Entry Two: Soundtracks Part one (introduction-chapter 3)

Fixity-Fluidity in Music and Culture

In the first chapter Connell and Gibson present the premise of their book, roughly, identity of music as found in the relationship between music and space. The authors introduce the binary of “fixity and fluidity” (pp. 9, 10). This theme is revisited throughout the book in its many manifestations; the authors note: “both ‘fixity’ and ‘fluidity’ operate as umbrella terms that reflect a range of spatial practices, tendencies, decisions and physical objects” (p. 9). When we grapple with the issue of authenticity, a central concept to both Soundtracks and my own research, the above binary becomes very interesting. Does the ethnomusicologist look for ‘traditional’ music fixed in place and origin? How does the researcher incorporate the fluidity of music when describing what is authentic and traditional based on fixity? How may we understand the notion of traditional? We are in a state that both complicates and makes interesting such notions. Dare I mention globalization? Simon and Garfunkel’s El Condor Pasa is a song, now decades old, that is a direct interpolation of a South American ‘traditional’ melody. Several days ago, I heard a Mexican version of the said song. Do origins vanish or are they rewritten? Does ownership denote a moment in time, an accreditation of a musical construction to a person?

Back to the binary of fluidity-fixity: authenticity based thereupon may be paralleled to ‘nature’ as notion. Nature is man’s construct, a reaction to the historic departure from the grasslands of Africa. A watered-down version of this evolution: man left the ‘natural’ world but only realized this when thousands of years later looked down from a skyscraper, longing for the past grasslands. Thus, man created nature as a notion, a reaction, a phylogenic spatiality: making space an issue.

Connell and Gibson approach this idea, this return to original space, or region from a venturing out: “Metaphors of hybridity, and of fluid, virtual spaces explain only part of the story; mobility triggers new attempts at fixity – holding on to traditions despite losses of popular appeal, constructing spaces for local expressions…marketing music through place and marketing place through music.” Hence, place as a determinant of authenticity in music is at least in part a construct. The authors further discuss copyright as a “crucial concept underpinning fluidity” as it denotes the diffusion of music. Copyright is one instance of a “cultural gatekeeper” (p. 46).

Chapter three delves further into the diffusion of music. A tension exists between how people (be they creators, owners, audience, researchers of a certain music) approach such diffusion: “Though hybridity took different forms in different places, what some took as a threat to local distinctiveness was interpreted elsewhere in a more positive light and, in some cases, fluidity of musical influences provided blueprints for new reclamations of place” (p. 50). The stress exists between the perceived loss of tradition and the perceived opportunity to create anew…

Connell, John and Gibson, Chris. Soundtracks: Popular music, identity and place. Routledge: London, England (2003)