World Sound Matters an anthology of music from around the world by Jonathon Stock Studying the Music of the World The CDs and INDEX The Transcriptions The Teacher's Manual Pupil Question Book Final Remarks

Overview

World Sound Matters is a fully-integrated anthology of music from around the world, comprising:

• 2 compact discs of 58 traditional music recordings, representing 35 different countries
• notated transcriptions of each recorded example
• explanatory texts covering the special context of each style and its musical content
• 2 sets of (photocopiable) progressive pupil listening-based questions for each musical style, suitable for use at GCSE and A level

Each unit is free-standing and can be used effectively on its own. Alternatively, multiple units can be combined, in any order, to provide an introduction to the musical traditions of the world.

The music incorporated in World Sound Matters has been carefully selected and prepared by the author in consultation with other music specialists and professionals actively engaged in music education. Two aims have been paramount: on the one hand, readers need analyses of a wide range of musical traditions which are both authoritative and yet remain accessible to the non-specialist; on the other hand, the many musicians whose work appears on the sound recordings deserve a thorough and sympathetic study which neither cheapens nor dilutes their artistry.

The result is a publication which should be of practical use to a wide range of musicians, from secondary school teachers to their pupils, from adults interested in knowing more about world music to music students wishing to specialize in this field, and to composers.

Jonathan Stock trained as a bassoonist at the Birmingham Conservatoire, UK. Graduation was followed by two years' work as a tutor for the National Youth Orchestra of Malaysia, where he first heard and became interested in non-Western music. Jonathan returned to Britain to study ethnomusicology, specializing in Chinese traditional music, and to gather material for a PhD on Chinese fiddle music. He spent a year in and around Shanghai (1989-1990), talking to musicians and learning to play two-stringed fiddle and bamboo flute. Subsequent field work in China allowed the collection of further material, including several of the tunes contained in Chinese Flute Solos (Schott, 1994). Jonathan is currently a lecturer in music at the University of Durham, UK.

Why is it important to understand something of the music of the world? Why should we not remain satisfied with our own musical traditions, whether popular, classical or something else? Various reasons have been proposed. For some, the pay-off lies in the fact that greater familiarity with musical styles simply expands the amount of music one can appreciate and thereby derive pleasure from. For others, the study of unfamiliar music brings to mind aspects of our own music-making which we habitually disregard. The greater sensitivity to music which results encourages a deeper engagement with and re-evaluation of our favourite kinds. A third view is that developing an understanding of foreign music is a significant part of the broader educational process of learning to respect human cultural diversity.

There is surely value to each of these proposals, yet I would like to add one more to the list: we need to study music because it is a very special part of human life. All around the world, music affects individuals in ways we barely understand. Music helps people project an identity; it assists them in the recollection of the past and in their prayers for the future. It offers a channel of expressive communication and a vital outlet for human creativity. If we are to understand fully what it means to be human, we need to discover how and why music operates in the ways it does. To expect to accomplish this from examining only the evidence of a single musical tradition, even one as rich and well-documented as that of Western art music, is surely unrealistic. Instead, just as botanists look at plants from around the entire globe or historians study the rich and poor of all nations, we need to consider the whole world's music.Yet it hardly needs to be said that if world music is to receive a larger share of a school's music curriculum, the music teacher will need to be convinced that it offers an efficient means of imparting musical skills and experience, as compared to more familiar musical forms. After all, when dealing with deeply familiar music, an experienced teacher can more easily design a lesson and turn unexpected questions in profitable ways. Also, given that resources for investment in new materials and the time to master their use is typically scarcer than teachers might wish, the teacher may feel more confident setting out along well-furrowed paths. The question remains, then, that even if one accepts that there are good reasons for expanding the focus of music education to include music from all around the earth, is it actually practical to do so, bearing in mind the input of time and resources this will necessitate?

The issue of practicality has guided the compilation of World Sound Matters. There would be little point in offering teachers written material that did not dovetail with the associated sound recordings, or of including sample pupil questions which cannot be readily answered by the teacher with reference to the sound recordings, transcriptions or written notes. Also, there seemed little to gain from producing a text which attempted to cover the whole world. Such an anthology would likely be of immense size, or would have to skate over the surface of what was important in each individual musical tradition. Instead, a range of interesting traditions, with a considerable geographical spread, was selected for deeper investigation. In many cases, two or three examples from the same country or region are presented, reinforcing the point that not all music from each of these places will sound the same, and allowing scope for regional project work. Although the ordering of the material suggests that a geographical approach is to be taken, the possibilities for cross-cultural comparison are extensive. These opportunities are mentioned both in the accompanying notes and the pupil questions; use of these will allow teachers to readily link examples from different cultures to create a coherent world music course.Those are the guiding principles behind this publication. It is now worth briefly describing each part of the set, how it was assembled and ways in which it might be used. Naturally, teachers will be likely to think of their own means of employing this material too.

These contain a series of music tracks, ordered just as in the accompanying books. Each track is licensed from a commercially available CD, since I wanted further sound material to be readily accessible to those who were attracted to these extracts. Nonetheless, the tracks in themselves are extensive enough to give a good idea of the musical style in question, and often contain complete songs or pieces. Many are live performances, recorded 'in the field', and include the sounds of the community at large as well as the musicians themselves. We are perhaps more accustomed to listening to cleaned-up, studio recordings, and may find disconcerting the occasional bark from a Balinese dog, but these tracks communicate a real sense of arising from actual social events.

The availability of suitable sound recordings from which tracks could be licensed naturally influenced the eventual content of the anthology as a whole. Some exciting musical traditions had to be omitted because of the difficulties of locating a suitable recording. Others would have required a longer extract than could have been accommodated, and occasionally I thought it preferable to omit a musical tradition altogether rather than give it too little space to justify itself properly.

Apart from their use in class to illustrate lessons derived from the accompanying texts, or by pupils working through the sets of questions, the CDs can easily be used as revision aids. By playing back tracks previously studied and asking leading questions, the teacher - armed with the transcription and accompanying notes - can readily test pupil knowledge and aural ability.

The hardest task in the compilation of this anthology has been the production of the book of notated transcriptions. Ethnomusicologists such as myself are trained to write down musical sound in visual symbols, but we rely on contextual knowledge of the music as much as on our ears. Knowing how an instrument works, how its strings are tuned, what its performance techniques are and what the local music theory admits as acceptable greatly assists the process of converting musical sounds to graphic signs. However, this familiarity is not easily acquired, and there are probably few ethnomusicologists with intimate knowledge of more than three or four different musical traditions. Sometimes, specialists in the music of other cultures helped by contributing transcriptions and notes, and a handful of my bolder students at the University of Durham gave of their best efforts. Nonetheless, it was not always possible to find someone with both the requisite local knowledge and the free time to undertake each transcription, and most of them I completed myself. The further I moved from familiar territory, which in my case means Chinese traditional music and Western classical music, the harder it was to find ways to write down what I thought I heard.

The phrase 'thought I heard' is important, because the human ear and mind are closely linked. Hearing music is not a passive process of taking in sound waves. It involves perception, or the making sense of the sounds, which is where experience and training come in. This means that a transcriber has no choice but to rationalize each set of sounds to his or her own ways of thinking about music. I may have detected patterns where the originators of the music would say that none exist, and I may have thought I heard intervals or rhythms which are not quite those so carefully performed by the musicians. Of course, I have very probably made straightforward errors too, but the point of explaining all this is to stress that musical perception is quite an individual quality and one greatly reliant upon a listener's experience. Given this variable, written transcriptions of musical sounds, however accurate, will never be able to tell the whole story. The sound recordings should, of course, be taken as authoritative, and the transcriptions as subsequent attempts to describe them in writing. They are thus quite unlike the scores of Western musical works, where the symbols typically prescribe a series of notes which, when realized adequately by the performer, should result in the sounds the composer had in mind.

Despite all this, written transcriptions are extremely convenient tools, allowing the viewer to take in a whole piece in one glance, or to compare, outside of the passage of performance time, different passages. In general, the transcriptions in this collection employ stave notation. Stave notation has the advantages of being both widely understood and a very condensed means of writing down certain musical information. It is strong on pitch and rhythm, which are graphically laid out on the vertical and horizontal axes respectively. It is less strong on attributes such as timbre or microtonal adjustment of existing notes, aspects which are very important in some musical traditions. For reasons such as these, the stave notation employed is typically adapted in some way, for instance an adjusted key signature or layout, to better suit the facts of the music in question. Special symbols are explained in each case, and additional comments to guide the viewer are found on every transcription.

The transcriptions are designed primarily for use with the sound recordings. A few, especially the unaccompanied songs, are suitable without further adaptation for use as performance scores. Even in these cases, though, I would still recommend learning the songs by ear from the recording and using the transcription as a supplementary guide.

Another role of the transcriptions might be to act as models for pupils' own project work. In many music curricula it is possible for a pupil to complete a special extended study. Partial transcriptions could be continued by students equipped with the original CD. Or, taking the transcription and its accompanying notes as a model, they could perhaps study an alternative track from the same recording.

A further possible use of these transcriptions is as a resource for composers. By this I mean not so much imitating the sounds of different musical traditions, although one could perhaps have fun doing that. Instead, close study of the ways in which different people from around the world combine musical sounds and structure musical passages will suggest musical techniques to those who are interested in structuring sounds in their own musical idioms. For reasons of focus, this line of thought is not pursued much further in this anthology, but the imaginative reader will find much scope here for fruitful experimentation.

The explanatory texts which accompany each musical example and transcription are grouped in a separate book. In most cases, the intention has been to discuss the cultural background of the specific recording, to give pertinent details to the genre in question, to describe the main instruments or techniques employed and to provide a musical analysis of the actual excerpt itself. Illustrations and supplementary musical examples or charts are frequently incorporated. Material has been drawn from specialist ethnomusicological studies and reference works in various languages as well as interviews with an international team of ethno-musicological experts and traditional music performers. Sometimes, I have used part of the space available to introduce a broader social, cultural or psychological issue suggested by the music. Sections of this kind should be useful in encouraging cross-cultural comparison, or, in other words, stepping back momentarily from the individual details of a specific example to consider larger musical trends and problems. Although much of the other information needs relatively little processing before it is suitable for pupil consumption, these theoretical sections are perhaps better thought of as being for teachers themselves than as something for them to break down and pass on. Still, with intelligent groups of older pupils it might be possible to use some of these ideas directly also.

Following on from the last point, provision of specific sample lesson plans has been avoided. Different teachers will want to use this material in different ways according to the age, size and aptitude of the class they are faced with. Although lesson outlines could have been prepared, and one suggestion is made in the next section, it seemed better to leave the specifics of delivery to the teachers concerned.

Apart from the manual's use as a source of lesson material, the explanatory texts could perhaps be given, in whole or part, to advanced pupils to work through on their own with reference to the sound recordings and transcriptions. These notes could form the starting points of more extended, independent studies of a particular music culture, style or instrument.

This part of the anthology consists of two sets of sample pupil questions, one set designed to be answered whilst listening to the excerpt, the other intended to be worked subsequently with reference to the transcription. Not all of the questions are of the type that might be set in public examinations, and a few will require many repetitions of the recorded performances, and perhaps some class discussion. Questions vary from the factual and straightforward to the more open, interpretative type, but, in the main, they have the function of pointing out features of the music. Some require written answers, others selection of the most probable of several alternatives, and still others reflection upon the techniques through which answers are achieved. Inclusion of this last kind of question acknowledges that the development of problem-solving skills in musical listening may eventually be of greater utility than the memorization of any amount of repertory. A primary thrust of an effective music education must be to equip pupils with the skills to deal with whatever musical experiences they encounter during their lives.

Earlier, I mentioned that one of the aims of World Sound Matters was not to provide sample lesson plans. This is true, but it does occur to me that in certain cases it might be possible to use the two sets of pupil questions supplied for each track as the backbone of a classroom lesson. Instead of simply posing each question, the teacher could perhaps ask a series of leading questions which draw the pupils toward each point raised in the written questions.

The above remarks have been directed primarily at music teachers and, by reduction, their pupils, but there are others who might find World Sound Matters useful. For instance, beginning students in the subject of ethnomusicology might well find the recordings, transcriptions and explanatory notes helpful as a basic survey of world music. Those who teach world music surveys at universities and colleges may find the recordings, transcriptions and notes helpful. Some of the pupil questions remain worthwhile at tertiary level also.

Likewise, for trainee-teachers and their instructors, this publication provides both a considerable amount of material for classroom use and also a practical example of how the theoretical concerns of a subject as seemingly inconsequent as ethnomusicology can be made relevant to larger audiences.

There are so many peoples and cultures around the world that there is constant pressure to compress the mass of available information into digestible chunks. Only partial introductions to each musical style can be provided, and, in the hope of depicting the remarkable international variety of human music-making, the examples chosen are often among the most idiosyncratic from a particular area or people. Throughout the anthology, because of the necessity to condense information, there is a general non-emphasis on the individuals involved in each recorded musical event. These people, whether composers, performers or listeners, are important and deserve respect and recognition. When reading the notes on a particular people in this book, try to imagine what would have to be left out from a similar-length passage on the music of your own people. When listening to the recorded examples, even when two or three are provided for a country, decide which two or three examples you would choose for your home nation, and whether everyone in your country would agree with your choice. Certainly, I am sure that many people from around the world would not have chosen the extracts I did to represent their musical practices.

There are many sources of information available to those interested in world music. Specialist books on individual countries or traditions are not mentioned here, but amongst those concerned with world music in general some of the most widely accessible are:

1. Reference Works

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan (1980). The twenty-volume New Grove contains an enormous amount of information on music of the world. Generally, this is organized into entries for each country or region, but some important instruments and genres have their own entries. Most entries in New Grove also contain useful bibliographical lists. A revised edition, which should be even more up-to-date, is currently in preparation, as is a several-volume encyclopedia of world music from Garland in New York.

The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan (1984). This three-volume dictionary is the best source for further detail on musical instruments from all around the world. Even when an instrument has a special entry in the original New Grove, it was often expanded or updated in this dictionary. Photographs and diagrams are common. Spelling of instrument names in this anthology follows that used in the New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments.

Microsoft's CD-ROM Musical Instruments (1994) contains a wide selection of traditional instruments from around the world. Attractively illustrated and with sound extracts available at the click of an icon, this kind of resource provides a very effective means of exploring the world's musical traditions. In the field of music education, the possibilities of multimedia are extensive and exciting, and will probably prove more influential than in subjects where sound serves only an illustrative purpose.

2. World Music Surveys

Music Cultures of the Pacific, the Near East, and Asia, 2nd ed., William P. MaIm. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall (1977), and Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents, 3rd ed., Bruno Nettl. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall (1990). Originally prepared in the 1960s, these two surveys remain useful today. Clearly written and authoritative, they discuss main musical styles, instruments and compositions. Illustrations and sample transcriptions are frequent.

Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples, 2nd ed., gen. ed. Jeff Todd Titon. New York: Schirmer (1990). This valuable book from a team of ethnomusicologists examines several musical cultures, and communicates the processes through which world musics may be investigated. A sound recording is also provided.

Excursions in World Music, Bruno Nettl et al. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall (1992). With its own cassette, this attractive book introduces several representative world musics, including that of the Western art tradition. No sample lessons are offered in this publication, but there is much clear discussion of key musical and cultural aspects, bibliographies of further sources and lists of sound recordings.

Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education, ed. William M. Anderson and Patricia Shehan Campbell. Reston, Virginia: Music Educators National conference (1989). Team-written by both educators and ethnomusicologists, this very useful volume introduces the music of many parts of the globe, providing short notations as part of sample lessons.

Lessons from the World: A Cross-Cultural Guide to Music Teaching and Learning, Patricia Shehan Campbell. New York: Schirmer (1991). This thought-provoking book examines and compares music learning from around the historical and contemporary world. Implications for present-day teachers are drawn and sample applications provided.

3. Journals

Much new research on world musics appears first in specialist journals. Perhaps because ethnomusicologists know that the majority of their readers will not have first-hand experience of the music they are dealing with, their writing is often accessible to the intelligent but non-specialist reader. Individual teachers who require a regular flow of information on world musics may wish to subscribe to an ethnomusicological journal or investigate whether it is possible for them to consult these in their local university libraries. Many university libraries allow visitors to consult their books and journals; at some, for an annual fee equivalent to the price of a single text book, it is possible to borrow materials.

Among the several journals specializing in this subject, the foremost is Ethnomusicology, currently published by the Society for Ethnomusicology at the University of Illinois. Issued three times a year, Ethnomusicology contains articles, book reviews, film and recording reviews and geographically-ordered lists of new publications. The latter are very useful for tracking down the latest information on specific musical traditions. For more applied information, frequently embracing traditional musical styles, teachers might find useful the International Journal of Music Education published by the International Society for Music Education at the University of Reading.

Credits

Japan - Music for Shakuhachi	transcription & notes	Ruth Lenihan
Korea - Music for Komun'go	transcription & notes	Robert Provine
Laos - Music for Khaen	transcription & notes	Katy Grainger
Indonesia - Javanese Gamelan	transcription	Simon Steptoe
Indonesia - Balinese Gamelan	transcription & notes	Laura Doggett
Australia - Aboriginal Music	transcription & notes	Harriet Gaywood
Ethiopia - Song with Masenqo	transcription & notes	Paul Hayday
Russia - Play Song	transcription & notes	Marzanna Paplawska
Romania &endash; Professional Folk Music	transcription & notes	Helen Roome & Ellen Scott
Romania - Music for Cimpoi	transcription & notes	Helen Roome & Ellen Scott
Trinidad - Music for Steel Band	transcription & notes	David Price
Brazil - Ritual Dance-Song	transcription & notes	Catherine Bancroft

Acknowledgements

Dorothy Almond, Merete Anderssen, Ron Berry, Ross Blyth, Peter Burt, Hilary Chung, Minh Chung, Catherine Crichton, Katherine Davies, Kevin D awe, Keith Getty, David Greer, Jonathan Haig, Grammenos Halkias, Adam Holladay, Ronak Hussein, Roman Ivanovitch, Yoshikazu Iwamoto, Natsuko Kato, John Koegel, Peter Nickol, Peter Owens, Dimitra Stamogiannou, Joo-Lee Stock, Charlie Stokes and Susie Winkworth

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