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The Mongrel metaphor: an arts practice response to
understanding musical hybridization.
Matthew ‘Mattu’ Noone Abstract
Drawing on a transdisciplinary arts practice and ethnomusicological methodology, this article explores the metaphor of ‘mongrelity’ as a potential salient characterization of musical hybridity. By focusing on an extended practice-based case study of Irish Traditional and North Indian classical music, this research explores ethnomusicological theory on ‘world music’ from a performer’s perspective. It draws upon reflexive self-narrative, autoethnography and musicological analysis in an attempt to understand the complexities of being a performer in an inter-cultural milieu. Through invoking the mongrel metaphor, this article hopes to challenge the notion of cultural purism and open a discussion about the terminology we use to describe musical traditions and genres. It is also the aim of this article to argue for the possible benefit of arts practice in ethnomusicology and also show how the ethnographic rigor and theoretical frames of ethnomusicology may be incorporated into performance based research. Keywords: hybridity, world music, Irish traditional music, Indian classical music, arts practice Introduction
Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me,
of all I have been seen done, of everything done-‐to-‐me…to understand me, you'll
have to swallow a world (Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children).
To understand the artistic practice of just one musician in our increasingly
interconnected global reality, as Rushdie suggests, is to be consumed by the complexities of
a whole world. While scholars have discussed the importance of hybridity in terms of
musical products (Bohlmann 2002; Frith 2007; Feld 2000, 1994, 1996), particular world
music artists, and also as a marketing term (Taylor 2007), few have engaged with the
individual as a location of hybridization. Furthermore, not enough research has focused on
the performance practices of musicians involved in global music exchange, particularly
those musicians who have undertaken serious study of an instrument foreign to their native
culture. 1 In my previous research with foreigners studying North Indian Classical music in
Kolkata (Noone 2013), it became apparent that these individuals inhabited a complex
cultural world that was resistant to traditional cultural, national or even musical framing.
These musicians were part of a global community that located home and the heart in
several places at once. While many were dedicated students of the Indian classical
tradition, the music they made reflected much more than a clear hybrid between East and
West. Many of these musicians, as well performing ‘pure’ Indian classical music, became
involved in various, what would generally be described as, ‘fusion’ or 'world' musics. In that
essay, I explored how the “complexities of being a performer in a foreign tradition can lead
to the creation of, not just new musical forms, but personally transformative ways of “Being-‐
in-‐the-‐world” (Noone 2013: 35-‐36).2 I have become interested in how these personal
transformations are manifested in musical forms and also vice versa, how hybrid musical
forms may possibly create, or at the very least support, a phenomenological hybrid-‐ness of
Being. I would like to characterize this positional transformation within the metaphor of the
mongrel.
Confessions of a Mongrel
Let me confess from the outset that I consider myself a mongrel, or to be more
specific a musical mongrel. I started out as a guitarist and self-‐taught drummer in urban
Australia, playing in instrumental post-‐rock bands in the early 1990’s before moving into
the world of ambient and experimental electronica. I spent a few years obsessed with free
jazz and performed with various ensembles before also getting involved with West African
percussion troupes around Sydney.
Figure 1: Author peforming with indie/lo-‐fi/post-‐rock band Cardiigan in Brisbane, Australia
circa 1996.
Figure 3-‐ Author performing at Dun Laorighe Festival of World Culture, Dublin, 2009
Eventually, my musical journey took me to India where I became a student of the 25
stringed lute called sarode. I have studied sarode in a 'traditional' guru-‐shishya manner for
over 10 years, and it is now my main performance instrument.3 I have performed on the
sarode across the world in a wild variety of genres and environments. While I have played
‘pure’ Indian classical music in yoga centres, arts centres and 'world music' festivals, I also
have performed with dub bands in the South of France, electric groove 'fusion' in grimy bars
in Dublin and more recently have engaged with Irish Traditional Music. To introduce an
example that I shall later explore in more detail, in 2014, I accompanied traditional duo,
Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill in a collaborative tour of India. However, to describe what I
do as 'world' or 'fusion' music has always seemed too simplistic, and as Stokes has
described, not even “remotely adequate for descriptive or critical purposes” (Stokes 2004:
52).
Drawing on my previous work studying foreigners learning Indian music in Kolkata
and my own experience as a performer on the sarode, I decided to pursue an arts practice
research model to unearth the complexities of my own performance practice as part of
structured PhD programme in the Irish World Academy in the University of Limerick.4
Succinctly put, arts practice research understands the individual artist, and the work they
create, as a microcosm of broader theoretical concerns. The self and one’s artistic processes
could be understood as a site of knowledge. In my own understanding, this is not dissimilar
to the ethnomusicological method of ‘fieldwork’, except that in arts practice research the
self is the ‘field’. This transdisciplinary research approach draws upon my experience as
performer yet also interrogates performances using musicological and cultural analysis.
The term ‘mongrel’ took on a whole new meaning for me whilst employing Chang’s
(2007) autoethnograhic method in my initial reflexive research phase. Chang’s model
proposes self-‐reflection and the development of a self-‐narrative, which forms a backdrop
for the research. As Pelias explains, in using autoethnography, one in fact is attempting to
use the “self to get at culture” (2003: 372). In analysis of my own speech patterns to
describe my historical musical experiences, the term mongrel kept re-‐appearing, but
without it’s commonly negative stereotypes. For me, the concept of mongrel is related to
the colloquial Australian use of the word. While also used to describe the mixed breed of
dogs, in Australian and New Zealand sporting slang, the quality of mongrelity relates to
toughness and physical aggression and is sometimes highly prized. Sports commentators
may describe a player as ‘having a bit of mongrel in them’ or if lacking conviction and
passion a team could be said to have ‘lost that bit of mongrel’. Likewise, working dogs of
mongrel mixes are said to be hardier, more intelligent and even to live longer than pure
breeds. These dogs are prized for their unique mongrel mixes and consequentially given
certain affection. The mongrel, while not being of pure breed or class, is often stronger for
its unique combination of genetic sources. My grandfather was particularly fond of the term
‘mongrel’ and used it as a double-‐edged sword both as an insult and an affectionate back of
hand.
It was through this autoethnograhic research process that I began to realise the
significance, and perhaps the strengths, of my other musical experiences. My mongrel
musicality is of an unusual pedigree and I always felt this to be potentially detrimental to a
sincere study of North Indian music and also Irish traditional music. In fact, for many years
it was something that I had literally written out of my artistic biography. However, I began
to realise that once you scratched the surface, many significant individuals within these
traditions exhibited a complex mix of influences.5 On a very personal level, I decided that if
I was to find my own authentic voice with my instrument I needed to embrace rather than
ignore my mongrel mix.
Yet, the reality of my own diverse musical experiences, and my acceptance of
mongrelity, is that it’s messy. Within the process of trying to balance my studies of sarode
in a traditional manner and also have some kind of professional music career, I admit that I
have made both musical and cultural blunders. Certainly, some of the musical projects I
have been involved with could conform to the criticism of the world music phenomenon
that Feld argues: “participates in shaping a kind of consumer-‐friendly multiculturalism”
(Feld 2000: 168). I can recount times when I have been invited to perform at openings for
relaxation centres and cringed when I have been offered a place on the floor in the corner to
play background music while glasses of prosecco were poured and finger food devoured.6
I’ve recorded, against my better judgement, on electronic dance and ambient tracks that
would confirm many ethnomusicologists concerns about cultural appropriation, exoticism
and the advancement of the “global schizophonic condition” (Feld 1996: 11). I have had the
image of the exotic spiritual musical other projected onto me while bound by the
conundrum that Indian music is not my culture, not my home.
Despite this, Indian classical music has given my soul nourishment beyond words
and I have never been, and probably never will be, more at home with any other instrument
besides the sarode. Yet, what does it mean to be a white/Australian/Irish sarode player
based in the West of Ireland? In the realm of ethnomusicological discourse, I fall between
categories. I am not studying sarode as a means of practicing bi-‐musicality (Hood 1960),
and neither do I fit neatly into the critiques of ‘world music’ as a representation of subaltern
domination.7 Likewise, from a Orientalist perspective (Said 1976), I could be accused of
mis-‐appropriating Indian culture. Whatever way you look at it, as a non ‘native’ musician of
the sarode, questions of authenticity and cultural agency are always lurking beneath the
surface of my practice.
What is the Mongrel?
The truth of all inter-‐cultural musicking, regardless of ethnicity, is that music bears
cultural capital it represents knowledge and therefore relates to the politics of power. 8 This
dynamic is at play among ‘traditional’ performers of Indian music and also with a mongrel
like me. However, my invocation of the term mongrel to describe my mixed musicality, does
not attempt to circumvent this dynamic. Rather I am attempting to embrace difference
whilst initiating an individual integration of that very difference. As opposed to terms such
as ‘fusion’ or ‘hybrid’, which generally point to musical products such as recordings, I
understand the mongrel to describe the much more visceral and complex phenomenological
nature of inter-‐cultural musicking. It also is a willingness to be honest, open and vulnerable,
both in interactions with musical cultures but also with the self. Embracing the mongrel
involves knowing, as Salman Rushdie so eloquently described in the quote at the start of
this essay, that the Self is all that has come before it, the performative present and the yet to
come. It is an awareness that, “our cultural selves are in fact composed of elements of the
culturally other that we have so far failed to recognize and thus have not fully understood”
(Shusterman 2000: 196).
The mongrel could, perhaps most benignly, be described as “something which arises
from a variety of sources” (Collins dictionary 1998). As a noun, the term mongrel can be
used to describe individuals, plants or animals, particularly of the canine species, resulting
from the interbreeding of diverse breeds with mixed or unknown origin. Originating
around the 15th century, the word itself is a mixture of sources from the Middle English
word ‘mong’ meaning ‘mixture’ which was possibly a shorthand version of ‘ymong’ which
again originated from the Old English ‘gemong’ meaning 'crowd', 'more at' or 'among'
(Collins dictionary 1998). The word also has a history of being tied up in extremely negative
discourses of inter-‐racial mixing and ethnic impurity (Burr, 1922) Cornwell (1999). In
particular, the term has been appropriated to discuss the racial mixture of America and
Britain (Dawson 2007) (Rodriquez 2003) and the cultural mix implicit in urban
development (Sandercock & Lyssiotis 2003; Sandercock 2006).
The sense of the mongrel being one of unknown ancestry generally often has
negative subtexts. In terms of perhaps its most common usage, that is, in reference to man’s
best friend, it is also largely negative. The image of the mongrel, both in a canine sense and
in its dominant associations, is confrontational, undesirable and even dangerous. Indeed,
perhaps it is because of the historical power of the word, and its dangerous overtones, that I
feel it such an appropriate term, not just to describe the uneasy balance of identity in my
own musicality, but to stimulate ethnomusicological debate about the words we use to
describe music in the global age. To paraphrase Stewart, if we can understand the historical
associations of a word, and also I would argue, within the context of personal narratives
such as my own autoethnographic research, then we are in a position to consciously re-‐
appropriate these words and “set the ethnographic study of cultural mixture on new tracks”
(1999: 40).
The Mongrel, the Hybrid and Others
So, why be a mongrel and not hybrid? Hybridity has been a prominent term
in ethnomusicology for exploring the processes of inter-‐cultural musicking.9 Yet in
the world of literary studies, social sciences and anthropology, there has been a long
debate about the use of such terms. Stewart describes how, “[a]nthropologists and
social scientists have expressed ambivalence about terms such as creolization,
syncretism, hybridity” (1999, p. 40).10 As a musician, the term 'hybrid' has always felt
sterile to me and generally associated with the electrification of some kind of ethnic
instrument or folk style. The use of the term has also become embedded in a discourse
around dichotomous power relations between West and East “inevitably being
conceptualized as the encounter of a ‘Third World’ culture with the West; being part of the
project of Western modernity and modernization” (Sharma 1996: 20).11 Arguably, the
scholarly pursuit of labelling musics as hybrid is in itself an objectification. Timothy Taylor
has argued that, “using the term hybridity makes us complicit in perpetuating and
intensifying historically unequal power relations and the entrenched conservatism of the
cultural categories employed by the music industry” (Taylor 2007: 159).
In hybridity, the purposeful mixing of sources is done deliberately and even
scientifically to attempt to create something new. Usually the hybrid is the offspring of two
animals or plants of different species. It begins as the confluence of two organisms to create
a third 'improved' organism. A sense of hubris (the etymological origin of the word), loss
and decrease in vigour, is implied. Stross (1999) argues that a decrease in vigour is not a
necessary an outcome of hybrid cultural forms as “there is no limit on the number of traits
or features that can be generated in a cultural hybrid form...moreover, adaptation to new
contexts can be so much faster in the cultural domain. In short, increased homogeneity and
a decrease in vigour are not a necessary outcome of hybrid forms "interbreeding” in the
cultural domain (Stross 1999: 257-‐258). In fact a strengthening process may take place.
This Stross has provocatively called the “mongrel factor” (1999: 247).
Taylor suggests that: “like all terms and categories you have to watch what happens
to hybridity in practice” (2007: 160). My argument is that most terms used by
ethnomusicologists in discourse on the world music phenomenon (hybrid/fusion/mash-‐
up/world beat/new age) emerge out language from genre marketing, are socio-‐centric,
product orientated and do not usually come from the practices of the musicians themselves.
Each of these terms have their own moral connotation, depending on their context and who
they are being used by, and for what purpose. In discourses around inter-‐cultural musics,
ethnomusicologists often seek to theorize at the macro-‐level ideas about globalization and
identity through a language already tainted by commercial mechanisms. Likewise, many
musicians have become savvy interlocutors between the demands of publicity, performance
and audience expectations, adjusting their language to describe their music accordingly.
Guillermo Gomez Pena, has described a similar chameleonality in his work in the field of
performance art as that of an “intellectual coyote” (1996: 12). In a similar way, I feel the
mongrel metaphor describes my own practice much more vividly than that of a hybrid as it
feels alive, embodied, conversive and somewhat confronting, which belies the abstract
socio-‐centric framework of most world music discourse. While certainly, the term mongrel
is not unproblematic, I have found in my own experience, its distinctiveness useful.
I do not, however, wish to champion the mongrel as a utopian character moving in
some kind postmodern performative shape-‐shifting “Fourth World” (Toop 1995: 161-‐172).
For me, the mongrel metaphor encompasses the messy reality of inter-‐cultural musical
mingling. The mongrel is a combination of many sources and is not necessarily considered
advancement; rather it embraces the multiplicity of difference. The mongrel does not
necessarily strengthen or a weaken culture but challenges the binary distinction of ‘West
and the rest.’ It also offers the possibility of acting subversively by playing with established
categories. Likewise, the mongrel, is not a term I am proposing to describe the mixing of
different ethnic musics as a broad category. Importantly, I define the mongrel as a self-‐
referential system. In this way, I am attempting to clarify the uses of this term not just for
ethnomusicological theory but, more importantly, as an invitation for other musicians to
explore the veracity of the term, or others like it, for themselves. For the mongrel is an
internal form that requires internal ways of knowing.
The Mongrel in practice
To demonstrate something of my mongrel way of knowing, I would like to give some
brief examples of my practice based research exploring Irish traditional music on the
sarode. This has involved a development of a unique internal logic which draws upon the
variety of my cultural experiences in the development of two major performance works.12
Figure 4: Junior’s Lament, live performance with percussionist Tommy Hayes, 2015
Figure 5: Junior’s Lament, live performance with percussionist Debojyoti Sanyal, 2015
Part of this research involved the application of Melrose’s method of a ‘critical meta-‐
practice’ (2002) where a performer becomes cognizant of their skill sets as a knowledge
system and seeks ways to apply this knowledge to the construction of new work. In
particular, I began to critique how my experience with the structures of heavy instrumental
rock, experimental electronica and also with Indian classical music created a ‘signature’ way
of seeing the world. Musically speaking, it was my understanding of the passionate dynamic
shifts of post-‐rock, the broad sound palette of electronica, which informed by encounter
with Indian classical music. I began to understand my practice as a sarode player, whether
playing Indian classical music or not, to include elements of all of those previous musical
experiences. Rather than being detrimental, they enabled me in my quest for finding an
authentic voice on the instrument through yet another musical form, namely Irish
traditional music.13
In the development of new performance material, I stopped trying to prove that I
was an authentic performer of any tradition yet still acknowledged and respected the
traditions which I had traversed. I embraced my mongrelity and even began to use the
word in my performance biography material. Yet invoking the mongrel in one's self can
lead to an uneasy reception. In a national newspaper article on an upcoming festival
performance I had scheduled, a journalist felt it necessary to put in a proviso that I was a
“self-‐styled” mongrel (Siggins 2013). This is understandable as the mongrel has a history of
bad press in Irish music. Traditional flute player, Seamus Tansey, has most vehemently
stated in reference to musics from other cultures and the Irish tradition that:
You can’t mix them...or else you have a mongrel representing nothing or speaking
nothing, just a noise or an obscene sound that should never have been heard. If
that is change ie the mongrelisation, the bastardisation, the cross-‐pollination, the
copulation of our ancient traditional music, with other cultures, then I say we want
none of it (in Vallely et al 1999: 211).
Likewise, despite being a land of syncretism (Rowell 1992), when I recently toured India
with Irish traditional music duo, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, my attempt to embrace
mongrelity was completely written out of all the promotional material altogether.14 The
promoters argued that audiences in the Indian classical worlds preferred “pretty straight
stuff” and also that my role as an ‘Irish’ musician should be highlighted first and foremost
(from personal communication, 2014).
Figure 6: documentary of Indian tour with Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill and author, 2014.
However, I was neither an Irish traditional nor Indian classical musician. I was the in-‐
between, the cultural conflux, what I describe as the mongrel or what Krebb has described
as ‘an edge walker’, an individual who “can discard membership without shedding cultural
traits” (quoted in Chang 2007: 23). This ambiguity proved a challenge for booking and
promoting shows with promoters in India due to the relatively conservative programming
of Indian Classical venues. However, without my involvement and my unique multiple
“cultural affiliation” (Chang 2007: 23) arguably the tour would have been less likely to have
taken place. The whole concept of the tour, introducing Irish music to an Indian Classical
audience, required an intimate performance and cultural knowledge of both worlds. Irish
traditional music, and Ireland in general, has almost no exposure in India. Rather than
being a hindrance, my mongrelity proved a great asset. In an interview back in Ireland after
the tour Martin reflected on my role and the role of ‘marginal figures’ in Irish music in
general.
The best practitioners in any realm are probably the ones who are 100% devoted
to that...[but] there are the marginal figures with feet in different worlds like
Dennis [Cahill] for example, Tomas [Bartleet] is like that, Utsav [Lal] is like that…
and you would be like that... in that same way...its a valuable skill area... you can
more easily see things that can be brought from one world into the other than I
can. That was a very important part of making this functional (Martin Hayes,
2015).15
Another western musician who has played this role, more specifically mediating
between the rock world and Indian classical music, was George Harrison.16 He once chose to
describe himself as a ‘conduit’ between East and West (see Shankar 1969). While I can
empathize with this analogy, I am suggesting that role of the mongrel is not this smooth or
as binary in definition. The mongrel is a lot more convoluted. A conduit implies passage
between two clearly identified worlds. This binary imagining of culture is extremely
limiting and does not represent the reality of individuals within multiple cultural frames. In
Martin's description of having 'feet in different worlds' we are directed towards the
complex multiple sites of knowledge within the somatic world of mongrel musical
individuals. I am reminded of the analogy of the Vedic tree of knowledge the roots of which
draw upon different streams of knowledge yet all feed the one central organism (Arapura,
1975). While, within this collaboration, the focus was on two distinct musical cultures, in
reality my own practice, and the practices of the other musicians to which Martin referred,
is much more diverse.
One aspect of my own practice that I inherited from the Hindustani tradition,
namely the reverence and practical deification of the instrument as an entity in itself, also
featured as an important element in my mongrel role. Karaikuddi Subramaniam, veena
player and our main collaborator in Chennai, reflected that, “while the major success of the
program depended on the brilliant musicianship and experience of Martin and Dennis, on a
subtler level, it was also because of the fact sarode as an Indian instrument made a
connection between the two music-‐cultures” (personal communication 2015). The sarode,
acted as an external representation of my own mongrelity, it was a “kind of half-‐way house...
that kind of helped bridge us...at least sonically into that world” (Martin Hayes 2015).17 This
'bridging' was not just sonic but also within the performance practice itself, for, despite the
fact that we were playing Irish melodies, I would perform the same performance rituals
with my instrument that I would for performing Hindustani music.18 My hybrid instrument,
which was in fact dubbed the 'Noone sarode' by journalists on the tour, became a ‘Third
Space’ (Bhabha 1994) of musical action between the perceived margins of Irish and Indian
music culture. This suggests that it is not just individuals but musical instruments
themselves that offer potential sites for inter-‐cultural collaboration.19
This inter-‐cultural dialogue was not always smooth or necessarily deep. In fact,
while the tour was undoubtedly a relative success I was personally left with doubts about
the longevity and musical integrity of some of the collaborations.20 While it is a testament to
all of these musicians that an attempt was made to make some kind of meaningful inter-‐
cultural exchange, it felt at times that the two musical cultures co-‐existed side by side rather
than in syncretism with each other. Desi Wilkinson has explored this in terms of Senegalese
and Irish music describing that “the outcome (the concerts) was less valorizing than the
rehearsal process and that this in turn may serve as some small indication that the
deliberately constructed genre now habitually called ‘world music’ when viewed as a
conceptual ‘field of cultural production’ does not fully facilitate explorations of musical
hybridity” (Wilkinson 2011: 55)
I draw attention to this, not as a point in musical criticism, but to highlight what I
discern as an important role of the mongrel, namely recognizing musical difference and
division then seeking a re-‐integration. This musical integration is first and foremost an
internal process that happens through and with the body. In my own practice, I draw upon
somatic tools, which draw upon a variety of sources that integrate both the theoretical and
performative musical moment.21 These practices do not always work as intended but they
are tools that put me back into my body. Focusing internally centres me in the complex
process of performance and can also lead to transcendent moments. It is this confluence of
practices (musical, cultural, emotional and spiritual) that allow the mongrel to resolve and
reintegrate in music exchange. The following extended field note, from our first rehearsal
with Indian classical musicians in Delhi, gives as sense of this somatic experience.
The loud tabla growling and popping in my ear...the flute jumping in and out in a
high treble like a bird above a forest canopy...the ominous rumble of the piano...like
rain clouds rolling in over us...threatening. Dennis strumming chugging a
continuous river of groove...Martin's sinewy melodic lines going around and
around winding their way past my intellect into heart...I feel like there is a direct
relation between my ears and my heart... the emotional place in the centre of my
chest...as I actively listen to the music...my breathing changes...I take deep in
breathes and longer exhalations..I can feel my muscles relax...my shoulders
drop...my neck loosen...my buttocks and legs on the floor..my glance goes
downwards...my eyes close...it's as if I hear the music in my chest...pounding in time
with an internal rhythm...like it emanates from within and then radiates out again
through all of my blood vessels and sinews to my fingertips, my toes, the tip of my
tongue, my lips, the top of my head...I feel my forehead raise...like an energy is
pulling up the skin around my third eye...I feel a crick in the back o neck...just
where my spine reaches my skull...a popping sound...it's a feeling I am familiar with
from my meditation practice...a signal the body is beginning to relax and let go and
be present to the eternal internal creative moment...it's brief, only a moment or
two...sometimes it can last for a minute or sometimes, very rarely, it can lead to a
sustained place of deep awareness and stillness which can linger for
hours...(Matthew Noone, 16/12/14)
This field note is not meant to be indicative of all inter-‐cultural music exchange nor
do I mean to suggest that all performances resonate with this amount of physical efficacy. I
use this quote to demonstrate how I understand the mongrel as an on-‐the-‐ground and in-‐
the-‐ground musical exploration of the variety of sources that are located in the individual
within the practice of musical performances. If we simply listened to the recorded output of
this musical exchange one could sustain a very different analysis about the quality of that
exchange. Exploring one's own musical mongrelity, on the other hand, offers a depth of
truth that is embodied, and in some regard, undeniable. It is undeniably my experience.
This is not to say that embodied accounts of inter-‐cultural music exchange are beyond
critiques of power and agency, it simply gives another insight into a complex musical
process. I do suggest however, that hybrid or marginal cultural figures provide an important
role in the exchange of musical ideas across genres specifically because of a unique
embodied knowledge. I have characterized my own practice within the metaphor of the
mongrel as I find it a productive and empowering term that speaks to my own histories, my
current state and possible futures. Perhaps the mongrel is too idiosyncratic to be of general
use to other musicians, but I believe its very confrontational nature is something that is
healthy for ethnomusicologists to reflect upon. Furthermore, the practices of the mongrel,
that which we could describe as mongrelity, are something which could provide a useful
framework for ethnomusicological study and as an embodied ground for developing new
theory.
Conclusion
While hybridity has announced itself as an essential process of music making,
perhaps we should be seeking its nature in the human body rather than musical works.
Blacking reminds us that, “many if not all, of music’s essential processes may be found in the
constitution of the human body” (1973: 6). If we propose that musicians are processing the
complexity of postmodern cultural hybrid selves through the creation of hybrid musical
works, then we need a music-‐making, human-‐focused response to the issues involved in
world musics. It is possible that mongrelity, both as an embodied “meta-‐critical practice”
(Melrose 2002) and phenomenological perspective, may offer new insights in
ethnomusicology’s attempt to engage with the increasingly complex artistic practices of
individual musicians in our interconnected global reality. This means analysing
“globalization from below” (Frith 2000: 319) and realizing that it is overambitious to “read
off” from musical forms the wholesale meaning of cultural practices (Born & Hesmondalgh
2000: 3). For it is within the Self of the artist that the complexities of global music are being
lived.
I would like to attempt to localise the experience of the performance of musical
mongrels as a radical subversion of categories. For the mongrel “does not challenge us to
disentangle influences like tradition and modernity or to unravel strands of difference.
Rather...[it] stands in resistance to such disarticulations: instantiating identity at the same
time that it is subverted”(Kapchan & Strong 1999: 245). This concept may also offer a
solution to the problem of hybridity's elusiveness. For Bhabha argues that hybridity has:
“no perspective of depth of truth to provide; it is not a third term that resolves tension
between two cultures...it does not produce a mirror where the self apprehends itself”
(Bhabha 1985: 156). My own autoethnographic exploration and reclamation of my
mongrelity, on the other hand, has definitely resolved some of my inner tensions about the
space I occupy between cultures, it has produced a useful metaphoric mirror from which to
apprehend myself. While the very presence of mongrelity may be considered an obscenity,
the mongrel stands for proactive advocacy in this tyranny of absolutism. The enunciations
of new cultural and musical identities are perhaps located in the in-‐between or liminal
places of which the mongrel resides. To mongrelize then, the transitive verb, could be
considered the process of intentional or organic creation of crossbreeds which enables, as
Rushdie describes, “newness to enter the world” (in Bhabha 2000: 300). Unbound and wild,
mongrelity may be considered a natural musical evolution of that could lead to
strengthening of traditions, by creating inter-‐connected and socially conscious individuals
who work as cultural agents and provocateurs.
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1 Exceptions include the work of Adrien Mc Neil (1995, 2007; see also Durrant, 2003; Booth, 2010).
2 There are scholars who are critical of westerners’ engagement with Indian classical music and argue that it relates to a ‘colonial imagination’. Korpella, who has conducted ethnographies of foreigners (although not always necessarily musicians) living in Varanasi and Goa suggests that westerners “imagine’ India according their own needs” (2010, p. 1299). While studies such as Korpela’s are useful in representing the flows of western tourist migration within India, in dismissing all western students of Indian music as “lifestyle migrants” she has obviated the difference between touristic engagement with Indian culture and expert performer’s knowledge. In her work, Korpela documents that westerners “embrace a pre-colonial understanding of India as they appreciate its ancient past rather than modern present” (2010, p. 1300). She implies that foreigners learning Indian classical music are more interested in socialising with other westerners and “smoking hash together” than an actual serious dedication to learning music (2010, p.1301).
3 For a more detailed look at the traditional guru-shishya system of Indian Classical music see (Neuman 1990). For a more critical modern perspective see (Schippers 2007).
4 Arts practice or practise based research is still a relatively new field within Irish third level institutions although several PhD programmes through practice are offered around the country. While the arts practice movement initially arose out of the field of visual arts, it now extends across virtually all artistic disciplines. The Irish World Academy offers a four year structured arts practice PhD programme which is open to dancers, curators, singers, musicians, theatre, performance and circus artists. For further reading on this research methodology and history see (Nelson 2013).
5 Such as the great sarodiya Ali Akbar Khan who was subtly influenced by aspects of jazz improvisation through his contact with the West and the iconic East Clare fiddle player Paddy Canny, the epitome of the East Clare style, who was arguably more inspired by the American recordings of Michael Coleman than more local ‘traditional’ players.
6 In Indian classical music, it is considered inappropriate to play while people are eating a meal and certainly not when the audience is consuming alcohol. Ravi Shankar famously stopped his first concerts in the West due to such circumstances and was saddened by the inebriated state of his audience members. See (Shankar 1969).
7 That is unless of course, you consider my Australian-‐Irish ethnicity as part of subaltern postcolonial discourse, which I wish to stress, I am not suggesting. There is an interesting discussion to be had here around the postcolonial identity and cultural sympathies between Ireland and India. For a more in depth discussion see Dillane and Noone, (2015) Likewise, Australia's relationship with Asia, especially in terms of artistic practices has been explored elsewhere. For example see, Richards, F. (2007). For another interesting perspective on another foreigners perspective of outsider-‐ness see Aubert ‘s concept of the ‘duck in the henhouse’ (2007: 82).
8 For more on general concept of cultural capital see Bourdieu, P. (2011). The forms of capital.(1986). Cultural theory: An anthology, 81-‐93.
9 Hijleh notes that hybridisation is perhaps “the most healthy and accurate paradigm of globalisation” (2012, p. 6). I use the term ‘musicking’ here in reference to Christopher Small’s (1998) understanding of music as a verb rather than a noun. This concept includes allows us to understand music not in just in relation to performance and sound but also incorporates wider musical discourse and processes.
10 There it is not the scope of this paper however to fully explore the categories described here. I believe the concepts of syncretism and creolization have much to offer ethnomusicological and that Stewart’s concept of syncretism to bears some semblance to my invocation of mongrelity,albeit from a more top down theoretical perspective. For further reading see: Stewart & Shaw (1994) Glissant (1997) Khan (2004) and more musically focussed Martin (2008) and Guilbault (1993). 11 For an engaging interpretation of hybridization and 'radical otherness; see Sharma and Hutnyk, J. (eds), (1996).
12 The first of these was a 2 week Indian tour with Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill in 2014. The second were two small scale performances with bodhran player Tommy Hayes and tabla player Debojyoti Sanyal in the Irish World Academy in Sept and Oct 2015.
13 It is beyond the scope of this paper to outline the full details of my own ‘critical meta-practice’ but generally speaking both cultural and musical elements of all of my previous musical experiences became integrated into the practical ‘studio’ element of the research. For example, I began to experiment with
acoustic drones using a loop pedal to find an appropriate Irish drone equivalent with the Indian tambura. Naturally I also began to apply Indian classical raga theory of improvisation to Irish tunes and understood and transcribed the music using a hybrid system of notation. In my performance analysis I also highlighted several techniques both from my guitar days and Indian music which could be applicable to Irish melody.
14 Martin Hayes (fiddle) and Dennis Cahill (guitar) are perhaps Irish traditional music’s most successful and recognisable duets. Their music while drawing on Irish melody, does take some inspiration from the aesthetics of Indian music, particularly the development of a temporal and dynamic arc. See Hayes, M., & Cahill, D. (1999). Live in Seattle. Green Linnet. Ironically, while Martin and Dennis are often presented as icons of Irish traditional music, there musical approach is a unique combination of aesthetics drawn from outside influences including western classical music, jazz and minimalism.
15 Thomas Bartleet (aka Doveman) is a pianist from New York who has traversed multiple genres within and around the pop world. He is an integral part of sound of The Gloaming an extremely successful so called ‘super-group’ featuring Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill, sean-nos singer Iarla O’ Lionard and fiddler Caomhin O’ Raghlaigh. Utsav Lal is a young virtuosic Indian pianist who performs Indian Classical music, jazz and Irish traditional music. He was based in Dublin for a number of years and also has toured India performing Indian Classical music and with an Irish-Indian fusion project entitled, Rags to Reels. He is currently releasing the world’s first album on the fluid piano, an instrument which allows microtonal tuning.
16 George Harrison is often cited as the main exponent of Indian music and culture to the West during the so called “sitar explosion” of the 1960’s. Harrison was a student of sitar with Ravi Shankar and utilised the instrument and basic principles of Indian music in Beatles records. For more thorough discussion see Farrel (1997: 168-200).
17 The instrument, which is something of a mongrel itself, combines guitar machine head tuning pegs, a bent neck like a medieval lute and a traditional sarode set up (albeit missing four strings and in the key of D), is designed and made for specifically for playing Irish music.
18 Namely the covering of the instrument with a special cloth, cleaning preparations, breathing techniques, private mantras recited before playing and sitting cross legged on the floor.
19 Other musicians who come to mind in regards to hybrid instrumentation, particular in the world of the sarode, are London based Soumik Datta and Canadian Edward Powell. Soumik in particular has engaged with his own hybrid self-narrative and developed a theatre show which recounts his experiences growing up in the UK and being exposed to western rock while also maintaining a connection with traditional Indian music culture.
20 Performances using Indian compositions and Indian rhythmic cycles, particularly the accompaniment of mridangam and table, caused the biggest difficulties in collaborations. Likewise, the Indian percussionists found it difficult to recognize the division and ‘groove’ of the melodies from the Irish tradition, especially so with jigs. However, the tour was a relative success considering these difficulties. For more information see (Noone 2015).
21 Beyond musical practices, which I would argue are in themselves are an embodied knowledge, I engage with meditation practices from Zen Buddhism and the Bhakti tradition of India and also basic Alexander technique.
