MUSIC, DANCE, AND IDENTITY

by Innocenza Giannuzzi

To talk about music is to talk about culture, history, communication, evolution, revolution, thought, progress, and discovery. Innocenza Giannuzzi, President of Casa

International, shares her view on the role of music in the

In every age, music brings people together: in the cotton fields, in the rice fields, in the marches of the Alpini, at Woodstock, at Beatles concerts, music is the glue of a collective identity. “Music is never alone,” said composer Luciano Berio. It arises and is articulated in multiple forms and with different functions wherever there is human life and communication. Because music, even when it does not convey a specific message that can be translated into words, is a form of communication, reflecting and interacting with the social context in which it is generated. The polysemy of the term music corresponds to a similar plurality of functions that vary from one culture to another.

One of the most original contributions to the study of music as a universal language is that of Irish ethnomusicologist John Blacking, who set out his ideas in his 1973 book How Musical is Man? Blacking defined music as humanly organized sound (emphasis on “humanly”) and, according to him, its profound function is to increase the quality of individual experience and human relations within the community: the structures of music reflect modes and motions of human experience, and the value of a piece of music as music is inseparable from its value as an expression of that experience. Blacking based his analysis of human musicality on the social nature of the functions, structures, and value of music.

The revolutionary aspect of this idea (at the time of its much debated proclamation) was the consideration that all types of music are human and social forms of expression, and therefore equally “folk” and equally communicative. According to Blacking, the terms folk (or “popular”) and art should be, if not outright abolished, used to describe not the musical product but the processes and ways of articulating the experience that produced it. Cultures of “popular” oral tradition may be “art” music even if, technically speaking, it is simpler than music produced in a culture based on writing and scientific and material progress. In postulating a relationship between music and society, Blacking turned his attention not so much to the degree of development of a given society as to its ethos and the sociocultural processes that generated it. He believed that many of the processes active in human relations in a society are the same ones that are used to “organize the musical sounds available” to that society. Music, in all its manifestations, in his view, reflects the interaction between universal factors related to the musical nature of man, and social and cultural factors. The artistic and musical products of a society are not abstract or “ritual” expressions of cultural phenomena: they are conscious commentaries on the human condition, expressing the dynamic relationships between nature and humanity, and between people in their existence in different cultures at different times. The collective creativity of a community nourishes the inner life of the individual who is part of it; individual creativity feeds on the expressive heritage of the community and revives it. In “popular” music, the reference to the social context is more explicit and essential; in “art” music, the reference becomes more allusive and abstract, and the commentary lies in the music itself, which through more or less complex processes acquires varying degrees of aesthetic emancipation from its social context.

Music, therefore, is the identity of a people, and even more so is popular music that encapsulates the history of it, which is handed down from generation to generation through music.