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How Musical Is Man? (Jessie & John Danz Lectures)

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John Blacking was an ethnomusicologist who spent two years living with, and studying the Venda, a tribe in South Africa. As opposed to Western classical music where the few (professional concert musicians) are revered by the many, and only a handful are regarded as "talented" while most believe they have no "talent," with the Venda, everyone is expected to be able to perform; no one is excluded. Music is their religion.

In the first chapter of his small yet very powerful book, Blacking writes that when he began to live with and study the Venda, he believed that music began and ended with Western classical music, but, that after two years of living and studying the Venda and their music, he no longer understood Western music. Put differently, his experience living with and studying the Venda forced him to question all prior beliefs he had both about Western music and assumptions underlying them. The Venda taught him that all people have talent or musical ability. It is only Western values or myths that create hierarchies of talent and ability. And that these underlying Western values and myths subjugate countless people, causing them to dismiss key aspects of their inherent human potential, because of widespread belief that it is pointless to pursue musical ambitions only a fortunate few possess, but most do not.

Blacking's book is important not only as an ethnomusicological study, but has, I think, universal application because its underlying theses directly question Western assumptions and myths that adversely affect people regardless of musical preference. The book forces one to think, to challenge values one might previously have taken for granted.

I have recommended John Blacking's How Musical is Man? to friends who thought themselves totally bereft of any musical ability or talent, who were highly reluctant to attempt anything musical.

Though the book has musical examples, it can be read and appreciated by those with absolutely no ability to read or play music.

Highly recommended.

This slim volume may be the be best single introduction to ethnomusicology we have. It is based on Blacking's fieldwork among the Venda, an agricultural people living in the African Transvaal. Blacking provides extensive musical examples and photographs covering children's music, ritual, spiritual possession, the musical calendar, etc. Unlike Westerners, who believe that only a few people are musical, the Venda believe that all people are musical and so all members of their culture actively make music.

I think all the people should read this book if not for anything else then to learn how to appreciate different musical styles and cultures. Every ethnomusicologists must.

Western Michigan University Professor John Blacking (1928-1990) prefaces his intended answer to the titular question, How Musical is Man?, with the qualification that this work - originally printed in 1973 - is "not a scholarly study, so much as an attempt to reconcile my experiences." With this in mind, the reader should not be surprised to find a self-indulgent speculative which walks a fine line between narrowly focused ethnomusicologic comparative (Western society versus the Venda tribe of South Africa) and a loosely organized philosophical reflection. Ultimately, Blacking presents an indictment of Western culture with relatively rare bibliographic references. The absence of an index or collective bibliography, combined with the restricted assessment, limits the text's use as a convenient or scholarly reference. Nevertheless, it retains value as a time capsule of perspective from a pioneering ethnomusicological researcher.
Blacking divides his discussion into four sections: I. Humanly Organized Sound; II. Music and Society and Culture; III. Culture and Society in Music; IV. Soundly Organized Humanity. Throughout, he raises further questions crucial to answering the overriding inquiry. He describes the first three chapters as an attempt to show how research in ethnomusicology may resolve myriad related questions. In the final chapter he endeavors to address why answering the question is essential. Somehow he never quite answers the question satisfactorily.
After an enigmatic opening with what appears to be a feeble attempt at numerologic humor ("Ethnomusicology ... It's seven syllables do not give it any advantage over the pentasyllabic `musicology.'"), Blacking's first chapter positions music as a species-specific sonic phenomenon we are compelled to organize and argues the need to look for patterns and relationships between musical and cultural behaviors. Blacking turns constantly, if monoptically, to his own experiences with the Venda tribe.
Blacking goes on to insist the question of man's musicality cannot be answered without first understanding the processes of cause and effect, such as the issue of who performs, sings and listens to music and why. Here he also aptly suggests the social setting may at times even supersede the music in a culture's perception and that it is essential to listen with the appropriate cultural ears. Again he turns largely to the Venda tribe for examples and even provides an illustrated calendar of Venda musical practice and an complicated diagram of musical and social relationships in the Venda society.
Ironically, while stepping on and off his societal soapbox, Blacking manages to critique the presumptive arrogance of narrowly focused Western musicologists and condemn the practice of apartheid, but he inherently accepts the Venda tribe's mutilation of women in their annual season of female circumcision. Contradictions abound.
The book contains several confusing segues into self-indulgent recollections and intermittent non sequiturs, such as in the ultimate paragraph: "Even falling in love may be more significant as a cognitive activity in which learned categories are realigned, than as an exertion of the sex organs or a hormonal reaction."
For a scholarly tome suitable for extended practical shelf life from this author, one might do well to forgo his philosophical prattling for his actual research originally printed in 1967, Venda Children's Songs: A Study in Ethnomusicological Analysis (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995)
© G. Galván

This book is an amalgam of flaws and flawed thinking. For starters, the title is a complete misnomer: only two musical traditions are extensively analyzed while hundreds of musical traditions -Native American, South American, Aborigine, Middle Eastern, Tibetan, Asian, etc. are ignored. Not to mention the fact that the animal world -bees, whales, birds- is skipped entirely. Most of the book is spent bashing European music and society with the music and social arrangements of the Venda tribe in Africa. More exasperating, Blacking's method of proving a point is often simply to state it: "it is reasonable to suppose that music ... is a species specific trait of man." What seemed like a very interesting thesis is, for the most part, finished with this statement!

We are treated to page after page of Venda music, and told such earth-shattering truths as when analyzing music, we have to take into consideration the society that produced it. Maybe this book can be forgiven for expecting this to be a momentous insight because it was written in 1974 before cross cultural studies were common. Reading this in 2002, Blacking is simply a preaching to a bewildered crowd of the converted.

Blacking also fails to make any distinction between songs composed for dance, for opera, for solo or choral performance, for ritual, for symphonies or any for any other type of music. He doesn't take into consideration that the inspiration for, say, blues, rock, and jazz, for classical and atonal Gregorian chanting may be quite different, that their functions may make for poor comparison. I lost the last of my tolerance for this book when, in the conclusion, Blacing decided to prove that purely musical considerations, such as "the logic of the melodic pattern" and tonal relationships, are not sufficient to analyze a song the Venda used to teach their children to count. Well, why should they be? This is the Venda version of Sesame Street ditties in which "on each half-note beat, a finger is grapsed and counted ... from the left little finger to the thumb ..." Who in the world would expect purely musical considerations to explain everything in such a pragmatic piece of work? Blacking utterly fails to take into account that virtually all of the Venda's music is of this sort-it serves a social or pragmatic function-whereas Western music has long since moved away from that into the realm of aesthetic expression.

Even the section of the book in which Blacking tried to decide whether there might be universal aspects to music was an abysmal disappointment because he fails in any way to expound on his idle musing that music may have universal elements.

By the time he gets to the conclusion, he will say a half dozen things about music that are either contradictory or simply hang there without any discussion, including the "hard task is to love, and music is a skill that prepares man for this most difficult task." He states this on page 103 (of 116) without any previous mention of love in the context of music. Nor will he go on to prove his point, instead he will briefly and tangentially discuss this before moving on to how music "may represent the human mind working without interference and therefore observation of musical structures may reveal some of the sturctual pinciples on which all human life is based." Indeed a revelation if only it weren't dropped on page 115 like paratrooper who finds himself utterly alone after the drone of the plane has faded into silence on the very next page. Perhaps the most absurd thing Blacking asserts in his conclusion is that "In order to create new Venda music, you must BE a Venda, sharing Venda social and cultural life from early childhood." It's no more absurd than the claiming that for an author to portray a believable male character, she must be a man.
"The chief function" -yet another chief function-"of music is to involve people in shared experiences within the framework of their cultural experience." Once again, he states this as if it were a self-evident truth and makes no attempt to sway anyone who might be skeptical. What about those of us who lean more toward the belief that music can be, if not a universal language, at least more mutually intellgible than, say, Turkish and German? In other words, the belief that a German musician can convey much much more with a musical composition than he or she can with a lecture given to a Turkish-speaking audience? Transcending culture, seems as much an element of music as perpetuating it. What a shame such a fascinating topic was given such unforgivably narrow treatment.

You are far better off reading what Mahler had to say about music (his are the most interesting quotes in this book) or, Igor Stravinsky's wonderfully concise and presented "The Poetics of Music."

The book is great if you really want to do a research paper on the musical history of Europe.