Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts

6 Encountering Oral Performance as Total Musical Fact

Oral Tradition O ral tradition is commonly used to designate the creation, dissemination, transmission, and preservation of verbal and musical “texts” by means of oral-aural communication and its retention in memory. This process requires the co-presence and interaction of those who produce sonic messages and, equally important, of those who receive them, whether they are called “speakers” and “hearers ” or performers and audience. Together, they create speech and music events that range widely in form, function, and configuration of participants ’ oral performances in the widest sense of the word. This chapter posits that oral performances are more than enactments of already extant musical texts; they are total musical facts that encompass everything that makes the music happen. The event is the music; they both identify each other, and it is common that the name of one also names the other. Because in every performance, music is sonically created anew, it is inseparably linked to its human agents. How they interact is as much part of the performance process as is its purely sonic aspect and must be considered of musical, cultural and social importance. With the primacy of music as a subject of contemplation deeply engrained in Western scholarship, early ethnomusicologists focused on all music as a sonic construct, with sound recordings providing their primary musical texts, to be transcribed and analyzed and compared. A parallel and still foundational approach has been to learn from musicians how to 129 Encountering Oral Performance as Total Musical Fact1 regula burckhardt qureshi SIX sing or play their music and thereby to acquire a culturally appropriate understanding of the musical language if not its use in performance (Hood’s “bi-musicality,” 1963). The focus on music as a performative process— rather than as an autonomous body of sound or a repertoire—is a recent development, advanced by anthropologically trained scholars (Asch 1975; McLeod and Herndon 1980; Seeger 1980) who drew on performance studies in socio-linguistics and folklore where the idea was pioneered that the contextual dimension of performance should be included in the study of verbal communications (Labov 1972; Baumann 1975; Ben-Amos and Goldstein 1975; Silverstein 1976). Singer’s “cultural performance” concept contributed seminally to this development for India (Singer 1972). Ethnomusicologists have encountered an astonishing variety of musical performances across the world. Most are associated or are expressly identified with designated contexts (e.g., religious, familial, agricultural, etc.), and they fit the designation of “oral tradition,” even where the music is complex and the musicians are professional specialists. Remarkably, such oral performances include religious and art music where musical notation coexists with oral tradition, thus problematizing the oral–literate dichotomy (e.g., in South Asia, China, and Japan). Finally, most of these performances are vocal and include verbal texts, which are set to music or vice versa. One of the most vivid and complex oral performance traditions is Qawwali, the predominant Sufi music of India and Pakistan. The Sufi assembly challenged me with a complex musical-verbal repertoire and the most elaborate interaction between performers and audiences I had ever dreamed of. This essay has its intellectual roots in my own study of Qawwali and its highly interactive performance of spiritual songs. Qawwali thus became a case study for a multi-dimensional analysis that encompasses both music as well as its relevant contexts, including musicians, patrons, and listeners (Qureshi 1987, 2006). To describe Qawwali music briefly, a lead singer heads a small vocal group accompanied by a drum, harmonium, and rhythmic clapping in a continuous sequence of mystical poems, which are sung in a fluid responsorial style, characterized by repetition and improvisation. The Sufi assembly , the performance occasion for Qawwali, is a gathering held under a spiritual leader for the purpose of listening to this music in order to achieve a spiritual experience of ecstasy. The Sufi devotees respond spontaneously, but in accordance with religious and social convention, expressing states of mystical love. The musicians, on their part, structure their performance to activate and reinforce their listeners’ emotions, while also attempting to elicit offerings, which represent their remuneration. 130 Regula Burckhardt Qureshi Consider entering a Sufi assembly held in Delhi at the anniversary of the Sufi Saint Nizamuddin Auliya: At the beginning of the Qawwali performance: immediately the lead musician intones the obligatory Arabic hymn that introduces every Qawwali at Nizamuddin Auliya. A great stirring begins among the audience. One by one, most of them stand up...