How Musical is Man
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"It seems to me that what is ultimately of most importance in music cannot be learned like other cultural skills: it is there in the body, waiting to be brought out and developed, like the basic principles of language formation." --How Musical is Man? (1973) by John Blacking, p. 100 "Many, if not all, of music's essential processes may be found in the constitution of the human body and in patterns of interaction of human bodies in society. Thus all music is structurally, as well as functionally, folk music. The makers of "art" music are not innately more sensitive or cleverer than "folk" musicians: the structures of their music simply express, by processes similar to those in Venda music, the numerically larger systems of interaction of folk in their societies, the consequences of a more extensive division of labor, and an accumulated technological tradition." --How Musical is Man? (1973) by John Blacking, preface |
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How Musical is Man? (1973) is a book by John Blacking.
It features many of his ideas about the social impact of music. He called for a study of music as "Humanly Organized Sound" (that's the title of Chapter One), arguing that "it is the activities of Man the Music Maker that are of more interest and consequence to humanity than the particular musical achievements of Western man".
Blurb:
This important study in ethnomusicology is an attempt by the author -- a musician who has become a social anthropologist -- to compare his experiences of music-making in different cultures. He is here presenting new information resulting from his research into African music, especially among the Venda. Venda music, he discovered is in its way no less complex in structure than European music. Literacy and the invention of nation may generate extended musical structures, but they express differences of degree, and not the difference in kind that is implied by the distinction between "art" and "folk" music. Many, if not all, of music's essential processes may be found in the constitution of the human body and in patterns of interaction of human bodies in society. Thus all music is structurally, as well as functionally, "folk" music in the sense that music cannot be transmitted of have meaning without associations between people.
If John Blacking's guess about the biological and social origins of music is correct, or even only partly correct, it would generate new ideas about the nature of musicality, the role of music in education and its general role in societies which (like the Venda in the context of their traditional economy) will have more leisure time as automation increases.
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