warbling elephant music — chris miller

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Scholarship

My work as a scholar is deeply informed and motivated by my involvement in music as a composer, improviser, and performer of experimental music and traditional Javanese gamelan.

A primary concern of mine is the place of creativity and experimentalism in contemporary musical ecologies. My PhD dissertation, which I am currently completing, explores this issue through the case of Indonesian musik kontemporer. It also explores the specific challenges of making modern art in a postcolonial context.

My choice of Indonesian musik kontemporer as a dissertation topic stems from having heard a touring group of traditionally-based Indonesian composers in 1991, when I was an undergraduate student in composition. From this encounter I also developed a general interest in the intersection between experimental and traditional musics, especially cases involving East Asian traditional musics. (In connection with this interest, I produced two editions of Further East Further West, a commissioning and concert project which brought together composers and performers of new music and traditional Asian performance practices based in Vancouver.) I have written on the work of Korean-American composer/performer/improviser Jin Hi Kim, on Japanese musicians Toru Takemitsu, Yuji Takahashi, Kazue Sawai, and Michihiro Sato, and a collaboration by Chinese musicians Liu Sola and Wu Man. In these papers I explore both the issue of identity—a central concern of ethnomusicology—and more distinctively the importance of the embodied relationship to tradition in new music for traditional performers.

• Paper on the embodied relationship to tradition in two collaborations
• Paper on Jin Hi Kim
• Paper on Japanese intersections between the traditional and experimental

I have also written a reflection on composing for gamelan in North America.

In a more musicological vein, my MA thesis is a theoretical exploration of rhythm and form in traditional Javanese gamelan music, conducted in parallel to my MA thesis project.

| PhD Dissertation | Other Writings and Presentations |

 
PhD Dissertation:
 
"Nativist Cosmopolitanism and Radical Traditionalism: Making Modern Music in Indonesia"

Projected completion date: May 2008

Abstract:

Indonesian contemporary art music, or musik kontemporer, encompasses a broad range of creative activity by both Western-oriented and traditionally-based musicians. It is a relatively new development, with a critical mass of composers and continuous activity emerging only in the late 1970s. Like contemporary art music in most places where it is found, musik kontemporer has a certain amount of prestige and elite support while remaining marginal and esoteric. My dissertation examines how it is that musik kontemporer exists in Indonesia, from historical, synchronic, and ontological perspectives: how it came to exist; what institutions and conditions make its existence possible and how it relates to the culture at large; and in what sense it exists as a distinct category within the broader contemporary Indonesian musicscape. Musik kontemporer is thus approached not simply as a musical style, but as a cultural phenomenon. Drawing upon participant observation as a composer/performer, interviews, primary sources, and previous scholarship in English and Indonesian, my study contributes to the understanding of artistic experimentalism in general, while at the same time investigating the specific challenges of making modern art in a postcolonial context.

The scope of my study encompasses three of the most important and seminal scenes of musik kontemporer, based in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta and the old Central Javanese court cities of Surakarta and Yogyakarta. The first major section is historical. It examines why musik kontemporer emerged in the 1970s and not earlier, and identifies the conditions which led musik kontemporer to gain its remarkably diverse profile. The question of Western influence is problematized through the ethnographic and biographic case study of a group of composers associated with the traditional performing arts academy in Surakarta. Their boldly experimentalist work has everything to do with the concept of art as a specialized realm of aesthetic experience—a concept of Western origin—but very little to do with the international spread of a musical modernism rooted in the European classical tradition.

The second section focuses on those whose work and approach can be understood in terms of the spread of Western musical influence. The shift in attitude of two key figures from the older generation towards a more nativist position is traced through a close examination of their writing for the Indonesian press. Their response to a situation arguably unique among those countries with significant traditions of contemporary art music—namely, where the balance of presence and prestige favors indigenous traditions over European classical music—influenced and was echoed by the widespread tendency among Western-oriented composers to engage with traditional music through collaboration with traditional musicians. A survey of such activity is complemented by profiles of the attitudes and practice of two younger Western-oriented composers. The final section examines the dynamic between art and pop. The call to counter the rise and spread of popular culture, whether Western or indigenous, is identified as a key thread in the discourse of those figures who have directed the institutions that support musik kontemporer. A number of case studies illustrate the more varied response in practice, including Western-oriented composers who have been influenced by or turned to alternative rock and pop, festival organizers who present musik kontemporer in a broader context, and composers who collaborate with village and amateur communities and thus take a more genuinely populist, non-commercial approach. The emerging category of musik etnik (ethnic music) encompasses a spectrum of artists, some based in the music industry, others among the most experimentalist of musik kontemporer composers, and still others in between, further complicating the art/pop dynamic.

| PhD Dissertation | Other Writings and Presentations |

Other Writings and Presentations

In the Face of Industri: Alternative Populisms in Indonesian Musik Kontemporer

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Columbus, Ohio, October 25.

Abstract:

Indonesian musik kontemporer (contemporary art music) has been contradistinguished from pop since its beginnings in the 1970s. The senior figures who directed the institutions through which musik kontemporer developed spoke, in terms reminiscent of Adorno, of the need to counter the flood of commercialized popular culture, whether foreign or indigenous. However, both the work and the discourse of the composers who emerged from these institutions increasingly demonstrate a more complex response. Djaduk Ferianto engages with “industri,” both as a source of subsidy for more “idealis” work and as a model to learn from. For others, industri remains anathema, yet many of them have also turned in more populist directions. Yasudah practices “mixophony,” a combination of “explorophony” and “beatophony.” Wayan Sadra jams with an eclectic group of young musicians, while continuing rebellious gestures such as dragging gongs on the floor. Sutanto has all but abandoned urban concertizing in favor of developing folk arts with Javanese villagers. Iwan Hasan has sought refuge in progressive rock from the money-oriented classical and jazz scenes in Jakarta. Concern about the dominance of commercialism has thus become key to Western-oriented and traditionally-based Indonesian composers alike, cutting across and even eclipsing previously preoccupying dichotomies of modern/traditional and foreign/indigenous. But rather than eschew popularity, they seek alternative populisms, along with alternative measures of artistic legitimacy as that of Western classical and Javanese court traditions wane. The ties of artistic value to genre have been loosened, making musik kontemporer more resilient, if harder to define.

Full text of paper (PDF, 181 KB)
Text, images, and audio-visual examples from accompanying slide presentations
 

Indonesian Musik Kontemporer and the Question of "Western Influence"

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Honolulu, Hawaii, 19 November 2006.

Previously presented at the annual meeting of the Northeast Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, 8 April, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, where it was Awarded the James T. Koetting Prize for "an outstanding paper by a graduate student."

Abstract:

Western influence is commonly regarded as a major factor in the existence of contemporary art music in Asia. Yet in the case of musik kontemporer by traditionally-based Indonesian composers, several observers have commented on their lack of familiarity with Western new music. Conversely, acknowledging a long colonial history and forces of modernization, scholars such as Becker, Sutton, and Sumarsam have drawn attention to conceptual and technological forms of Western influence on Indonesian music. These discrepancies follow in part from disciplinary understandings of influence. The humanities focus on individual artists, texts, and matters of style, while the social sciences give greater attention to social and cultural forces and phenomena. I argue, with reference to musik kontemporer, that it is crucial to be specific about the kind and extent of influence, the path that influence travels, and most importantly the degree of what I term "ethnological valence." For example, sound amplification is arguably less Westernizing and more ethnologically neutral than the symphony orchestra, though both are Western inventions. More complex in this respect and most pertinent to musik kontemporer are the concepts and attitudes associated with experimentalism. Having traveled to traditionally-based and Western-oriented scenes by distinct and parallel paths, experimentalism is variously abstracted or associated with Western models and practices. Specificity and conceptual clarity are thus crucial to the evaluation of the role of Western influences on modern arts in postcolonial contexts, in order to avoid reinforcing the notion of the all-powerful West without resorting to simplistic disavowal.

Text (PDF, 170 KB)
Video Clips from Daily, by I Wayan Sadra (MPG, 11.5 MB)
 

Orchids (and Other Difficult Flowers) Revisited: A Reflection on Composing for Gamelan in North America

the world of music 47/3: 81-112.

Abstract:

The creative engagement of North American composers with Indonesian music has produced a great diversity of work. Focusing primarily on new music for Javanese gamelan, and drawing largely on my own experience as a composer with a significant involvement in the performance of traditional music, this article examines the variety of approaches taken by composers and ensembles and the different relationships to tradition they imply or embody. Arguing that creative activity cannot be understood apart from the broader presence of Indonesian music, I attempt a realistic assessment of gamelan's existence in North America on both a philosophical and practical level. I relate the basis of my own interest in the music, and recount some of the history of the group in which I started, a group which managed to avoid the schism which generally persists between composition and traditional performance. In examining different compositional approaches, I point to the interconnectedness of instruments and musical ideas, the problems with simple imitation, and the importance of the situations in which work is created, determined largely by the musicians involved.

"Radical Traditionalism": Reconfigured Connections between the Experimental and the Traditional in East Asian Music

Paper presented at the Northeast Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, 17 April, Wesleyan University.

Abstract:

This paper examines work resulting from two collaborations between composer/performers involved in experimental music and performers of traditional Asian musics. Singer and composer (and playwright, actress and novelist) Liu Sola has produced two CD recordings with pipa player Wu Man, featuring several pieces consisting mostly or entirely of material drawn from traditional pieces. Composer and pianist Yuji Takahashi (who in the 1970s was one of the leading exponents of the postwar avant-garde) turned his attention in the 1980s to composing for traditional Japanese instruments. While this work fits squarely within the realm of the avant-garde, it goes beyond a juxtaposition or fusion of Asian traditional and Western classical or avant-garde sensibilities, or the transference of a modernist musical language onto Asian instrumental resources. Instead, both projects are examples of what might be called "radical traditionalism." Sola draws upon Wu Man's embodied relationship to traditional repertoire in a process that is akin to sampling, but that goes far beyond mere quotation. Takahashi deeply engages with the physicality of instrumental techniques by studying the instruments he writes for, and then applies this experience to decidedly experimental works for specific performers.

In addition to a discussion of these particular examples, the paper will also pose questions about the potential significance of such work. Though too idiosyncratic and particular to the individual artists involved to form the basis of a new genre or style, the approaches taken do, I suggest, stand as models for a more interactive relationship between the experimental and the traditional.

Text (PDF, 140 KB)
Handout (PDF, 72 KB)

Audio examples:
excerpt of Takahashi, Kagehime No Michiyuki (MP3, 1.6 MB)
excerpts from "Dengyue Jiaohui" and "Festivals": Motif A (MP3, 636 KB); Motif F (MP3, 568 KB); Motif F1 (MP3, 604 KB); Motif G (MP3, 416 KB)
 

The Sound of Stretched Time

Paper presented at the New England Gamelan Weekend, 20 April, Wesleyan University. Drawn from MA thesis.

Abstract:

Discussions of formal and rhythmic aspects of Javanese gamelan music have, for the most part, focused on either technical explanations or symbolic, iconic or epistemological significance. This paper investigates rhythm and form from an experiential perspective. In particular, it is concerned with identifying how Javanese gamelan music gives rise to a sense of stretched time. Gendhing Monggang—a piece which figures prominently in key writings by Judith and Alton Becker, and Stanley Hoffman—is discussed in considerably greater detail, and analyzed in terms of psychological principles of time perception. Hypotheses drawn are related generally to the standard repertoire of Javanese gamelan.

"as time is stretched...": Theoretical and Compositional Investigations of Rhythm and Form in Javanese Gamelan Music

MA Thesis, Wesleyan University.

Abstract:

Part one is a theoretical (in the sense of technical music analysis) investigation of Rhythm and Form in Javanese Gamelan Music. Chapter one presents the fundamentals of formal structures and the formal principle irama, a system of density relationships between different levels of subdivision as well as a technique by which musical material is expanded or compressed. Chapter two is concerned with Javanese terminology for rhythm and form. Chapter three presents detailed analyses of three pieces. Part two consists of a single chapter documenting and reflecting on a creative project, a performance/installation for Javanese gamelan instruments, carried out in parallel to the theoretical investigation of part one.

Text (PDF File, 1.71 MB)
Oversize Figures (PDF File, 1.96 MB)
Appendix 1: Performance Materials (PDF File, 0.99 MB)
 

Asian Women in Music Today.

International Alliance for Women in Music Journal, 6/12, 38-41. Summary of conference held at the Asia Society, New York, October 22-23, 1999.

Improvising Identity, Composing Context: The music of Jin Hi Kim

Unpublished paper.

New Music, Old Instruments: Tradition and the Avant-Garde in Japanese Music

Unpublished paper on musicians Toru Takemitsu, Yuji Takahashi, Kazue Sawai, and Michihiro Sato.

Bartlett, Martin. "Xenomelophilia."

Front, September/October. Transcription of a lecture given at the Western Front.

HP Radio Show.

Profile of a radio show produced by the Western Front, an artist-run center in Vancouver, broadcast on CFRO Cooperative Radio, Vancouver, February 17. 1991

New Music Indonesia.

Noise, October 19. Response to a concert review.