Kathleen Marie Higgins - The Music between Us

The Music between Us

IS MUSIC A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE?

Kathleen Marie Higgins

The University of Chicago Press CHICAGO & LONDON

KATHLEEN MARIE HIGGINS is professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of The Music of Our Lives and Nietzsches Zarathustra.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2012 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2012.

Printed in the United States of America

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-33328-1 (cloth)

ISBN-10: 0-226-33328-0 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-33327-4 (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Higgins, Kathleen Marie.

The music between us : is music a universal language? / Kathleen Marie Higgins.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-33328-1 (hardcover : alkaline paper)

ISBN-10: 0-226-33328-0 (hardcover : alkaline paper) 1. Communication in music. 2. MusicSocial aspects. 3. Music and language. 4. Intercultural communication in the performing arts. 5. MusicPhilosophy and aesthetics. I. Title.

ml3916.h54 2012

781.1dc23

2011033761

This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.481992

(Permanence of Paper).

For Bob, with love and gratitude

C ONTENTS

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to many people whose support, music-making, and ideas about music have helped me to write this book. In particular, my father, Eugene Higgins, acquainted me with many kinds of music and encouraged my musical studies. My grandfather, Otto Merz, also encouraged my interest in music by getting me to sing in public; and my grandmother, Margaret Higgins, let my family have her piano so that I could take lessons. My entire immediate family accommodated my absurdly early morning practice sessions. Besides my father, I am grateful to my mother, Kathryn Higgins, and my siblings, Tim Higgins, Colleen Cook, Jeanine Felten, Maureen Daily, and Jim Higgins, for their tolerance as well as their ongoing support. For moral support, I also want to thank Jenene Allison, Sheila Asher, Douglas Buhrer, Sarah Canright, Paula Fulks, Clancy Martin, David Sherman, and Garret Sokoloff.

I learned about music from many teachers, especially James Evans, Marjorie Ounsworth, Marion Peterson, LeRoy Pogemiller, and John Swanay, who first acquainted me with non-Western music. Steven Feld and Stephen Slawek graciously permitted me to audit their ethnomusicology classes, and both have been generous in sharing their ideas about music with me.

I wish to thank many individuals whose ideas and advice have helped me in connection with this book. I am particularly indebted to Stephen Davies, who read a draft in its entirety and gave me extensive comments. He has also been an invaluable interlocutor and supporter of this project. Others whose insights and suggestions have assisted me in writing this book include Roger Ames, Nicholas Asher, James Averill, Martha Nussbaum, Kimasi Browne, Eric Charry, Ya-Hui Cheng, Julia Ching, Meribeth Clark, Amber Clifford-Napoleone, Kathleen Costello, Steven Feld, Marilyn Fischer, Danielle Fosler-Lussier, Nico Frijda, Gavin Garcia, Luis-Manuel Garcia, Peter J. Garca, Jay Garfield, Ron Grant, Jeremy Grimshaw, Anthony Kwame Harrison, Mary Ellen Junda, Patrik Juslin, Max Katz, Jennifer Kyker, Petri Laukka, Jerrold Levinson, George Lewis, Justin London, Heather MacLachlan, James Makubuya, Jeffrey Malpas, Eva Kit-Wah Man, Daniel Margolies, Lisa Margulis, Richard C. McKim, Rebecca Moore, Ali Colleen Neff, Charles Nussbaum, W. Gerrod Parrott, Aniruddh Patel, Stephen Phillips, Thomas Porcello, Sarah Quick, Jesus Ramos-Kittrell, Daniel Reed, Jenefer Robinson, Joel Rudinow, Sandra Salstrom, David Samuels, Klaus Scherer, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Stephen Slawek, Mark Slobin, K. Denea Steward Shaheed, Susan Pratt Walton, Wolfgang Welsch, Mina Yang, Marcel Zentner, and Su Zheng. Others with whom I have discussed music to my profit include Philip Alperson, Elliott Antokoletz, Ed Baklini, John Benoit, Frances Berenson, Neil Blumofe, Mary Bodine, Timothy Brace, Christopher Brooks, Lee B. Brown, Donna Buchanan, J. Byron Butts, Victor Caston, Jeffrey Cook, Peter Czipott, William Day, James P. Davis, Peter Derksen, Dionisio Escobedo, Wanda Farah, Aaron Fox, Gabriela Lena Frank, Cynthia Freeland, Roger Gathmann, Mary Gilbert, Lydia Goehr, Stan Godlovitch, Dana Gooley, Ron Grant, Roger Graybill, Douglass Green, Lars Gustafsson, Garry Hagberg, Karsten Harries, Eileen Heaney, Timothy P. Higgins, Elizabeth Hornbuckle, Gregg Horowitz, Jay Hullett, Jo Ellen Jacobs, Jennifer Judkins, Michael Kelly, Kevin Kissinger, Peter Kivy, Robert Kraut, Michael Krausz, Jerrold Levinson, Eric Lewis, Renee Lorraine, Louis Mackey, Janice MacRae, Alejandro Madrid, Bernd Magnus, Joel Mann, Joseph Margolis, Lisa McCormick, Christopher Middleton, Denise Milstein, Alexander Nehamas, Jonathan A. Neufield, Martha Nussbaum, Nicholas Partridge, Lynne Peterson, John Fischer, Diana Raffman, David Ring, Fred Rush, Richard Schacht, Janet McCrackery, Anita Silvers, Julietta Shuey, Garret Sokoloff, Andy Solomon, Carrie Solomon, Jon Solomon, Rachel Solomon, Francis Sparshott, Michael Tanner, Laurence Thomas, Alan Tormey, Leo Treitler, Jorge Valadez, Bruce Vermazen, Kendall Walton, Sanford Weimer, Paul Woodruff, Julian Young, and Marl Young.

I want to thank my editor, Elizabeth Branch Dyson, for her consistent support and encouragement in getting this book into print. I have received institutional support during the writing of this book from the Canberra School of Music and the Philosophy Department of the Australian National University as well as from the Liberal Arts College Research Fellowship Program and the Faculty Research Assignment Program of the University of Texas at Austin. I also wish to express my appreciation to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Society for Ethnomusicology for the opportunity to participate in the Ethnomusicology and Global Culture Institute held at Wesleyan University in the summer of 2011.

Finally, I want to express my great debt to Robert C. Solomon. Bob, my husband, discussed innumerable aspects of this book with me throughout the writing process, and he also provided me with comments on a full draft. He supported me in this project and all others until his death in January of 2007. I dedicate this book to him.

C HAPTER 1

Other Peoples Music

Music itself [is] the supreme mystery of the science of man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key to their progress.

CLAUDE LVI-STRAUSS, The Raw and the Cooked

A few years ago I visited Hong Kong as a member of an evaluation committee for a university humanities program. At one juncture, the committee was taken to a courtyard where students in the program had set up an exhibit and were available to discuss it. In the same courtyard, some music students had set up a stage with an assortment of African drums, occasionally trying them out. We visited for a while with the humanities students and then gathered in preparation to leave. One of the music students called out, Professors can drum, too! To my surprise, the professor in charge of us said, Well, we do have about five minutes. So we each grabbed a drum. A student musician demonstrated some alternative ways to strike the drums, and we began drumming, our strong beats more or less in tandem, while our music student host drummed counterrhythms. We were refreshed and jovial when we boarded the van that was to take us to our next appointment a few minutes later. There we encountered one of the local members of our committee, who had briefly gone to her office to attend to some business. Did you hear all that noise? she asked. That was us, one of our group replied. She laughed and said, No, I mean the drumming. That was