In this section, I would like to examine the particular theoretical and methodological approaches of two of the earliest scholars of Australian Aboriginal music, Richard Waterman and Alice Moyle. As well as any two ethnomusicologists, their work clearly represents the mixed parentage of the discipline, one anthropological and one musicological — although it is difficult to characterize their work in a simplistic way. Their distinctive approaches to the study of music reveal much of the discipline’s past, and also the directions it came to take in the subsequent five decades.
Richard Waterman is best known as a scholar of African and African-American music, and had a distinguished anthropological pedigree through Herskovits to Boas. His doctoral research, completed in 1943, looked at African patterns in the music of Trinidad, which he pursued through a clearly anthropological framework.[92] He later worked with Herskovits at Northwestern University in Chicago, becoming the founding director of the Northwestern University Laboratory of Comparative Musicology and supervising the doctoral research of Alan Merriam, who was to become one of the leading figures in ethnomusicology.[93] Merriam later wrote of Waterman’s work: "overriding all else is a basic orientation toward anthropology; [Waterman] was an anthropologist first and foremost, and his ethnomusicological specialization was almost always handled within the anthropological frame of reference."[94]
This orientation is most clear in Waterman’s consistent theoretical interest in cultural dynamics, examining how cultural patterns, especially musical ones, are retained, reinterpreted, or fused over time.[95] His best-known work in this regard examined the degree to which African-American musics maintained African musical elements.
Waterman was most interested in rhythmic styles and their cultural context; this in itself differentiates him from a great deal of comparative musicology which had a primary focus on tonality, melody and harmony, and the analysis of music in its own terms. His 1948 paper entitled "'Hot' Rhythm in Negro Music" examined the varying tenacity of West African rhythmic patterns in a variety of African-American musics in the New World. Waterman describes "hot" as "one of those subliminal constellations of feelings, values, attitudes, and motor-behaviour patterns"[96] which manifests itself in mixed metres, percussion polyrhythms, off-beat melodic phrasing, and an overall prominence of percussion instruments.[97] The degree to which these West African musical characteristics were syncretised with musics in the New World, and the particular nature of the syncretism, depended on the musical styles to which they were exposed and, crucially, on the cultural context. In North America, where whites discouraged and disparaged African music and culture, African-American music is largely European in nature, with significant but submerged African features. In contrast, in Central and South America, in which there was a more accommodating cultural context, African musical elements were more evenly blended, or even dominantly West African.[98] A place like Trinidad exhibits the full range of possibilities, with dominantly British and Protestant areas featuring European-derived religious and folk music with a more subtle African flavour in some areas, and music of African religious cults in others.[99] From the outset, then, Waterman’s work on music pertained directly to understanding the broader cultural patterns of which music was a part.
Waterman’s work on African and African-American music was also critical of some of the prevailing attitudes in the academic study of non-Western music. He took issue, for instance, with the notion that Africans were not developed enough culturally to have harmony, and that any instances of harmony in recorded samples were purely the accidental result of overlapping polyphony of different vocal parts. He also lamented the methodology that facilitated such an interpretation, where analysts relied on poor-quality recordings made by others, where true harmonic features may have been masked, rather than on recordings they made themselves.[100] Waterman writes: "That a hypothesis concerning the absence of harmony in African music could have been framed on the basis of early data presented, then, is completely understandable; how the hypothesis came to be accepted as fact and how it managed to persist to this day are less readily understood."[101]
In his work on Australian Aboriginal music, Waterman retained his overriding theoretical interest in cultural dynamics and social context, even to the extent that any focus on particular musical features is limited. He made around 15 hours of recordings of Yolngu music during a year’s field research in Yirrkala in 1952/53. For the most part, they were elicited recordings of short sequences of songs, perhaps a half-dozen to a dozen, by single patrifilial groups. There are several recordings of oral narrative, and at least two sequences of songs recorded in their ritual context.
Waterman’s only published work dealing specifically with Yolngu music was an article in 1955 entitled "Music in Australian Aboriginal Culture — Some Sociological and Psychological Implications". Waterman’s primary focus was in examining Yolngu music as an enculturative mechanism, and he drew upon functionalist theory in his interpretations.[102] Much of the article examines how music is learned in childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and late adulthood, and the functions of music are described as providing recreation, improving morale, increasing and relieving emotional tension,[103] strengthening kin-group solidarity, acting as textbooks of natural history, history and cosmology, and affirming ties between social groups and totemic species.[104]
In terms of musical features, it is curious that Waterman’s interest in rhythm, as detailed in his African-American research, does not replicate itself in his Yolngu research (despite considerable rhythmic complexity). Instead, Waterman turns his attention to subject matter closer to the heart of comparative musicology: melody, scales and intervals. Even here, though, his primary interest is to demonstrate the relationship between melody and sociality, by demonstrating the patrifilial identity of various melodic intervals. Thus, he can assert that: "[a] karma cycle of the ridajigo-speaking lineage uses the first, the flatted second, and the flatted third of scale; a cycle of the komaitt-speaking lineage uses the natural second and flatted third of scale, and one of the magkalili-speaking lineage the flatted third and the fourth."[105]
If the shift to a focus on melody over rhythm is somewhat surprising, the focus on social context is not. At any rate, the article as a whole does not deal with any musical feature in great detail, concentrating on matters of social function and enculturation.
Waterman’s interest in cultural dynamics is more obvious in a paper, co-written with his wife, called "Directions of Culture Change in Aboriginal Arnhem Land",[106] a chapter of a book co-edited by him on the subject of cultural change in Aboriginal Australia. The paper is a critique of the view, widespread at the time, that Aboriginal culture is essentially conservative and unchanging under conditions of cultural contact, leading to cultural breakdown instead of accommodation. The Watermans advance the position that, although certain areas of Yolngu culture, such as their experience of missionary education and religion, demonstrated considerable resistance to change, in other areas of culture Yolngu people were remarkably innovative and willing to accept new things.[107] In support of this position, the Watermans point to Macassan-derived material culture and cosmology, and the discovery of "new" songs in the Yolngu musical repertoire.[108] The authors conclude:
…that Australian Aboriginals, as exemplified by the people of Yirkalla [sic], have earned their reputation for resisting change only in connection with changes whose motivations they do not understand, changes detrimental to their well-being, and changes that would involve behaviour in opposition to their values and to the principles of their world-view.
Actually, in their own terms, the Aboriginals of Yirkalla are people with open and questioning minds, continually making use of every source of good and valuable suggestions for the modification of their behaviour and willing to consider any innovation on its own merits.[109]
In his only other publication on the subject of Aboriginal music, Waterman again adopts a stance reminiscent of comparative musicology in two senses: first, through a focus on melodic structures (although he does pay attention to melodic rhythm); and second, by analyzing a collection of music made by Mountford on Groote Eylandt. In both senses, Waterman would seem to contradict the interpretive stance which he took vis-à-vis African and African-American music in the 1940s and 1950s.
Waterman’s focus is to draw some tentative conclusions about Groote Eylandt music based on his melodic analyses of a small sample of songs. The language which he uses and the style of analysis are strongly reminiscent of early-twentieth-century comparative musicology, and mark something of a departure from his other ethnomusicological work. There is a general interpretive assumption that the analysis of melodic structure, in the sense of counting notes and measuring the intervals between them in terms of Western musical theory, can provide material for general conclusions about the music and its place amongst the musics of the world. Thus, to give but one example, Waterman writes about one particular song in the sample:
Its basic materials are two tone levels, scored G and A. In the first measure the initial notes of the half-measure figures rise to B, but I suspect that this is either a species of beginning formula or the singer using a few notes to find his best pitch. A peculiar feature about this song is the “rise” in measure 12, which is echoed by a high note at the beginning of measures 13 and 14. This intrusive high note — intrusive because it is unique in this particular collection, and because it breaks the consistent pattern of alternating and balancing figurations using G and A, of which the present song is almost entirely composed — reaches to a major seventh above the low note, then slides down a half-tone for its other two appearances.[110]
What is surprising here is not the nature of the analysis itself, which was common enough in the mid-1960s when the paper was written, nor the value of such an analysis. What is surprising is that it comes from the pen of Waterman, whose other published work is based so strongly upon an anthropological method, copious cultural context, and a much broader approach to the analysis of musical features.
Waterman himself comments on this in the paper, noting that, although he is generally in the "anthropological" camp of ethnomusicology, one may follow the lead of Kolinski — amongst the most "musicological" of ethnomusicologists — in using other people’s recordings, analyzing musical structure, and ignoring the cultural context[111] — an approach which he had previously characterized as "unfortunate for the development of ethnomusicology as a branch of cultural anthropology".[112]
Waterman’s conclusions in this paper also situate it within a well-established discourse of comparative musicology. Given that Groote Eylandt music (at least his small sample) uses a small number of notes, he suggests that melody is better understood in terms of pitch levels rather than scales. He writes:
…this is a way of making music somewhat different from the creation of melodies using an array of notes drawn from a series that can be arranged in a scale either by the singer himself or at least by some musically trained investigator…I should like to suggest that, with regard to tonal materials, there exists a hitherto unrecognised musical culture area to go with the scale-type areas generally recognized. To the South Asian-North African microtonal area, the European-African diatonic area, and the Far Eastern-American Indian pentatonic area (which, incidentally, should be divided and recharacterized), I should like to add an area of Oceania characterized not by scales, but rather by the technique of forming songs out of a very few established levels of pitch.[113]
Thus, here we have one of the most prominent "anthropological" ethnomusicologists, a student of Boas and Herskovits, shunning the investigation of cultural context and addressing himself to the kinds of questions which had dominated comparative musicology since the mid-1880s. It is obvious that, despite being able to characterize different approaches to the study of non-Western music, some scholars cannot be completely tarred with one brush.
What, then, of Alice Moyle? In many ways, she was as good an exemplar of the "musicological" side of the discipline as Waterman was of the "anthropological" side. But, like Waterman, she cannot be entirely tarred with one brush either.
One of Alice Moyle’s first publications was a book called Know Your Orchestra,[114] but her first excursion into Aboriginal music was her 1957 M.A. thesis at the University of Sydney entitled "The Intervallic Structure of Australian Aboriginal Singing". The subject matter, overall approach and theoretical inspiration place her squarely within the European tradition of comparative musicology. Moyle’s objective was the comparative study of intervallic resemblances among different musical traditions in Aboriginal Australia, with an eye toward describing them in terms of developmental stages.[115]
Moyle draws upon some of the most prominent figures in comparative musicology, especially Curt Sachs, positing a relationship between the number of notes used melodically and different stages of singing; that is, fewer notes equals an earlier stage.[116] She further uses Sachs’ framework of logogenic, pathogenic and melogenic singing, stating that Aboriginal song belongs in the last category due to the presence of well-marked intervals.[117] Moyle also refers to Alain Danielou’s "Introduction to the Study of Musical Scales", in which he states that intervals can either be divided by numbers (like string lengths), or "by their psychological correspondence such as the feelings and images they necessarily evoke in our minds",[118] extending such an idea to Aboriginal singing.
Like so much comparative musicology in the first half of the twentieth century, Moyle devotes a significant portion of her study to the subject of the pentatonic scale, and refers to both Hornbostel and Sachs in her analysis. She notes that the sequence A-G-E-D-C is a "typically Australian" mode of descent,[119] and examines a number of other possible pentatonic modes.[120] She writes, however: "while the intention here is not to suggest regular or systematic pentatonism…— the reverse is nearer the truth in Australian singing — the conglomerations of small 'motives' already described do frequently produce resemblances to the above pentatonic sequences."[121]
She continues:
What remains to be said here on the subject of pentatonism is that in songs all over the continent both pentatonic, diatonic (heptatonic), chromatic, even microtonic progressions are demonstrated. And it would seem that all of these are purely vocal modes of singing which can exist side by side. Theories of “evolution” or development are probably no more than theories of emphasis, certain instruments emphasising certain scale progressions more than others. The Australian situation in this regard would closely parallel that at the beginning of Western musical history, long before subsequent experiments in harmony gave to the diatonics that "advanced" status that they had in Western musical theory.[122]
It is obvious that Moyle has not been swept away by an inordinate focus on the pentatonic scale in so-called primitive music, like some of her predecessors. However, her work is clearly marked by a strong concern for scales and intervals as holding the key to understanding universal principles of musical development.
Tonality — that is, the number of tones used and the way they are used in particular intervallic sequences — is at the centre of Moyle’s theory of stages of development in Aboriginal singing;[123] for, as she writes, "the rise and fall of melody is surely closer to the core of music than features derived from song-texts or from dancing rhythms".[124] This is combined with a corresponding theory of musical diffusion in order to speculate on the origins and spread of Australian Aboriginal music. Moyle refers to Sachs’ belief that there was an Asian cradle of music which could be demonstrated by attention to melody, modes and scales.[125] She writes: "Having traced — thanks to Sachs — the major-third-plus-semitone progression right to Australia’s back door, we are now able to follow it further into North East Arnhem Land to the popular Wadamiri [sic] song-series which features this interval group in a well-established and striking manner."[126]
And she continues:
…judging by the basic tones and intervals aboriginal singers select, it might well be that here in Australia, and for contemporary ears to hear, is music which belongs to the same deep strata as the sources of both Eastern and Western music. In Australian aboriginal music we may be hearing the same germinating cells from which have come every known style of music.[127]
She then goes on to outline, based on melodic structure, a series of stages in the development of Aboriginal music, from a small range with monotonous repetition all the way through to polyphonic rudiments,[128] and states that diffusion accounts for similarities between musical regions across the country.[129] It seems to me that the underlying evolutionist implication of Moyle’s thesis was probably imported into her thinking by her theoretical reliance on Sachs more than any other single scholar.
Moyle’s primary interest in the intervallic features of Aboriginal music continued in subsequent publications. Her 1959 analysis of Baldwin Spencer’s wax cylinder recordings, made in 1901 and 1912, concentrates almost entirely on which intervals may be heard and in which order. The universal significance of particular intervals is suggested through numerous comparisons between the intervals sung on Spencer’s cylinders and the ancient modes of Western civilization: "the tones of the “Arunji” corroboree…resemble those of the ancient Greek Hypophrygian, or mediaeval Mixolydian mode"[130] or "a structural interval of a fourth…is linked conjunctly to one of a fifth…after the manner of the ancient Greek Hypomixolydian and mediaeval Phrygian modes".[131]
In 1960, Moyle turned her analytical ear to the earliest recordings of Aboriginal music in existence, made in 1899 and 1903 of the Tasmanian singer Fanny Cochrane Smith. Once again, melodic structure provides the material for her interpretive framework, as it had in her earlier work. Comparing these songs with those of the Vedda of what was then Ceylon — the hands-down winner of the early comparative musicological prize for "most primitive" music — Moyle contends that the Tasmanian songs show a much higher level of organization, based on melodic structure, with "a compass of an octave and seven or eight appreciably different tones" and melodies which "proceed upwards as well as downwards".[132] And, within the sample itself, the legato-style "Birds and Flowers" song is more musically advanced than the syllabic "corroboree" song, by virtue of melodic phrases which are "balanced above and below a tonal centre".[133] In both cases, conclusions regarding musical development and sophistication are made solely on the basis of melody and melodic features, with no consideration of rhythm or timbre, much less cultural context.
Moyle’s grounding in the theory of European comparative musicology also leads her to adopt an explicitly comparative approach to her material, as she details similarities and differences between the Tasmanian material and songs from the west coast of South Australia as well as Central Australia. These comparisons are based on scale tables, a method advocated by Hornbostel, which break down a piece of music into its constituent notes and their relative duration; the most frequently occurring note is taken as the tonic of a scale used in the piece.[134] Moyle concludes that the Tasmanian songs have a clear tonic and an emphasis given to a triad with the tonic in the middle, whereas the other Aboriginal songs emphasize the fifth note above the triad. These and other melodic features lead Moyle to compare the Tasmanian songs with Melanesian styles of singing[135] — which is obviously drawing a very long bow.
So, early in her career Alice Moyle was strongly informed by some of the characteristic features of comparative musicology: an overriding interest in melodic and intervallic structures; a negligible interest in rhythmic features; an interest in comparison, musical origins and developmental stages; a reliance on a "laboratory" method of analyzing field collections made by others; an overall lack of focus on cultural context; and a general belief in notation and musical analysis as the foundation of methodology. However, as her career progressed she became much less easy to characterize in each of these areas. A single example, an article from 1968 which was a follow-up on the Tasmanian recordings, reveals some subtle changes in her approach.
One notable change, which reflects an extra decade of thought on matters ethnomusicological, as well as her first-hand research and recording, is a re-orientation away from the scalar arrangement of pitches toward a focus on melodic contour, which may reveal "significant demarcations of musical style".[136] To this end, Moyle’s standard transcriptions in Western notation are accompanied by graphs outlining melodic contour, with pitch represented on the Y-axis and duration on the X-axis. Of this method Moyle writes:
…the tonal level (or levels) with which the progression of vocal tones most often coincides is seen to emerge in the length and disposition of the horizontal lines. Western designations such as “tonic”, “dominant” etc. are thus avoided. Vertical lines indicate “broad” (as against “narrow”, or accurately measured) melodic steps or intervals…Pitch/duration graphs have the advantage here of directing attention to tonal movement, rather than to precise pitch.[137]
Another notable change is Moyle’s much greater emphasis on the historical record to provide some relevant cultural context; in particular, in examining song texts and historical reports of polyphonic singing in parallel thirds. Although she points out that, on the Australian mainland, polyphonic singing was produced by accidental overlapping of vocal parts (the same interpretation criticized by Waterman with regard to African polyphony), she gives some credence to early historical accounts of Tasmanian singing in parallel thirds.[138]
However, despite these changes in her approach, and new information thereby generated, her conclusions remain virtually the same. The innovative pitch/duration graphs depicting melodic contour are used to compare Tasmanian singing not only with mainland Aboriginal singing, but also with singing in the Solomon Islands, again taking melodic features as the sole basis for intercultural musical comparison. Examining these graphs, along with the historical accounts, Moyle is able to conclude:
Compared with songs recorded on the mainland more differences than similarities have been found in the present study of Fanny Smith’s songs. Fanny Smith’s Spring Song and Hymn Improvisation show some structural resemblance to a style of singing hitherto observed in parts of Melanesia. And if early evidence for singing in “third parallels” be accepted, further support is thus given to a tentative theory of musical connection between Tasmania and places in the South Pacific.[139]
So, up to this point in her career Moyle continues to develop a speculative theory of musical diffusion, reminiscent of Hornbostel’s support of diffusion theory and the monogenesis of cultural phenomena.[140] Although her thought changed over the many years of her work, it can be concluded that Moyle maintained a consistent grounding in the theoretical framework of her early career, and therefore is a good representative of the "musicological" side of ethnomusicology.