3. STRUCTURAL DECONSTRUCTION OF REIMER’S MUSIC EDUCATION:
3.4. Towards a holistic view of the human being in music education
In Chapter 3, I suggested that the “solo agentive view of mind”606, as Bruner puts it, is encouraged by western individualistic culture and philosophies and that the African musical situation and conception of the self seem to reveal the need to see music from a wider holistic and inclusive perspective. My intention was also to show that music could be a genuine way to create situations, to construct social relations in situations, to communicate in a holistic way that combines body and ethics, individual and community. The aim of the rival comparison between the west and Africa was to point out the transparency of the social world when music education conceptualizes learning and music. Rather than suggesting African views or African musical manifestations as a model for music education, my purpose was to portray an alternative, to highlight what African music can offer to the theory of music education, if the only other alternative is to reduce music simply to musical objects or the musical-acoustic-ideas that are perceived or cognized by individuals.
Generally, it can be said that in African cultures musical sounds are used to integrate the individual into the group and the group-membership situation, whereas western concert music builds up an event where music “speaks” to separate individuals by minimizing the presence and interaction of other “bodies”. These different views of music are sometimes related to the notions of ‘art for art’s sake’ in western thinking and ‘art for life’s sake’ in African thinking. However, as Mills has argued, the notions as such are not the problem, but rather the normative tension between the two, the superiority of the western ‘art for art’s sake’. In Reimer’s case it was possible to identify the normative tendency to assume that those musical forms, which are integral to life functions are somehow less valuable than those that are viewed as separate. The social, ethical and practical do not belong to the world of aesthetic
606 Bruner 1996, 93.
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and artistic experience. There is a normative tension between the inner and mental subjectivity and the social and bodily self. Even if music is said to be ‘music for people’s sake’, as Reimer corrects his interpreters607, the purpose of individualized aesthetic education is to teach artistic values, and only secondly to involve social interaction608. The question is, do we need to see artistic values and social interaction as necessarily separate aspects of musical experience and music education.The reader may insist that Reimer’s theory does not describe ‘western music education’ in general. Therefore, one can argue that aesthetic and high art may carry on their notions and that people outside of these discourses act according to what is best for themselves, independent of the normative ideological power of high art.
The ‘culture of the west’ does not represent experienced musical practices in western countries. European ‘art’ music, even as a plural enterprise, is only one musical practice even in the so-called western world and, besides, it is practiced almost everywhere in the world. It has never been the music of the majority of people and it represents the west merely with its prestige and cultural authority609. Giroux, for instance, has argued that there has always been a space in which we can diagnose the collective investment of play and affective engagement, which he calls a productive moment of corporeality610. Musical practices channel the efforts and engagement differently so that the Apollonian and Dionysian can coexist within same society.
For Giroux, popular music and rock represent a cultural suggestion for affective corporeal engagement. Wolterstorff for his part argues that in all art action has been vastly more pervasive than “the action of aesthetic contemplation”611. Subsequently, it is not so clear that even high art should be seen through the paradigm that Reimer to some extent repeats. This is what is argued in this work.
The question is not only theoretical. Shusterman has argued that although we can see high art’s autonomy as aesthetically valuable and socially emancipatory, this isolation from the praxis of life is no longer so profi table or even credible612. More importantly, Shusterman also doubts that aesthetics and high art can alone overcome its own biased artistic legitimacy. He thinks that
607 Reimer 1993a, 14.
608 Reimer 1989b, 26.
609 See, e.g., Martin 1995, viii.
610 Giroux 1992, 190-191.
611 Wolterstorff 1980, xv.
612 Shusterman 2000b.
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[i]t would be nice to think that art criticism and aesthetic theory could provide the needed leverage to break the exclusionary dominance of high art and transform our conception of art. But they themselves, so long enthralled by high art’s institutional ideology, need some alternative cultural base from which to argue and nourish their critique. Popular art could provide this and so could be a promising force for transforming our concept and institutions of art towards greater freedom and closer integration into the praxis of life.613
Willis has claimed that it is in the popular fi eld rather than in progressive intellectual classes in which cultural mixing and hybrid ways of living will gain new forms614. What this means in practical terms may be discussed elsewhere. However, I would not be so pessimistic about the ability of musicians to renew the practice that has distanced ordinary people from concert halls and opera houses615. As I see it, their attempts result, however, in dissolving the barriers between popular and high art artists, between “musical museums” and other recreational places.
What could this difference between high and popular art be in terms of the ethos and ideals of human enjoyment and expression and how do they again relate to the notion of the self? Although any music can be seen as open to multiple interpretations in the continuum of experience, music as art can also suggest certain experiential engagements and enjoyment. Shusterman explains the differences between high art and rock by showing how they channel effort and resistance. He argues that appreciating rock requires more somatic effort and activity than appreciating the music of intellectuals, which forces us to sit still quietly, and often creates not just
“torpid passivity”, but sometimes even snoring616. Rock is typically enjoyed through moving, dancing, and singing along with the music that involves “overcoming resistances like ‘embarrassment, fear, awkwardness, self-consciousness, [and] lack of vitality’”617. According to Shusterman, the aesthetics of rock or African music, the active, excited plunging, reveals how passive the aesthetic attitude of uninterested and detached contemplation is at least from the viewpoint of the body. He reminds us that the term “funky” that is used to characterize and commend many rock songs derives from an African world, which means “positive sweat” and is “expressive of an African aesthetic of vigorously active and communally impassioned engagement
613 Ibid., 145.
614 Willis 2000, 84.
615 The “education project” movement in England seems to be one sign of how professional musicians within the classical tradition search new ways to integrate their music into the everyday life of schools.
616 Shusterman 1997b, 111; 2000b, 184.
617 Shusterman 2000b, 184, Shusterman is citing Dewey’s Art as Experience (Dewey 1934, 162).
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rather than dispassionate judgmental remoteness”618. Shusterman argues that popular arts like rock suggest “a radically revised aesthetic with a joyous return of the somatic dimension”619. The aesthetics of African music are therefore not lacking in control but rather that the channelling of effort and resistance is different compared to modern aesthetics of high art.Thus, the anomaly in Reimer’s philosophy of music education could well have been rock music or some other musical practice where the channelling of effort and resistance is different from the contemplative ethos of western art music. Since my interest was particularly in the actual social aspects of music, I have found the African example more revealing. The question is, however, more about acknowledging that music, generally speaking, can fulfi l its transformative function in human experience in multiple ways. When examining African music we can ask further questions as to what difference it makes if the musical experience, meaning and value is “brought down” to the situation and social relations instead of being fi xed in the object or the individual mind? My purpose was also to open up discussion to encourage further thinking on how music education manifests a cultural ethos and a world view and how could overcoming resistances, such as fear, self-consciousness, lack of vitality, and so on, be manifested in musical experiences. What materials are there for such goals in music education; or by what means could social relationships be improved through music in education? In order to consider these questions, we may need to abandon the search for a core essence of music and see music in education from multiple perspectives.
618 Shusterman 2000a, 44.
619 Ibid.