Music has been often described as the most noise conveying the least information. Eduard Hanslick, summarizing the tenets of formalist criticism, has said that “music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks […] nothing but sound.” As I listen to the voice of Betsy Smith on the radio, I feel very much inclined to disagree. Music plays a critical role in human exchanges and in making us human. At the same time, I would also like to reflect on some of the contradictions that emerge in a complex world where post-national governance structures and the most virulent nationalism co-exist. How can a national musical expression help individuals and communities construct an imagined self in the 21st century? What are the boundaries imposed and the promises delivered by the music of national artists in nations that are not states? What are its dangers?
If we understand music as a multilayered text that can be read and interpreted outside of its subjective, formal and sonic qualities, then we can’t fail to realize the power of music in shaping the symbolic dimension that permeates all facets of life, from the imaginative-emotional to the politico-social.
The work of several contemporary ethnomusicologists (including Joseph Lam and Martin Stokes) rests on the assumption that music is one of the battlegrounds in which identity is shaped. More than political projects, historical conditionings, and religious and ethnic associations, music plays a privileged part in the imagining of a “global self” because of its immediacy and because it contains, reifies and is informed by all of the above. By highlighting its discursive nature, in its practice and its products we learn that music is not an innocent and disembedded object meant solely for aesthetic pleasure, but that, in fact, it carries meaning and provides an aural venue for the intangible threads of identity to be woven. Music acts as an epistemological palimpsest of critical importance in a confused age where individuals and communities are searching for ways to re-imagine their souls, for a coherent articulation of their desires, subjectivities and yearnings that will infuse their political and historical projects, and their presence on this planet, with signification and meaning.
But homogeneity, or even coherence, is not to be expected. Go to the “World Music” shelves of a record store and you will find wonderfully hybridized compositions where the rhythms of a beatboxer mix with the pulsations of taiko and tabla, or a flamenco guitar sings with and Indonesian gamelan orchestra in the background. This trend of music making by borrowing and incorporating foreign elements and practices is characteristic of the larger process accelerated with the advent of globalization in the phase of late capitalism. We enter a historical phase where there is nothing, if there ever was, nationally or culturally authentic. Cultural practices are but an alloy of influences and currents from diverse sites.
Now, to the political implications of all this. If music is a battleground in which the self is built and negotiated, then it provides a rich, subversive and accessible platform for individuals to express their agency, and to compete and bargain vis-à-vis their international Other. For this reason I’m interested in looking at the role of music in the formation of nationalist identities. Borrowing Anthony Smith’s definition of the term, I’m referring to nationalism as “the doctrine that makes the nation the object of every political endeavor and national identity the measure of every human value.”
In the European context, the nationalist forces that punctuate domestic politics in many countries (including Spain and the UK) are crucial to understand the contradictions of a historical moment where the nation state is under serious attack and when internal national boundaries are being abolished. However, as we learn from a quick glance at the newspaper, borders and nations still matter. Last September, the Spanish press reported that more than four hundred people attending a nationalist demonstration in Catalonia burnt images of the Spanish king while singing Els Segadors, the Catalan anthem.
As Anthony Smith suggests,
“in many ways national symbols, customs and ceremonies are the most potent and durable aspects of nationalism. They embody its basic concepts, making them visible for every member, communicating the tenets of an abstract ideology in palpable, concrete terms that evoke instant emotional responses from all strata of community.”
It is in this sphere of the emotive-political that I seek to understand how music articulates a nationalist ideology by building an imagined contemporary nationalist self.
The sonic textures of the gaita
In order to explore this, I have chosen a musical soundscape that is very dear and familiar to me: Galician music, the music produced in the northwestern autonomous region of Spain.
Galicia has a distinct character and culture, different from the rest of regions that comprise Spain. Gallego, a romance language closely related to Portuguese, is the native language. Since 1978 it enjoys co-official status in Galicia together with castellano. From pre-Roman days, Galicia was occupied by Celtic tribes whereas the rest of people in the Peninsula were of Iberian origin. This Celtic past has survived trough the ages in its mythological and poetic form and, for some, it grants claims of a distinct ethnic identity. Whereas this ethnic claim is arguable, its culture presents many unique features. Galician music, for instance, stands out from the rest of music in the Iberian Peninsula. Its flagship instrument is the gaita, a version of the bagpipe. The gaita has become “the” symbol of Galician national identity. The Romantic poets of the nineteenth century that articulated the nationalist tenets of the Rexurdimento movement spoke of the beauty of this instrument and its connection to the land. Its potent melody always accompanies official acts and informal events alike.
The symbolic importance of the gaita has an indisputable political dimension. Last year, a group of musicians had the creative but unfortunate idea of performing in an official event a version of the Galician anthem in Flamenco style. The Galician Nationalist Party presented a resolution in the Galician parliament to avoid this from happening again. As Dr. Lam points out, “whenever the self is factually or psychologically threatened, the efforts to preserve and to adjust the treasured self promptly emerge.” Indeed, members of the nationalist party argued that it was their duty “to defend our culture, our music and our symbols.” (El Mundo, December 21, 2006).
Since Franco’s death in 1975, nationalism has become a major political force in Galicia and in other Spanish regions. The Galician Nationalist Block (BNG in Spanish) is the main nationalist political party in Galicia. Based on claims of the existence of a distinct national identity different from the rest of the country, the BNG strives for self-determination and eventual independence. Today, the BNG holds a modest number of seats in the Galician parliament but it is now governing in the region thanks to an alliance with the Socialist Party.
It is necessary to mention that several competing projects of Galician selfhood co-exist today in the region. For instance, a large number of Gallegos, although they have been born and live in Galicia, conceive their self as a uniquely Spanish one, believe in the territorial and political unity of the Spanish nation, and rarely use Gallego or limit it to the private sphere. Another equally important self is that of individuals who comfortably inhabit a dual or benevolently schizophrenic self, the result of a combination of both a Galician and Spanish identities that are not mutually exclusive. Finally, there is the nationalist self, which discourages a dual Galician/Spanish identity and favors an exclusively Galician one. This Galician self, however, is often imagined in a global context.
By analyzing the sonic texture of the gaita in the work of two Galician pipers, I endeavor to illustrate how music helps to simultaneously articulate and subvert a nationalist identity, while offering a creative way of imagining a Galician global self.
Electronic authenticity and musical cosmopolitanism
Mercedes Peón is in many ways the symbol of the renaissance of Galician folk music. A BBC world music award nominee, she has spent ten years visiting Galician villages, collecting and recording the oldest of Galician musical expressions from the rapidly disappearing oral tradition of the Galician people. Her ethnographic fieldwork has yielded more than two thousand hours of musical material which has crystallized in three CDs. In her work, the rough and primal vocal rhythms of the Galician heartlands can often be heard in conjunction with a hoe, whose blade she beats with a piece of cut flint to provide percussion. The gaita plays a central part in her music, but the sonic texture of this instrument is very different from its traditional sound. Peón places the gaita in the crossroads where tradition and modernity meet.
A sinuous, primeval sonic quality confers Peón’s work with a surprising, new-age-cum-medievalist flavor. I believe Peón has undertaken the romanticist project of “reconstructing the sounds of the nation in all its concrete specificity and with ‘archaeological’ verisimilitude.” (Smith). She goes back to the past and the oral tradition which are the genuine sources of the Volksgeist. Peón thus rescues the “authentic” national character of the land. However, as she herself has stated, her music is not “traditional [but] an evolutionary expression of the people, from generation to generation.” The way she incorporates synthesizers, pre-recorded sounds from nature, and other digital technology to create special sonic effects attests to this. By creating such a soundscape, Peón suggests “the nation’s antiquity and continuity, its noble heritage and the drama of its ancient glory and regeneration” (Smith) now accomplished through electronic technology and international global markets. The global Galician self holds the hand of the past while walking confidently into the future.
Despite their connection to the land, the modern Galician people are also global nomads. Over the last 150 years, at least 2.5 million Galicians (roughly the population of Galicia nowadays) have migrated in massive numbers to Latin America, to the point that nowadays Spaniards in the American continent are referred to as Gallegos.
This global presence is best captured in the music of Cristina Pato. This twenty-seven year old piper belongs to the Erasmus generation, that increasingly larger group of European students who thanks to the educational policies of the European Union have become more aware of the cultural diversity beyond their national borders. As Pato has stated, her musical project consists in “mixing the gaita with other musics. [She wants] to drink and eat from other cultures.” This thirst for hybridity led her to collaborate with the Silk Road Ensemble in New York last year. More importantly, it can be appreciated in the eclecticism of her last two works, in which she combines traditional musical codes from Galicia with Latin music, jazz and blues.
Adjusting the gaita to the musical codes of other traditions alters its sonic texture in surprising and inspiring ways. In conjunction with electric guitars and a piano, the gaita transcends its melancholic, lyric, and martial tonalities. It becomes explosively sensual and enticing. It achieves a cosmopolitan dimension that projects the desires of the global Galician self.
This transcultural process of music-making, however, is not totally devoid of a nationalist agenda. Pato states that her goal is “to bring the gaita to the same level with other instruments […] because I am a woman of the world, but first of all I am gallega.”
The hybridity of Pato’s music is not new. As some of the Galician immigrants returned from Latin America in the 1930s, they brought with them Cuban rumbas, Argentinean tangos and Mexican rancheras that were adapted and incorporated to the gaita’s repertoire. Ironically, the proponents of Galician nationalism in the pre-Franco years despised these “sins of the art… this profanation of the Galician gaita.” Both in Pato’s work and that of her predecessors, we see how the foreign is not disciplined, but is emphasized and made salient, either to embrace it or to despise it.
Re-thinking nationalist identities through music
The two examples I have used reveal the inherent contradictions enmeshed in the formation of a contemporary nationalist identity. On the one hand, musicians project a global Galician self, confident in different cultural codes and embracing global technologies and markets. At the same time, they participate in a nationalist project that rejects the idea of a world community in its moral unity. Nationalism, as Smith argues, “offers a narrow, conflict-laden legitimation for political community, which inevitably pits culture-communities against each other.” I am perfectly aware of the need to actively preserve and cherish traditions and cultures (and I acknowledge the crucial role that nationalism has played in that respect). However, I cannot condone the radicalism and insularity that is often used to defend such postures and which emphasizes our human differences over our commonalities. I understand that individuals and communities need to have an identity core that centers them and allows them to meaningfully interact with each other. However, when the creation of such identities rejects democratic ideals of equality, fraternity and non-violence I despair. Similarly, I also understand the need for people to fight political and military oppression (I am an outspoken supporter of the rights of the Palestinian, Tibetan and Saharaui people), but in the current European context of rights, freedoms and material wealth, radical nationalism is reactionary. Taking it to the extreme of groups like the Basque ETA, is totalitarian.
If music allows us to re-imagine ourselves and our relationships with the rest of the world, why not transcend parochial attachments and truly embrace a global identity? After all, as Benedict Anderson has said, communities and nations are constructed through acts of the imagination. In order to encompass a more accurate reflection of the global Galician self, it is necessary to create a global identity that is not bound to national imperatives. Shelly, appropriately wrote that artists “are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Their duty, I believe, is to legislate ethically and responsibly.
sanzbritz@gmail.com
Labels: by Héctor Pascual Álvarez, Theory
