Do We Hear What We Think We Hear?

By Dick van der Meij

Wim van Zanten is currently working in the Department for Cultural and Social Studies, Leiden University. Among his tasks is teaching the anthropology of music. It appears there are three major places in Holland to study ethnomusicology: in Leiden, where it is called 'anthropology of music'; in Amsterdam, under the title 'ethnomusicology'; and in Rotterdam at the Academy of Music: world music. Three different names: does that also imply three different approaches?
According to Van Zanten the difference between Leiden and Amsterdam on the one hand and Rotterdam on the other is that the emphasis in Rotterdam is on performing the music studied, whereas in the other two places the emphasis is on the study of music performed. In Leiden the idea is to study human behaviour through music, using theories and approaches borrowed from the Social Sciences; whereas in Amsterdam the emphasis is on the music and the behaviour of people using it, adopting ideas and approaches from the Humanities. Van Zanten stresses the fact that the difference is not as marked as it might seem at first glance.

Theory and practice
The difference engendered between the use of an approach based either on the Social Sciences or the Humanities has fuelled a heated debate and is still being discussed on a global scale. The difference is that the Social Sciences tries to understand the aesthetics of music as a social phenomenon. Aesthetics in themselves are a feature which can be understood only in their social context. The idea is to find out what society thinks of its own music and fieldwork is often part of the method used to gain an understanding of this. The Humanities try to grasp the aesthetics of music via the understanding of the musical instruments and other musical ins-and-outs using Western technology and theories based on these features.
In fact, Van Zanten regrets the division of theory and practice. The invalidity of this segmentation is much more widely understood in the US. A Western researcher should also understand the practice of the music performed, and the best way to do so is the actual study of the performance of the music itself.
For Van Zanten the meaning of music is the main issue. Post-Modernism is not his cup of tea. He argues music cannot and should not be studied divorced from its context! The essential factor of the context requires fieldwork. Especially in Leiden, the fact that fieldwork is an integral part of research has been recognized for decades. Alas, the recent drive to economize at the university has resulted in a drastic reduction in fieldwork- funding. Van Zanten feels strongly about this point. It is detrimental to the outcome of research if fieldwork is no longer possible. It is an integral part of doing one's work properly and it is greatly to be regretted that funding has been reduced so severely. Other funding is equally difficult to obtain and we even discussed the amount of valuable time spent on trying to find funding, time which is lost to actual research.

Notation systems
Van Zanten originally started his research in Africa and then changed to Indonesia. He defended his PhD on Cianjuran tembang from West Java and is currently planning to re-enter this research by publishing a book on the practical aspects of the rather theoretical aspects he has touched upon in his thesis. He also plans to finish his research on the musical traditions of the Badui, a small, isolated Sundanese population group in West Java. In his research he use notation systems for the music he discusses. In contrast to Judith Becker, who feels notation systems lead to stagnation and fossilization of the music, Van Zanten feels there is nothing wrong with a notation system in order memorize music. The question is rather whether the best system is used, and how it is used. In the West notation systems have not lead to stagnation. In the same way, notation of music in other cultures need not necessarily lead to fossilization. The Chinese and Japanese have used notation systems for many centuries, and one cannot say that the performance of a guqin zither has fossilized. He wants to publish his book with audio and video recordings; to him it seems impossible to talk properly about music if you do not know how it sounds and what the related movements are.

Sound analysis
When asked if ethnomusicology is entering the field it started from - discovery, physical descriptions, theory, rediscovery - he feels that indeed the theoretical approach, based on physical descriptions, has not been very fruitful. We should never forget to rediscover and redescribe the findings of our predecessors. Jaap Kunst's findings are still valid as far as his discoveries are concerned. His theoretical speculations are almost invariably outdated.
The measurements Kunst made were not an unmitigated disaster. For a long time, measurement was out of fashion. It was thought to be a device so completely outdated and nonsensical that no one ventured into the field. Van Zanten: Actually Canst was not so bad. Our present equipment is much more sophisticated meaning our results are more refined and thus we can find aspects in music which we would otherwise have never understood. For instance, 'overtone singing' is a way of singing bi-phonically, i.e. two sounds at the same time: the fundamental together with one of the overtones that is exemplified more than the others, because of the special singing techniques. It is found in several places: with the Tuva, in Mongolia, Tibet, and also in African cultures. If we study such psycho-acoustic phenomenon by using the machines for analyzing sound, such as used in phonetics, we may get a better understanding of it. After all, most western musicians are not used to some sound phenomena: Do we actually hear what we think we hear? This type of analysis may eliminate part of the ethnocentric bias.
In the field of the ethnomusicology of Southeast Asia the focus is strongly on Indonesia. Apart from the traditional fields of study: Javanese and Balinese gamelan, other traditions in Indonesia are also being studied, not only by Dutch and other foreign scholars, but also by Indonesians themselves.

Conference on ethnomusicology
As chairman of the Nederlandse Vereniging Ethnomusicology Arnold Blake (Arnold Blake Society for Ethnomusicology), established 1984, Van Zanten is proud that in Rotterdam, from September 13 - 17 1995, in conjunction with the Research School CNWS of Leiden University and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences a conference will be held on: Music in a Changing World. The seminar will incorporate the 3rd International Symposium on Teaching World Music, the 11th European Seminar in Ethnomusicology and is preceded by the 2nd Meeting of the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research: East Asian Voices (11-14 September). The impressive programme also includes a World Music Festival and a World Music Market. It is the first time that such an international congress has been organized in the Netherlands, and Van Zanten expects that stemming from this conference the Netherlands will once again present itself to the world of ethnomusicology as a united front.