In Search of Interacting Musicking Body: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Keywords

Musicking, body, communication

Objectives

Anthropological studies of music have been carried out in the last 50 years. However, many of the previous studies tend to be divided into those biased in favor of “musicology,” which seeks the meaning of music from sound (text), and those biased in favor of “anthropology,” which seeks the significance of music from the cultural background (context) of sound. Moreover, the difficulty of academic dialogues between the two has been pointed out.
In recent years, researchers who aim to bridge the gap between anthropology and musicology have advocated that humans’ musical activities be understood as “musicking.” The gerund form of music, i.e., musicking, covers not only singing, playing musical instruments or dancing, but also activities such as hand clapping, listening and so on. This key concept has been proposed to fundamentally review “music,” i.e., the modern and abstract concept, by paying attention to embodiment in musical practice.
This study aims to establish a methodology that describes interacting bodies in the middle of a performance as an essential part of a musical event, by shifting the focus of description and analysis from “music” to “musicking.”

Research Results

This inter-university research project lasted three and a half years and held a total of 14 workshops. Project members presented reports on a diverse range of regions—East Asia (Japan, China, and South Korea), Southeast Asia (Indonesia and Cambodia), South Asia (India), Africa (Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Cameroon), North America (USA), and South America (Argentina)—and a wide variety of themes were discussed, including the body, orality, healing, politics and movements, dance, film, possession, and recitals. The coordinator’s original plan for the project was to examine what new horizons could be opened up if the focus of the event generally referred to as “musical performance” was shifted from the word “music” to “musicking,” i.e., the interaction between sound and movement (in other words, “interaction between bodies”), produced during the event. However, when this idea was proposed at one of the workshops, the responses by the other project members could not be fit into a simple, neat framework. We reaffirmed that there was a diverse range of interpretations of the concept of “musicking” depending on the field of research and the object of research. On the other hand, concepts that have the potential to bring together a wide range of arguments also emerged from discussions in the workshops. The key, as repeatedly remarked by Akira Okazaki (ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies), was “agency of space” and “participation.” The idea that the “agents” involved when musicking is being carried out are the individuals who are playing instruments, singing, dancing, and watching said performance is no more than a modern prejudice. Rather, the power of music may lie hidden within situations where the individual is drawn into specific phrases and occasions of musicking. At the very least, it is clearly an area of profound interest to the anthropology of music, in which previous research that has studied “music” has not been able to approach. We aim to describe this dynamism effectively in the collection of papers on the research results.