Most speak more Hungarian than Romani; many have lost Romani language skills altogether.
• Documents from the 1700s show "Gypsy music" ensembles hired to provide party and dance music at courts of princes and dukes—integrated into the fabric of life for ethnic Hungarians, but as a separate social class (hired help at parties).
• Today they continue as professional musicians and work in other jobs; they still face discrimination in education, though university access is growing.

🎶 What is Romungro "Gypsy music"?

"Gypsy music": popular music often performed in cafés or restaurants in regions historically belonging to Hungary by professional musicians who are frequently ethnic Romanies.

• For a long time, no distinction was made between "Hungarian" style and "Gypsy" style: Hungarians thought of it as their own (it was made for them), and Western Europeans thought Hungarian and Gypsy styles were the same (both seemed foreign).
• Structure: very often a single piece includes a slow section ("music for listening") followed by a fast section ("music for dancing")—a holdover from a popular Hungarian dance style of the late 1700s.
• Instruments: Romungro musicians adopted the violin and clarinet (two Western European instruments) as the most prominent lead instruments; bands also include cimbalom (hammer dulcimer), bass, and second violin.
• Blended style: the music blends ethnic Hungarian elements with a performance style particular to Romungro musicians (not intrinsically ethnic—non-Romungro can adopt it—but associated with Roma because so many made a living as professional musicians).

🎭 Performance characteristics

• Slow style (listening music): sounds very romantic; lead violinist plays fast ornamental notes "around" the main melody, often hesitates and holds out notes to prolong suspense; tempo is variable.
• Fast style (dancing music): sounds more like "fiddling" with a steadier stream of notes; chord changes become more frequent; musicians play at a quick and comparatively steady tempo with "oom-pah" patterns in bass and second violin.
• Purposeful imprecision: even at fast tempo, the lead violinist arrives at the main beat a little before or behind everyone else, leading the group to speed up toward the end—adds spontaneity and moment-to-moment suspense.
• Virtuosity: technically difficult playing (playing two notes at once, extremely fast notes) is an important part of the performance; the person who plays this way is called a virtuoso. To play this music well requires being as dramatic and showy as possible.

Example: Lajos Sárközi Jr. (1991–), from a Romani family with a long musical tradition, developed his virtuosity at Hungary's Liszt Academy of Music; he is also an expert in jazz, including Manouche jazz.

⚖️ Who gets the credit? Nationalism and racism

• The controversy: because Romani performers are so often thought of in racist terms, the question of who should take credit for "Gypsy music" has been raised throughout its history.
• Hungarian nationalist view (1854 onward): the musical basis of Hungarian "Gypsy music" was entirely Hungarian, including features present in Hungarian folk songs for centuries; Roma were merely hired performers who adapted to the Hungarian style. Given the low social status of Romani people, many Hungarian critics were unwilling to see them as creative partners in forming the national style.
  • Nationalism: can encompass not only investment in the nation's political success but also promotion of its artistic achievements; based on a belief in shared genealogy, history, or ethnicity. In a nation that saw itself as ethnically Hungarian, Roma were outsiders, no matter how long they had been there.
• Early 20th-century ethnomusicologists: acknowledged that Hungarian "Gypsy music" was Romani in origin, but claimed it was no good—merely popular music corrupted to appeal to the masses. They blamed Roma for demeaning the national style and went looking for "pure" performances among ethnically Hungarian peasants in rural areas.
  • Don't confuse: this idea of "purity" was both an unattainable ideal and a racist one. It is unusual for a given ethnic group or music to maintain firm, clear boundaries over centuries; Eastern Europe's history is full of migrations that encouraged mixing of peoples and musics.
• Franz Liszt's view (19th century): insisted that Romani performers should receive credit for their musical creations; Hungarian music critics were outraged.
• Western European orientalism: people in Western Europe were reasonably willing to accept Liszt's story because Hungarians, being of a different language group, already seemed peculiar. Western Europeans enjoyed reading about "oriental secrets" and hearing vivid, exciting performances; whether these were Hungarian or Gypsy was not very important to them—they did not recognize the difference.
  • Irony: the way Western Europeans thought about Hungarians was similar to the way Hungarians thought about Roma. Believing that some people are exotic "others" can make their music seem more attractive, even as it also creates a disparity of opportunities.

🎤 Vlach Roma music: tradition apart

🎤 Who are the Vlach Roma?

• The Vlach Roma (sometimes spelled Vlax; final sound is "kh" at the back of the throat) are the second most populous subgroup of Romani people in Hungary.
• Descendants of Roma who were enslaved in Wallachia and Moldavia; those who moved into Hungary after their emancipation in the 1850s lived in rural areas, were not well integrated into Hungarian language and culture, and tended to preserve the Romani language.
• Maintained their own musical styles, distinct from the urban Romungro.
• Traditionally, Vlach Roma were not professional musicians but artisans (metalworkers, woodcarvers) for generations; they made music among themselves, for their own use.

🎵 Slow style: laments

• Songs in the slow style are typically laments: they express longing, sadness, or frustration.
• Not accompanied by instruments; comparatively simple.
• Melody generally moves from higher notes to lower notes, like a sigh; mournful tone.
• Tempo is variable; singer uses both timing of phrases and quality of voice to express sorrow.
• Interactive: music-making includes audience comments inserted into the singer's pauses.

Example: "Grief, Grief" (sung by Mihály Várady)—lyrics refer to being orphaned, alone, damned by God, suffering, poverty. Among Romani people, separation from one's family is one of the worst tragedies imaginable—and a common one throughout their history of persecution.

🎉 Fast style: dance music

• Emphasizes happier themes; music for dancing, usually performed at parties with friends and extended family.
• Produced in a distinctive way: people use their mouths to imitate the sounds of the string bass and other instruments to maintain a steady rhythm.

  • Oral bassing: the technical term for this strategy (closest analogy in Western tradition is beatboxing).

• Can be accompanied with hand-clapping, spoons, or other rhythm sounds; if another instrument is available, it may be used, but the foundation is the singing and the rhythm created by oral bassing.
• Singer alternates lyrics in Hungarian and Romani with oral bassing; conveys the tune with singing, vocables (syllables that do not carry linguistic meaning), and trumpet-like buzzing with lips.

Example: "You Are Not That Sort of Girl" (Mihály Kolompar)—lighthearted, flirtatious song; singer playfully denounces a girl who might not return his affections.

Example: "Who Has Been There"—two singers perform; a woman's voice introduces oral bassing, then sings the main tune (words in Hungarian and Romani), while a man joins with oral bassing as accompaniment; other people join in as the song continues. This kind of singing might be heard at a festive family party, with different people taking over so everyone has a turn to dance.

🌐 Recent changes: folk revival and world music

• Historical distinction between integrated and nonintegrated populations has broken down in recent years.
• Early 1970s onward: a revival of folk music and dance in Hungary encouraged exploration of many kinds of traditional music; through formal classes or informal folk-dance evenings, amateur and professional enthusiasts brought rural music and musicians into urban environments.
• 1980s: a boom in world beat (also called world music)—the mass-marketing of recordings of many different ethnic groups and traditions.
• These trends brought Vlach Roma music greater visibility and brought Vlach Roma people opportunities and connections.
• Example: the Vlach Roma performing group Kalyi Jag has capitalized on the appeal and novelty of this music; their recordings have made this music accessible internationally. So have the "Gypsy punk" musicians in the New York band Gogol Bordello.

🗺️ Diversity across the diaspora

• The Hungarian Vlach Roma are only one among many Romani groups.
• Despite linguistic connections, different groups have distinctive musical styles and practices.
• Example: Greek Romani music (lead instrument is a zurna, a reed instrument like an oboe) bears no resemblance to the Romani music typically performed in Hungary.
• Because the Roma are a diasporic population, scattered like seeds throughout many places, they have adapted their musical practices to suit their situations.

Group	Integration	Language	Music style	Instruments	Social role
Romungro	Integrated into Hungarian society, mostly urban	More Hungarian than Romani	"Gypsy music" for Hungarian patrons; slow (listening) + fast (dancing) sections	Violin, clarinet, cimbalom, bass, second violin	Professional musicians, hired entertainers
Vlach Roma	Rural, not well integrated	Preserved Romani language	Laments (slow) + dance music (fast); made for their own communities	Primarily voice, oral bassing, hand-clapping, spoons	Traditionally artisans (metalworkers, woodcarvers), not professional musicians

Key takeaway: Whether a particular group is economically, socially, and artistically integrated into the surrounding community affects the development of their tradition over time. Integration of a minority population with the majority may or may not mean altering aspects of one's own language, music, or customs in exchange for better opportunities.

🎼 "Gypsiness" in European classical music

🎼 Appropriation and stereotype

• Romani music (particularly the Romungro style) was consciously incorporated into the concert music (or "classical") tradition of Central and Western Europe.
• People referred to the classical adoption of the Romungro style as the "Hungarian style"—believing that Romungro and Hungarian music were the same thing.
• This appropriation was part of a widespread preoccupation with foreign "others."
• Historical context: until the late 1600s, the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire reigned in Southeastern Europe, including most of Hungary, extending to the outskirts of Vienna. Not surprising that Austrians and Germans were preoccupied with Turkish and other "Eastern" peoples—this inspired a fad of caricatured imitations of Eastern music in Western music.
• The point was not to portray other people's music accurately but to present a kind of "foreignness" in music.
• "Gypsy music" (the Romungro style) became one of the styles available to composers of classical music in Western Europe.

Terminology note: When discussing the stereotyped version of the people or the music, the excerpt uses the term Gypsy (even though it has pejorative connotations) to distinguish the stereotype from the lives and performances of Romani people.

🎻 How classical composers borrowed Romungro features

• European musicians typically did not imitate the Romungro style directly, but they used enough of its key features that the result was recognizable as "Gypsy."
• Key borrowings:
  • Presence of an individual instrument or voice (often violin or clarinet) played with heightened drama or expression.
  • Rhythmic flexibility (with a tendency to speed up or slow down dramatically).
  • A high degree of virtuosity.

🎶 Joseph Haydn's String Quartet, op. 54, no. 2 (second movement)

• Haydn (1732–1809) did not call this work "Gypsy," but many have recognized Romungro features in it.
• A string quartet usually includes one slow movement; it was a challenge for the composer to maintain the listener's interest at a sedate pace.
• Haydn solved the problem by allowing the violin to play a highly ornamented melody that moves at a variable tempo, in the manner of the Romungro slow style.
• Differences from Romani performance:
  • Less room for improvisation: the piece is written down in music notation, and changes in the melody's speed are specified precisely in the violin part.
  • The violin's runs of quick notes are still slower than what a Romani musician would play.
  • Haydn chose an ordinary minor scale (a common Western scale pattern) rather than the altered notes characteristic of Romungro performance.
• This music is a distant echo of Romani performance, not an attempt to faithfully recreate it.
• This strategy was used occasionally by later composers: Johannes Brahms's Clarinet Quintet (1891) includes a slow movement that follows Haydn's model.

🎭 Context and cultural meaning

• Composers of Haydn's time (1732–1809) frequently borrowed ideas from dance music or popular tunes.
• Romungro bands were gaining fame by playing in Hungarian courts during Haydn's career, so he likely came into direct contact with their music.
• For Haydn, the Romungro style was just one of many useful musical "topics" to draw on and did not likely reflect a particular point of view regarding the Roma people.
• During the 1800s, though, the stereotyped idea of the "Gypsy" began to permeate popular culture: Gypsy characters were featured in opera and operetta (such as the famous Carmen), and imitations of the Gypsy style of instrumental music flourished.
• The idea of the Gypsy had symbolic value (the excerpt cuts off here, but implies that the stereotype became a cultural trope divorced from the reality of Romani lives).

Don't confuse: borrowing musical features vs. understanding or respecting the people. Classical composers used Romungro features as exotic color, not as a faithful representation or acknowledgment of Romani creativity and suffering.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

European classical composers appropriated selected features of Romani (Romungro) music to create an exotic, thrilling sound for their audiences, while real Romani people remained marginalized despite their music's deep integration into European national identities.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Selective borrowing: Composers like Haydn, Liszt, and Brahms adopted certain Romani musical features (tempo flexibility, ornamentation, minor keys) but excluded others (improvisation, non-Western scales, piercing tone quality).
• Exoticism as attraction and repulsion: Europeans fantasized about Roma as "free" and "natural" outsiders, using their music to imagine crossing social boundaries without actually doing so—a mix of fascination and loathing.
• Mediation changes meaning: Romani music passed through multiple filters (composer's selective listening, notation, publication, reinterpretation) before reaching European audiences, creating a gap between stereotype and reality.
• Common confusion: "Hungarian" vs. "Gypsy" music—the two are often conflated because Romani musicians created distinctive national styles, yet Roma remain excluded from full belonging in those nations.
• Modern visibility without power: Contemporary Romani performers like Joci Pápai gain media attention but must conform to stereotypes and state expectations, achieving musical visibility while persecution continues.

🎻 Early Classical Appropriation: Haydn and Brahms

🎻 Haydn's distant echo

Haydn's approach: allowing the violin to play a highly ornamented melody that moves at a variable tempo, in the manner of the Romungro slow style.

• What was borrowed: melodic freedom, tempo flexibility, ornamentation.
• What was changed:
  • Less room for improvisation—everything written down in notation.
  • Tempo changes specified precisely in the score.
  • Ordinary minor scale instead of altered Romani notes.
  • Slower runs of notes than actual Romani performance.
• Result: "a distant echo of Romani performance, not an attempt to faithfully recreate it."
• Example: Brahms's Clarinet Quintet (1891) followed the same model—evoking freedom within a fully notated framework.

🎹 Brahms's Hungarian Dances

• Purpose: sociable four-hand piano pieces for amateur home performance.
• Features: fast melodies, minor keys, variable tempos, "oom-pah" accompaniments.
• Accessibility: significantly easier than Liszt's virtuosic works, allowing middle-class Europeans with pianos to enjoy the "Gypsy" style at home.
• Effect: people who would never encounter a Romani person became familiar with a mediated, domesticated version of the style.

🔥 Liszt's Virtuosity and Exoticism

🔥 Liszt's deeper engagement

Unlike Haydn's distant echo, Liszt aimed to capture:

• The specific instrumental sounds of a Romungro band (e.g., cimbalom imitation on piano).
• The rousing spirit and virtuosity of Romani performance.
• Both slow dramatic sections and fast, accelerating passages.

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 demonstrates:

• Slow section: simple melody decorated with ornamental flourishes, dramatic tempo changes, pauses and rushing ahead.
• Fast section: imitation of cimbalom hammers hitting strings, shift from slow to fast music, acceleration to an exciting close that "sometimes sounds as if it might veer out of control."

🌍 Exoticism defined

Exoticism: imaginary thinking that crosses social boundaries, typically involving people with higher social status fantasizing about those they perceive as inferiors.

Liszt's complex relationship:

• Wrote about Roma as an "exotic race" with racial stereotyping.
• Also expressed deep admiration for their virtuosity.
• Paid close attention to their playing and imitated them as precisely as possible.
• Key insight: "Exoticism includes not only racist denigration but also affectionate admiration: a complicated blend of ideas."

How exoticism works:

• Allows audiences to imagine contact with someone they believe is utterly different.
• Contains that contact within the frame of a comfortable performance.
• Activates prior stereotypes and prejudices—these ideas "are not separate from the music: they are part of what makes the performance fascinating."

💰 Professional and financial benefits

• Liszt's virtuosity became legendary (caricatured as having eight arms).
• Romungro style provided a vehicle for showcasing his skill—a "distinctive brand."
• Novelty drew people to live performances.
• Published sheet music in multiple versions for financial gain.
• Inequality: As an international performer with access to publishing markets, Liszt benefited financially "in a way that Romani musicians could not."

🎭 What Was Lost in Translation

🎭 Features excluded from appropriation

Romani feature	European classical version	Why the difference
Improvisation	Fully notated scores	Written tradition; "free-spiritedness" specified in advance
Non-Western scales	Regularized minor modes	Easier for Western ears and instruments
Bright/piercing tone	Markedly reduced	Preference for smoother classical sound
Variable tempo (extreme)	Moderate flexibility	Controlled within classical norms

Don't confuse: The European "Hungarian style" with actual Romungro music—it was a "domesticated European version" that selected appealing features while excluding others.

📞 The mediation problem

Mediation: the process by which content passes through multiple filters, changing meaning at each step.

The chain of mediation:

1. Romani performance
2. European composer's selective listening
3. Composition for different instruments
4. Publication in sheet music
5. Interpretation by other musicians

Result: "Much like a whispered game of 'telephone,' the content and meaning has changed in the process."

• People at the end may understand something very different from the original.
• Europeans developed familiarity with the style but not with Romani people or their reality.
• This gap caused grief: "Many Europeans have maintained an affection for the popular cultural manifestations of 'Gypsiness' yet have expressed a revulsion for real, living Romani people."

🏛️ Identity, Belonging, and National Music

🏛️ The Hungarian/Gypsy confusion

• Romani musicians created some of Europe's most distinctive national styles.
• "Ongoing confusion between what is 'Hungarian' and what is 'Gypsy'" testifies to connections between majority and minority populations.
• Paradox: Roma have lived in Hungary for hundreds of years but are granted "much less 'belonging' than ethnic Hungarians and only under certain conditions."

🪞 The outsider's role in self-definition

"The outsider is 'absolutely destined to return . . . to trouble the dreams of those who are comfortable inside.'" —Stuart Hall

• Roma were not geographically distant but differentiated by "skin color, clothing, music, social class, and behavior."
• Europeans defined themselves as "white, modern, and civilized" against the perception of Romani "others."
• Exoticism's boundary-crossing: Because these "others" were close to home, most Europeans perceived them as dangerous, not just curious.
• Incorporating Romani music made European classical music "more exciting, with a definite flavor of having crossed a boundary to experience something dangerous."

🎪 Strange intimacy

• Roma and majority populations are "not entirely separate; neither are they fully integrated."
• "They remain in tension with each other but tightly bound together."
• Romani music absorbed into Europe's ethnic majorities' music.
• Europe's "persistent preoccupation with Romani people" shows the thoroughgoing impact of this relationship.

🎤 Contemporary Representation: Eurovision 2017

🎤 Joci Pápai's "Origo"

Context:

• Eurovision Song Contest: international pop competition with ~180 million viewers.
• Theme: "Celebrate Diversity."
• Pápai: Romani Hungarian singer, first major Romani success in Eurovision.
• Irony: Kiev burned Romani neighborhoods before the contest to "clean the city," forcing 350 people from homes while claiming to "celebrate diversity."

Musical strategy—blending identities:

Element	What it signals	To whom
Four-line folk song pattern	"Purely" Hungarian heritage	Hungarian audience
Lyrics: "born to be a wanderer"	Romani traveler stereotype	All audiences
Vocables (Jálomá)	Romani vocal style	International audience
Dancer's belly dance, wide skirt	Generic "Gypsy" folksiness	European audience
Violin with ornaments	Romungro tradition	Knowledgeable listeners
Water can percussion	Vlach Roma popularization	Broad audience
Couples' dance (csárdás)	Hungarian national dance	Hungarian audience
Rap section	International pop, personal struggle	Global youth audience

🎭 The rap's political message

• Tone shifts from plaintive to angry.
• Lyrics: music is his "weapon," expressing grief and demanding respect.
• "Tears of thousands are streaming down my guitar."
• Oblique politics: No explicit mention of Roma or specific grievances—meaning conveyed indirectly.
• Dancer drops to floor looking distressed; Pápai comforts her.

🌐 Suspended between global media and nation-state

Musicians like Pápai are "suspended between the global media and the nation state." —Anikó Imre

Requirements for access:

• Conform to particular expectations.
• "Hand-picked" by state officials and music industry executives.
• Distance themselves from Romani traditions for broader appeal.
• Sing in Hungarian instead of Romani.
• Sing patriotic songs about the nation-state.
• Play demeaning roles.

What changes:

• Some stereotypes combated (dirtiness, criminality).
• Other stereotypes reinforced (wandering, exoticism)—these are "a valuable selling point."
• Result: "Popularizing 'Gypsy music' has meant capitalizing on those stereotypes, which only reinforces their power."

🎯 Visibility without meaningful change

• Pápai's performance raised visibility of Romani people.
• Did not inform audiences about continuing struggle for equal rights.
• After selecting a Romani representative, "Hungarians and the Eurovision Song Contest can claim to be inclusive and multicultural, even as the persecution of Roma continues all around them."
• Warning: "The musical visibility of Roma is promising, but it may not deliver a meaningful change in circumstances."

🌍 Advocacy and the Future

🌍 International Roma movement

• Past 60 years: organized using European Union and United Nations human rights frameworks.
• Identity shift: from identifying only with local groups to seeking connections throughout the diaspora.
• Thinking of themselves as "a nation without a state, even a 'virtual nation.'"
• Larger group identity is more visible and therefore more effective in advocacy.

🎨 Arts as advocacy

Athe Sam (We are here!) festival (Budapest, 2007–2011, sporadically since):

• Blends music, theater, film, visual arts with panel discussions and education.
• Includes Romani and non-Romani performers.
• Marketed to tourists and locals.
• Goal: "gaining the understanding and trust of neighbors far and near might encourage those neighbors to support the movement for Romani civil rights."

Moving beyond the entertainer role:

• Musicians becoming advocates.
• Using arts to bring people into direct conversation about citizenship and rights.
• Challenge: government officials often regard Romani voices as politically oppositional.
• Public expression remains "tentative and subject to censorship."

🔄 Survival strategy continues

• Musical and personal flexibility has long been a Romani survival strategy.
• Roma have adapted, "performing the roles asked of them by different patrons."
• Modern patrons: Eurovision, nation-states, nationalist audiences, online "world beat" buyers.
• Difficulty: "It has been difficult for the Roma to break out of their limited roles as outsiders."
• Spread among many lands, no common language, varying laws and policies across nation-states.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

African Americans actively preserved and adapted their musical heritage under slavery to create new traditions like the blues, which show both African kinship traits and distinctly American origins shaped by forced migration and social conditions.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Forced migration context: The trans-Atlantic slave trade (1619–1850s) was the largest forced migration in history; slavery shaped every aspect of US society, including music-making.
• African musical continuity: Enslaved Africans brought instruments (banjo, slide guitar, mouth bow) and traditions from West and Central Africa, continuing to make music despite profound family and community dislocation.
• The blues as a new tradition: Blues emerged in the mid-to-late 1800s as a solo singing tradition with first-person expression, three-line verse form, 12-bar structure, call-and-response, and "blue notes."
• Common confusion – survivals vs. active preservation: Some scholars debate whether African traits "survived" passively (retentions) or were actively guarded and preserved by Africans and their descendants; the latter view emphasizes agency.
• Methodological limits: Comparing recordings made decades and continents apart cannot prove a "family tree," but can identify characteristic traits suggesting kinship between African and African American musical traditions.

🌍 Historical context and forced migration

🚢 The slave trade and social conditions

• The United States formed from overlapping immigrant groups moving into Native American territories.
• African people arrived continuously between 1619 and the 1850s through the slave trade.
• Slavery evolved from indentured servitude based on religion (non-Christians) to a hereditary, permanent caste based on race—an imagined concept with no biological basis but profound social effects.
• Forced labor of enslaved Africans became an economic mainstay; social relations created by slavery shaped music-making conditions.

📜 Challenges in reconstructing history

• Almost no African American music was written down until the 1800s.
• Scholars rely on eyewitness accounts, mostly by white observers.
• Historical records mention slave traders requiring Africans to bring instruments and forcing captives to sing and dance on ships (as exercise and entertainment).
• After the Louisiana Purchase (1803), slaveholders moved west and south, taking enslaved people to cotton plantations in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas.

🪕 African instruments in America

Instrument	African origin region	US tradition
Banjo	West Sudanic Belt (Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Nigeria) – long-necked lutes played by itinerant minstrels	Rural southern United States
Slide guitar	Central Africa – one-stringed instruments played with a slider	Southern United States slide guitar tradition
Mouth bow	Angola, Namibia, southern East Africa – one-stringed plucked/strummed instrument held against mouth	Appalachian and Ozark regions

• These instruments offer tangible evidence that Africans brought their own music-making ways to the Americas.

🔗 Dislocation and preservation debates

• Slave owners bought and transported slaves at will, preventing families and communities from staying together.
• Most scholars describe the African experience in the Americas as one of profound dislocation.
• Some evidence suggests ethnic clusters persisted in some places.
• Debate over terminology:
  • Some scholars use "survivals" or "retentions" to describe African musical traits that persisted.
  • Kof Agawu argues these terms imply too much passivity; Africans and their descendants actively guarded and preserved their musical heritage.
• What is certain: Africans continued to develop and adapt traditions in the Americas and initiated new musical traditions.

🎵 The blues tradition

🎤 Defining the blues

Blues: A tradition of solo singing developed by African Americans in the United States in the mid-to-late 1800s that gives the effect of highly personal expression.

• Early blues often described hard work and sorrow, but also treated broken relationships, money problems, and other topics—sometimes seriously, sometimes with wry humor.
• Lyrics are cast in the first person (e.g., "I'm leaving this morning..."), creating a speaking persona and vivid situation for listener identification.
• Don't confuse: First-person lyrics do not mean the blues are autobiographical; the singer creates a persona.

🎶 Musical characteristics

• Melodic features: Most phrases start at a relatively high pitch and descend; singer may use wavy or inexact intonation (complaint, wail, provocation).
• Accompaniment: Early blues had one instrument (often played by the singer): guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, harmonica, or piano; later replaced by small bands in recordings.
• Poetic form: Three-line verse—first two lines have the same words, third line is a conclusion with new words.
  • Example: "Lord, I'm a hard workin' woman, and I work hard all the time / Lord, I'm a hard workin' woman, and I work hard all the time / But it seem like my baby, Lord, he is dissatisfied."

🎼 The 12-bar blues structure

• Each line consists of four bars (units), each with four beats (time-units felt as pulses).
• This form can be repeated, bent, broken, or ignored as the musician wishes.
• Tempo is slow; rhythm has characteristic "swing" (underlying pattern of long and short notes on each beat).
• Texture is not complicated.

🔄 Call and response

Call and response: A pattern where the instrument drops out or keeps the beat while the singer sings one phrase, then comes in with more interesting material after that phrase.

• This musical back-and-forth is a key feature of blues.
• Example: Mississippi Matilda Powell's "Hard Workin' Woman" (1936) exemplifies all these features.

🔍 Ethnographic research on African connections

🎓 Gerhard Kubik's methodology

• Ethnographer: Someone who records and analyzes the practices of particular groups of people.
• Kubik traveled through Africa making field recordings, then compared specific elements to the earliest blues recordings.
• Important limitation: Comparing recordings made decades apart and continents away cannot determine a "family tree" for the blues.
  • Music was not routinely recorded until the 20th century; no way to hear precisely how blues developed in early years.
  • Recordings Kubik made in the 1960s cannot be "ancestors" of 1920s blues recordings.
• Goal: Identify characteristic elements of musical traditions—traits preserved over time—suggesting kinship between traditions.
• Like a family resemblance to a distant cousin, these traits hint at a relationship; but much in the blues reflects distinctly American origins.

🌾 Ancient Nigritic style (West Africa)

• An ancient lamenting song style from West Africa associated with work rhythms.
• Songs accompanied by repetitive motions and sounds of manual labor (e.g., grinding grain with stones).
• Example: Grinding song by a Tikar woman recorded in central Cameroon (1964).
  • Grinding tool produces "swinging" rhythm.
  • Melody begins high and descends with each phrase; phrases of roughly equal length.
  • Words are a lament and work song: "If you don't work you cannot eat. I am crying about my fate and my life."
• Kubik's comparison: Mississippi Matilda Powell's blues singing shows similar features:
  • Thin, breathy vocal quality.
  • Descending melodic phrases.
  • Work and lament themes.

🏙️ Arabic-Islamic song style (West Sudanic Belt)

• Developed among people of the West Sudanic Belt, particularly the Hausa people of Nigeria and Niger.
• Contrast with ancient Nigritic style: This was urban and cosmopolitan, flourishing around major cities and courts.
• Made by a single person accompanying himself on an instrument.
• The singer was an entertainer who moved from place to place; tradition consisted of solo songs not connected to community music-making.
• Example: "Gogé" performed by Adamou Meigogué Garoua, recorded in northern Cameroon (1964).
  • Distinctively raspy vocal style, vehement and exclamatory.
  • Words declaimed theatrically.
  • Most phrases descend in pitch.
  • Voice often slides between pitches or moves quickly among ornamental notes.
  • Call-and-response pattern: During sung phrase the fiddle is silent; between phrases the fiddle comments with its own melodies.
  • Characteristic "blue notes" (bent or pitch-altered notes).

🎸 Comparison with Big Joe Williams

• Example: Big Joe Williams, "Stack O'Dollars" (1935, Chicago).
• Like the Garoua example, Williams uses his voice to make many different sound qualities.
• Sometimes speaks in a raspy voice; sometimes melody reaches up to become a wail.
• Throughout, he bends notes, glides between notes, and adds ornamentation.
• Shows kinship with Arabic-Islamic song style while being distinctly American.

🧩 Key takeaways on musical adaptation

🔀 Multiple African influences

• Blues show traits from at least two different African musical traditions:
  1. Ancient Nigritic lamenting/work song style (West Africa).
  2. Arabic-Islamic solo entertainment style (West Sudanic Belt).
• These traits suggest kinship but do not prove direct lineage.

🇺🇸 Distinctly American origins

• Despite African connections, the blues are a new tradition created in the United States.
• Shaped by the social circumstances of slavery, forced migration, and dislocation.
• African Americans actively developed and adapted their heritage under these conditions.

🎭 Agency and creativity

• The excerpt emphasizes that Africans and their descendants were not passive recipients of circumstances.
• They actively guarded, preserved, developed, and adapted their musical heritage.
• The blues exemplify this creative agency: a new tradition that honors African roots while responding to American realities.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The excerpt does not contain content related to the stated title; instead, it discusses the musical origins and development of African American blues through the blending and localization of African song traditions in the United States.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Mismatch alert: The provided excerpt is about blues music history, not about violence, difference, or peacemaking in a globalized world.
• Two African song styles contributed to blues: the Arabic-Islamic urban solo tradition and the ancient Nigritic style, both identifiable in blues characteristics like raspy vocals, pitch bending, and call-and-response patterns.
• Blues were not simply "heritage" music: family and ethnic disruption during slavery meant blues did not develop within intact ethnic communities but spread person-to-person across mixed groups.
• Common confusion—heritage vs. localization: blues traits became widespread not because specific ethnic groups preserved them (heritage), but because they were useful and attractive in the particular environment of the American South (localization through selection).
• Why certain traits survived: practical factors like suppression of drums, portability, and the ability to perform solo with any instrument shaped which musical traditions flourished.

🎵 African musical roots of the blues

🎵 Arabic-Islamic song style

Arabic-Islamic song style: an urban, cosmopolitan tradition that flourished around major cities and courts, performed by a single entertainer accompanying himself on an instrument.

• Key characteristics:
  • Solo performance, not community-based
  • Mobile tradition—singers moved from place to place
  • Songs were not tied to collective music-making
• Example from the excerpt: "Gogé" performed by Adamou Meigogué Garoua in northern Cameroon (1964)
  • Raspy, vehement vocal style
  • Declamatory, theatrical delivery
  • Descending melodic phrases with pitch slides and ornamental notes
  • Call-and-response between voice and fiddle (instrument silent during singing, comments between phrases)
  • "Blue notes" (bent or pitch-altered notes)

🎸 Connection to African American blues

• The excerpt compares Garoua's song to Big Joe Williams's "Stack O'Dollars" (1935, Chicago)
• Shared musical traits:
  • Varied vocal qualities (raspy speaking, wailing)
  • Note bending, gliding between pitches, ornaments
  • Call-and-response between singer and instruments
• Kubik identifies these elements as links between Arabic-Islamic song style and African American blues

🌍 Ancient Nigritic style

• The excerpt mentions this as another contributing tradition but does not provide detailed characteristics
• Kubik's view: musical traits from different African groups and regions contributed to blues

🔄 How blues developed—not heritage, but localization

🔄 Why "heritage" explanation doesn't work

Heritage music (in the genealogical sense): music handed down only among people who belonged to the ethnic groups from which the styles originally came.

• The problem: blues did not develop this way
• Historical disruption:
  • Slave trade caused family and ethnic group disruption and dislocation
  • Migration of slave owners and sale of enslaved people dispersed members of different African ethnic groups
  • People were mixed together and scattered widely among European American communities
• Result: blues were not cultivated only among West Sudanic or West African ethnic groups in the United States
• Don't confuse: the presence of African musical traits in blues does not mean intact ethnic communities preserved them as "heritage"

🌱 Localization through person-to-person transmission

Localization: the process by which musical traits take root and become widespread in a new environment.

• Kubik's explanation: traits became prominent not because of who brought them (heritage), but because they were useful and attractive to Black people in the particular environment of the American South in the 1800s
• How it spread:
  • Music spread as a tradition, passed from person to person
  • Musicians learn songs and techniques quickly
  • When they hear something they like, they imitate and adopt it
• Example: a musician hears a vocal technique or instrumental pattern, finds it appealing, and incorporates it into their own performance

🎯 Selection pressures—why certain traits survived

🎯 Environmental factors shaped blues

The excerpt describes a "selection process" where practical conditions determined which musical traditions flourished:

Factor	Effect on musical tradition
Drum suppression	Traditions involving drums were frequently suppressed by slave owners, so traditions without drums flourished
Portability	Blues could be performed by one person with any instrument that came to hand—inexpensive and mobile
Difficulty to suppress	Solo, quiet performance was hard to take away, unlike louder group singing and dancing
Avoiding attention	Blues were less likely to attract unwanted attention compared to louder forms

🛡️ Practical advantages of blues form

• Solo performance: did not require gathering a group
• Flexible instrumentation: any available instrument could be used
• Low cost: no expensive instruments or large ensembles needed
• Mobility: a single person could carry the tradition
• Discretion: quieter than communal music-making, reducing risk

⚠️ Note on content mismatch

The provided excerpt discusses the musical history and development of African American blues, analyzing how African song traditions were localized in the United States through person-to-person transmission rather than ethnic heritage preservation. It does not contain substantive content related to the stated title "Conclusion: Violence, Difference, and Peacemaking in a Globalized World." The excerpt appears to be from a chapter on music history, specifically from "Music on the Move" by Danielle Fosler-Lussier.