THE
CENTRE FOR INTERCULTURAL MUSICOLOGY
AT CHURCHILL COLLEGE
Akin Euba, Director
A new research unit, the Centre
for Intercultural Musicology at Churchill
College, has been launched and the
details of it appear below.
CONTEXT
The movements of people around the world and the cultural
contacts arising therefrom have always resulted in the
mixing of musics. One can hardly find any "authentic" music
existing in the world today and even the so-called
traditional types have in historical times been subjected
to innovation through cultural contact. It can therefore be
said that interculturalism in music is likely to be as old
as music itself. At the same time, specific musical
cultures and traditions of instrumentation, composition and
performance indubitably exist.
However, as a result of new developments in music
technology and increasingly better means of music
transmission, together with improved air travel facilities,
intercultural activity in music intensified during the
closing decades of the twentieth century. The world’s
great music cultures became more easily accessible and
composers were encouraged to explore new music in which
elements from different cultures were combined. Moreover,
performers became specialists in the musics of other
cultures. As a result, composers around the world
(especially those from non-Western countries) are producing
music in which resources derived from traditional and folk
music (normally the province of ethnomusicology) are
combined with Western techniques of composition (normally
the area of specialization of historical musicologists and
music theorists) and neither ethnomusicologists nor
historical musicologists are adequately equipped for the
analytical study of such music. Hence the need for
intercultural musicology. The study of this kind of
composition requires a new theoretical approach by scholars
who possess combined expertise in analytical techniques
that have hitherto belonged to separate fields of
scholarship.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of the Centre for Intercultural Musicology at
Churchill College (CIMACC) is to provide a forum that will
lead to the development of such expertise.
Intercultural musicology combines features of historical
musicology with those of ethnomusicology, so both these
fields will be represented. Another area of interest for
the CIMACC is the phenomenon of musical appropriation,
whereby regional types of music are being globalized. For
example, the symphonic tradition (which was a manifestation
of European classicism in music) has become world music and
no longer belongs to the West. What kind of mechanics
produce such globalization? Can the process be reversed and
can the Javanese gamelan,
the Japanese gagaku,
or the
jembe
drumming tradition
of West Africa also one day become world music? The CIMACC
will also be a platform for the exploration of the
transcendental nature of music – that aspect of music
which, for example, enables Asian performers to become
masters of the European practice (Yo Yo Ma, Fu Tsong, Zubin
Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, to name a few) and vice versa. In
addition to its purely artistic value, does musical
transcendentalism have political or economic implications?
Is it in any way symbolic of power?
These are some of the questions in which the CIMACC will be
interested. The Centre will promote the concept of
intercultural musicology through lectures, seminars,
workshops, residencies, symposia, concerts, festivals and
publications. In all of its activities, the Centre will
ensure that opportunities exist for composers, performers
and scholars to interact with one another. The practical
dimension of actual music-making and experiment will be
vital to the Centre, since musicians (comprising composers,
performers, and scholars) learn by doing. Intercultural
musicology may be described as the study of specific musics
using techniques that are applicable to all musics. It will
be an important (perhaps necessary) adjunct to existing
musicologies.