This debate about tradition is very interesting. Please allow me to
share some thoughts on this.
In the academic world, tradition often have a negative meaning.
Tradition is away from "evolution". The Austrian composer Arnold
Schoenberg said something like this about music "If it is art, it is not
for all, and if it is for all, it is not art." The ethnocentricity of
European classical music is such that only classical music can be called
"music". But when a country looses track of its musical tradition, as is
the case in so many Westernized Asian countries or in the process of
being westernized, its people looses in many ways the sense of who they
are and thus their traditions. One way to fit in the landscape of the
hegemony imposed by Westernization is to ignore one's tradition. This
psychosocial and psychocultural conflict between traditions and
"evolution", one of the motto of Westernization, is not easy to cope
with. So, tradition becomes somehow the things to get rid of... In order
to cope with this new transformation.
But one strange thing is going on at the moment in Japan and in the West
about shakuhachi. When a Japanese learns a traditional instrument, he or
she wants to modernize it. One very good example is Tadao Sawai.
Although he has remained truthful to his Japanese spirit, he modernized
koto music according to Western standards. On the other hand, in the
West, when one learn an instrument from another tradition, such as the
Japanese shakuhachi, we are much more devoted to the traditions than
Japanese are. But at the same time, we ignore our own Western
traditions.
In the 1960s, many museums, scholars and people who owned the ukiyo-e
drawings were throwing them away. Some Westerners complained publicly
about this: destroying such a traditional treasure. Japanese were
surprised by this. In the 1970s, those who still owned ukiyo-e were
proud of it. Will this happen with shakuhachi? Will Westerners learning
and maintaining the shakuhachi tradition somehow save it? It remains to
be seen.
Another mention I would like to share with you about destryoing
tradition is the case of China. Although the Chinese government is
complaining about the "American Imperialism", since 1949, the government
is "modernizing" music on the entire Chinese territory. All songs are
rewriting according to the communist credo, but all instruments are
tuned and songs written according to the Western tempered scale, or, as
they put, "tuned on the piano". So, the music of more than 110 ethnic
monorities are starting to sound all the same.
It is interesting to discover that modernization means as well a kind of
flattening of diversity.
Enough said for the moment!
Thanks for reading me through!
________________
Bruno Deschenes
Tel.: (514) 277-4665 * Fax: (514) 844-5498
E-mail: musis@videotron.ca
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