Music and culture (Part 2 of 2)

Cultures across the globe have notably varied music. Different cultures use different instruments, compose different styles and forms for their music, and use music in many different ways in their society. 

Ghanaian Drummers

In Ghana, drums are used as ceremonial and celebratory. Indian classical music is perhaps more like Western, given its more-composed (though still improvisatory) forms and it's relaxing-though-trancelike presentation. In Indonesia, music for the Gamelan, a large, South East Asian orchestra, was very well composed in a manner quite similar to Western symphonies and orchestras, but the music often made use of non-Western scales, rhythms, and motifs. 

Can I--a Westerner bred on rock and roll, jazz, drum kits, electric guitars, and symphonies--understand what the gamelan means? Is there some aspect of the gamelan that is only significant to Indonesians?

This is a complex issue. Through a series of thought experiments, I'll try and elucidate it.

Indian Classical Music

Imagine a culture to which music is very important and sacred. Our imaginary culture believes that the world, a giant reverberating string, was brought to life from stillness by God, who plucked the string and so brought all of creation into existence. For this culture, the playing of music represents the height of spiritual ecstasy. 

Such a situation is quite plausible, I think you'll agree. Now, pretend I've heard this culture's music and I like it. It pleases me, and it makes sense to me in my Western way--I hear pitches, rhythms, motifs, and it has all of the aspects of music that make music so great. I like listening to it, and would even pay for it. But, there is no way that it could mean the same thing to me that it means to members of our imaginary culture.

Indonesian Gamelan

Culture is not static, though. It is not a blanket--if you come from a certain place, a certain ethnicity, it is not necessarily true that you feel the same way as everyone in your group about art. For example, imagine a youth rebelling against our imaginary culture. It's quite possible he would not feel spiritual ecstasy at the playing of his people's music, because he rejects it.

In this way, I think, we can really see that culture is personal. I may not be able to understand another culture's music, but culture lives within individuals. It's not that I don't understand another culture, it's that I don't understand the shared perspective that many of these individuals have. If I'd grown up around members of our imaginary culture, perhaps I'd understand; then again, perhaps not. 

What it comes down to, really, is that it is impossible to understand the way any other person hears music, just as it is impossible to understand the way that any other person sees the color red, for example. We both can point to the same piece of fabric and call it red, but I can never be sure that we see the same red, the same subtleties of the color. Perhaps someone else's red is green--I'd have no way of knowing.