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Meki Nzewi’s “THEORY AND COGNITIVE RESEARCH OF AFRICAN MUSICAL ARTS:
Critique & Poser.” Major issues
raised by Meki Nzewi’s contribution match up with perspective and communication
in Ethnomusicology. The detonator leading to them follows from a patient
review of the audacious arguments and claims circulated by the author
about the Ethnomusicology of Africa. About “perception, misperception and fallacies.” Grievances of misperception and fallacies
and finally gripe of non-verbalization of root-knowledge grab namely George List (1963), A. M. Jones (1959),
James Koetting, Trevor Wiggins (1999), and Andrew Tracey (1988, 1997),
put down to a
Mental arrogance in scholars' cognitive perception
of the creative theory and logic in African music. Although Simha
Arom (1991) and Israel Anyahuru (1975)
are respectively given the merit of perceiving "the implicit theory systematically used by the performers in practice"
as well as the tactile automatisms complementing experienced performers’
actual cogitations, the contention of nonconformity to the music-in-culture
perspective leads to an emphasis on the culture of the owners which
results in claims like borrowing
culture's creative discretion. The ongoing argument actually about
the absence of indigenous verbalization is upturned to assess targeted
meta-theories about African music with this time Simha Arom (1991) and Gilbert Rouget (1956) described
in flagrante delicto of substituting an internal
variation principle to the concept
of development in African music, an approach that the author considers
as illusions about repetition in African music. The author denounces misperceptions … woven around the concept
of metric organization, which lets him tackle the principle of the fastest equi-spatial impulse... in structural conformations
as nonconformist in relation to the axiomatic pulse defined by Cooper
& Meyer’s (1960). The principle of the fastest equi-spatial impulse
is described to have been initiated by Koetting (1970) and to have misled a number of subsequent African music
researchers into … strange transcriptions and structural analysis. This represents the author’s broad-spectrum
evaluation of perspectives and aims from both the Ethnomusicology discipline
and its community. He develops a censoring discourse about colonial
and missionary attitudes, sacred franchise of African traditional musicianship,
objectivity versus self-promotion, from false hearing to false understanding,
false authority and representation, performance ability versus creative
authority, before wrapping up with a swift compensation of the performer over
the analyst, that “In Africa, musical arts knowledge is articulated
and transacted in the public space of participation.” Meki’s proposal
of perceptive and analytic approach in African music consists of “a sampling and further elaboration of the signposts
of structural-formal rationalization and organization in African music
that could enable cognitive appreciation, enlightened
analysis and perceptive transcription.” These are about
·
Pulse, with insistence
on the African traditional artists’ clear and basic composite
pulse
sense from the inception
and all through a performance.
·
Rhythm, reckoned with
the essentiality of pulse as the temporal frame, which goes along with
a negation of cross-rhythm.
·
Form, presenting
The Ensemble Thematic Cycle
as the basic structural form in African music. And – since an impression of staggered entry points would result from failing to reckon with the nature
of Ensemble Thematic Cycle… he dwells on a perceptible Starting Point, common to all parts,
endorsing finally an external development of themes. Additional concepts
enlightening the highway of the African music literature appear here
– some out of context – as findings since “Other manifestations include
through-composed performance form
and chain-song form
and further rationalization of form in terms of tension
and catharsis, the mood form deriving from the psychological
imperatives of African music.”
·
Harmony, which comprises
cultural normative codes informing
harmonic thought and practice:
the female, the male and the small children in-between the voices
among others.
·
Phrasing, with the
eye-opener that the Phrasing Reference
instrument role …has been
mis-perceptually discussed as “time line”.
·
Meter, the most common metric structures being the common time (4/4) and its interface, the
compound quadruple time (12/8). But then if “Staggered entry and exit
of polyphonic voices will not qualify as chorus part”, this would mean that
the staggered entries previously negated by the author at the “Form”
signpost are definitely far from
being an impression and actually exist. To arrive at such unpredictability,
it is conceivable that Meki’s distaste for experts systems impacted
on his structuralism. This internal
disagreement like a perjury to the whole theoretical framework within
an overrunning argumentation probes all the experiment, letting us chew
over the uneven structural level carried by the next signposts.
Pulse, Rhythm, Form, Harmony, Phrasing, Meter, paving the way to Flexibility and Precision, Significant sound, Starting Point, before linking with Texture, Language, and
integrating finally Stress
and Cadence. One would suggest that Pulse,
Meter, Rhythm and Stress – although in a part-and-a-whole or in an attribute versus whole concept ratio – get closer, as it would also be proper with
harmony and cadence... These checking points may similarly
cloud the real interest of the subsequent findings gathered under the
heading of Creative principles and cognitive perception
dealing extensively with 1) Relativity
in Creative Thinking and Production – all about Tuning and Intonation in addition to Shifting Tonality in African music – as well as 2) Ideational Interfaces which include the interface of musical
sense and musical meaning, the interface of pitch and tone-level, the
interface of melody and melorhythm, the interface of harmony and mellophony,
the interface of short and long triplets, the interface of common and
compound meter, the interface of text and vocalic lilting, the interface
of the tension and the catharsis in performance form and the interface
of abstract and poetic dancing. Meki Nzewi’s
cognitive research postulates that Cognitive
understanding of the theory guiding a ‘musical arts’ product… is accessed
through induction into the creative philosophy and structural principles
of a music culture or type. This view is in line with the music-in-culture philosophy among others that founded Ethnomusicology,
except for its radical aspect. The debate on the African musical Arts extends broadly
beyond the above epicenter; it goes far beyond bold reminders like the
American publishers’ Black put
down, since here grumbles of misperception, misinterpretation and
fallacy grasp unenclosed African scholars equally. Through Andrew Tracey
(1988 and 1997)’s ‘review’ mostly, Meki Nzewi has come, more overtly
than the African heritage empowerment exhibited by historians of the 1970’s,
to put dots on the “i(s)” of the whole Ethnomusicology of Africa, cleaning
in his radical language, analytical frames and cognitive data torn out
on the highway of the African music literature, thus standing for a
step towards unbiased theories and treatises on African Music. In this respect, it is conceivable that public assessment appears flexible as to authoritative analysis. Or, in view of its ongoing scholarly interest, A. M. Jones’ misperception is far from being just ostracized like a fallacious intention. Its pedagogical interest, because scholarship, as it happens to operate in the present case, wouldn’t stand only as an unclassified repository of principles of musical cultures, but also as a valuable blank organization of those principles into enlightening contextual failures versus steps towards an unbiased representation and environment of theories. Dr. P. Zabana
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