Week 1: Bomba

Title of piece: Bomba
Performer(s): Raul and Freddy Ayala
Culture or Origin: Puerto Rican Folksong
Orchestration: Two drummers

Audio: http://www.folkways.si.edu/TrackDetails.aspx?itemid=14426
Liner Notes: http://media.smithsonianfolkways.org/liner_notes/folkways/FW04412.pdf

The study of ethnomusicology has unique qualities that require careful understanding and a very open musical mind. After reading through the assigned reading material this week, I found that some of the issues that ethnomusicologists reveal as biases toward listening to and teaching music outside our Western music framework. In the article, Music as Culture: Toward a Multicultural Concept of Arts Education, written by Author David J. Elliott, I identified a truth about my own teaching that will shape my learning during the study of ethnomusicology this term, specifically with regard to appropriate pedagogy. Elliott writes, “ ...to encourage an understanding of the meaning and use of a culture (macroculture or microculture) one must look deeply to the network of concepts, beliefs, and action systems from which the expressive products of a culture spring and by means of which they are perceived and interpreted.” (p. 150) In order to get a jump start on the curriculum project at the end of this term, I looked for music that is of the Western Carribean cultures, including Puerto Rico. With this concept in mind, I found that after listening to several different tracks from the album, Folk Songs of Puerto Rico, the tune “Bomba” piqued my interest. While there is a distinct correlation to the African drumming track from Ghana, on our listening list this week, specifically a lead and accompaniment feel, the two are distinctly different. Further study of the liner notes of the original album reveal that “Bomba” is not a specific song, rather a style of drumming with, “two drummers, one playing the accompanimiento, and the lead drummer playing the repique, or improvisation.” (p. 8) The liner notes discuss the fiesta that a “bomba” would be played for, the historical perspective leading to the beginning of the celebration, and even how the drums are constructed. With regard to pedagogy, all of this information is critical to provide the most authentic, or universalist perspective on this “foreign” music. My own perspectives and lack of understanding must give way to allow my students the opportunity to be presented music of other cultures, to help define their own cultural identity in a global context. As Riemer writes in Chapter 6 of The Contextual Dimension of Musical Experience, "we must struggle to learn foreign music and cultures, while understanding that there are no foreign cultures and exotic music.” (p. 188) I look forward to the expansion of my cultural understanding as the term progresses.