Page 42 - Effable Encounters
P. 42

The African Dog

        charts  in  America,  and  everyone  and  his  brother  in  Tin  Pan  Alley
        jumped  on  the  bandwagon  with  fusion  and  cross-over  studio
        recordings,  I  tried  to  put  together  East  African  tarabu  and  Cole
        Porter-ish Broadway musicals. ‘Djibouti Cutie’ was another disaster. I
        had tried to meld two styles that were just too different. But this is
        the price  of an education,  Professor; you  must appreciate what we
        call the ‘school of hard knocks’.”
            “Indeed I do, Señor Mosca. My own efforts in producing folkloric
        records,  although  critically  successful,  were  extremely  modest  in
        financial returns. And it has been years since I was involved in such
        things.  My  country  has  not  had  the  money  to  invest  in  the  music
        industry.”
            “I know, and that is why I came over here as soon as the economic
        and  political  climate  became  friendlier  to  North  Americans.  My
        search  for  information  I  could  use  in  my  business  turned  up  your
        article  in  La  Revista  del  Historia  Mundiale.  I  had  it  translated  into
        English,  and  that  brought  me  here.  Your  analysis  of  twentieth
        century  popular  music  is  brilliant,  particularly  the  analogy  of  the
        African dog.”
            Mombeau  inclined  his  head  slightly,  a  perfunctory  act  of  self-
        deprecation. “You flatter me, Señor. ‘Music of the African Diaspora:
        Creole or Mongrel?’ was merely an attempt to record certain thoughts
        of mine concerning the broad sweep of stylistic development, relating
        it to theory in other disciplines.”
            “Ah, yes, it is now quite the vogue to apply Darwinian models to
        every  sort  of  human  activity,  from  automobile  design  to  neural
        networks. But you, Professor, went right to the heart of the problem
        of so-called ‘world music’. I mean cultural relativism, of course. After
        I  got  through  all  the  technical  jargon—niches,  isolation,  cross-
        fertilization,  inbreeding—I  found  a  new  basis  for  understanding
        music’s  decline  into  mediocrity.  I  was  already  familiar  with  the
        creolization of dominant-subordinate elements in the music crazes of
        the modern era: how the Caribbean, from New Orleans to Trinidad,
        served as a melting pot of European, Native American and African
        modes of expression. And I certainly agree with your claim that this
        music—including its components of song and dance—is the major
        cultural development of the twentieth century; the tired old forms of
        European art and literature, and the dying folk traditions of the rest

                                       41
   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47