Abstract
One of the best explanations I’ve ever encountered for why we need art is offered by Thomas Torino, a (now-retired) musicologist from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation situates art (and more specifically, music) in a “crucial interplay between the Possible and the Actual” (p. 16). Torino's aim in writing this book was to fill a gap in scholarly material that could “teach analytical concepts and frameworks” that would help students understand the key role of participatory dance and music in social life, and “spur them to think about music and the nature of social groups in new ways” (p. xv).
My previous favorites include Ellen Dissanayake (1990), the American anthropologist, who posited that art is an evolutionary adaptation—part of a human need to make socially important events pleasurable and memorable. Another, put forward by the literature scholar Brian Boyd (2009) sees stories (and the arts in general) as originating in play. Equally related to evolutionary adaptation, stories, and other art forms provide opportunities for humans to engage in a kind of elevated play for exploration, imagination, and trying out aspects of real life. Linked to survival, Boyd makes the case that practice makes us—if not perfect—at least better able to deal with everyday trials and tribulations.
Torino is decidedly practical in the aims he lays out in his introductory chapter. Drawing on a range of influences (Gregory Bateson, Charles Sanders Pierce, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and one of his friends: James Lea), he accounts—not for the origin of art, but its importance to social life. Whereas our “Actual lives” are based in habits, which may lead to “stagnation and boredom,” the Possible, emerges from “dreams, hopes, desires, ideals [and] the elements of life that… make us want to keep living” (p. 17). He adds that music (and other types of art: dance, movies, paintings, poems, and the like) are a type of “framed activity where it is expected that the imagination and new possibilities will be given special license” (p. 18).
At first consideration, this explanation of arts’ value evokes a kind of argument common these days in cultural policy. The arts stimulate the imagination and inspire creativity. Creative people create new possibilities that then add to the creative economy thus fueling the larger economy and enhancing hospitality, tourism, and a host of other industries. Watch that GDP climb! Allegedly, anyway.
In fact, this is not the direction Torino takes. What he wants to inspire is a deeper understanding of arts participation by defining participatory music as a “separate art” (p. 28). In his chapter, “Participatory and Presentational Performance,” he explains that musical participation comes in many forms. There is, for example, silent contemplation in a concert hall or listening to music through an iPod. Both of these count as participation by some measures—notably, in official statistics of the National Endowment for the Arts as one example (NEA https://www.arts.gov/impact/research/NASERC/arts-participants), which is so broadly inclusive that almost anything qualifies as participating in the arts.
Torino's restricted meaning, in contrast, erases distinctions between artist and audience and upholds an ethos that “everyone present can, and in fact should, participate in the sound and motion of the performance” (p. 29). Very specifically, participation in music means actively contributing to the sound and motion of a musical event through dancing, singing, clapping, and playing musical instruments when each of these activities is considered integral to the performance. (p. 28)
So not the traditional concert experience, rooted in seventeenth century music making. What Torino describes instead is a social gathering—or what the traditional concert experience replaced in the Western world.
Torino's view is that participatory music has unique values that differ from those of performance, or “presentational traditions” (p. 33). The latter is what we find more commonly on offer in contemporary, (especially) Western societies or, in Torino's terms the “capitalist-cosmopolitan formation” (p. 29) where you pays your money and then sit back and listen. Music in this case is a “specialized activity” rather than a social occasion. Never mind that we often treat them as such, for example, by attending a concert with friends. A key difference is that while both participatory and presentational music include performing and listening, the success of a participatory event “is more importantly judged by [its] degree and intensity…than by some abstracted assessment of the musical sound quality” (p. 33). All contributions are valued and essential, but that “doesn’t mean that everyone in the event is necessarily happy about some people's inept or clumsy contributions” (p. 33). Agreed.
Having set the stage for the differences between these two types of musical events, Torino discusses the expectations of performer/audience, the responsibility of performing in ways that don’t exclude any of the participants, the etiquette of virtuosity and soloing, and the ways of preparing for participatory events. Although he doesn’t make this comparison, what Torino is describing is analogous to the difference between hands-on arts participation (woven into the fabric of a community) and the kind of art reserved for high end galleries and museums. It is another distinction we often forget to make in advocating for the arts.
A chapter on recording compares high fidelity music—or musical recordings that are “iconic of live performance” (p. 67) and recordings that are edited and perfected, standardizing pitches to make them “perfectly in tune” (p. 65). Torino introduces the concept of dicent ideology (new to me) that has to do with “the signs of liveness in the recording” (p. 67). The distinction between high fidelity and studio recordings is blurred these days since so-called live recordings are often manipulated to “create, not merely capture” the musical sound as the “documenter purposefully shapes the sound in the recording and editing processes” (p. 70). In todays’ world, dicent features of a recording are likely to be a pro forma, value-added (in-studio) quality.
On a completely different plane, however, is Studio Audio Art that is “patently a studio form with no suggestion or expectation that it should or even could be preformed live in real time” (p. 78). It is thus “freed from ideologies of authenticity involving live performance.” And therefore, has quite different dynamics, goals, and values.
The connection to Torino's main thesis is that we tend to treat music—as we do art—as one kind of thing rather than recognizing that “music refers to fundamentally distinct types of activities that fulfill different needs and ways of being human” (p. 1). In a chapter entitled “Habits of the Self, Identity, and Culture” Torino deepens his thesis by connecting music to the formation and manifestation of identity. He isn't inventing anything new. He draws significantly on Bourdieu's habitus, concepts of in-group/out-group status, and the musical practices of non-Western societies. To restate a point, Torino makes no claim of hierarchy. Studio Audio Art, similar to certain types of visual art—that win international prizes and are coveted by collectors—is not inherently better or superior, on measure, to what you might find in a community gallery. It is another thing altogether to be judged by different criteria and values.
In a surprising turn, Torino's discussion of culture and cultural habits segues into the overtly political. He introduces the case of musical trends—over time—in Zimbabwe where “Presentational music and high fidelity recordings were introduced and adopted … in the context of colonialism” (p. 141). Rather than traditional participatory music offerings, “the musical style and the social style exhibited during the concerts closely resembled middle-class popular music and musical events elsewhere in the capitalist cosmopolitan formation” (p. 141). Torino gives an account of the National Dance Company (NDC) in the 1980s and 1990s, which began offering dance performances that “fit stereotypic images of sexualized African dances” and “cosmopolitan stereotypes of African warriors” (p. 153). This led to a rejection by many locals of the NDC versions of their dances.
Seemingly off-piste from his central theme of music as social life, Torino manages nonetheless to connect presentation trends in Zimbabwe (albeit thinly) to notions of participation. The subtitle of his book, after all, is the politics of participation. Here, it is the turn away from participatory traditions that receives scrutiny. A lengthy passage on cultural nationalism, Zimbabwean independence, and the unification of diverse cultural groups suggests that music and dance played a “prominent role” (p. 146).
In the end, Torino optimistically concludes that Zimbabweans have many more musical resources now than they did in the late nineteenth century. This is all to the good as long as all fields continue to be equally valued and available for the contributions they can make to social life. (p. 154)
To be fair (although fairness is not really the issue), Music as Social Life was published in 2008, predating today's increased awareness that imposed cultural disruption never ends well even if it broadens the range of musical traditions you can claim. I confess the author lost me in this section of the book.
Torino briefly returns to themes of community in the context of old-time music—a designation “used by music preservationists to refer to (U.S.) southern mountain music” (pp. 163, 164) and by Tornio as a term “devised in the 1920s as one less offensive alternative to hillbilly to refer to recordings of early country musicians” (p. 163). Old-time music is part of a well-developed participatory tradition according to Torino that offers both simplicity and community, emerging from the informal fabric of rural life.
The book dives back into politics in its final chapter entitled “Music and Political Movements,” which includes an account of Nazis and participatory music. The latter occurred “in the realm of amateur choruses and participatory musical activities in the growing youth movement” (p. 205).
Despite the book's (very obvious) flaws, I nonetheless found value in reading most of the text. The promise at the beginning of the book veers sharply into political terrain, some with dubious value (and validity). But one doesn’t need to agree with the whole to gain from the parts. Torino is a musicologist, not a philosopher or sociologist. He introduces some compelling ideas relating to music and social life that while not fully advanced in the length of the book are worthy of consideration. The author never fully develops the possible and the actual into a coherent thesis, but I found potential in this articulation of the value of art and music.
In April 2008, the year that Torino's book was published, more than 500 arts leaders and advocates from around the U.S. met with Congressional leaders during an event called Arts Advocacy Day, organized by Americans for the Arts and 87 national arts organizations. Among the issues was support for a $176 million increase in NEA funding to take effect in 2009. The suggested amount was slightly higher than the previous high point of $175,954,680 in 1992. Final appropriation was in fact $155 million.
Previously, in 1994–1995, U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich led an effort to eliminate the NEA, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (responsible for Sesame Street and National Public Radio), and the National Endowment for the Humanities. History does repeat itself. All I’m saying is that in the current political climate, we really need some better advocacy arguments.
