Ethnomusicology
by Meredith Laing
Many people jet off to exotic destinations when they need a change of pace and a break from everyday life. But for ethnomusicologists like Christopher Blasdel and Carol Babiracki, trips to foreign locales are just part of the job—and the most important part, at that.
Ethnomusicologists are like musicians and anthropologists combined; they study music in both cultural and social contexts. Often, they focus their work on a particular region or group of people, and the best way to do that is to immerse themselves in the culture.
"Intellectual research is all well and good, but it’s actually making music with people where I find that I learn the most. Those are the most valuable moments,” says Babiracki, 57, who is an expert on the music and dance of India. Babiracki travels to India about once a year to do hands-on research, or “fieldwork.” Back in the US, she’s a professor of world music at Syracuse University.
Blasdel, also 57, has actually become a permanent resident of Japan, where he studies and teaches traditional Japanese music. “Music in Japan is very much connected with social climate, social structure, and history,” he explains. “In order to play the music well, I think you have to learn the language and the background.”
Born in the USA
Babiracki and Blasdel both grew up playing musical instruments, but of course, neither could imagine where their hobby would eventually take them.
Babiracki started piano lessons at age eight, but soon fell in love with the flute. “I always felt that flute was more my instrument. I had my heart set on being a flute performer,” she remembers.
With that aspiration, Babiracki started degrees in music performance and music theory. By the middle of her college career, though, a congenital defect on her right lung threatened her future as a musician. Her lung collapsed a total of five times, and she came to the realization that she could no longer continue as a flutist.
Babiracki did, however, decide to finish her degree in music theory. Then, just as graduation was approaching, she spotted something that would change her life. “I was walking down the hall of the music department and I saw a little poster that said, ‘Would you like to do independent study in South India?’ And I said, you know I would!” she laughs.
Also a flutist, Blasdel played in his high school marching band in his Texas hometown and continued with the instrument in college. When he learned that his small school happened to have an excellent study abroad program in Japan, he decided to take advantage. “It was a matter of good luck, circumstance, and fate,” Blasdel says.
A Trip Of A Lifetime
Once she arrived in India, Babiracki, too, had a feeling that she had met her fate. “There was something about the music of India that filled a gap for me that had been left by giving up flute,” she explains. “Concerts in India are very intimate, with the audience sitting on the floor with the musicians. And because it’s such a heavily improvised music, the audience response is very important. I guess I felt like I had a part in the music making, which filled a need for me at that time.”
Babiracki decided to focus her independent study on South Indian classical flutists. She interviewed and took lessons from different native players, got insight from touring musicians, and went to local performances. “That really gave me a taste of ethnomusicology: doing it rather than reading about it,” says Babiracki. "I was going out and studying through making music, talking to people, and being a part of their performances.” She enjoyed it so much, in fact, that she returned to the US to pursue a master’s degree in ethnomusicology.
In Japan, Blasdel channeled his flute background in a different direction when he became interested in the shakuhachi, a vertical bamboo flute. “I liked that the shakuhachi had this spiritual and cultural connection in Japan,” Blasdel recalls. And it certainly didn’t hurt that he was able to study with one of the master performers and teachers of the instrument, Goro Yamaguchi. “It would be like going to New York to study piano and someone saying, well Arthur Rubinstein lives down the street, why don’t you go and study with him?” he says.
View from the Top
"At a point I realized, if I had the good fortune to meet these great teachers and performers, there must be a reason for it,” Blasdel remembers. “And now that most of those people have passed away, I feel like it’s up to me to continue that tradition.”
With a master’s degree in ethnomusicology, and as the first of only two non-Japanese students to be accredited as a master of the shakuhachi by Yamaguchi himself, Blasdel is more than qualified to do that. His famous teacher even honored him with a professional name, Yohmei, which loosely means "alliance from afar.”
Blasdel has written two books on the shakuhachi, published in both English and Japanese. He also performs frequently and teaches college courses on Japanese music. Like most musicologists, this puts him in the ironic position of being a "foreigner” who often understands more about the music culture than the natives themselves.
"The Japanese are still very much focused on Western music,” Blasdel points out. “Some of the great masters of Japan’s music are not even recognized by the Japanese public.”
Babiracki has had similar experiences in India. “I’m sometimes asked to act as a source of village information,” she says. “I’m asked to teach things about the music; I’m sometimes asked to choreograph dances. It’s an odd position to be in when I’m teaching indigenous students.”
But the distinction between insiders and outsiders of the culture isn’t one that either side seems to dwell on. Blasdel explains, “I’ve always felt that being an outsider actually works to my advantage because I can have a very objective view of the society and the music. It’s like standing on a hill and looking at what’s going on from a distance.”
"The idea of learning from someone who knows is more important than their ethnic identity. That came as a real surprise to me,” adds Babiracki. “Music can really transcend language and flow across borders and boundaries of all kinds.”
Valuable Souvenirs
Blasdel has found that Japanese music has transcended cultural and national borders to an extent that he never would have expected. For example, in 1998 he served as co-organizer of the World Shakuhachi Festival in Boulder, Colorado: the first to be held outside of Japan. He was an invited guest for a similar festival in New York in 2004, and more recently, was co-organizer of a large-scale shakuhachi festival held in Sydney, Australia, in 2008.
In addition, Blasdel has taught and performed at a shakuhachi summer school in Prague for the past four years. “To think that a Japanese instrument is being taken up by the city of Prague as part of their own musical venue is pretty amazing,” he exclaims.
For Babiracki’s most recent trip to India last June, she focused on collecting and studying instruments to take back to the US. Her findings will be displayed at a musical instrument museum to open in Arizona.
During her trip, she also had time to enjoy a regional “mela,” which is like India’s version of a state fair. Along with some other musicians, she was invited—spur of the moment—to get up on stage and perform, and it was an experience that she will not soon forget.
"Now, this was the time when the monsoon should have been coming, but it was late, and crops were dying,” Babiracki begins her story. “And as we were dancing around on stage, we saw this black cloud coming, and this wave of joy went through the crowd and everyone on stage. The wind was whipping us around, the rain finally came and just drenched us, and we just kept dancing and playing in this moment of transcendent joy,” she remembers. “Those are the kind of moments, the high points, that make me love what I do.”
