The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments

Abstract

A musical instrument is much more than the sum of its parts. It can be measured and weighed, its acoustic properties investigated, the ecology of its wood documented, its metals sourced, the site of its sound activation identified, and its sound spectrum plotted. However, made to be played, whether one person’s noise or another person’s music, when musical instruments sound out they are invariably made to make meaning (changing soundscapes, affecting emotions, moving bodies, demarcating identities, mobilising ideas, demonstrating beliefs, motioning values) which, in turn, makes them potent social and cultural phenomena. As sites of meaning construction, musical instruments are embodiments of culturally based belief and value systems, an artistic and scientific legacy, a part of the political economy attuned by, or the outcome of, a range of associated ideas, concepts and practical skills: they are one way in which cultural and social identity (a sense of self in relation to others, making sense of one’s place in the order of things) is constructed and maintained. For example, I note the prominence and rootedness of the ‘u¯d in the soundscape of Arab music cultures and its significance for the development of a musical cosmology, mythology, and performance practice system over several centuries (see Jenkins and Olsen 1976; Shiloah 1995; Touma 2003; Marcus 2007).