Ethnography and Analysis of a Musical Performance - Essay Example

ETHNOGRAPHY AND ANALYSIS OF A MUSICAL PERFORMANCE For this paper, I attended a concert for one the most famous death metal band, Behemoth from Poland, featuring three other metal acts: Truth Corroded from Australia, Bhelliom from Singapore and GXSXD from Japan. The event was a metal festival and took place in Beijing on October 31. The concert was an electronic concert of which the instrumentation was formed of Electric guitars, Rock drum sets and synthesizers. The instrumentation of the band being of simple construction made each instrument's sound easily distinguished. The timbre can be described as Noise, including random pulses characterized by the rustle time. Like the typical vocal system of metal bands, the vocal harmony was existent and the final sound resembled to a feminine voice even though all the performers were male. The loudness of the voice was extreme to add excitement to the atmosphere of the concert. The performances were certainly high pitched. This paper puts the spotlight on the indispensible role of music as a way of promoting intercultural relationships between the citizens and nations of the world. Analyzing an event gathering musicians from two continents clarifies the function of music as a way of supporting Internationalism and solidarity between all the people of the world. This paper aims to defend music's role as a melting pot of different cultures rather than an enemy of the authenticity of different cultures. An ideology is known to be a group of ideas, values or conceptions to which agree a large amount of people. Different ideologies often come into conflict with each other. Globalization aims to help different cultures coexist by promoting cultural exchange between different civilizations. Music, being a cultural activity that is tightly connected to identity, plays a very important role in helping the world overcome civilization related conflicts by proving that the 'global' is more important than the 'national'. The event took place in order to celebrate Halloween. That occasion motivating the creation is a universal celebrating. Music, being attached to festive atmospheres, spread the feeling of unity between the elements of a given culture. However, in this multinational event music's role extends to cover assuring cooperation between various cultures. Like any event gathering artists from different areas of the world, one of the main purposes of this concert is to give the performing artists the chance to discover eachother's music techniques and to possibly experiment mixing with these genres. The Venue of the concert was in MAO Club. The general atmosphere that reigned in Beijing throughout of the performance was the typical atmosphere expected from a metal festival in any place in the world. The overall atmosphere was unconventional, wild and quite extreme, "The strong stimulating beats, the coarse, rough loud vocal delivery, the wild singing of nonsense syllables, and the music's direct, unrestrained and liberating quality" (Taylor,2007: 33). The concert being held in China means logically that the biggest part of its attendance was of Chinese natives. The Chinese audience however grasped that western form of music and fully interacted to it proving that music has no nationality. In the twentieth century, the revolution in means of communication introduced to the Chinese people the various musical techniques of Western music and the new ideas of the entertainment business. This led consequently to the creation of some sort of "star system" in China at least in big cities. The public was then introduced to means such as "mass-circulation newspaper and glossy magazines, movies, radio and the phonograph" (Gunde, 2002: 96) helping to create a mass popular commercial culture. Nowadays, Chinese youth finds in that genre of music their individuality as they let down their hair and dance along to the music with their friends and enjoy this feeling of freedom. In addition to that, the three opening acts were Asian bands that felt that western originated music genre expressed best their music tendencies. This should only prove that we should not limit a certain culture to its country of origin meaning that we should not hold to traditional images of cultures. The audience was mostly formed of young individuals. Some parents attended the concert to give company to their kids as well as some adults who are interested in this music genre nevertheless. The female presence in the concert was minor. The male dominance of the concert was not surprising since it is common that this genre of music attracts male audience. Couples were barely existent in the concert; the audience was mainly formed of single individuals or groups of friends. Since its creation, Rock music was always attached to higher and more liberal classes; most of the audience appears to be part off the middle to high classes actually the price of the tickets was quite high so it's only affordable for the latter classes. From all the previous descriptions, a visible homogeneity can be detected among the elements of the audience. Although I belong to the same age, sex and socio economical category of the majority of the audience, I personally didn't really fit in the atmosphere as I am more relaxed and tend to enjoy calmer and warmer environments. Therefore, music plays a role in classifying people in certain categories allowing people with similar interests and circumstances to communicate. The audience's reaction to the sound was revealing of the impact of music on them. The higher the sound rose, the more extreme the reaction of the audience became. Their dance moves became so wild, sort of satanic to match with the lyrics of the performed songs which promoted Satanism. However, it appeared to me that the audience does not know the profound meaning of the move they perform. In fact, each cultural form being transmitted to a given population goes automatically through a personalization process to fit with the new receptors. "Throughout China's history, music has played a vital role in virtually all aspects of life of the people, whether it be recreational, religious, social or economic" (Gunde, 2002 : 89). We can note that with the total westernization of the music forms in China, music continues to play continues to be a prominent mean of expressivity. The behavior of the audience before the concert was quite violent as many fights occurred due to fights for front raw places. During the concert, the impact of music was visible, the universal language of music dominated all human sounds that became limited to repeating the words of the songs. The behavior of the audience in the minutes following the performance proved the impact of the performance on them. The tense atmosphere is gone; no one was pushing to reach the doors. When it comes to the performers, they did not interact much with the audience. They seemed to be so absorbed in the atmosphere they created. Unsurprisingly, they were dressed in unconventional outrageous clothes that, with the impact of the multicolor lighting of the stage, gave them an extremely wild appearance. The music was mainly characterized by its extreme speedy tempo. The effect of the ground shaking sound amplifiers played a big role in giving the concert a real imaginary atmosphere that coincided with the Halloween celebration. The inferno-drums used by Behemoth gave to this act a special flavor that differentiated it from the rest of the bands. In conclusion, Music is a manner of apprehending the world and reacting to it" (Ribeiro, Sigar, Aubert,2007 : xii). In fact, One of the main aims of ethnomusicology is to approach the relations between society and music . "Musical and social structure coexist in a relation of close solidarity and every reflection on the significance or the aesthetics of music will necessarily send us back to the studies of mentalities" (Ribeiro, Sigar, Aubert, 2007: 1). The previous analysis of the performance proved that the audience's behavior comes as a reflection to the music proving the hypnotizing effect of music being a major cultural form that unites human beings regardless of their cultural backgrounds. Sources: 1- Timothy Dean Taylor, Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World, Duke University Press, 2007. 2- Nimrod Baranovitch, China's New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, University of California Press, 2003. 3- Richard Gunde, Culture and Customs of China, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. 4- Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia, Temple University Press, 2003. 5- Ian D. Biddle, Vanessa Knights , Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Global and the Local, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007. 6- Richard Curt Kraus, Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-Class Ambitions and the Struggle Over Western Music, Oxford University Press US, 1989. 7- Richard Young, Music, Popular Culture, Identities, Rodopi, 2002. 8- Laurent Aubert, Anthony Seeger, Carla Ribeiro, The Music of the Other: New Challenges for Ethnomusicology in a Global Age, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007 9- David Steigerwald, Culture's Vanities: The Paradox of Cultural Diversity in a Globalized World, Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. 10- Bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-one Issues and Concepts, University of Illinois Press, 2005. Read More