In ethnomusicology—if not in the echelons of Western Art Music—a canonical text is

• Judith Becker, “Is Western Art Music superior?” (Musical Quarterly 72.3, 1986) (text here).

As she observes,

Among musicologists, music educators, and even some ethnomusicologists, the doctrine that Western European art music is superior to all other musics of the world remains a given, a truism. […]

A more subtle form of this dogma is the concept that Western art music is intrinsically interesting and complex, while other musical systems need their social context to command our serious attention. According to this version of the theory of Western superiority, some exceptions are allowed, and music systems such as Persian classical music, Hindustani and Carnatic music, or Javanese gamelan music are classified among those musics which can stand on their own, be usefully extracted from context, are susceptible to intricately complex analyses, and are aesthetically satisfying in their own right. This, the most liberal edge of the theory of Western music superiority, has adherents of great persuasiveness among scholars who are deservedly respected within the disciplines of musicology and ethnomusicology.

 I’ve noted such “exceptions” as the Beatles, Indian raga, and jazz, besides posts like Joining the elite musical club. Becker lists three main axioms that underpin the claimed superiority of WAM:

1) that Western music generally, and art music in particular, is based upon natural acoustic laws, the natural overtone series providing a link between man and nature, that is between culture and the phenomenal world; this intrinsic bond provides a physical and metaphysical base (with its Pythagorean transcendental orientation) which informs all music so created;

2) that Western art music is structurally more complex than other music; its architectural hierarchies, involved tonal relationships, and elaborated harmonic syntax not only defy complete analysis but have no parallel in the world;

3) that Western art music is more expressive, conveys a greater range of human cognition and emotion, and is thus more profound and more meaningful than other musical systems in the world.

She goes on:

No-one, I think, denies that Western art music has a foundation in the natural world, is very complex, and is deeply meaningful to its musicians and audiences. The problem lies in denying these attributes to other peoples’ music. Because we often cannot perceive it, we deny naturalness, great complexity, and meaningfulness to other musical systems. Despite all protestations to the contrary, to deny equivalences in all three pillars of belief -that is, naturalness, complexity and meaningfulness, to the musical systems of others-is ultimately to imply that they are not as developed as we are. The doctrine of the superiority of Western music is the musicological version of colonialism. Thus the issue is not only an intellectual problem, it is also a moral one.

Becker takes the three axioms in turn, showing how naturalness, complexity, and meaningfulness are common attributes claimed or evident in musical cultures around the world. For nature and acoustics she adduces the musical bow and mbira in southern Africa. Furthermore,

To say that a musical system is “natural” is to endow it with a kind of necessity, a kind of power which it otherwise might not have. One way musical systems gain “naturalness” is to be conceptually linked with some other realm of discourse which is highly valued and whose validity is unquestioned. The linkage of music with acoustics, that is, science, is to create a coherence between a very powerful realm of discourse (science) and a less powerful one (music). Another way of linking music with a highly valued system is the interpretation of music as the setting of texts, as in logocentric Arabic cultures. Another powerful linkage, this time metaphoric, is found in the idea that music is mimetic and imitates the sounds of nature. Music as the organisation and elaboration of the sounds which would be in the world even if men were not is a theory fairly widespread in China, Indonesia, Melanesia, and ancient Greece. […]

What is felt to be natural, correct, and true depends upon the correspondence between the musical event and some other realm of human experience. Naturalness has to do with relationships, with what aspect of the world outside of man is believed to be intimately connected to musical expression: natural, believed iconicities between music and the world outside music.

As to complexity,

We tend to equate complexity in music with one particular kind of complexity, and then look for that kind in other musics. Not finding it, we designate that music as simpler.

and

Calculated, deliberate alteration of pitch, duration, rhythm, overtone structure (tone quality), attack, or release according to prescribed constraints creates a kind of complexity in a single line which is as demanding of the artist as any single passage in a Beethoven symphony. A Japanese shakuhachi player or a solo singer of a Mongolian “long song” are particularly striking examples of this kind of complexity. Closer to home are the iterative songs of many American Indian traditions…

Noting complexity in polyphony and polyrhythms, she presents an initiation chant from Benin: That musicologists were slow to appreciate all this reflects both ignorance and a prejudice against cultures seemingly lacking in notation or theory. Becker cites Hugo Zemp’s work on the panpipe ensembles of the ‘Are ‘Are in the Solomon Islands (preview here).

Like a violin, a digeradoo [sic] may be played simply or complexly. All degrees of complexity of intent, along with degrees of ability to carry out complex intent, exist in all cultures. If, with or without instruction, we cannot readily perceive the complexity of a digeradoo performance, the fault does not rest with the musician. One must always assume that a musician of another culture is as sensitive to fine musical distinctions, is as caring about tone, attack, and phrasing, as our good musicians are. Not all are, of course, but variations in complexity of intent, and skill in carrying out intent, are not determined by geography, race, or culture.

As to meaningfulness, Becker starts with WAM:

Two ideas of musical meaning predominate in Western Europe, both in the scholarly and philosophical literature and in the common everyday realm of the intuitions or expressed concepts of lovers of Classical music. One is that music has no meaning outside of itself, that meaning is inherent in its structure. The other is that music expresses human emotions. While it might seem that one could hold both these views simultaneously or sequentially, in the history of musical scholarship of the past century and a half they have tended to be mutually exclusive and antagonistic.

Meaning is diverse among different cultures. Steven Feld’s study of the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea has become a routine exhibit. Becker concludes:

Individual reactions to Western Classical performance may be as intense as among the Kaluli, but musical performance is more commonly felt to be somewhat abstracted from a personally felt emotion. We feel the sorrow or the joy vicariously, through the skill of the composer and performer, and we are not required to make any direct introspection of our own past.

One cannot say which music is more expressive, or meaningful, or which refers to a greater range of human cognition. Each should be studied and understood on its own terms; one cannot usefully be evaluated against another.

Evaluation is only viable within a culture, particularly within a genre. Standards of excellence are as stringent and as clear cut for a gisalo performance as for Schubert lieder. Expressiveness appears to be closely related to skill in all cultures. The difficulty with comparison and evaluation arises when one compares an intimately known musical genre with one barely understood. Musical systems are radically contextualised and intermeshed with other realms of culture and demand particularised analyses. Western art music is neither superior nor inferior to other musical traditions. Musical systems are simply incommensurable.

This way of thinking has also given rise to impressive ethnographies of Western Art Music by scholars such such as Ruth Finnegan, Henry Kingsbury, Christopher Small, Kay Shelemay—and Bruno Nettl, most articulate advocate for the equality of the world’s musical cultures (among many expositions, see e.g. his reflections on Blackfoot aesthetics).

The theme that Becker spelled out underlies my reflections in What is serious music?!; note also posts under Society and soundscape. And of course, one should take the critique further: as the anthropologist (big brother of the ethnomusicologist) would say, the claimed superiority of “Western culture” rests on an assumption that the whole “civilisation” of the Western bourgeoisie is itself superior—leading us to pundits such as Edward Said and the many critics of colonialism…