chapter 2

🌍 Overview

This chapter explores how music is shaped by its setting—the physical, social, and cultural contexts in which it is created, performed, and experienced.

• Focuses on how local traditions, environments, and social functions give meaning to music.

🎶 Key Concepts

1. Setting

   • Defined as the time, place, and social situation where music happens.
   • Includes physical spaces (like homes, churches, streets), cultural contexts, and social purposes of music.
   • Emphasizes the dynamic relationship between music and its environment.

2. Soundscape

   • A term used to describe the characteristic sounds of a particular place.
   • Example: The daily sounds in a Balinese village vs. New York City.
   • Encourages listening beyond music to understand its surrounding acoustic ecology.

3. Music and Function

   • Music serves different purposes: ritual, entertainment, storytelling, identity, etc.
   • The same piece can function differently in varied settings (e.g., religious vs. concert use).

4. Insider vs. Outsider Perspectives

   • Highlights the importance of understanding music from within the culture (emic view) and comparing it from outside (etic view).
   • Raises questions about cultural appropriation, authenticity, and respect in studying world musics.

📍 Case Studies / Examples

• Ewe drumming (Ghana): Performed in social and religious ceremonies—music is deeply tied to community identity and ancestral reverence.
• Balinese gamelan: Played in temples and village ceremonies—tied to ritual and cosmology.
• Blues in the Mississippi Delta: Reflects social history, regional identity, and personal storytelling.