The Use of Music in the Study of a Problem of Acculturation*

Abstract

increased considerably. The result has been a number of studies of the music of nonliterate people, but as yet little theoretical application for such studies has been shown. The present paper will attempt to indicate one way in which musical investigation can be used to support anthropological theory, with the hope that its broader ramifications will become apparent by implication. For purposes of discussion let us state a hypothesis in the field of acculturation studies as follows: When two human groups which are in sustained contact have a number of characteristics in common in a particular aspect of culture, exchange of ideas therein will be much more frequent than if the characteristics of those aspects differ markedly from one another. In order to test this hypothesis let us examine the musical acculturative situation which exists, first, between Western culture and the Flathead Indians of western Montana and, second, between Western culture and urban Africa south of the Sahara with special reference to the Belgian Congo. Among the Flathead Indians the evidences of acculturation with respect to music are by no means pronounced, and those changes which can be documented appear in areas of activity surrounding the music rather than in the actual music itself, that is, in such matters as the construction of musical instruments or the use of song texts as opposed to vocal quality or scale structure. Flathead musical instruments at present include the war drum, hand drum and end-blown flageolet, a reduction in number from that indicated in earlier sources. Turney-High, for example, speaks of the whistle of bird bones which was used in courting and, more specifically, in arranging trysts, as well as rattles made by stringing deer hoofs on thongs tied to sticks, which were used both by shamans in the Camas Dance and by laymen in less esoteric dancing (Turney-High 1937:39, 83). Teit further indicates the presence of the rasp which, however, he mentions only in passing and without description (Teit 1927-28:386). The whistle and rasp are nowhere found in use today while the modern sleighbell has been substituted for the original rattle; these bells * This paper was first presented at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association at Tucson, Arizona, Dec. 29, 1953. The author wishes to acknowledge with thanks the support of the Belgian American Educational Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and l'Institut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique Centrale, which made research in the Belgian Congo possible, and the Music Foundation of Montana State University, which supported field work among the Flathead Indians.