For several years I am observing diverse views toward how should one culture preserve and keep its traditional or folk music alive. I met a number of modern conservatories having courses on teaching this kind of music. Even though, such music conventionally were being taught orally for thousands of years. Do you think teaching traditional and folk music through modern system will eventually harm the nature of this kind of heritage or it is they only way to keep it alive in our time.
I personally have written a short article in case of Iranian traditional music a while ago in which I wrote some of my suggestions. However, I recently had a chance to visit Beijing central conservatory and listened to the outcome of teaching traditional music there and that visit made me think more about this issue.
That is a wonderful research you are carrying out. Of course, the teaching of traditional folk music is really a field that needs to be looked into rigorously. In this age where traditional knowledge systems are fast on the decline, there is the need to revive and promote these powerful systems of knowledge that regulated the morals of the youth.
The traditional music aside its high sense of entertainment and relaxation that it offers, it is pregnant with sound values and norms that enhance social living. They instruct listeners with good moral traits such as honesty, hard work while ridiculing bad and unacceptable attitudes in the society. The oral mode of educating learners on it adds the traditional touch that cannot be filled by any contemporary form of instruction. However, the rapid extirpation of the traditional music is due to its oratory storage and
However, the rapid extirpation of the traditional music is due to its oratory storage and instructional methods. Therefore, there is the need to synergise the traditional oratory systems with the modern methods of instruction to beef up the conservation of this great source of knowledge. When this pluralistic approach of relaying instruction is pursued in the music schools and institutions, it would not result in the loss of the original traditional content and touch while upgrading it to meet the modern, contemporary taste. This would aid in the promotion, preservation, and development of the traditional or folk music- the richest source of education-entertainment that could nurture proactive youth to advance the course of our ingenious forebears.
Dickson Adom
The traditional cultures I have studied are in little danger of disappearing because of any decline in interest. The desire on the part of ethnomusicologists like myself to document traditional music cultures is not the same as teaching them in a conservatory setting -- teaching a group of dancers, for example, where traditionally it is a one-on-one situation.
A conservatory setting where everyone is taught simultaneously does not compare with the kind of learning that takes place in a society where music, and not only music, is learned by enculturation. Scholars must appreciate the value of that kind of learning.
Teaching music in a conservatory setting in my experience means teaching a large group at the same time. It also leads to one way of playing a piece or dancing to it where tradition allows for several versions that sometimes depend on local preferences.
The storage of traditional music is very simple -- in the memory. My experience with that kind of learning is that it is never forgotten. A local story is told orally. In order to fully appreciate it, we must hear it told, rather than read it in a book. The book may be a way of recording the story, but not a way of experiencing it.
If a people decides that a particular part of its culture no longer matters, it may be discarded. When and if that happens, outside scholars are always disturbed. One way to avoid that disappointment would be to document that aspect of culture.
In a nutshell, the observer (viz., the conservatory) becoming the participant (viz., the musician) and, in turn, unintentionally changing the original character of the music.
Dear Elena Khokhlova,
I would want to argue your phease "Anyway, my idea is that folk music does not belong to academia, it cannot be established and practiced there since it does not go along with its values and stances".
The best example of a compound folk music and academia is Glinka's "Kamarinskaya"
( Fantasy on Russian Folk Songs for Orchestra ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMOhbjD0vVk .
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