A Song, Two Rhythms and Rihanna PhD Oral Defense Presentation 2014
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This is my PhD oral defense on the music of Barbados.
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A Song, Two Rhythms and Rihanna PhD Oral Defense Presentation 2014
- 1. A Song, Two Rhythms and Rihanna Musical Sounds, Identity and Power in Four Genre Worlds H. Stefan Walcott PhD Candidate Cultural Studies
- 2. A Song, Two Rhythms and Rihanna Musical practitioners Sounds Identity
- 3. Questions Which sounds do Barbadian musical practitioners use to articulate their identities? What do these sounds mean and how do these meanings then attach themselves to other meanings, in particular, a nationalist identity? Who benefits from this particular articulation of a nationalist identity?
- 4. Discipline Sounds Identity Power
- 5. Framework Genre World Articulation
- 7. Chapters Introduction Methods Bajan to the Bone: Whose Folk Song Are These? Spouge: Sounding a Bajan Genre, Sounding a Bajan Hero 246 to the Wirl - Under Her Umbrella Ella Ella: the Global Bajan the Bajan Global Outside Men Bajan to the Bone Spouge: Sounding a Genre, Sounding a Hero 246 to the Wirl: Under Her Umbrella Outside Men
- 8. Articulation Practitioners articulate their identities in fleeting moments from multiple discourses. Sounds have become articulated to particular discourses which are not permanent. Articulation concerns itself with hegemony.
- 9. Methods Interviews Analysis of strategy through musical parameters Transcription Analysis
- 10. Interviews
- 11. Strategy Melody Harmony Rhythm Texture
- 12. Transcription Analysis – “Boom Tick Tick”
- 13. Findings Bajan to the Bone: Whose Folk Song Are These? – The Bajan folk song has been constructed as an Afro form, Bajan dialect is only considered on a lyrical level, other songs in common circulation are not articulated to a Bajan identity. Spouge: Sounding a Bajan Genre, Sounding a Bajan Hero – Spouge is articulated as a rhythmic genre, Bishop is articulated to a Bajan musical canon using criteria from a borrowed aesthetic, the Opel figure and Spouge are seen to resist cultural imperialist such as Jamaica. 246 to the Wirl - Under Her Umbrella Ella Ella: the Global Bajan the Bajan Global – Rihanna’s articulation to a Bajan identity is problematic, others have articulated their Bajan identities using non indigenous sounds, technology is not seen to be as problematic as rhythm in terms of an indigenous articulation.
- 14. Outside Men - Findings (Summary) Practitioners actually engage with sound to produce meaning in Barbados. *A key contribution. They are a number of specific strategies which have been weakly and strongly articulated to certain identity discourses. They are a number of identities which are actively articulated through sounds. They do not unsettle discourses and contradictions are shown within their articulations. The articulations by practitioners show the presence of a expansive hegemony. Articulations show an attempt to create a homogenous Bajan identity based on Creolisation at the exclusion of other Barbadians.
- 15. Articulations – Sounds – Identities Articulated Identities heteregoneous texture, polyrhythm privileging, absence of dense harmonic structures, musematic repetition, binary-construcuts African/Afro-Bajan/African Lack of rhythm, homegenous textre, harmonic privileging European back-beat, use of technology in creation of post-production textures, American/Globalised absence of dense harmonic structures, Ska beat, musematic repetition, speech rhythm Jamaican Sweetness through discursive repetition Trinidadian
- 16. What is your key contribution Examining meanings and sound The reading of an presence of an expansive hegemony Re-articulations
- 17. Weaknesses Clearer layout. Too many genre worlds.
- 18. Future? Christopher Spencer – Barbadian avant garde composer The Merrymen – Popular Folk Group Bajan Dancehall – an evolving genre world since the 1980s Further fleshing out of genre worlds presented
Editor's Notes
- This thesis sets out to look at this issue of identity and music in Barbados by privileging sounds and the way practitioners, not audiences, through their manipulations of these sounds, make meaning in order to perform identities. In other words, it looks at what musicians mean as they engage with sounds. I was motivated to do this topic because I saw a vacuum of knowledge in dealing with Barbadian music where the voice of the musical practitioner on how they engage with sounds was absent. As a musical practitioner I therefore sought to rectify this and that is what this thesis is about.
- This thesis seeks to wrestle with three questions. The first, which sounds do Barbadian practitioners use in order to articulate their identities? For example, which arrangement of musical parameters do they use, or what do the sounds they choose ‘sound’ like. I wanted to let their voices be heard on this. (Demonstrate)It was not sufficient to look only at sounds and I concerned myself with looking and why and how these chosen sounds where attached to other meanings especially a nationalist identity. Finally, as this is a Cultural Studies thesis, I looked at who benefits from how this nationalist identity and how musical meaning is thus bound up in issues of power.
- As this thesis dealt with the following key words, it had to be interdisciplinary operating discursively within ethnomusicology and cultural studies. Methods of ethnomusicology were required to adequately detail the first question, what sounds do practitioners make , while Cultural studies methods and theories were needed to understand the issues of nationalist identity and power. This thesis is therefore geared towards those working within the fields of cultural studies and Caribbean ethnomusicology.
- As the first slide showed, this thesis has a sub-heading and one of the key words within this is genre world. The other important one is articulation. These two are important theories which were employed throughout the thesis.
- A genre world is a phenomenon constructed and then articulated through a complex interplay of musicians, listeners, and mediating ideologues” (Frith Performing 88). Musical compositions are aligned together, for as Holt notes, “Human agency is never formless, and even the simplest cognitive functions depend on categories and typologies” (3) and music, like other areas of culture, relies on generic categories (Holt 3) The genre world is a very important theoretical concept for this work. It has allowed me to approach musical texts from the position that they can share some common meaning which practitioners are actively trying to engage with. In other words, when a musical text is produced, there is expectancy in listening that the practitioner hopes to induce as he ‘knows’ the genre world. The same thing also applies to practitioners who set out to disrupt the expectancy, for the genre world’s general understandings need to be understood for there to be an unsettling of it. The genre world therefore prevents seeing musical texts as isolated events, which has allowed me to look at identity on a wider national level.
- There are six other chapters within "A Song, Two Rhythms and Rihanna” – Musical Sounds, Identity and Power in Four Genre Worlds. These chapters, outside of the methods and the concluding chapters, deal with the particular genre worlds. Bajan to the Bone focusses on the Bajan folk song, Spouge deals with Spouge and the construction by practitioners of the genre as being Bajan as well as Jackie Opel as a mythological figure and 246 deals with the Euro American popular music and the local where musicians have always used strategies associated with the Euro American popular genre world as part of their performance of a Barbadian identity.
- Within genre worlds I have looked at how musicians articulate their various identities. Articulation has formed a significant part of my theoretical framework and is a term put forward by Stuart Hall. I am using articulation in two ways, one, that practitioners articulate their identities in fleeting moments from multiple discourses which are frequently contradictory and two, sounds have become articulated to particular discourses which are not permanent, but serve the purpose of the hegemonic structure at that particular time. These two ways of looking at articulation are of course linked as the articulation of sounds does not occur by itself and is in fact a form of individual articulation. In using articulation, I have looked at the linkages formed as well as the discourses incorporated within identities, as they are temporally unified when they are produced by practitioners through sounds (DeNora 6)
- Interviews were essential to this thesis. In selecting practitioners, I chose those who were engaged with their genre worlds over an extended period of time or that have actively produced musical texts within their genre worlds, or as was usually the case, both. Persons interviewed still covered a wide cross section of ages from Nexcyx to the Mighty Gabby and Boo Rudder.
- Interviews were essential to this thesis. In selecting practitioners, I chose those who were engaged with their genre worlds over an extended period of time or that have actively produced musical texts within their genre worlds, or as was usually the case, both. The privileging of practitioners’ voices was not easy. Firstly, I am known to a number of them who I interviewed. As result, they all assumed that I have a certain kind of knowledge. For example, they would frequently say “…as you well know” and “I don’t have to tell you.” This manner of speaking inevitably omits greater depth of explanation on some areas which have not been well elucidated within genre worlds. However, the benefit of this was that practitioners spoke with a level of comfort and were able to expand in other areas, which they might not have done if confronted with another interviewer with whom they were not familiar. Here are two examples of how the interviews went. There was certain familiarity and shared language in both but especially in the Alan Sheppard interview. Sheppard was the lead vocalist and writer for a lot of Spice’s music and the other is with the Drinks boss, singer Omar ‘Gorg’ Sobers.
- I thought it necessary to place the practitioners’ views in to parameter categories so as to best see their approaches to music texts. I consider this the best method because I could better see comparisons between practitioners Demonstrate using Waiting in Vain. Strategies are choices made in how these parameters are put together. Each composition has a different strategy. In is the use of strategy that we see the articulation to a discourse.
- I will now show another method as well as how strategy is articulated to discourse using “Boom Tick Tick.” Of course I would have loved to not have to transcription but such was the format of the thesis. So the chorus appears as follows and a way to notice similar strategy is to of course see the melodic choices being made here. The melody is two notes and repetitive and this was a melodic strategy that was repeated several times. For Gorg, he sees this melodic strategy as performing an African identity, thus we get this type of writing articulated to an African discourse as well as articulating an African identity.
- Practitioners actually engage with sound to produce meaning in Barbados. *A key contribution. They are a number of specific strategies which have been weakly and strongly articulated to certain identity discourses. They are a number of identities which are actively articulated through sounds. They do not unsettle discourses and contradictions are shown within their articulations.
- It is my hope that this work has shown how much meaning could be extracted when looking at the sounds of musical texts. This thesis will hopefully be the beginning of a process in which practitioners within Barbados, and indeed the Caribbean, allow their work to be represented within academic practice. It should hopefully encourage cultural studies scholars as well to recognise that there is an active exchange of meaning thorough musical sounds and, if given the right methodological approach, they can become a rich source of cultural practice for critical analysis.As meaning within musical sound is arbitrary, it provides a great medium by which re-articulations can occur. One such re-articulation is the use of oral techniques to unsettle reliances on literary knowledges. For example in the Bajan folk song orality can open up the consideration of what is Bajan beyond just a homogenous ideal. As a musical teacher this is important.
- On reading over with a level of detachment, I have believed the opening chapters could have been laid out much easier. There are far too many quotes which then to obscure my voice as it is seeking to layout in simpler terms what this thesis is about. The same thing also relates to methods as genre worlds, strategies, parameters and rules could have been explained more concisely as well what each chapter is doing in terms of articulation and identity. Another weakness is my choice of genre worlds. One of these genre worlds could have been an entire thesis for example the articulations look at in Bajan to the Bone could have been expanded to include in depth analysis of the Merrymen as well as considerations of the two early folk songs. In addition a wider look at Caribbean folk forms could have also been done. The same could have been said for all the others as well as each sentence and paragraph continually put forward more issues. Therefore, less genre worlds would of led to a greater analysis of some of these chapters.
- I hope to develop many of these concepts further including matters of creative ideology, as it relates to not only these four genre worlds, but other music types such as jazz and classical music. To investigate active composers of classical music, for example Christopher Spencer, who writes avant-garde music in Barbados, will be an exciting activity as it will further interrogate assumptions of the homogenised identity, as well as assertions made here concerning the construction of binaries by practitioners. In the future I want to also consider matters of race and practitioners as they were largely overlooked here. For example, the Merrymen were one of the foremost practitioners within the Bajan folk genre world and were also responsible for maintaining the repertoire as set out in Folk Songs of Barbados. They also, to many Barbadians, are considered white and economically privileged. Thus, to investigate how they navigate that problematic articulation given the state’s working class African articulation of Bajan would again be compelling. In addition, matters of race will concern Spice and Company, as well as they too are considered white, yet, even though with globalised articulations, were one of the major practitioners within the Soca genre world of the eighties.