Brandon Spevacek
Oral Traditions
Due: 4/22/09
The Marriage of Orality and Literacy: Music
“It is a larger mistake to speak of them as adversaries. Instead light is an aspect of the prior and enduring state which is darkness. An so the state of light and the state of dark are present at the same time” (Kane 167). The complementary idea of existence suggested by Kane could have been seen as a marriage of two “things” which usually are set apart as opposites. When one looks at the function of literacy and orality in music, the same marriage is born by two different forms of art.
The idea of a marriage between orality and literacy in music would not have been popular with many philosophers like Plato since some musicians chose to write their songs down. “Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an external resource for what they lack in internal resources. Writing weakens the mind” (Ong 78). Music is a form of memory. Charlie Parker once said, “Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it wont come out of your horn.” This was true from my own experience; my musical journey began with the hope of reliving past pain, happiness, joy and sorrow I had experienced throughout my life. The idea that I used the technology of writing the song did not destroy my memory of my past events; it enhanced them. The writing and performance of the songs I had written gave life to my past memories and allowed others to share in the experiences and emotions that I had lived.
2
In Ong’s book Orality and Literacy he suggested “ a singer effects, not a transfer of his own intentions, but a conventional realization of the traditional thought for his listeners, including himself” (Ong 142). In this section Ong referred to the idea that every ancient, oral Greek poet had to remember traditional formulaic and stanzaic patterns. Thus, orality had influence from previous speakers. Music is no different. When I wrote a new song, I relied on the same formulaic and stanzaic patterns of other musicians. What I did when I wrote was similar to what ancient Greek oral poets did before they preformed. This was just one example of how music used and still uses practices of both cultures.
To see another way music married the oral culture to the literate I had to look again at Plato’s argument on writing and his opinion of technology. His idea that the technology of writing destroyed memory because they (people) relied on external resources was faulty in the sense that all through human existence technology was inevitable. People had been using new tools (technologies) throughout history starting with language. Language was a tool that people utilized to communicate with other members of the species. Did the fact that language was a new technology diminish interaction between two people? No, it enhanced the experience and allowed a constant flow of communication and allowed non-literate people the opportunity to relate with each other even if the experience was artificial in Plato’s eyes.
This “Platonian” argument, that attempted to separate the literate world from the oral culture, did not fit when one attempted to explain music. In music,
3
people didn’t rely on the external resources of writing to remember their past; they used the genre as a whole to relive experiences or emotions they have felt in the past. Plato would argue that since the idea was remembered in the non-natural way of writing, the memory would have been artificial. The only natural way of remembering was through the oral culture. I love Ong’s response to this idea “To say writing is artificial is not to condemn it but to praise it” (Ong 81). Ong went on to say that the artificial nature of writing allowed the realization of human potential to be fulfilled.
In my opinion, I believe that writing allowed the potential of music to be realized. I would say that music had become more advanced since the day of chain gang music. Chain gang music was simple in rhythm; it moved with the beat of the work they were doing. The music of that time was entrancing because they sang of things they new. They knew the songs in every inch of their body. That has not changed. I knew a couple of musicians who memorized their songs before they preformed them for a crowd. This allowed the entrancing element of the oral presentation to be experienced by everyone. At the same time, the musicians had to memorize the songs by the technologies brought forth by the print culture. This was another example of how the oral and print conditions came together in the genre of music.
4
“Writing moves words from the sound world to a world of visual space” (Ong 119). With music, this quote from Ong is true but at the same time false. When I wrote a song, I first found the tune I wanted it to play and wrote it down. This did move the sound from the world of noise to the world of print but after I had written the song, I moved the song from the world of print back to the world of sound. “ A song only exists only when it is going out of existence” (Ong 100), if I interpreted this quote correct, music only exists when it is heard. When a musician wrote a song, the song did not exist until he preformed it.
Ong said in his book that the oral culture was situational rather than abstract. All conceptual thinking was and still is to a degree abstract. For example, a concrete word like cloud did not refer to any singular tree, but it was an abstract idea that could refer to any tree. Music was and still is abstract to some degree. In the song This Little Light of Mine you never quite understood what the light actually was; it was an abstract idea. This abstract way of thought came from the print culture. Oral was situational and rarely abstract.
Situational language was also found in music. In the song The Battle of New Orleans we knew what battle Jonny Horton was talking about because he gave the date of the battle. So I can honestly say that music is a marriage of situational language and abstract thought found in both the print and oral cultures.
Music is both part of the oral and print culture based on the way that they are constructed. Ong discussed Freytag’s pyramid when we discuss the construction of
5
the oral narrative. In Freytag’s pyramid, there was a starting point, rising action, climax, falling action and an end point. Citizen Cope’s song Salvation was constructed in this manner. The song started with a man who had no name coming town to find a musician. The man beat the musician’s girlfriend until she told him where the musician was located. When he found the musician, he attempted to murder him and then he committed suicide; that was the conclusion. The song was tightly constructed in the confines of Freytag’s pyramid.
Songs also were constructed very loose with out closure. We talked about the idea of mis-ene-byme in class meaning “into the abyss.” This term construed the idea that this thing would never end; it would continue on into eternity. When I thought of this term with regards to music, the Never Ending Song came to mind.
“This is the song that never ends. It keeps going on and on my friends. Some people started singing it not knowing what it was and they will continue singing it forever just because it’s the song that never ends…”
As the title of the song so clearly stated, there is no end point to the song. It continued into the abyss of eternity.
As I have shown, music incorporates characteristics from both the print and oral culture. If one tried to classify it into either of these categories they wouldn’t be completely correct; music was and always will be in the grey area between print and orality. It was much easier for me to think of music as the ring that signified the marriage between orality and literacy.
Work Cited
1). Kane, Sean. Wisdom of the Mythtellers.
Broadview Press, 1998.
2). Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy
Routledge N.Y, 1998
