This is the second blog post in a new series featuring behind-the-scenes discoveries from the Ethnomusicology Archive & Lab at UT Austin’s Butler School of Music.
BY DIMITRIS GKOULIMARIS, PHD STUDENT
When I began to explore the Ethnomusicology Lab’s collections, among the first things to draw my attention was the stack of LPs located to the left of the computer desk. Flicking through the LPs, I saw titles representing music from different corners of the world — though not all places received equal representation, with the Indian subcontinent an especially popular choice, given the expertise of previous faculty. I also noticed a consistency in the cover art: many LP sleeves featured sketches that blended hipness with exoticism.
Before long, I realized that most of the LPs in our collection (35 out of the 62) came from the same source: the Explorer series published by New York-based indie label Nonesuch Records. Nonesuch was founded in 1964 as a “budget classical label.” In 1967, editor Tracey Sterne launched the Explorer series, initially with the help of musicologist-collector David Lewiston, who contributed his field recordings for production and distribution. It is not coincidental that such a series of commercial records was launched in the same era that saw the founding and growth of North American ethnomusicology.
Commercial “world music” records have a complicated relationship to ethnomusicology. During our training, we learn to view the world music industry from a critical distance. We deconstruct the notion of “world music,” guided by the writings of Steven Feld, Louise Meintjes, and Veit Erlmann — all of them once affiliated with UT’s program, by the way. We read critiques of the “worldbeat” genre, of Paul Simon’s Graceland, of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (“The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices”). We explore issues of unequal distribution of authorship rights, lack of accreditation, cultural appropriation, objectification of the “other,” exoticism, orientalism, primitivism, and many other “-isms” that have long festered in the Western imagination.
Given this aspect of my own training, I approached Nonesuch’s Explorer series with some apprehension. Initially, I was put off by the representation of certain cultures in some cover art. Then, as I was reading up on the label, I found out that this series had inspired some of the “usual suspects” of appropriative worldliness. For instance, David Byrne, who famously drew from African and African-American stylistic innovations for his own “worldbeat” experiment, was a big fan of the series as a teenager. It seems that Nonesuch’s Explorer series was a pioneer in triggering the aural exoticism of Western audiences, setting the stage for what would later become the world music industry as we know it.
However, there are significant ways in which the Explorer series differs from what came after it. Items in this series are not packaged according to Western aesthetic preferences. There is no arrangement of melodies in a Western European harmonization style (unlike the “Mysterious Voices”), and neither a use of de-contextualized, vaguely “exotic” musical features for the sake of catchiness (unlike David Burne’s “worldbeat”). The music comes as it is: the Explorer records are either field recordings made by ethnographers, or studio recordings of musicians performing in their own style — although the recordings are framed by production choices, as I will discuss in Part II of this blog post.
Notably in this series, the musicians are named and foregrounded — and their instruments and styles are explained and contextualized in the liner notes — unlike, for instance, the faceless “African-ness” of Paul Simon’s Graceland, wherein musician names are all but omitted. Each LP features dense text on the back side of the sleeve, with content ranging from the artist’s biography, to translations of song lyrics, even to instrumental technique and music theory.
Here I highlight two items from the Explorer series, both of which feature studio-recorded performances by individual virtuosos.
First, The Pulse of Tanam: Ghana Raga Panchakam — a performance of South Indian music by Vina virtuoso Mokkapati Nageswara Rao, presenting a form called tanam wherein five different raga (musical modes) are performed in succession. The liner notes, co-written by the performer and by some Jon K. Barlow, explain the tanam tradition at great length, addressing the etymology of its vocabulary, the structural elements of the music, the instrumental technique, and even the governing principles of raga theory (see above image).
I was drawn to this record because someone had previously penciled in the word “GOOD” on the sleeve. And it was very good indeed.
The second item I selected is titled Escalay — The Water Wheel: Oud Music from Nubia. As an oudist myself, I was especially intrigued by this record, which features Sudanese Nubian artist Hamza El Din in an extraordinary display of the technical capacities of the instrument. Side One features El Din’s composition “Escalay,” meaning “Water Wheel” — a sonic reflection on the Upper Nile communities’ reliance on the river. Side Two features two tracks: track 1, “I Remember,” is an interpretation of one of Abdul Wahab’s compositions for Umm Kulthum, while track 2, “Song With Tar,” is El Din’s personalized take on early 20th century Nubian folk music. Side Two thus showcases the duality of El Din’s musical identity, shaped by both his Nubian upbringing and by his study of Arabic classical and popular music.
Even though these two virtuosos perform their own music in their own way — not attempting to cater to foreign tastes — there may still be some affinity between Western ears and the sonic contents of these two records. There is something about the modality of the South Indian raga, the Arabic maqamat, and Upper-Nile pentatonicism that, in my ears, resonates with American popular music genres such as the blues, rock ‘n’ roll, even psychedelic rock. And there is something in the two artists’ virtuosity and affective intensity that made me think: This track is rockin’ hard. Perhaps the popularity of certain types of “world music” in the West is not coincidental.
In Part II of this blog post, I will feature other items from the Nonesuch Explorer series — to consider how recorded sound can construct an imagination of place. I will also contemplate the place of commercial records within an ethnomusicological archive. Stay tuned!
