Poetics South Africa "Afrika Is Me" Session @ Bolo Bolo

InZync 2014 Autumn Slam (AmaZink, Kayamandi)

Lexical Semantics: Bela Bartok and the Devaluation of Ethnomusicology

I assume you expect to hear from me, during this presentation, a commentary or account of the content in the essay by Bela Bartok, “The Influence of Peasant Music on Modern Music” (Bartok, 1931), as well as a description of what ethnomusicology is, along with it’s history.  For purposes of keeping within the academic frame, let me not call it an assumption and rather an educated guess (lexical semantics at play from the onset).  I, however, have decided to approach the problem from a different perspective, that is, to look at how lexical semantics might have led to ethnomusicology being regarded in some circles as the lesser sibling in the musicological family.  Indeed the task at hand requires me to at least answer, even if in passing, those more obvious questions stated above.  Why have I decided on this approach?  Quite simply, I don’t believe we’re here to describe or rehash music history.  My thinking is that we are here to offer opinions, question and think critically on musical events, ideologies, history and music self.  In this vein I offer my most humble opinions.

The People Under The Sea.

If no human has ever seen a living giant squid, if we don’t know when and where “…the most gargantuan beast the Earth has yet produced…” breeds, if we have better maps of the surfaces Mars and the Moon than we do of our ocean floors, if there could be as many as thirty-million species of animals living under the sea, if we’ve only sent humans to the very bottom of the ocean once, in 1960, in a metal ball with small windows and no lights, is it too far a stretch of the imagination to entertain the possibility of intelligent life under our oceans?  (With all due respect to them, I’m not speaking here of dolphins and whales, I mean creatures with some or other form of technology).  And if we choose to entertain this inane suggestion, could we not also presume that they are mightily pissed off at us landlubbers?