Ethnicity, Identity, and Music

Stokes, Martin (Ed.). Ethnicity, Identity, and Music: The Musical Construction of Place. Berg Publishers: New York, NY. (1997)

With Ethnicity, Identity, and Music, I have chosen to read a selection of chapters as they are individual essays. Several chapters overlap in theme and point; for example three of the chapters deal directly with the construction of national identity through music. Thus, I have chosen to read the introduction: Ethnicity, Identity and Music, chapter four: National Anthems: The Case of Chopin as a National Composer, chapter five: Macunaima’s Music: National Identity and Ethnomusicological Research in Brazil, chapter seven: Identity, Place, and the ‘Liverpool Sound,’ and chapter ten: Music, Literature and Etiquette: Musical Instruments and Social Identity from Castiglione to Austen.

This book gives us an interesting surface read into themes we may consider when pondering the relationship of music, culture, and space/location. As Stokes lays out in the title, identity issues are a main focus of each essay. This is a good follow-up to Soundtracks, as it deals with the same overarching theme. Like said, where Soundtracks went in depth on how to approach the theme, namely Connell and Gibson basing their approach on a fixity-fluidity of music/culture binary, Ethnicity, Identity, and Music is a surface read, a collection of essays.

Much of the book is dedicated to cases of countries building up their national character/identity through music. Zdzislaw Mach takes us through how Chopin has become a significant figure for Poland. The account is on three different levels: Chopin as far as his technical, compositional skill, Chopin himself as a national hero/symbol of Polish music and art, and finally Chopin as “a remedy for the inferiority complex that the Polish intelligentisia often experiences and conceals in its mythology of greatness.” (p. 66) In the later respect, Mach writes of the illusion of inferiority Polish people have faced being separate from the apex of western European cultural production centers, namely Germany, France, England, and Italy. Much of the essay is written in this way, looking at the musical identity of Poland through the lens of a collective social psychological/emotional state, or the national soul.

In order to compare approach I chose Suzel Ana Reily’s essay on Mario de Andrade’s research on the music of Brazil. Reily presents a more complex analysis of our theme by describing the works of Andrade, who “became the intellectual leader of an entire generation…” (p. 72) Reily cites Andrade’s philosophical/social influences and contextualizes key points in his life: “Mario de Andrade’s work was clealy influenced by European intellectual tides of the late nineteenth century. It has been claimed that his ideas developed out of his reading of Levy-Bruhl, Taylor, Frazer, Freud, and later Marx.” (p. 76) We may parallel Brazil during the 1800s with Poland say, around the turn of the century, as Reily cites an inferiority complex amongst the intellectuals and upper class. Thus, both countries identify themselves based against a western European model of comparison.