Conrad Arensberg and Alan Lomax discuss varied performance style and culture topics (part 5)

Note: How do we define cultural types, as one distinctive type or as groups of cultures? We need to indicate evidence for each ethnographic region with tabulations for every society. Gongs in Southeast Asia, China, Melanesia (some in India, but not New Guinea). In Alor, a metal and rice culture, men use gongs as currency, beat them in a cacophonous way, quarrel over bride price. Women do all the work, children are left behind and have to scrounge for food. Hunger and deprivation are themes. Songs are long, boastful recitations. Instruments as male mastery, or desire for mastery [assertion]. Instruments are made and played by men, except hetaerae [cultivated concubines or companion-entertainers of high culture]. Instruments represent women. Conrad Arensberg: A test - instruments infrequent in places where there is not male dominance and represent opposite. Lomax: In Polynesia children are brought up with little anxiety and there are no instruments. Pygmies can play them well but scorn instruments. Balkans play flutes and bagpipes. Stringed instruments are played by gypsies. Guslan is recent introduction from high culture. Old music of Slavic world was mostly sung, sometimes to the accompaniment of soft flutes. Flutes represent love, magic, and seduction everywhere. Arensberg and Lomax: Whiting hypothesized that where little boys were left alone with mother they had to be painfully reborn into world of masculinity by demonstrating public mastery or through violence. When you become a man in full, you are saying, "I'll lord it over women." Arensberg: Men can also withdraw from women without dominance, as is said about Englishmen, where boys are thrown into sports activities where women are excluded. Dominance is separate from isolation. Lomax: Drumming indicates acting out of "hoped-for dominance." Arensberg: Where dominance is real you don't get drumbeats. We need a separate measure of dominance. Drums abound in Bantu Africa and in Papua New Guinea, where you get orchestras of 1,000 drums. Men live separately from women and make them work so they can have bigger and bigger feasts. Lomax: Drums associated with armies in near and Middle East. African fathers off with other wives. Suburban adolescent music is dominated by powerful rhythm and harsh, squawking saxophones. Bright kids take up guitar or banjo, whipping the hell out of them. Little rapport between older and younger males. Drums among Hindus of Trinidad. Most ferocious, played with sticks. Arensberg: How to measure the many components of male-female dominance. Are there pair relationships? Initiative is a good measure. Does the woman have the right to initiate sexual advance. Male and female teams in hay pitching. Ceremonies: pair dancing. Homestead situation should produce choral music if women working together. In harems there is good deal of association among women but no initiative. Age leveling. Bantus organized in age sets. Team culture. Here (in U.S.A.) age grading is very strong. There is antagonism between groups a few years apart. Teenage music is choral in presentation: group songs with elaborate drill around microphone. Presence of work groups. Spontaneous versus imposed labor and musical expression. Social field of German culture is highly determined but allows social withdrawal and self-expression (quest for mastery). Lomax: Music as a way of moving around early childhood experience with mother. Arensberg: Music as rehearsal for adult experience. Male dominance among Asian and Trinidad Indians. Boys can't get father's attention. No age segregation (except among Indian tribal groups). African women sing hard to outsing other women. European women sing more softly, with more voice blending. Pygmy women sing gently. Cultural evolution: transition from hunter gathering to pastoral (herding). Old Europe was a homestead culture, with gardening in dispersed settlements, characterized by pilgrimages. Teutons older than Celts. There were work bees and music was choral.