The North/South Relations in Music: it’s time we turned the tables!

The thematic proposition of this forum concerns the relationship of sovereignty and subordination between the knowledge produced by western civilizations of the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Recognized through hierarchically distinguished voices and silenced knowledge, this reality is unfair to Latin America’s state of artistic and scientific production, causing distress, non-conformism and even indignation to the artists and scientists who construct and represent the different Latin-American cultures. The expression ‘waste of experience’ as well as the focus on the asymmetry that characterizes the North-South productive relations points to Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ sociology of absences¹.

A brief visit to Santos’ cultural theory and his conceptual and analytical horizons is therefore advisable, so that the discussion stimulated by the editors of ART Review may meet their expectations. His “A Critique of Lazy Reason: against the waste of experience” (2000) is especially recommendable for the understanding of the sociological basis of the aforementioned reality. In this book the author theorizes upon the model of reasoning underlying hegemonic knowledge produced in the western world in the last 200 years, both philosophic and scientific.

Supported by the scientific legitimation necessary to maintain the political and economic differences that nourish capitalism, this “lazy” model of reasoning, according to Santos, occurs in four ways: as ‘impotent reason’ (“which does not exert itself because it thinks that nothing can be done against necessity conceived of as external to itself”); as ‘arrogant reason’ (“which feels no need to exert itself since it imagines itself as unconditionally free and therefore free from the need to prove its own freedom”); as metonymic reason’ (“which claims to be the only form of rationality and therefore does not exert itself to discover other kinds of rationality”); ‘proleptic reason’ (“which does not exert in thinking of the future because it believes it knows all about the future and conceives it as a linear, automatic and infinite overcoming of the present”). (SANTOS: 2002, p.239-240)

Founded on the idea that history is made towards progress, modernity, development, growth and globalization, the lazy model of western rationality considers the cultures of central countries, their institutions and models of sociability under the paradigm of the universal and global. Hegemonic concerns are transformed in true knowledge and everything that the western canon does not legitimate or recognize is considered irrelevant and declared inexistent. The ‘lazy reason’ is incapable of recognizing/valuing another understanding of the world except the western one. This “translates itself in the occultation or marginalization of a great deal of experience and creativity in the world and therefore in their waste” (SANTOS: 2006, p.53). At the basis of its subtractive consequences there is the perception of a hierarchic relation in all dichotomies: scientific knowledge/traditional knowledge, man/woman, civilized/primitive, North/South, East/West, etc.

The ‘sociology of absences’ aims at transforming cultural absences in presences; at enlarging the field of credible experiences, and therefore, also enlarging the present world. As a first methodological step, it proposes that we think of the terms of the dichotomies without the relation of power which unites them; to look at those considered subordinate without such relation. Free from that, absent experiences may become present, as alternatives to hegemonic experiences. “What is it that exists in the South that escapes the dichotomy North/South?” This is an example of the assumptions which guide the ‘sociology of absences’.

Complementing the ‘sociology of absences’, Santos’ ‘sociology of emergencies’ is “the investigation of alternatives which fit within the horizon of concrete possibilities” (SANTOS: 2002, p. 256). According to him, possibility is “the movement of the world”. Resulting from the inclusion of wasted experiences in the present (‘sociology of absences’), the ‘sociology of emergencies’ focuses on future expectations of this inclusion. An intimate connection between present and future projects itself from the relationship between experience and expectation.

The silence of Latin-American knowledge and the hierarchical distinction between Northern and Southern voices is a reality that asks for transformation. Such transformation requires overcoming experiences and alternatives of resistance. Overcoming this requires transposition of prejudices, distances and differences in favour of an unbiased dialogue between the multiple voices and the logics of multiculturalism. Transposing prejudices, distances and differences require in turn a participating force, inclusive of opposite diversities which are concurrent but complementary as well. Latin-America needs to think of itself as an archipelago, where there is a sense of communality with a complex and vitalizing heterogeneity. We must wake up to take on an authentic emancipation, which is only possible from an “emancipatory common sense”, warns Boaventura de Sousa Santos (SANTOS: 2000, p.383)².

I believe that this brief visitation to the theoretic arguments which guide the thematic proposal of our discussion is in good measure to refer to the following account of an exemplary case and a final reflection upon the ways that we should follow to answer, politically and theoretically, the challenge of overcoming this historic reality of exclusion and segregation. My exemplary case of valorization of the artistic and scientific canons of central countries (European and North-American) and subtraction of Latin-American musical knowledge was observed in the finest of the Brazilian academia. I will outline the intellectual profile of a very recent conference in the field of music theory and analysis: the “III International Encounter of Music Theory and Analysis - ETAM” (São Paulo, April of 2013), organized by music departments of four universities in Southeast Brazil³.

My observation took in consideration the selected spontaneous demand of the conference: 38 theoretic-analytical papers published in the congress’ proceedings.

In spite of its international ambition, all the papers presented in the III ETAM are from Brazilian academic institutions. Nevertheless, we can’t say that the congress reflected the Brazilian research in music theory and analysis as a whole. Practically 70% of all the papers corresponded to the Southeast region, with approximately half of them coming from São Paulo universities (55, 26%). Figure 1 shows the institutional representativeness in the III ETAM.

The majority of the papers explicitly refer to composers and works, being therefore fundamentally analytical. In the universe of 25 mentioned composers, 72% are from the Northern Hemisphere and 28% from the Southern.

Among the representatives of the Northern Hemisphere, 64% are European and 8% are North-American⁴. The 28% which represent the Southern Hemisphere are South-Americans⁵.

However, from the 10 represented nations, Brazil had the highest percentage of composers⁶. The theoretical references of the papers consist of 305 titles (articles, interviews, entries, chapters, books, dissertations and thesis). Their cultural origins are: 59, 67% are publications from the Global North and 40, 33% from the Global South, where 39, 67% correspond to Brazilian publications and 0, 66% to Argentinian publications.

If the editorial profile makes us feel optimistic (“we are finding a balance…”), the authorial profile makes us distressed: 75,75% are authors which represent Northern cultures, while only 25,25% represent Southern cultures, among which 24,60% are native Brazilians or Brazilian citizens and 0,65% are Argentinians.

This means that, in the music theory field, Brazilian editors publish much more foreign authors (translated into Portuguese) than our own. 60, 33% from the Brazilian publications referred to in the papers of the III ETAM are translations from foreign authors (English, French, Belgian, German, North-American).

Considering that all the papers presented in the conference derived from Brazilian academic institutions – that is, from graduate students who are generally supported by the Brazilian Foundation CAPES, or from researchers generally assisted by Brazilian Research Foundations, I think that the reality revealed by the analysis of the III ETAM’s intellectual content is at least disturbing, if not ethically questionable. It is true that we can’t do without the theory produced in the United States, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain or Portugal. The multicultural dialogue is at the core of artistic and intellectual development. Nevertheless, we need to discover our cultural context, understand its idiosyncrasies, value our own intellectual production, and, why not, be acquainted with that of our Latin-American neighbours. I am pretty sure that this reality observed in the theoretic-analytical field presents itself with different nuances in the other fields of musical knowledge (ethnomusicology, historic musicology or music education, for instance). It would be advisable to evaluate the artistic and scientific production circulating in the whole area of Music.

If the analysis of the theoretical references reveals a distressing result, I would say that the analysis of the objects of theoretical study demonstrates an outrageous situation. Would we have more to say about Mahler’s orchestral texture, Scriabin’s harmonies, Schoenberg’s orchestral fragmentation, Bartók’s inversional symmetry, Lygeti’s rhythmic construction, Xenakis’ timbric fusion, Lachenmann’s formal conception, the modeling of time in Messiaen, Schaeffer, Stockhausen, Grisey, Romitelli or Gervasoni, Kurtág’s intertextuality, Milles Davis’ improvisatory techniques or Don Ellis’s metric dissonance than the European and North-American theoretic literature have already done in approximately seven decades of researches? Aren’t we rather demonstrating what we learn from the central countries’ production than researching and producing original knowledge that is applicable to our cultural specificities? Are we hypnotized by the Northern canon? Or do we prefer the comfort of the ready-made recipes and do not perceive that our intellectual maturity depends much from our cultural independence? If we are still heirs of the ‘proleptic reason’, the ‘metonimic reason’ and the ‘arrogant reason’, at least I believe that we are not heirs from the ‘impotent reason’. Therefore, we can and we should face the political challenge of projecting a different reality.

Incidentally, aren’t theoreticians, analysts and critics of the musical production, the most legitimate spokesmen of the music values? Being ahead of historical musicology, are they not supposed to produce the arguments that legitimate the musical work, ensure its survival and influence so that it figures in canonic repertories? It is worthy to remind you here of William Weber unfolding Kerman’s phrase “A canon is an idea; a repertory is a program of action”⁷: “Thus, simply performing works does not in and of itself establish them as part of a canon; the musical culture has to assert that such an authority exists, and define it at least to some degree in systematic fashion.” (WEBER: 2001, p. 349).

Recognizing the need to stimulate the emergence of the musicological production of semi-peripheral cultures, during its 19th congress (Rome, July 1-7, 2012), the International Musicological Society (IMS) welcomed the creation of its Latin-American and Caribbean branch: the “Regional Association for Latin-America and Caribe (ARALC-IMS), whose first congress will take place in La Habana, in March 2014. The theme of this conference, “Latin-America and the Canon”, invites us to reflect upon the strategies which determine the formation, inclusion, exclusion and persistency of a referential and representative corpus of a tradition within certain historical context. Establishing roots, the canon takes on the important role of regulating changes, by controlling the cultural relativization associated to the coexistence of a plurality of semantic fields and discourses. ARALC’s theme certainly boosts a significant dialogue between distinct but related cultures that need to discuss emergence, independence and cultural sovereignty policies.

Adopting project ALICE⁸, the European Research Council – one of the most prestigious and competitive international financing agencies for research in the conditions of scientific excellence – also adopts the ideology that “there isn’t global social justice without global cognitive justice”. To rethink the renovation of the Northern conventional knowledge under the light of the inclusion of Southern epistemologies means to bet on the possibility of new forms of sharing knowledge and experience well beyond those which characterized (and still characterize) the capitalist and colonial domination. This inclusive perspective, which presupposes policies of reciprocity and intercultural understanding, must be seen by the Southern countries as an important stimulus to our pledge for independence, autonomy and visibility of our intellectual production. We shall work and turn the tables!

References

KERMAN, Joseph. “A Few Canonic Variations”. Critical Inquiry, 10 (Sept. 1983), pp. 107-126.

SANTOS, Boaventura de Sousa. A Crítica da Razão Indolente: Contra o desperdício da experiência. São Paulo: Cortez, 2000.

_____. “Para uma sociologia das ausências e uma sociologia das emergências”. Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 63 (Oct. 2002), pp.237-280.

_____. “Introdução”. Conhecimento Prudente para uma Vida Decente: Um discurso sobre as ciências revisitado, Boaventura de Souza Santos (org.), São Paulo: Cortez, 2006, pp.17-59.

USP; UNESP; UNICAMP; UNIRIO. Anais do III Encontro Internacional de Teoria e Análise Musical: dimensão temporal na análise musical. São Paulo, 17 a 19 de abril de 2013.

WEBER, William. “The History of Musical Canon”, Rethinking Music, eds. Mark Everist and Nicholas Cook, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 336-355.

Notes

¹ Retired professor of the School of Economics at the University of Coimbra, Director of the Center for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra, Boaventura de Sousa Santos is the director of the research project ‘ALICE – strange mirrors, unsuspected lessons’ (see <alice.ces.uc.pt>). Financed by the European Research Council, this project aims at rethinking and renovating social-scientific knowledge through the emergence of Southern epistemologies, which are made invisible in the Northern hemisphere (mainly in Europe and United States of America) due to capitalist politics. According to the author, the project is an attempt to achieve global social justice, since, as he says, “there is no social justice without global cognitive justice”. It should be stressed that the fieldwork undertaken by Santos for his J.S.D. thesis (Yale, 1973, Sociology of Law) was based on participant observation in a favela in Rio de Janeiro.

² SANTOS, Boaventura de Sousa. A crítica da razão indolente contra o desperdício da experiência. São Paulo: Cortez, 2000.

³ São Paulo University (USP), São Paulo State University (UNESP), State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO).

⁴ European composers: O. Messiaen; P. Schaeffer; I. Xenakis; G. Grisey; Mahler; A. Schoenberg; A. Webern; A. Berg; S. Gervasoni; F. Romitelli; K. Stockhausen; H. Lachenmann; B. Bartók; G. Ligeti; G. Kurtag; A. Scriabin. North American Composers: M. Davis; D. Ellis.

⁵ South-American composers: Heitor Villa-Lobos (BR); Moacir Santos (BR); Luizão Paiva (BR); Marcos Câmara de Castro (BR); Bruno Yukio Meireles Ishisaki (BR); Laiana Lopes Oliveira (BR); A. Ginastera (AR).

⁶ Russia (4%), Romania (4%), Argentina (4%), United States (8%), Hungary (8%), Germany (8%), Italy (8%), France (16%), Austria (16%) and Brazil (24%).

⁷ KERMAN: 1983, p. 107.

⁸ Initiated in July 2011 for a vital period of five years, project ALICE – referred to in Note 1 – counts on a global financial support of 2, 4 million Euros. In an articulated way, research is being developed in countries seen as “conveyors of important experiences” for the study of democracy, interculturality, non-capitalist forms of economy and human rights: South Africa, Bolivia, Brazil, Equator and India, which might be extended to other countries and experiences that contribute to the project’s objective.