RICHARD K. WOLF

 

Invité à l'EHESS par Marie-Claude Mahias (Directeur de recherches au CNRS et membre du CEIAS), Richard Kent Wolf, Professor of Music, Harvard University et Professeur invité à l'EHESS, ethnomusicologue et connaisseur réputé de musique carnatique (Inde du sud), animera l'un de nos séminaires du Jeudi.

Jeudi 7 mai, de 11h à 13h, salle 8 (105 bd Raspail)

Musical and other social 'beginnings' in South Asia and beyond

Richard K. Wolf présentera (en anglais) un aspect de ses recherches en ethnomusicologie dans l'Inde particulièrement approprié à notre séminaire. L'objet de son propos, ce sont les premières notes et les gestes avec lesquels on commence à jouer un morceau de musique, ou bien les mots qui précèdent et annoncent la musique, ou bien encore the contextually-varying procedures whereby the south Indian Kota community gets ready to play an instrumental piece (comme il l'annonce ci-dessous dans son résumé), ou pour user d'une traduction française qui parlera à nombre d'auditeurs, les diverses formes d'«Attaques» musicales. Cette conférence invitée de Richard Wolf est en parfaite continuité avec les conférences de John Haviland avant Pâques. Pour illustrer l'un de ses exemples pris dans la musique carnatique, outre les documents audio et vidéo qu'il utilisera, Richard Wolf a apporté sa Veena <vīṇā> (instrument de musique sud-indien) et se propose de nous en jouer quelques notes.

Wolf_Beginnings_Handout_whole.pdf

Abstract

Certain kinds of beginnings have the potential to foreshadow, suggest, portend, or otherwise have implications for the future. They may function something akin to models or theories, they may index models and theories, or they may trigger "assessments" that index indigenous theories. At minimum, beginnings may serve as food for thought, stimulating cogitation and discourse among members of a social group. The problem of musical beginnings is a subset of the larger question of why events happen when they do in a sequence and relates to the general problem how events acquire meaning by virtue of their syntactical positions. In this presentation I will address the question of what is to be learned from certain kinds of musical beginnings. What can musical beginnings tell us about indigenous theorizing? In what ways might local forms of theory be embodied in a musical beginning? What are the cultural implications of musical beginnings and how deep do they run? How might the study of "beginnings" in human action help us to counter the generally logocentric view of what counts as "theory" or "theorizing" in musical and other forms of social action? I'll approach these questions through three sets of case studies: (1) the well-known south Indian classical genre, the varnam; (2) the contextually-varying procedures whereby the south Indian Kota community [on the Nilgiri Hills] gets ready to play an instrumental piece, and (3) the prefacing of a piece, or a section thereof, with vocables. The three share their status as gestures of beginning and their special roles in pointing to what comes next; but lack similarity in magnitude, musical sound, immediate function, or cultural context. The dissimilarity of these examples is meant to stimulate further reflection about a range of initiatory phenomena.

An ethnomusicologist who has devoted his career to the interdisciplinary study of South Asian musical traditions, Richard K. Wolf has written about classical, folk and tribal musical traditions in South India as well as on musical traditions associated with Shi'ism and Sufism in North India and Pakistan. Since his first study visit to India in 1982, Wolf has lived and conducted research in South Asia for seven-and-a-half years. More recently, Wolf's interest in South Asia has expanded westward into Iran, and his work has concerned sociomusical processes that transcend the borders of South Asia. This is reflected in his edited volume, Theorizing the Local: Music, Practice, and Experience in South Asia and Beyond, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 (www.oup.com/us/theorizingthelocal). Wolf is also the author of the book The Black Cow's Footprint: Time, Space, and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of South India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005 and Champaign IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006), which was awarded the Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Humanities. He has been the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including recently those of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. In addition to writing and teaching, Wolf also performs on the South Indian vina; his is a disciple of Ranganayaki Rajagopalan, a renowned vina player in the Karaikkudi style.

Homepage:

http://www.music.fas.harvard.edu/faculty/facbios.html#wolf

Programme à Paris:

Programme des quatre conférences de Richard K. Wolf