<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:st1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
<head>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 11 (filtered medium)">
<o:SmartTagType namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
name="City"/>
<o:SmartTagType namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
name="country-region"/>
<o:SmartTagType namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
name="place"/>
<!--[if !mso]>
<style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) }
</style>
<![endif]-->
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Arial Black";
panose-1:2 11 10 4 2 1 2 2 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:Verdana;
panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
h1
{margin-top:12.0pt;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
page-break-after:avoid;
text-autospace:none;
font-size:14.0pt;
font-family:"Arial Black";}
h2
{margin-top:6.0pt;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:3.0pt;
margin-left:0in;
page-break-after:avoid;
text-autospace:none;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial Black";
font-weight:normal;}
h3
{margin-top:6.0pt;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:3.0pt;
margin-left:0in;
text-indent:.5in;
page-break-after:avoid;
text-autospace:none;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial;}
h4
{margin-top:12.0pt;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:3.0pt;
margin-left:0in;
page-break-after:avoid;
text-autospace:none;
font-size:14.0pt;
font-family:Arial;}
h5
{margin-top:12.0pt;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:3.0pt;
margin-left:0in;
text-autospace:none;
font-size:13.0pt;
font-family:Arial;
font-style:italic;}
h6
{margin-top:12.0pt;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:3.0pt;
margin-left:0in;
text-autospace:none;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:Arial;}
p.MsoBodyText, li.MsoBodyText, div.MsoBodyText
{margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:0in;
text-autospace:none;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
p.bibliography, li.bibliography, div.bibliography
{margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-indent:-.5in;
text-autospace:none;
font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;}
span.EmailStyle19
{mso-style-type:personal-reply;
font-family:Arial;
color:navy;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
</head>
<body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple>
<div class=Section1>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>I find this position itself weirdly Eurocentric:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<div style='border:none;border-left:solid blue 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 4.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Basically, I would argue
that 'theory' is itself a eurocentric construction that expresses a state
of cultural hyper-literacy.<font color=navy><span style='color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=2 color=navy
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>This
assumes that “theory” is…only European! The vedic tradition
has a thousand-year history of music and art theory. <st1:country-region w:st="on">China</st1:country-region>,
too, has an ancient theoretical tradition as does <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Persia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>
is really very new at this stuff.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Thus it is hardly
surprising that our theoretical writings are eurocentric since eurocentrism is
inexplicably intertwined with literatism. (Which is not – just for
the record – to say that only white folks can/should read and write,
but rather that <st1:place w:st="on">europe</st1:place>'s imperalist history is
deeply inscribed with the imposition of literate systems of exchange,
education, governance etc. on non-literate or mildly literate peoples whose
social character is/was based on the very different organizational imperatives
of the human voice).<font color=navy><span style='color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=2 color="#333399"
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'>What
of the history of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>?
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Egypt</st1:place></st1:country-region>?
<st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Babylon</st1:place></st1:City>? The
history of writing is NOT Eurocentric. The history of writing is the history of
accounting, of domination, of the accumulation and exchange and stockpiling of
knowledge long before anything called <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>
existed. The history of writing is the history of recording. What recording
allows you to do is FORGET and use those grey cells for something else. The
history of writing is the history of knowledge accumulation and dissemination
beyond the spatial and temporal span of the individual. Absent writing—or
scriptible recording—techniques for remembering make use of dithering
processes—rythm, meter, rhyme. That’s what all the fuss is about
the Illiad. And the information value of what oral recitation shifts in
relation to actual events, so that it’s more important to fill in the narrative
forms and meters and rituals than it is to maintain a strict accuracy in the account
of actualities (or what a eurocentric might call “fact”). That’s
what all the fuss was about I, Rigoberta Menchu, a book that was accurate as to
the general outlines of a culturally specific experience but which wholly
inaccurate when it came to Western journalistic “fact.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=2 color="#333399"
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'>Paul’s
right in principle when it comes to getting out of a certain geographic parochialism.
On the other hand "Eurocentrism" as an accusation presumes that
"<st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>" is something homogenous,
no? But "European" music now includes rai, qawwali, blues, bhangra,…;
American art music since the 1940s has been infused with East Asian microtones
and polyrhythms while one need only listen to late Debussy to understand the
fact of Modernism's own propensity to remixing. On the flip, Ali Farka Toure
played the "birth of the blues" out of Mali--a remix; Korean
bubble-gum pop arguably comes bursting through American neo-colonial radio of
the 1950s--a remix; daring Iranians play Queen, Yo Yo Ma tours with his Silk
Road show; Japanese musicians have taken "Euro" formats (e.g., the
3-piece rock band; new-wave staging; blues) and retooled them with traditional
Japanese instruments (e.g., shamisen, shakuhachi, koto) and musicality, at the
same time cross-pollinating Ainu, Shinto, Buddhist traditions, and that’s
a hell of a remix. Of course, my references are all bound to my own immersion
in European modernism. I don’t mind being here since it’s a tradition
includes Beethoven, Jimi Hendrix AND an extraordinary and expansive (and, yes,
consuming) interest in the new, the different (microtones, polyrythms,
duration, harmonics, subsonics…). Yet don’t we run the risk,
hunting so conscientiously for the other to our so-called eurocentrism, of recolonizing
exactly those cultures we claim to be…what? appreciating for their
authenticity? saving? (From a puff piece: "The music of the Sufi is the
most swinging religious music there is." Cool! Where can I buy some?) The
discourse of certain technologies is, yes, Northern (incl. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Japan</st1:country-region></st1:place>) and it necessarily moves
from object to object. The discourse(s) of process and of medium is(are)
dispersive, inversive, remixive. This kind of mixology wouldn’t exist
without script. And Europe, as is now more than abundantly clear, has been
remixed way beyond any holistic, genetic, mythic fantasy “Europe”—even
if “Europeans” keep assuming the right to access everything non-“European”
as part of their “European” identity. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=2 color="#333399"
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'>Judith</span></font><font
color="#333399"><span style='color:#333399'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=3 color=navy
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:navy'><br>
</span></font>On 12-Apr-06, at 4:18 PM, Paul D. Miller wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>hey folks - as usual, this is waaaayyyy too Eurocentric.<br>
<br>
Arghh! When will people look at other stuff... This gets to be a drag.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>