Counterpoint: A response to Bernard.(Jonathan Bernard)

IN THE COURSE of developing elegant and provocative ways for hearing and thinking about minimal music, Jonathan Bernard proposes certain criteria for music-analytical relevance and cultural authority that, while he did not intend to talk about such things, nevertheless inform and inflect his work in ways that give me pause. In my "Yes I Wrote It ...", I referred to these criteria and some other incidental comments as "hotspots" and "fires." Though I have no doubt that identity politics cause Bernard as much discomfort as they do me, these fires flicker near this very combustible stuff. They threaten the integrity of the analytical foundations Bernard constructs and, if ignored, could bear down on my own work and that of others concerned with the musical ramifications and manifestations produced by the complicated dance between what we are generally referring to in this exchange as "the West" and "the non-West."

In his thoughtful and spirited response to my article, Bernard says he doesn't see the fires. And though he acknowledges that, in light of our exchange, he perhaps should have omitted or tempered some of his original comments or made an intended allusion more explicit, he nevertheless feels that I have invented these fires by distorting and unfairly recontextualizing both what he said and what he meant to say. Rather than attempting a point by point reassessment of how I understand what each of us said in our respective articles, I will leave it to the reader to decide to what extent, if any, Bernard's feelings are justified. In his response, however, he outlines his positions on a number of the issues I felt he touched on in "Theory, Analysis ... ," and about which I voiced concern in "Yes I Wrote It...." Thus, whether or not the reader senses, as I do, that there are indeed fires (albeit unintended ones) in Bernard's article, they blaze brightly in his response to mine. I would like to comment briefly on so me of them.

"The question of what happens when a creative musician in one culture encounters the music of another culture is really a very complicated one; I didn't address it in 'Theory, Analysis...' and I don't propose to do so now," says Bernard early in his response. But I fail to see how his subsequent remarks don't address this question head on in ways that need to be discussed. While Bernard lauds attempts to focus music analytical efforts on identifying cultural crossing points, he insists that (and this is not unique to Bernard)--in order to avoid analytical "wildgoose chases"--such efforts should be undertaken only if there is some "plausible" evidence that justifies their pursuit. For Bernard, this plausibility seems intimately tied to two interconnected constraints, and both feel "hot" to me. In order to avoid membership in Bernard's wild-goose chase category, consideration of possible music-cultural crossing points in a given work can (and should) be made if and only if its composer has: 1) spent a significa nt amount of time studying and (presumably) performing music of a culture not his or her own; and 2) studied and performed (for the same significant time) in the geographical location commonly identified as a/the home for that music and culture. With these constraints in place, Bernard feels justified in dismissing the possibility of meaningful/ interesting Ghanaian crossing points in Reich's music because, for Bernard, Reich's five-week stay in that country was not sufficiently long enough to have had any plausible impact on him, at least none that could be regarded as having the potential to manifest itself as anything more than trivial, superficial, "vague" influences. The possibility that, despite his time/location profile, Reich might have left Ghana with some degree of music-cultural authority that could later manifest itself compositionally in non-trivial ways is denied tout court. "Impossible," says Bernard.

While I certainly agree that achieving a deep understanding of all aspects of a musical genre in any musical culture is not possible in five weeks, is it fair to assume, as Bernard seems to, that Reich left with nothing significant? no potential crossing-points? nothing that might contribute to solving the "problem" of his minimal music? For an analyst considering cross-cultural music-analytical potential in Reich's music, is Reich's stay in Ghana really equal to no time? Just how much time would be enough? And exactly why does Ghanaian musical authority/analytical plausibility seem to depend so heavily on Reich's physical presence in Ghana? Are we to assume that Reich never again considered or studied Ghanaian music in another location, never continued to build on what he had begun? (It's possible, I suppose. But it seems unlikely.) Or are we to assume that even if he did study independently that such immersion would somehow not count? that the authority that Bernard demands can be conferred and earned only "over there" and consequently by "those people"? Bernard gives no answers to these questions other than alluding to a "court of true jurisdiction" that apparently adjudicates such matters (among other things). But I am not at all sure where this court exists. Who writes its judicial code? Who wields its gavel?

Despite the fact that Bernard acknowledges that cross-cultural encounters are a complicated business, the method suggested in his response for addressing those of Steve Reich and Phillip Glass seems remarkably simple: their ...