The politics and poetics of dance by Susan A. Reed

Susan Reed analyzes and critiques the different aspects of dance in culture. Her focus on colonialism, nationalism, women and sexuality, and feminism intrigued me to the subject of dance anthropology. Reed discusses the “recontextualization” and the domestication of moves and styles of a particular dance, and its effects on the culture’s view of themselves. She relates this to Marta Savigliano’s complex research on the tango in Argentina and the process of its “auto-exoticization” in France. Savigliano defines auto-exoticization as the process by which the colonized come to represent themselves to themselves through the lenses of the colonizers – or in this case, the neo-colonizers. Dance masters in Paris standardized the tango, simplifying and making it suitable to “cosmopolitan aesthetic sensibilities.”
Reed goes on to discuss gender and dance, and how culturally accepted gender roles can either be emphasized or reinterpreted through movement and costume. She uses the Cuban rumba as an example where men exhibit their strength, courage and bravado. She also cites examples of dances in Africa where gender roles are crossed and mixed in order to portray feelings of homoeroticism, competitiveness, or temporary release from their assigned roles in society. Her extensive study on women and sexuality in dance discusses how dances performances can exhibit and generate gender and class conflicts regarding the appropriateness of sexually provocative dance movements for women. She cites Senegalese dancing as having conflicted perceptions of women’s sexuality. “While traditional dancing is considered to be ‘women’s business,’ dancing is also considered risky for a woman’s reputations, particularly after marriage.”
The last category Reed discusses is movement and body in dance. She discusses the “agentive” nature of dance, and how it is often linked to ideas of resistance and control. She also refers to Novak’s research on dance as an “art-sport” and her attention to historicizing the body in culture, and to Barbara Browning’s exploration of “bodily writing.”
This multitude of perspectives on dance showed me how inclusive and exclusive dance can be in different cultures. It also brought forth the idea that dance can be used to convey messages not only through costumes, movements, and themes, but also through history and interpretations.

Tewa Indian Ritual: Native Aesthetics by Anya Peterson Royce

Royce writes about the dance rituals of the Tewa Indians, one of the six groups of Pueblo Indians. She writes how the Tewa dance for both ritualistic purposes and for crowds of tourists in order to sell local crafts. The dancers’ skill is very important in the Tewa society. “Ability, rather than status associated with a social or political role, is extremely important in selecting dancers for particular roles.” The “roles” Royce is talking about can include anything from maidens to animals. Tewa Indians place great importance on time. Time has two dimensions in their society: ritual time, which refers to the larger cycle of agriculture and hunting, and secular time, which refers to work and the life needs of people.
The Tewa Indians have also adopted new dances, like the Matachines, which is a hybrid of European and indigenous dance and musical elements. The dance is performed in pueblos at Christmas. “The Matachines dance is probably the most significant single ceremony from the outside that was adopted by the Tewa but their history is one of continuous interaction and selective borrowing.”
Dancing for tourists has also become a large part of Tewa society. Royce discusses the “ceremonials”, an Anglo-organized event in which Indians dance for outside audiences. Whenever dances are done outside of the pueblo, or plaza, the choreography is drastically changed. Segments are made shorter, costumes are made more flamboyant and colorful, and the dances overall cater to the outsiders’ stereotypes of Tewa Indians.

“(Up)Staging the Primitive" by Richard Green

Green describes the life and works of dancer and anthropologist Pearl Primus, and her attempt at bringing together “body politics and political bodies.” Primus used art as a means of articulating a socio-historical identity, and also as a means of advancing her Negro race. While Primus was in high school in the 1930s, Marcus Garvey was raising consciousness for his “back to Africa” movement. As a parallel to Garvey, Pearl Primus returned to Africa symbolically through her dances. She aimed to claim that American Negroes do possess a rich cultural heritage. Primus started her career through The New Dance Group. As an American Negro, anthropologist, and social-protest dancer, she offered a “counter-hegemonic narrative of identity by placing the Negro on the grand stage of inherited social tradition.” Although Primus was always seen as a Negro dancer first and her pride in Negro-ness affected the way in which she was perceived despite the character she was portraying, her sheer talent as a modern dancer has not been overlooked. The representations and re-constructions of Primus’ pieces against segregation, lynching, and cultural denigration are what brings her legacy and life dreams alive.
Later in the piece, Green raises important questions about the process of the black American’s exclusion and also the terms on which inclusion is permitted. She questions integration and its functioning in reestablishment of hierarchical relationships.

Dancing with the Virgin by Deidre Sklar

Based in New Mexico, this book focuses on Sklar’s own experiences while she was submerged in the Mexican culture, and her adaptation to new ways of being in the world. As a Jew from Brooklyn, Sklar’s experiences in a new culture seem out of place at first. She documents the traditions surrounding the fiesta devoted to the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe. This fiesta was originally five to six days long but now goes on for three days, during which people reenact the stories of the Virgin. These reenactments depicted the contradictions and multiple layers of their complex society.
Sklar soon realizes that understanding the traditions and actions of her “host” families do not come from merely studying them extensively. One day as she was kneeling in front of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, she felt a sudden sense of reverence. Although she was still that Jew from Brooklyn, she began to understand how everyone else felt in this community. In other words, she gained access into their personal understandings of this festival.
Reading this Sklar’s documentation of another country’s festivities was a real eye opener. Her depiction of how the people of New Mexico sediment their memories through one generation to the next, and her observations as someone completely new to the culture made me think about how people from other cultures could view our traditions and festivals in a different way.

Among the Jasmine Trees by Jonathan Shannon

Among the Jasmine Trees is a documentation and immersion in Syrian music and musical culture. It gives personal accounts of music in small restaurants in Aleppo and Damascus, but also analyzes religious singing in Mosques and the personas of the artists that sing the Q’uranic verses, or dhikir’s.
I really loved reading this book and engaging myself in Syrian culture. Not only were the nuances of small restaurants and intimate gatherings relatable to me because of their similarities to Indian culture, the style of writing itself made the depictions more relatable. Small descriptions such as the conversation between you and Sabri Moudallal made me smile and also gave me the impression that great vocalists and religious figures have multiple dimensions. “…We talk about sundry things: how when he traveled to Europe he found it strange that people on buses there are so absorbed in reading newspapers and books that n one talks to anyone else; how the great ‘Umar al-Batsh used to charge his students half a lira for lessons but never charge him because he was his favorite…”(p.188). Descriptions of the different ways of describing one’s singing voice showed to me how important of a part music plays in Syrian culture. The mere poetry in those descriptions showed the amount of importance Syrians place on the effects of music.
Watching the videos of Sabah Fakhri and others in class greatly enhanced my reading of this book.

Gender, Location, and Tradition: A Comparison of Two Papua New Guinean Contemporary Artists By Jacquelyn A. Lewis-Harris

Harris begins her article with citing the two types of contemporary art prominent in Papua New Guinea (PNG): the “arts gallery” faction and the “neotraditional” group. The first group uses foreign media and styles that are directly influenced by Western art. The artists that produce these works are usually graduates of universities or government schools. Neotraditionalist artists use functional village art forms or traditional ritual objects in their work. Harris states, “the majority of neotraditional art is sold in the international artifact and handcraft market, and only a small portion is produced for domestic consumption.” Both of these categories are used to preserve the traditional forms of ceremonies and arts as a way of attracting much desired tourist income.
Two artists are compared in this article are Saun Anti and Wendi Choulai. Saun Anti was a highly regarded carver from Indabu village. His art began to threaten the cult’s spiritual power and authority because he was reintroducing an “old” form that was not sanctioned by current societal members. As a holder of sacred traditions and a member of high standing in his tambaran, Anti’s spiritual influences in his sculptures posed a possible threat to the power of his tambaran cult.
Wendi Choulai is another artist of PNG. She was the first Solien Besena female who graduated from the National Arts School, and conveyed her mixed heritage in her paintings. She challenged gender roles in her society and although she was forced to respond to clan, national, and international concerns, she was successful in negotiating her way through conflicts and obstacles.
Reading about Anti and Choulai gave me a broader perspective about the trials and tribulations of being a contemporary artist in PNG. They not only have to respect traditions and rituals in their individual cults, but the also have to keep up with the ever-developing world-art world.

The Postcolonial Virtue of Aboriginal Art from Bathurst and Melville Islands By Eric Venbrux

Venbrux focuses on the Tiwi artists from Bathurst and Melville Islands in northern Australia. He explores the problem of cultural empowerment amongst the Aboriginal community and painters. In 1959, seventeen Tiwi grave posts were displayed in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. This signified an important turning point of Aboriginal works from ethnographic artifacts to fine art. As Aboriginal art began receiving more recognition, their sense of national identity grew. However, the majority of Australians did not share the same sentiment. They believe that Australian art has begun to automatically mean Aboriginal art.
Non-urban Aboriginal producers or contemporary art are encouraged to created works that express regional variation in order to be better suited for tourist consumers. Venbrux states that the commoditization of art has been a long-standing cultural practice in the Tiwi Islands. Therefore, when commissioned to create a piece of work, artists never want to risk being paid less than they deserve. The Aborigines’ entrance into the international political and art scenes is said to help improve “Australia’s international cultural profile,” whether or not non-Aboriginal Australians like it. However, some think that their economic and political difficulties could put a stain on Australia’s international image.
Venbrux goes on to talk about Charles P. Mountford and his journey and observations in Tiwi society. Mountford commissioned Tiwi artists to paint their myths and legends to provide a visual aid to their oral stories.
The increased interest in Aboriginal art has posed both non-Aboriginal Australians and Aboriginal societies with problems. It has caused many societies such as the Tiwi to assimilate with a broader “Aboriginal” style of painting. However, this assimilation has also allowed them to gain a bigger influence in national matters and in the international scene.

Present images: photographic archives in ethnographic collections By Alison Devine Nordstrom

Nordstrom analyzes the treatment (or mistreatment) of photographs in archives and ethnographic collections. She states that photographs were seen as either two things: relics of a crude and ancient science that is useless in present day, or as racist and embarrassing imperialist evidence that has no role in today’s more politically correct society.
Nordstrom goes on to cite several collections of photographs in museums and galleries. Photographs in even the most renowned museums are poorly cared for. They are often kept in loose folders where air, moisture, or acidity can get in, and are many times casually available to the public. This produces the risk of vandalism or theft. Although Nordstrom states that the costs of photographic conservation are high, the mere ways that these photographs are displayed become condescending. Simplistic geographic headings, and lumping together many different groups of people into one heading “reinforces the same stereotypes in current thought, or encourages a smugly uncritical ‘That was then and this is now’ attitude that exacerbates the denial of present-day racism.”
The ways in which these relics of the past are cared for by famous institutions shows a great deal about our society and what values it favors. The United States National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution developed a successful program in which is used and interpreted ethnographic photographs by descendants of their subjects. Many photographs of Native Americans, organized by tribe, were identified and researched by Native American interns. They found relevance to their people, and thus took more interest. I think incorporating the subjects or the descendants of subjects in photography research and display is a great way to show respect for ancient relics. Not only does it help people to understand more about their own roots, but it also prevents the audience from looking at the photograph from an aloof or privileged point of view.

Seeing Through Pictures: The Anthropology of Photography By Jay Ruby

Ruby discusses the possible relationships between photography and social sciences. Ruby states that because studies of mass media and popular culture are either characterized by being critical evaluations by an elite scholar, or a quantitative survey that lumps masses together without taking into consideration nuances or cultural differences, one needs to understand how the media is used by ordinary people. He quotes Stanley Milgram as saying, photography will be examined as “A technology that extends two psychological functions: perception and memory. It can thus teach us a good deal about how we see, and how we remember.”
Ruby breaks down his study domain into six categories: professional photography, those that take pictures as a hobby (hobbyists), public exhibition events, historical photographs, photography in education, and family photographs.
Some of his questions that interested me a great deal were, “what constitutes an even worth photographing?” and “how are changes in conventions related to changes in technology and availability of equipment?” The popularization of digital cameras has decreased the significance of snapping photographs. The photographer rarely gives a second thought to what he or she snaps a shot of. This could be seen as another way in which thought processes are getting shallower and shallower.
Ethnographic Semiotics, a paper by Worth, suggested that more analysis should be put on ethnographic study of how people make meaning in their everyday lives, and less on anthropological texts. I agree with this fact. Merely reading texts will never give us the useful insight we need to understand how mass media benefits or harms us.

Circuits of African Art/ Paths of Wood: Exploring an Anthropological Trail By Paul Stoller

This chapter starts with a depiction of The New York International Tribal Antiques Show at the Seventh Regent Armory on Park Avenue. Stoller continues on to prove how the economic and social forces of globalization have changed art worlds. African art has been shaped and brought into the Western world by The Museum of Primitive Art, which later became a wing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)’s 1984 exhibition called “Primitivism” made tribal art even more acceptable by demonstrating how primitive art has inspired great artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
African statues and masks, referred to as “wood”, are also sold and traded at The Warehouse near the Hudson River in Chelsea. Stoller analyzes the factors that influence and drive these traders to come to America. He sites Islam as being closely linked with merchant capital. “Muhammad, whose wife Fatima was herself a prosperous merchant, deemed trade an honorable profession (pg.95).” In the West African kinship system, age, gender, and generation are all very important. The head of the household, or great trader, sends out his “children” to distant markets to sell and trade. “Looking to move ‘wood’ and ‘mud,’ African mobile merchants travel from city to city, festival to festival…until they have depleted their inventories (pg.99).”
Stoller sites El Hadj Ousmane of Niger saying that the two main reasons for the increase of African art in North America is 1). The hype surrounding MOMA’s primitivism exhibit which increased the value of tribal art and attracted new collectors, and 2). the increasing appeal of Afrocentrism, which has increased much interest in Africa.
Transnational crossroads are created where West African art is sold to Westerners. It becomes a place of complex dynamics where two completely different social worlds collide. Sometimes, as Stoller says, these crossroads can lead to a greater understanding of different cultures by both sides. However, sometimes they can lead to misunderstandings and anger.
From reading this article, I became more aware of the hurdles and issues between buyers and traders. Also, I learned of the journey of African art. From kinship villages to fast-paced contemporary worlds, traders have to adjust to the different flows.

The Unsettled Business of Tradition, Indigenous Being, and Acrylic Painting By Fred Myers

Myers focuses on the Pintupi-speaking people of the Yayayi community in Australia in this article. He approaches questions of aboriginality amongst them. What makes something or someone “Aboriginal”? What are the boundaries of Aboriginality? In fourth world communities such as the one Myers focuses on, tradition has been used to divide the Aboriginal people, by empowering some over others. In particular, Myers focuses on the acrylic paintings of the Aboriginals and the role they play in their traditional societies. Although acrylic paintings have been called nontraditional by some, “…Aboriginal producers do regard acrylic paintings as authentic”.
Linda Syddick, a Pintupi woman, creates Aboriginal Christian paintings through the use of dots. Her paintings do not fall neatly into any aesthetic categories, but rather signify that her tradition is always unsettled. They both show their relationship to local Aboriginal identities and also engage with wider themes of loss and disturbance. Syddick was adopted by Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi when her biological father passed away. Her paintings depict both her feelings of her biological father and of Shorty’s care for her. As Myers states, these images were seen as “artistic communication” and as evidence of the way in which place and its representations might convey significance for Pintupi (pg.187).” Her paintings were therefore creating universal images of loss and passing, as well as specific cultural relevances.

Anthropologies of Art: Three Approaches By Wilfred van Damme

Van Damme separates the anthropology of art into three disciplines. The first one, he calls Anthropology A, focuses on the fact that anthropology is the study of humanity and human nature. Not only does it focus on the fundamental issues in the arts such as origins and development, style and reference, production and evaluation, and patterns of use and function, it also creates a bridge between Darwinism and Biology and the arts. This approach stresses the motor, perceptual, and cognitive capacities that hade to develop first in order to appreciate or create art.
The second approach to anthropology of art (Anthropology B) focuses on the study of non-Western art. Studies based in other countries “are usually carried out within a broadly conceived particularist or cultural relativist paradigm and, as such, tend to offer a rich contextual perspective.” Non-western based studies are extremely valuable because they provide data from different local contexts.
The last approach (Approach C) revolves around sociocultural phenomena. Contextual studies of art around the world lead anthropologists to question the actual uses of art forms, the art patronage, who the producers were, and what the process of creating the piece was. Using this approach, outsiders become immersed in a foreign culture, and examine the phenomena in that culture to their own larger sociocultural matrix.
In my opinion, approach C is what affects most people. The almost natural process that comes from finding phenomena in another country and relating it to one’s own culture seems to have an impact on people that might not have known anything about that particular culture before.

Gauguin, Negrîn, and the Art of Anthropology: Reflections on the Construction of Art Worlds in a Costa Rican Port City By Russell Sharman

Sharman analyzes the works of Paul Gauguin and Negrîn (Ricardo Rodriguez-Cordoba) in this article. He writes that Gauguin’s paintings and projects were the result of internal disputes. He, like many at the time, disliked the white invasion of his home in French Polynesia and portrayed the effects of the invasion in his work. Although Negrîn shared Gauguin’s feelings of dislike for the white invasion, he painted scenes from what life was like before the invasion. Negrîn, painting scenes of early Puerto Limon, called this trying to “rescue the culture.”
The term “aesthetics” and its roots and implications are discussed at length. It originated from the Greek term aesthetica, which referred to the attachment of value to experience, and the objectification of that socially valued experience. Greek philosopher, Plato, thought, “aesthetics, relying as it does on the emotions, polluted the purity of intellectual reason.” As Plato’s attitude toward aesthetics spread, it was Kant that brought the term back into contemplation.
Sharman also addresses the issue of art versus craft. He sites many artists and craftsmen in Limon as saying that they are both the same. One sentence that stood out to me was, “[This] distinction between art and craft is more economic and political than aesthetic.”
From this article, I got an overall idea of how aesthetics and art are perceived in different societies. The ethnography of art can be studied from many angles. It had been studied from the wrong angle for too long; giving more importance to the actual object rather than the creator of the object. Art is being studied from the correct angle slowly but surely, informing the anthropology of race, gender, and political economy, and not merely a glorification of objects.

From Dull to Brilliant: The Aesthetics of Spiritual Power Among the Yolngu by H. Morphy

Aesthetics is concerned with how something appeals to the senses. This article focuses on the aesthetics of the Yolngu in northern Australia. “Only minor artists manage to say all they wish to and major artists frequently express things they did not intend to or were even unaware of,” Whitford states in the article. The Yolngu critical focus seems different than that of Western art criticism. The aesthetic properties do not have to be interpreted in order to have an impact. As far as public comments are concerned in Yolngu society, individual creativity is assigned no positive role. Although Yolngu individuals have aesthetic and creative capabilities, they never attribute these qualities in front of people. The reason attributed to why some people create the paintings and others don’t, is because of functional or practical reasons.
The distinctions between natural and cultural designs are irrelevant because of the constant change in their ancestral stories between inanimate objects and animate objects, between humans and animals. A Yolngu artist is guided by three objectives: to produce a correct design, to produce an Ancestrally powerful design, and to produce a painting that enhances or beautifies the object painted on. Paintings are usually smeared before they are displayed in public, and the only people that can see the painting in its full glory are those that create it. All others merely sneak glances at the paintings. It is believed that long, contemplative viewing is not the only way to appreciate a painting in Yolngu society. The Yolngu think that if a spiritually vulnerable person (young children, people suffering bereavement, seriously ill people, or sometimes women) sees a sacred painting, more sickness or death may result.

Open Ears by Murray Schafer

This article seemed much more tangible than the other articles I have read about sound and music. Schafer begins his piece by documenting the ringing of church bells, and the significances that go with it. On one hand, the bells were meant for God to know when the monks recited prayers. The bells also served to keep the regimen of the monastery and everyone who lived within that Christian society. Schafer writes, “When the authority of Christianity weakened, church bells grew fewer (pg.260).” Similarly, a people’s political state has a great relationship with their music at the time.
Schafer documented the Ear of Dionysius as the prototype for all future developments in acoustic surveillance.
Schafer’s analysis the “inner voice” was of great interest to me. It is so true that “The steady development of consciousness and rational thought has transformed the inner voice into a symptom of psychic disorder (pg.263).” Rationalism and so-called “modernism” has muffled the rich treasury of imaginary voices. Television has played a huge role in causing people to think less.
Even the small exercise of imagining different sounds (a fish jumping out of water, a woman weeping) helped me focus better on the rest of my chores for the day.
Although we are all physically condemned to listen, we shut our ears to almost everything. The number of things we ignore or refuse to listen to outnumber the things that we do listen to.

But What of the Ethnographic Ear? Anthropology, Sound, and the Senses by Veit Erlmann

In this article, Erlmann emphasizes a sort of sensual scholarship. He states “attention to the senses might not only yield new and richer kinds of ethnographic data but, perhaps more importantly, also force us to rethink a broad range of theoretical and methodological issues (pg.248).” Erlmann calls for the rejection or replacement of this current thought of the eye as a modern sensory organ and hearing as a pre-modern mode of perception. Some case studies that Erlmann includes in his essay include an analysis of the sonic definition of the “home” and those in it. Also, he compares the historical continuities of the gramophone, radio, and Walkman. He states “Walkman users share with the flaneur the desire to aestheticize the alienating urban space by “colonizing” it sonically…(pg.251)”
Pious listening and, in particular, Qur’an reading are analyzed. Whether devout Muslims value the sonic aesthetic of Qur’an reading more or the direct meaning of the words more becomes a comparison between secular Muslims and more traditionalist Muslims, respectively.
This article focused on many separate studies on how music or sonic aesthetics are felt in different situations. Although the different studies allowed me to understand the vast possibilities and positive qualities of using sound rather than and in conjunction with the other senses, I only superficially understood all the studies. However, reading about the different uses of sound, especially the medical uses of sound and the art of hearing another person listen, has made me want to read more case studies.

High Art as Tourist Art, Tourist Art as High Art by Eric K. Silverman

This article documented how, many times, the roles of art are reversed. In particular, the article talks about the Sepik River communities. Tourist art from the Sepik River has always been motivated by money. Although tourist art is generally seen as commodities, fakes, and not genuine art, Silverman argues that Eastern Iatmul tourist art from one part of the Sepik River is a genuine expression that reflects concepts of ethnicity and identity. Silverman focused on the Stanford University New Guinea Sculpture Garden, which was created to provide a new “public art space” for artists from the Sepik River communities of Papua New Guinea (PNG). Artistic categorization and contact zones are discussed at length in this article. Contact zones are defined as transnational zones and “the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historical disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect (pg.272).” These zones encourage hybridity between different art categories that might not have coexisted before. The sculpture garden at Stanford was seen by its director, Jim Mason, as “an opportunity to experiment with and reinterpret New Guinea aesthetic perspectives within the new context of a Western public art space (pg.278).” Although the art made in the garden by the Melanesian artists were to be enjoyed by foreigners, (much like tourist art is), the garden emphasized artistic individuality. The art was supposed to be viewed as art, rather than exotic crests and emblems.
It became apparent that even though some individuals aspire to blur artistic categories, and bring a more positive light onto the men and women that carve and paint for the enjoyment of visitors to their country, the majority would refuse to let that happen. In particular, Westerners will hold on tight to concrete distinctions between touristy, seemingly cheap art and high art.

Doing anthropology in sound by Steve Feld and Donald Brenneis

In this conversation with Feld and Brenneis, Feld’s work amongst the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and his study of culture through acoustics, or the connection between sound and place, comes to light. Feld says, “…An ethnography should include what it is that people hear every day.” In addition to speaking in detail about his teachers throughout his undergraduate and graduate years, Feld spoke about the different CD’s he put together from his work in Papua New Guinea and also in Greek Macedonia. A common observation in both societies was the “layering” of sounds. In PNG, Feld recorded a structured kind of whooping in between speech and song that people do when they’re cutting trees. Feld states that, “Simultaneously and in sequence you get the layering of speaking voices, the birds and ambience, the overlapping of axes, trees falling, and the whooping, whistling, yodeling, and singing different snatches of song—12 minutes of life-up-over sounding, the local term for all the ways sounds alternate, interlock, and overlap.” (p.236) A similar layering of sounds was observed in Greece, but with different types of bells. Church bells, along with bells on sheep, along with funeral bells could be heard simultaneously.
Not only was the Kaluli peoples’ interaction with the rainforest important in their culture, but also their interaction with each other was very strong. Feld gives one example of singer and mother, Ulahi, who changes the lyrics of her songs based on who is listening to them.
Feld’s work on music and human rights intrigued me immensely, because my main interest lies in human rights. His main passion, “recordings related to human rights, related to the way the indigenous, refugee, diasporic, and exile world of music has changed,” seems genius to me. His focus on oud player, Munir Bashir, and the story of how his talents were practically thrown away once he came to the United States touched me. I was also amazed to see how Feld focused his studies of musicians so much on emotion.

Ideas of Culture and the Challenge of Music by John Chernoff

This article provided a very comprehensive overview of how past anthropological studies have dealt with music (musicians, music-making, etc) in different cultures. First, Chernoff observes that in Western civilization, “culture” occupies its own territory within society instead of permeating the whole. “Culture is seen as a refinement of human experience…Culture is often associated and appropriated by people of means and power, those seemingly least affected by life’s bodily struggles...” (pg.222)
Because music is the least materialistic of the arts, it is harder for people to grasp the meaning of it. Chernoff makes an important point that music is rarely studied as “music”, but as an expression of culture. Anthropologists, in a sense, use a culture’s music in order to find out about other aspects of their lives. “An effort to ground music in a cultural context does not merely reflect a social scientific inclination to the abandonment of musicological analysis, nor does it merely reflect the belief that issues of musical meaning should be addressed with regard to the references and associations of indigenous people.” (pg.227)
Chernoff also briefly cites the Dagbamba of Northern Ghana, whose musical institutions offer a key to understanding the depth of their cultural life. The Dagbamba display their familial ancestry (back to around 600 years) through performance, drumming, and singing. The society embodies their personal relationship to history by dancing in musical contexts.
It is evident that music is not given the right sort of attention that it deserves. The emotions and sensitivities that are evoked from music are not looked upon effects of the music, but as clues to other parts of the particular culture. I do not think that music from another culture should be labeled as non-Western because it automatically creates a scale to which different music is compared.

Commodities of Authenticity: When Native People Consume Their Own "Tourist Art" by Alexis Bunten

Bunten talks about the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska and, in particular, the role of a blanket named Yaakoosqé X’oow, or Blanket of Knowledge. This blanket was originally made for tourist markets to raise money for their heritage language programming. Bunten argues that “commercial Native art objects, often deemed as ‘inauthentic’ or regarded by collectors, curators, and academics simply as a by-product of cultural commodification, can become a tangible part of the contemporary Native cultural experience (pg.319).” Among the Southeast Alaskan natives, the circulation of objects through gift exchange, and the use of traditional objects in ceremonial contexts is common. By circulating commercial art objects, these objects can become part of the local socio-cultural system bounded by Native ideas that concern the function of their own art. Although commercial art has been integrated into Native communities, noncommercial objects are still produced for Native use.
The Yaakoosqé X’oow blanket is made for both Native and nonnative buyers. Because no one clan owns the main design on the blanket, a large raven and an eagle, the entire Tlingit social system can give, buy, and use it. Although this blanket was made for tourist buyers, it has become socially meaningful to Native consumers. In order to get this way, it had to undergo a process of symbolic transformation from a commodity of exchange to an owned object for exchange and/or display amongst Natives.
This process of “decommodification” was very foreign to me. Reading this article once again, (first time was in Silverman’s High Art as Tourist Art, Tourist Art as High Art), proved to me the fluidity of art categories.

The Disputed Value of Contemporary Papua New Guinea Artists and Their Work by Pamela Sheffield Rosi

The work of Urban artists in Papua New Guinea (PNG) have received little attention regarding their work, which has been called a "decoration without meaning or social function," in contrast to the traditional village arts of PNG. These ignored artists have found themselves "being professionally adrift, their artwork devalued or unnoticed."
This article analyzes the factors that have contributed to PNG's modern art system, pinpoints the hardships and conflicts that urban artists have had to face socially and economically, and also focuses on the challenges that these artists have had to face in the art market. The institutionalization of art in PNG was started by Georgina Beier and Tom Craig, two art teachers. Although universities started their own art departments, funding and support was not always available.
Rosi included great detail in this article about the completely different system of values and obligations in PNG in order to live as or become an artist. "Managing the wantok system" is very important to the artists, along with having a modern career. They send remittances to fulfill their kinship obligations, and host village relatives or unemployed kin. When the artist's own future is uncertain, much like that of artist Larry Santana, not only is it hard for him to help sustain himself and his immediate family, but it becomes hard to uphold his obligations to the wantok system.
The role and fate of females in PNG seemed extremely dreary. High rates of pregnancy cause many female art students to drop out of school, and physical and verbal violence is a huge problem. After reading this article, it seemed as if the problems that exist in PNG exist everywhere, but here are brought out in the open, and exacerbated because of the small population and close research and examination.
Art in rural India has seen some similar changes. The Shantal tribesmen and women lead similar struggling lives because their entire livelihood depends solely on their artwork, which many places label as outdated or inferior.

Tourism, Aesthetics, and Global Flows along the Swahili Coast by Sidney Kasfir

In this article, Kasfir explores the Swahili coast as a tourist destination in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He brings together the mercantilist society of the Swahili coast and the recent splurge of modernity that the area has been experiencing. Kasfir focuses his article on the Swahili furniture-making workshops in Lamu, (an island near the border of Somalia), and on the group of Maasai and Samburu warriors that encamp seasonally in Mtwapa, (a beach settlement along the north coast of Mombasa), and sell spears and beadwork to tourists.
A Maasai and Samburu bachelor warrior settlement slowly developed near the Kenya Marineland business and the resort hotels. These warriors not only sold spears and artifacts, but also provide Western tourists with a “real” representation of Swahili life. “Tourist perceptions of the warrior with his decorations and weapons as both image and artifact blur the boundaries of what is conventionally considered ‘performance’ and ‘material culture’.” Although the Maasai and Samburu warriors sell their artifacts to tourists, (sometimes engaging in affairs with the women), they remain almost totally unassimilated, and interact only when they have to.
The second industry Kasfir talks about is the furniture-making industry of Lamu Town. The carved furniture, doorposts, and lintels are the most important local forms of material culture, and tourists are rarely the ones who purchase them. Most of the furniture clientele consists of families in town that purchase pieces for their daughters’ dowries. However, there are also some nontraditional uses of this furniture. More modern hotels and resorts commission traditional styled furniture for display in their public rooms to create a particular atmosphere. “In this case, there is a reversal of expected consumption patterns: the five-star hotel as an upholder of traditional forms…(Pg.122)”
After reading about these two forms of modernism and tourism in the Swahili coast, it became evident that the West is really making little impact on the traditional cultures of the coast. In the case of the Maasai and Samburu warriors, they are the ones in control of the Western tourists, and they are the ones teaching the tourists about their life. In the furniture-making industry of Lamu, it is the hotels located on the island that promote the production of traditional pieces of furniture.

Marvels of Everyday Vision... by Jeremy Coote

Coote states “There is, it is true, probably no society that has no art-form at all, but there are certainly societies with no visual art traditions.” This being said, he analyzes the cattle-keeping Nilotes (Nuer, Dinka, Atuot, and Mandari) of Southern Sudan and East Africa and their visions of aesthetics. “Cattle are not just a food source, but a central factor in all aspects of their social and cultural activities, being used to mediate social relationships through the institutions of bridewealth and bloodwealth, as well as to mediate man’s relationship with God through their roles as sacrificial victims (pg.137).” The perceptual qualities of cattle are very different from anything the Western world could think of. Three main characteristics of the cattle are given most importance: the color, the glossy hide, and the horn shape. These characteristics are not only seen as qualities of the cattle themselves, but are used as terminologies and analogies for people and things alike. The qualities of cattle are seen as art and aesthetics itself. One line sums up their view of cattle: “cattle are primarily a feast for the eyes, and only secondarily a feast for the stomach.”
Because the Nilotes’ entire livelihood depends on their cattle, children grow up knowing everything about them. Cattle characteristics play a role in every part of society, whether it is dance, clothing, color schemes, or architecture.
Although this article was to summarize the value of aesthetics among a particular group of people in Africa, it served a greater purpose. This article showed that aesthetics are not the same everywhere. One’s own sense of beauty comes from whatever he or she grew up with. Also, mere descriptive words come from wherever the person grew up and what he or she is comparing the thing to.

Art and Anthropology by Raymond Firth

Firth states the myriad of ways in which art has been expressed and contemplated in this essay. He says that although anthropologists give particular importance to the formal qualities of a piece of art (whether a sculpture or a piece of music), “even the simplest naming of an object—as mask, or anthropomorphic figure, or funeral song—indicates an awareness of a social, ritual, and economic matrix in which the object has been produced (pg.121).”
Modern architects or scientists claim that the construction of a building, and the discoveries using scientific theory are all really art. However, Firth attempts to make a clear distinction by stating that craft is technical skill that has been applied to useful ends, whereas “art” is predominantly non-utilitarian. In many societies, the artist and the craftsman are practically the same thing. The title of “craftsman” depends on his creation’s level of social use. There is a tendency to think of art as only consisting of man-made objects, and created by man. While comparing man-made “art” with natural aesthetic patterns and occurrences, Firth makes a point of defining “incipient art.” He states that although patterns such as forms in snow crystals, and the songs of birds occur naturally, they are converted (whether consciously or unconsciously) into art by human recognition.
Although he offers different examples of art and different societies’ interpretation of art such as the Tikopia and the cattle-keeping Ahir of Bihar, he also presents the reader with some pros of Western influence. “Industrial society has not only offered a new market for indigenous art work, it has also given new opportunities for artistic enterprise (pg.131).”
Firth questions the motivations of exotic art, and where the tensions in the pieces arise. Do the tensions arise from personal woes and wishes or from the political system as a whole? The entire essay forced me to think about so-called exotic art from different angles, as opposed to the well-known angles that are posed to us by the West. It was a great contextual introduction to the anthropology of the arts.

Franz Boas: Primitive Art, 1927

I enjoyed reading this piece very much. The style of writing was not filled with jargon, and I found myself immersed in what Boas had to say about the meaning of aesthitic art versus industrial activity, etc. I agree with Boas completely in that, "It is hardly possible to state objectively just where the line between artistic and pre-artistic forms should be drawn." Alois Riegl's idea that "the WILL to produce an artistic piece is the essence of artistic work" seems to speak some truth. However, that does not explain why some pieces are said to have "no taste" by critics, despite the artists' WILL to create it.
The point that artistic effect has a twofold source, (form, and the ideas associated with form), gave me a much clearer understanding of the actual meaning of "art". How nostagia, symbols, or a particular meaning plays into the aesthetic form of art gives "art" itself a deeper meaning besides merely the artists' expertise.
One thing I was somewhat unsure about was whether people like Richard Thurnwald, Emil Stephan, and Alfred C. Haddon were art critics or cultural anthropologists.

Art as a Cultural System by Clifford Geertz

Although Geertz said, “Art is notoriously hard to talk about,” I found this essay topic hard to read about. Some parts of the article seemed very wordy to me at first. However, the points made became clearer to me after the second read. A line that stood out to me was, “…only in the modern age and in the West that some people have managed to convince themselves that technical talk about art, however developed, is sufficient to a complete understanding of it.” I agree that many art critics and so-called connoisseurs of art have convinced themselves that using big words to describe an artifact or a painting shows that they have knowledge about it.
Quattrocento painting from Renaissance Italy and Qur’anic poetry were discussed at length in this article. Italian paintings were meant to deepen human awareness of the spiritual dimensions of existence, and reflect the truths of Christianity. Geertz quotes a Dominican preacher: “For it is one thing to adore a painting, but it is quite another to learn from a painted narrative what to adore.”
From this article, I learned a great deal about Islam and the Quran. The fact that the Quran contains exact words of God, rather than reports by prophets of what God said, was interesting. This makes the reading of the Quran solely an act of worship, rather than for artistic beauty or poetry. This point is made clearer by a quote in the article, “…one such poet said, trying hard, to explain his art, ‘The I forgot the verses and remembered the words.’”