Hybridity

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

No culture is an island. The mirage of pure and “uncorrupted” languages, rituals, recipes, beliefs, and bloodlines evaporates on closer inspection. Human beings are genetically inclined toward interaction, cooperation, and mimicry. As big-brained social animals, we constantly absorb, transmit, and reconfigure concepts, behaviors, and technologies. The greater the contact, both within and between cultural groups, the greater the mixing, both culturally and biologically. Beneath the veneer of pristineness is an accumulation of elements, often with roots reaching beyond the scope of memory.

Such hybridity is a musical norm. Virtually everywhere and at every time, internal and external forces have accelerated or decelerated the pace of assimilating forms, styles, patterns, and instruments. Periods of heightened cross-cultural exposure, such as migrations and the Internet age, can both magnify hybridity and heighten the impulse for preservation. But, even when cultural walls are erected, influences inevitably seep through. Moreover, periods of intense hybridization are often followed by periods of stability, in which the new hybrids become “mainstreams” or “traditions.”

On an individual level, the process of musical creation is, almost by definition, an act of hybridization. Consciously and subconsciously, composers and performers mediate between diverse and sometimes divergent influences, intentions, methods, and emotions.

Intentional cross-cultural hybridity has a long history in the Euro-American classical tradition. For instance, Antonín Dvořák originally billed his New World Symphony (1893) as incorporating tunes from spirituals and Native American songs. He later clarified that the music contains “original themes embodying the peculiarities of the Indian music” (emphasis mine). Either way, it is a hybrid. The same goes for composers like Bartók, Copland, and Shostakovich, who meld folk, folk-style, and popular sounds with orchestral techniques.

Perhaps less obvious today are the eclectic tendencies of J. S. Bach. Part of his genius was incorporating sounds from disparate sources: North Germany, South Germany, France, Italy, ecclesiastical chant, etc. Hubert Parry notes in his classic biography, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Story of the Development of a Great Personality (1909): “[I]t must be recognised that the principles of Italian art, in its broader and more substantial aspects, influenced [Bach] considerably; and in the first few years at Leipzig he endeavoured to accommodate his church cantatas to the prevailing taste in Leipzig.” Among other works, this yielded Cantata 174 (Ich liebe den Höchsten von ganzem Gemüte, 1729), which, like the earlier Brandenburg Concertos (1721), showcases Bach’s sophisticated take on Vivaldi’s formal and stylistic signatures.

The dissection of any music—folk, classical, pop, and otherwise—discloses similar eclecticism, varying in degree. These, too, can be self-conscious, like Afro-Cuban or jazz-rock, or masked, like American fiddle music and rock ‘n’ roll. Usually, the amalgamated sounds are not easily picked apart. The organic fusion of elements, whether musical, linguistic, culinary, biological, or otherwise, rarely reveals its seams.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

The Musician’s Mentality

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Legendary jazz musician Nina Simone once remarked, “Music is my God. The structure, the cleanliness, the tone, the nuances, the implications, the silences, the dynamics . . . all having to do with sound and music. It is as close to God as I know.” These words echo the feelings of many musicians. The experience of making music can (and regularly does) bring one into a spiritual zone: a state of being in which cognitive functions, emotional highs, sensory perceptions and creative energies fuse into a transcendental whole. There is no need for theology in such a state. Holiness becomes a sensation rather than an idea.

Of course, there are devout musicians who contextualize musical sensations in the language of their faith. The God they encounter in music is the same one they read about in holy writ. (They might agree with Luther: “Apart from theology, music is God’s greatest gift. It has much in common with theology because it heals the soul and raises the spirits.”) But countless others feel as Simone did.

Her position is supported by the long list of prominent atheist musicians, including such luminaries as Hector Berlioz, Georges Bizet, Giuseppe Verdi, Béla Bartók, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Frederick Delius. These composers were in contact with their inner-nature and explored the recesses of the human mind and spirit. Music provided them with the sort of spiritual nourishment commonly sought in religious concepts and practices.

A glimpse into this aspect of the musician’s psychology is found in Music as an Asset to Spirituality (1928), an enigmatic book written by Laura J. Richards. The origins and ideology of the book are difficult to decipher, and nothing is available of the author’s biography. In truth, it is an almost incomprehensible work of pseudo-science and pseudo-mysticism, and probably deserves less attention than it is getting here. A random sampling exposes its baffling content: “How to cultivate a musical feeling is a very difficult subject. It takes many centuries for the musician to come to this state of perfection”; “What is mind? It is the soul functioning perfectly according to the laws of nature”; “Winds are nature’s entities to destroy the impure forces that cause the vibrations to intermingle.”

The bulk of the text reads in this fashion. Like other theosophical writings, its sentences can be poetic and may on the surface seem profound; but when we pierce through the flowery language, we discover jumbled thoughts that offer nothing of substance. Richards’ clumsy esotericism and happy disregard for reason are typical of early twentieth-century spiritual literature, and persist in some contemporary New Age publications .

Even so, there are moments when Richards is coherent and insightful—as long as her exaggerations are read as metaphors. One such instance is her section on the musician’s mentality. She notes that musicians are often misunderstood “because their organism is created of an entirely different material than other individuals.” There is no literal or scientific validity to this claim: we are all made of the same matter. But the “material” she refers to is dispositional, not elemental. One who is perpetually engaged in musical activities can, as it were, lose touch with the ordinary. Musicians familiar with the upper reaches of human consciousness can effortlessly drift into a heightened, spiritual or transcendent state (whichever terminology one prefers). “Consequently,” writes Richards, “the material world is very difficult for them to endure.”

Music-making is a sacred act: it is removed from the mundane and hints at something deeper than the physical. This has made it a helpful aid to religion and prayer. However, music is just as readily experienced as an equivalent to (or a substitute for) theological concepts. For the musician, music can be God enough.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.