Born to sing: Fiji's "singing culture" and implications for music education in Canada

McGill Journal of Education, Fall 2001 by Joan Russell

The inquiry asks a number of questions: What are Fijians' singing practices? What role does singing play in social life? How is singing woven into the fabric of social life? What values do Fijians express through their singing? What are the social contexts of their singing practices? How do individuals learn to become singers? How do these practices relate to Fijian social structures? Could answers to any of these questions be relevant to music educators in western institutions?

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Two conceptual perspectives frame this inquiry. The first is a semiotic concept of culture (Geertz, 1973; Geertz, 1983; Geertz, 1995). In Geertz's view, humans are cultural beings and culture is a context within which symbols, or systems of construable signs can be intelligibly and "thickly described" (Ryle, 1949). Geertz states that culture denotes an "historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life" (1973, p. 89). In the present inquiry the construable signs that I examine are the singing practices of the Fijians with whom I had contact during my two visits. Singing behaviours are understood as strands in a "web of (musical) significance" that humans create and in which they are suspended (Geertz, 1973).

The second conceptual perspective is derived from Blacking's (1995) assertion that if organized sounds (i.e., musical sounds) are to affect people's musical actions they must first "acquire certain habits of assimilating sensory experience" (p. 174). The concept of assimilating sensory experience is relevant to this inquiry because it suggests that music learning, specifically the development of musical skills, is a culturally-embedded social process (Campbell, 1998; Jorgensen, 1997; Russell, 1997; Veblen, 1996). Just as children assimilate the idioms and logic of language through participation, children similarly assimilate the idioms and the logic of a musical language. In this paper Fijian singing practices are conceptualized as behaviours that express and embody Fijian values. These behaviours are social acts, construable signs that are symbols of deeply held beliefs and values that can be intelligibly and thickly described in the context of historically-transmitted, culturally-specific patterns, and structural regularities of Fijian social life. These surface behaviours are interpreted as manifestations of Fijian beliefs and values. Several communities on Viti Levu and Vatulele that share musical practices are treated as a cultural entity. A deeper inquiry would no doubt reveal differences within communities and within families. However the focus here is on singing, which, at the level of surface behaviours, consists of some general patterns.

METHODOLOGY

The epistemological foundation for the methodological approach embraces perspectives from educational anthropology (Heath, 1983) (Spindler & Spindler, 1992) (Wolcott, 1975; Wolcott, 1992); qualitative research in education in the arts (Bresler, 1998) (Campbell, 1998) (Jorgensen, 1997) (Stake, Bresler, & Mabry, 1991); and ethnomusicology (Campbell, 1998; Rice, 1996; Veblen, 1996).