Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Western Impact on World Music: Change, Adaptation, and Survival
by Bruno Nettl
Review by: Margaret Kartomi
Source: Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol. 19 (1987), pp. 117-120
Published by: International Council for Traditional Music
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/767880
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 BOOK REVIEWS

From the Book Review Editor

My efforts to increase the international character of the book review section are
frustrated by a lack of books on languages other than English to review, and by postal
delays. Once again I appeal to the readership to recommend important books for review in
this journal, and if possible to request publishers to send them to me. Publishers in the
United States, Canada, and Great Britain appear to be sending me books quite regularly yet
I am sure there is more to review than I am receiving.
Some of the publications that do arrive at the Book Review office do not appear to merit
a full review in the pages of this journal. These include issues of journals, catalogues of
expositions, and collections of texts or transcriptions of melodies without much discussion
or analysis. Individual journal issues cannot be reviewed for reasons of space; catalogues
are usually specifically related to visual presentations of artifacts and usually cannot be
reviewed by themselves. Since texts and transcriptions can provide data for analysis and
resources for performances by the members of the ICTM, I have decided to list a number of
the volumes this office has received in the past few years. For each I give a brief summary of
its contents, including the type of material presented, the number of items, the presence of a
discussion of the material, and types of end material-bibliographies, discographies, and
indices that they may possess.

Nettl, Bruno. The Western Impact on World Music: Change, Adaptation, and Survival.
Individual chapters by Carol Babiracki, William Belzner, Victoria Lindsay-Levine,
Christopher Waterman, Steven Whiting and Paul Wolbers. New York: Schirmer
Books, 1985. 190 pp., bibliographies, index. $22.95.

Like Nettl's other most recent book, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues
and Concepts, this volume tackles a very broad topic in an attractive narrative or conversa-
tional style. Urbane, witty and relaxed, its bouts of anecdote and quizzical humour
alternate with serious commentary on issues that arise in contemplating examples of
musical change. Though not a scholarly book in the usual sense of the word, it is one
replete with the experiences, views and insights of a scholar who has devoted his life not
only to his own research but also to the critical understanding and synthesis of others'.
With twelve books and many articles to his credit, no one is better placed than Nettl to
draw together overviews in ethnomusicology, whether on its theory and method or on a
topic such as the one chosen for this book-the impact of the West on the musical traditions
of the Non-Western world over the last hundred years or so.

The Historical Hypotheses

The author's main hypotheses are drawn at the broad historical level. The first
chapter-'The Fourth Age'-takes its title from Wiora's provocative book The Four Ages of
Music, which presents a model for understanding the history of the world's music. Nettl
interprets Wiora's position as follows:
Only in the first and fourth of these (overlapping) ages does Wiora see a unified
musical world. In the first, he speculatively suggests, the world was
homogeneous, . . . (with) all cultures roughly sharing an early history of music. In
the second and third periods, the cultures of the world diverged, each building a
music appropriate for its values, social structure, aesthetic, and technology. But in
the fourth age, that of "global industrial culture" since the industrial revolution, the
world's musics have again converged, united by the intensive diffusion of elements
derived from European society-its technology, economic and political organisa-
tion ... and ... the coming of Western music not only as a system of sound but
also as a set of concepts and attendant technology and behaviour. The world's
cultures come together, as well, in their need to confront Western culture musically
(p. 3).

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118 / 1987 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

Nettl's book interprets and vividly illustrates this framework of ideas as they apply to the
latter part of the fourth age. Western music began to be introduced into other cultures
several centuries ago, but its imposition was much more intensive in the twentieth century,
which must therefore be seen 'as a period of the most intensive interchange of musical ideas'
(p. 3). Happily the sum of Nettl's data serves to dispel the quite widely held fear that the
spread of Western music would homogenise the musical styles of the world. On the
contrary, he finds, it has actually helped to create a state of unprecedented musical
diversity.

Anthology of Vignettes
The bulk of the book assumes the form of an anthology. Indeed, to read it in several
sittings as an anthology is highly recommended. Its thirty-two short 'vignettes' or case
studies are each to be savoured as miniatures. Together they refer to a wide variety of kinds
of music distinguished by members of a society. Each of them illuminates an example of
culture contact in a different part of the world, ranging from Africa to the Middle East,
South and North America, East and Southeast Asia and Polynesia.
Despite the breadth of the topic, the book has an engaging informality about it which
derives partly from the narrative style and partly from its total lack of footnotes, diagrams
and musical examples. To produce a book for the general reader as well as the specialist
naturally has its advantages and disadvantages (one cannot have one's cake and eat it too).
The price to pay, of course, is that one cannot engage in prolonged theoretical argument in
this kind of book, nor can one present thoroughly documented historical accounts or music
analytical studies. However, Nettl's intentions were not, of course, to produce a theoretical
book, a documented history, or musical analysis. His contract with the reader was to
convince him of the diversity and complexity of musical change by 'bombarding' him with
samples (p. xiii).
Of the many thought-provoking chapters in the book only a few can be mentioned in this
review. Some of the best chapters are drawn from the author's field experiences in cultures
of the North American Indians, Iran and South India. The vivid stories about the Arapaho
Indian, William Shakespear and the Blackfoot Indian, Calvin Boy show how the old tribal
repertoire threatened to disappear on contact with White Americans yet reasserted itself
later as a major symbol of tribal identity. In the thought-provoking chapter entitled
'Innovators', a Carnatic singer is quoted as saying that Indian musicians do not need to
engage in far-reaching musical experiment (implying that Western musicians do) because
they get it constantly in their use of improvisation and the wide latitude they have for inter-
pretation. The chapter headed 'Pop' engagingly discusses terminological problems and
intercultural influences on pop music around the world, concluding that pop music has
been able to 'provide a context for such musical combinations more easily than the classical
music system of the West which, despite some valiant efforts, has shown itself less
amenable to intercultural treatment' (p. 86). One interesting chapter is devoted to the initial
exposure of non-Western societies to Western music; this, it is suggested, focussed on
church and military music. Nettl notes the irony in the fact that some music most valued by
large segments of Western audiences was not introduced (p. 11). Although this obser-
vation may be true in the case of concert hall music, which would have required the
support of a highly developed Western music education system in colonised cultures, it is
not true in the case of another kind of music he mentions-the authentic folk songs.
Portuguese folk songs, for example, were widely propagated fro the sixteenth century and
are still performed in partly altered form in ex-Portuguese colonial centres such as Goa,
Malacca and Tugu (Jakarta).
Some chapters of the book were contributed by the author's graduate students. For
example, Christopher Waterman's chapter on the 'vital, flexible syncredit musical system
called juju among the Yoruba of Nigeria sketches developments over fifty years and relates
precise social processes to musical change. Paul Wolbers' chapter on kroncong music could
usefully have been expanded to deal with forms of really contemporary Indonesian pop
music such as dangdut. For kroncong is not Indonesia's most "popular" genre (p. 85); it is
widely regarded as being old-fashioned and has never had a very large following.

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REVIEWS BOOKS / 119

Culture Contact Theory

Though the book's emphas
(p. xiii), a theory of musical
outlined at its beginning an
is only slightly modified her
and the present reviewer (1
considering or confronting
theory of central traits and
have already been discussed
When Nettl asks the imp
music?', his answer is prese
standing outside the culture
for argument's sake as a uni
most obvious trait is funct
(sic!), harmony must alway
the ideal of the large ensem
repetition in performance,
from other domains of cult
This central trait theory
Richard Waterman in 1952,
two cultures having similar
other than cultures having
The problem with this theo
that matter, normally agre
Qureshi (1986) recently expr
of Western instruments an
among his central traits. Ne
Western music; formerly h
it as central (Nettl 1978: 134
the Western traits that Ne
expect them to accept. For i
gamelan culture has totally
susceptible to influences fro
fact of the secularisation of
the Western-style commerci
tradition. The fact that gam
musical 'compatibility' with
large ensemble and notation
reject was based on complex
Nettl modified his position
that in a society undergoing
differently and also disting
system (p. 21). However, the
the problem of pinpointing
similar and compatible in o
music cannot in principle be
1981:241).
Nettl concedes that his dist
isation has been criticised; "
(p. 25). He now defines mode
in the direction of Western
the non-Western tradition t
central features of Western
of essential facets of the tra
imply that Western/non-W
between two or more non
American cultures), where
examples of intercultural c

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120 / 1987 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

altogether and allows us to revert to usage of a more neutral term such as syncretism to
include both cases.
Not surprisingly, the book does not dwell on many of the countless instances of the inter-
cultural transferral of single traits, such as a musical instrument or other object or idea,
This is presumably becaus such borrowings are mostly less interesting than adaptations of
whole complexes of musical traits which result in the much more lengthy, difficult and
creative process of transculturation. It is a much more significant phenomenon when
complexes of aesthetic standards and extra-musical meanings cross boundaries rather than
just single entities.
The scope of this book makes it abundantly clear that we are only at the beginnings of
understanding the processes and results of culture contact (and, it should be added, not
only between the West and non-West but also between the various non-Western cultures
themselves). This is especially so in cases which feature the intermeshing of several cultures
rather than just two, as in many Latin American and Southeast Asian musics, which
demand a more complex theoretical treatment than we have been able to devise as yet. The
next step in our research may be to make structural analyses of the processes of culture
contact in the precise cases for which we have the historical data. Preliminary findings from
structural drawings made suggest that these processes are much more complex and often
involve interactions between a greater number of cultures than initially appeared to be the
case. They also suggest that the paradigms but not the basic structures of response are even
more varied than expected.
The fascinating case studies in this book certainly succeed in conveying an impression of
the diversity of responses to culture contact around the world and the need to take this into
account in our theorising. If the measure of a book's success is the degree to which its
author fulfills his contract with the reader and suggests the need for further research, then
this is indeed a successful book.

References Cited

Burkhardt-Qureshi, Regula
1986 Review of Nettl's The Western Impact on World Music: Change,
Adaptation and Survival, in Ethnomusicology 30: 547-8.
Kartomi, Margaret J.
1981 'The Processes and Results of Musical Culture Contact: A Discussion of
Terminology and Concepts', Ethnomusicology 25: 227-50.
Nettl, Bruno
1978 "Some Aspects of the History of World Music in the Twentieth Century:
Questions, Problems, and Concepts', Ethnomusicology 22: 123-136.
1983 The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Shiloah, Amnon and Eric Cohen
1983 'The Dynamics of Change in Jewish Oriental Ethnic Music in Israel',
Ethnomusicology 27: 227-252.
Wiora, Walter
1965 The Four Ages of Music, New York: Norton, 147-197

MARGARET KARTOMI

Hewlett, Walter B. and E. Selfridge-Field (eds.). Directory of Computer As

in Musicology 1986. Menlo Park: Center for Computer Assisted Res
Humanities (525 Middlefield Rd., Suite 120), 1986, 86 pp., illustra
ography.

The title of the 86-page booklet is self-explanatory. Musicologists might turn the pages
and start reading where it ends, for perhaps they would find friends among the list of
approximately 330 individual addresses (mostly of the Anglo-Saxon community, but also

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