(A paper I wrote for 20220822133808-uncsa.Library-research-class-info)

Musical Knowledge as a Way of Accessing Enchantment

The teaching and transmission of music is fundamentally a continuation and holding fast of tradition, and the American and European institutions dedicated to that continuation are aptly named; the term "conservatories" implies the existence of a thing that can be considered scarce, or otherwise run out, and thus need to be "conserved."

At the same time, however, there are educators and other members of academic institutions that take a more expansive approach; instead of "conserving" a particular tradition or style, what would we gain from incorporating other worldviews? This sort of thinking is "trendy" in academia in the year 2022; ask any undergraduate student in a music program if they think their education would be better served by including more broad subjects and histories, and odds are they would agree.

This tension can also be expressed as a desire for self understanding:

"Western interest in the anthropology and visual history of non-Western cultures stems partly from the usefulness of insights gained about Self through knowledge of the Other, a strategy toward self-knowledge that could potentially function as a two-way highway [@capistrano-bakerWhitherArtHistory2015]."

However, this is hardly a "new" phenomenon, and educators of all stripes, not just in music, have been trying to come to grips with what has been described as a "green wave," the post-modern, pluralist, globalist, diverse, and inclusive world that author Ken Wilbur identifies as having begun in the 1970s and still continues today [@wilberTrumpPostTruthWorld2017].

Indeed, in the words of Steven Cornelius, who has served as a professor of music at such schools as Boston University and Bowling Green State University,

… Music in the post-modern world has come to reflect and inform new levels of global awareness and cross-cultural experience
…
If we are to keep abreast with the ever-changing, social and political conditions of today's musical world, we must continually re-examine our goals and responsibilities as music makers, and music educators [@corneliusIssuesRegardingTeaching1995].

In other words, he is saying that music as a whole is changing, even in places where we might not expect it. He identifies "the postmodern world" as a driving force of this change; essentially, the change is coming from the inside of the institution of music and music instruction itself, and is pushing outwards. He illustrates this by way of example with his study of Santeria.

Professor Cornelius is an expert on the music of Santeria. An educator and performer, Cornelius discusses the power, history, and cultural relevance of Santeria in music today as well as historically. As described by him, Santeria is a spiritual tradition from Cuba that syncretized aspects of Roman Catholicism with "Kardacen spiritism", with its roots in the Yoruba people of West Africa.^[1]

Notably, Santeria is characterized by its place as a worldview that permeates many aspects of believers' lives; it is not merely musical or relational, but rather belief system that is encompassing.

In many ways it typifies what Charles Taylor would describe as the distinction between the "porous self" compared to the modern "buffered self"

It is a mainstay of secularization theory that modernity "disenchants" the world – evacuated of spirits and various ghosts in the machine…. Generally, disenchantment is taken to simply be a matter of naturalization: the magical "spiritual" world is dissolved, and we are left with the machinations of matter … In this pre-modern, enchanted universe, it was also assumed that power resided in things which is precisely why things like relics or the Host^[2] could be invested with spiritual power. … Prior to this disenchantment… the human agent was seen as porous… and just as things are intermixed with mind and meaning, so the pre-modern self's porosity means the self is essentially vulnerable [@smithHowNotBe2014].

Cornelius understands this concept and flat out says as much:

Throughout the paper a central tenet, sometimes explicit but always implicit, is the concept in Santeria that performance of this music constitutes the application of social and spiritual power. Practitioners believe that the music itself—no matter what the context—is capable of both representing and invoking the orishas;^[3] even experienced musicians cannot always control such potential.

This comparison illustrates how for practitioners of Santeria, and in particular, the performers of the sacred music therein, one is provided with an opportunity to contact an entirely different method of experiencing both the act of making music as well as their own internal experience of themselves. Much has been written about the emotive power of music, and in fact the Western canon owes a great debt to the spiritual lives of composers and performers; however, the "disenchantment" Taylor references has become the de facto starting point of modern musical education as well. Through his study of Santeria, Cornelius and his students have discovered a way to connect with that enchantment in a disenchanted world, and the type of educational, artistic, and more importantly personal value that provides is difficult to measure, but almost undeniably apparent.