Finding a way: Discourse analysis of music transmission in Eka Sruti Illini and implications for music education.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to analyze the discourse of music transmission in the three settings comprising Gamelan Eka Sruti Illini in the Robert E. Brown Center for World Music at the University of Illinois. Borrowing from Foucault, Blommaert, Scollon and Scollon, discourse was defined in this study as meaningful, mediated language-in-place. Discourse included acts of speech as well as cultural objects and concepts used as mediational means by actors in the three settings of Eka Sruti Illini. Discourse analysis was a process of: (1) Discovering and documenting actual and densely contextualized forms in which language occurred. (2) Determining what repertoires were employed by language users to understand what they could and could not do with language. (3) Exploring mediational means, that is, how cultural objects or concepts were used, and to what extent they were internalized as discourse by various participants. (4) Tracing historical contingencies that oriented language and mediational means. (5) Focusing on positioning of participants in relationship to each other, to the language and mediational means they were using, with the intention to display complex relationships of power.;I uncovered two variants of transmission discourse in Eka Sruti Illini: direct acculturation and analytics teaching. Direct acculturation included fluid talk and little interaction. It contextualized Balinese musical practices in terms that could be understood by students of Western European music theory. The other discourse variant was analytics teaching, in which there was little talk but several mediational means incorporated in the discourse.;I used ethnomusicological research as archives to explore legacies of ensemble participation in Bali and in United States institutions of higher education. I was able to see how legacies of ensemble participation circulated and often conflicted in transmission discourse, but it also became clear that concepts of time were orienting the discourse. A comparison of Balinese and Western concepts of time led me to Blommaert's claims about globalization and discourse (2005): the general shape of discourse can travel, but value, meaning and function of discourse have to be granted by others.