John Baily

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John Baily (* 1943 in Glastonbury , England ) is a British ethnomusicologist who specializes in the music of Afghanistan .

Professional background

Baily studied psychology and physiology at Oxford University from 1962 to 1965 . In 1970 he obtained a doctorate in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex with a thesis on spatial orientation and human sensorimotor control. In 1973 he began his long-standing collaboration with the ethnomusicologist John Blacking on a post-doctoral research fellowship at Queen's University of Belfast . His subject now was the relationship between body movement and musical structure. In 1978 he became a lecturer in ethnomusicology at Queen's University.

From 1988 to 1990 Baily was Associate Professor at the Center for Ethnomusicology at Columbia University , New York. In 1990 he went to Goldsmiths College at the University of London, where he is now a professor emeritus.

Research on Afghan Music

1973 Baily went to the western Afghan city of Herat for the first time for a year with the aim of researching the most recent changes in the form and playing style of the eastern Iranian long-necked lute dutar . This originally two-stringed instrument was expanded to 14 strings in the middle of the 20th century. The sound reinforcement by sympathetic strings brought about a change in performance practice and social structures, with urban professional musicians now using the dutar instead of amateurs in the countryside. As part of his research program, he learned to play the two-string long-necked lute dutar and the Afghan national instrument rubāb .

In 1975 Baily researched a second time with his wife Veronica Doubleday in Herat, this time with a broader framework that encompassed the music and the associated social fabric in the city. In parallel to his work with the male musicians, Doubleday had access to the family and professional female music sector, which would otherwise have remained closed to him. She learned to play Afghan singing and the frame drum dāireh and performed in a band at weddings. Part of Baily's work extended to the Kabul music scene , which consisted of several hundred members of traditional families of musicians and also popular musicians who had grown up around Radio Afghanistan. The radio station had been at the center of musical activities since the early 1950s and offered Baily illustrative material for the transition from amateur musicians to professional life. Baily and his wife left Afghanistan in 1977, and a year later mass emigration to Iran and Pakistan began under the communist regime. With the invasion of Soviet troops in 1979, the country was practically inaccessible.

Back in England, Baily summarized his research in the work Music of Afghanistan: Professional Musicians in the City of Herat (1988). He graduated from the UK's National Film and Television School with a degree in documentary filmmaking. He came to Peshawar for three months in 1985 . Baily's first engagement with Afghan musicians in exile is documented in the 1985 film Amir: An Afghan refugee musician's live in Peshawar . He met the musicians in the refugee camps outside the city, where the mullahs had set up a strictly religious regime, which forbade any music-making or listening to music. Musicians therefore met in a bazaar area in the old town. The film about the professional musician Amir from Herat describes his musical adaptation as an accompanist to a band and generalizes the social situation in exile.

In 1994, when a coalition of mujahideen under President Rabbani took power in the country, Baily returned to Herat for two months. Reconstruction was pushed ahead under the local commandant, but public musical life was made impossible by restrictions. Musicians were only allowed to perform religious songs without electrical amplification, and only in private houses. (Music was completely banned under the Taliban rule.) After this experience, Baily began to be interested in the identity-creating effects and therapeutic function of music in the Afghan communities in exile.

With a short stay in 1997 in Peshawar, the collecting basin of the Kabul music scene, he wanted to explore the different perceptions of music in different cultures with the refugees using the example of Afghan songs that revolve around the singing of birds. In Herat, some musicians brought birds in cages to concerts. Their voices should be stimulated by the music in the idea that the better the music, the stronger the birds would react to it. The nightingale is the most valued bird in Afghanistan: gol o bolbol, "rose and nightingale" - music awakens the birdsong. It goes so far as to understand bird song as a form of dhikr , ritual music with which Sufis approach God. Baily got the musicians in Peschawar to interact with the play, instead of the chirping of birds, with Olivier Messiaen's piece , Le Loriot, played from the tape , in which bird songs were musically transposed.

He then carried out further field research on Afghan musicians in exile. In 1998 and 2002 Baily was in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashad , where musicians from Herat in particular had fled, mostly in wedding bands. Baily followed the exiles to New York and stayed in Fremont , California for six weeks in 2000 . The stars from the radio had found their way to the United States.

After the end of the Taliban regime in 2002, Baily was in Kabul a few times to set up a music school in Central Asia on behalf of the Aga Khan Music Initiative . In Freemont, some musicians had developed western elements for their music. The extent to which returning musicians with a new east-western identity exert an influence on the music of Kabul is another topic. In 2006 he received financial support from an English migration research program to investigate the Afghan music scene in London and the rather large Afghan colony in Hamburg.

His archives in Brighton hold numerous rare audio and film documents from 35 years of field research on Afghan music.

Baily has also made a name for himself as a rubāb and dutar player and has played with the most famous Afghan musicians in concerts and for music recordings. He and Veronica Doubleday played on a tour with the California-based Afghan dutar and rubab player Aziz Herawi. Both organize joint concert concerts around the world, and in spring 2009 they were looking for Afghan musicians in Australia.

Publications (selection)

Independent works
Articles in magazines
  • with George Singer: Behavioral compensation through false information feedback and transformed visual input. Australian Journal of Psychology, 19, 1967, pp. 49-53
  • with John Blacking: Research on the Herati Dutâr. Current Anthropology , 19, 1978, pp. 610-611
  • with John Blacking: Professional and amateur musicians in Afghanistan. World of Music, 21 (2) 1979, pp. 46-64
  • with John Blacking: A description of the naqqarakhana of Herat. Asian Music, 11 (2) 1980, pp. 1-10
  • A system of modes used in the urban music of Afghanistan. Ethnomusicology, XXV (1) 1981, pp. 46-64
  • with John Blacking: Amin-e Diwaneh: The musician as madman. Popular Music, 7 (2) 1988, pp. 131-146
  • with John Blacking: Anthropological and psychological approaches to the study of music theory and musical cognition. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 20, 1988, pp. 114-124
  • Principles of Rhythmic Improvisation for the Afghan Rubâb. International Council for Traditional Music UK Chapter Bulletin, 1989, pp. 3-16
  • Film making as musical ethnography. World of Music, 1989
  • Cross-cultural perspectives in popular music: The case of Afghanistan. Popular Music, 1, 1989, pp. 105-122
  • Principles of Rhythmic Improvisation for the Afghan Rubâb. International Council for Traditional Music. UK Chapter Bulletin, 1989 pp. 3-16
  • with Peter Driver: Spatio-Motor Thinking in Playing Folk Blues Guitar. World of Music 34/3, 1992, pp. 57-71
  • with Peter Driver: The Role of Music in Three British Muslim communities. Diaspora, 4 (1) 1995, pp. 77-87
  • Using Tests of Sound Perception in Fieldwork. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 28, 1996, pp. 147-173
  • Afghan Perceptions of Birdsong. The world of music 39/2, 1997, pp. 51-59.
  • The naghma-ye kashâl of Afghanistan. British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 6, 1997, pp. 117-163
  • Music and refugee lives: Afghans in eastern Iran and California. Culture in Exile, No. 6, December 1999, pp. 10–12 (PDF file; 266 kB)
  • with Michael Collyer: Bring Back the Rubab. Afghanistan Reflections, 1: 12-15, 2000
  • Music and Refugee Lives: Afghans in Eastern Iran and California. Forced Migration Review, 6, 2000, pp. 10-13
  • Ethnomusicological Research in Afghanistan: Past, Present, and Future. IIAS Newsletter 27, 2002 (PDF file; 105 kB)
  • John Blacking. Dialogue with the ancestors. European Seminar in Ethnomusicology, Geneva 1991
  • So Near, So Far: Kabul's Music in Exile. Ethnomusicology Forum 14 (2) 2005, pp. 213-233
  • The circulation of “New Music” between Afghanistan and its transnational community. Conference on Music in the World of Islam, Assilah, 8. – 13. August 2007 (PDF file; 628 kB)
  • Two Different Worlds: Afghan music for "Afghanistanis" and "Kharejis". Ethnomusicology Forum 19 (1), June 2010, pp. 69-88
Contributions to edited volumes
  • Movement Patterns in Playing the Herati Dutar. In: John Blacking (Ed.): The Anthropology of the Body. Association of Social Anthropologists Monograph, 15, Academic Press, London 1977, pp. 275-330
  • Music Structure and Human Movement. In: Peter Howell, Ian Cross, and R. West (Eds.): Musical Structure and Cognition. Academic Press, London: 1985. ISBN 2-85297-203-4 .
  • Anthropological and Psychological Approaches to the Study of Music Theory and Musical Cognition. Yearbook for Traditional Music 20, 1988, pp. 14-124.
  • Traditional music in the Muslim communities: Qawwali in Bradford. In: Paul Oliver (Ed.): Black Music in Britain. Open University Press, Milton Keynes 1990, pp. 156-169. ISBN 0-335-15297-X
  • Musical change in Herat in the twentieth century. In: Shirin Akiner (Ed.): Cultural Change and Continuity in Central Asia. Kegan Paul International, London 1991, pp. 258-269. ISBN 0-7103-0351-3
  • Music Performance, Motor Structure, and Cognitive Models. In: Max Peter Baumann , Artur Simon , Ulrich Wegner (Eds.): European Studies in Ethnomusicology: Historical Developments and Recent Trends. Intercultural Music Studies, Florian Noetzel Verlag, Wilhelmshaven 1992, pp. 142–158
  • Maqâms, dastgâhs and râgs in Western Afghanistan. In: Jürgen Elsner, Gisa Jahnichen (Ed.): Proceedings of the Second Conference of Study Group Maqâm. Berlin 1992, pp. 51-74
  • Learning to Perform as a Research Technique in Ethnomusicology. In: Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller, Uwe Pätzold, Chung Kyo-chul (eds.): Lux Oriente: Encounters of cultures in music research. Cologne contributions to music research, Gustav Bosse Verlag, Cologne 1994, pp. 331–348
  • Afghanistan. In: Ludwig Finscher (ed.): The music in history and present , subject volume 1, 2nd ed. 1994, columns 45–47
  • The role of music in the creation of an Afghan national identity, 1923-1973. In: Martin Stokes (Ed.): Music, ethnicity and identity: The musical construction of place. Berg, Oxford 1994, pp. 45-60
  • Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology. In: Kyo-Chul Chung and Uwe Pätzold (eds.): Lux Oriente - Encounters of Cultures in Scientific Musical Research. A feschrift for Robert Günther. University of Cologne, Cologne 1994, pp. 331–347 ISBN 3-7649-2620-1
  • with Veronica Doubleday: Patterns of Musical Development among Children in Afghanistan. In: Elizabeth Warnock (Ed.): Children in the Muslim Middle East Today. Texas University Press, Austin 1995, pp. 431-446
  • Music and the Body. In: John Baily (Ed.): Working with Blacking: The Belfast Years. Special edition of: The world of music, Vol. 37, Florian Noetzel Verlag, Berlin 1995, pp. 11–30
  • with Veronica Doubleday: Music and the State. In: Alison Arnold (Ed.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Vol. 5: South Asia. The Indian Subcontinent. Garland, New York 2000, pp. 804-811 ISBN 978-0-8240-4946-1 / Western Afghanistan. Ibid. Pp. 817-824
  • with Nabi Misdaq: Southeastern Afghanistan. In: Alison Arnold (Ed.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Vol. 5: South Asia. The Indian Subcontinent. Garland, New York 2000, pp. 833-841
  • Music censorship in Afghanistan before and after the Taliban. In: Marie Korpe (Ed.): Shoot the singer! Music censorship today. Zed Books, London 2004, pp. 19-28, ISBN 978-1-84277-505-9 .
  • John Blacking and the “Human / Musical Instrument Interface”: Two Plucked Lutes from Afghanistan. In: Suzel Ana Reily: The Musical Human: Rethinking John Blacking's Ethnomusicology In The Twenty-first Century. Ashgate, Farnham (UK) 2006
  • Ethnomusicology, intermusability, and performance practice. In Henry Stobart (Ed.): The New (Ethno) musicologies. Scarecrow Press, Chicago 2008, pp. 117-134
  • The Circulation of Music Between Afghanistan and the Afghan Diaspora. In: Ceri Oeppen, Angela Schlenkoff (eds.): Beyond the "Wild Tribes": Understanding modern Afghanistan and its Diaspora. Hurst, London 2010, pp. 157-171
Filmography
  • Amir: An Afghan Refugee Musician's Life in Peshawar, Pakistan. 16 mm film, 52 min. Royal Anthropological Institute, London 1985 Film Guide for Amir. (PDF; 193 kB) Documentary Educational Resources
  • Lessons from Gulam: Asian Music in Bradford. 1986, 16 mm film, 52 min.
  • A Kabul Music Diary. 2003, DVD from Goldsmiths, 55 min.
  • Tablas and Drum Machines: Afghan music in California . 2005 video, 58 min.
  • Scenes of Afghan Music. London, Kabul, Hamburg, Dublin. 2007, DVD from Goldsmiths, 97 min.
Discography
  • Aziz Herawi, Siar Ahmad Hazeq, Omar Herawi, Veronica Doubleday and John Baily: Memories Of Heart: Instrumental Music Of Afghanistan. 1996. Latitudes CD
  • John Baily (Rubab), Ustad Mohammad Asif Mahmood Chishti (Tabla), John Harrelson (Tanpura): From Cabool to California. John Baily and Ustad Asif. Recorded in California in 2000. Bolbol CD 01.
  • Ensemble Bakhtar: Music from Afghanistan. Concert at Theatro Massimo, Palermo, February 22nd, 2002. (John Baily: Bandleader, Rubab and Dutar) FTM004
  • Ensemble Bakhtar: The Light Garden. Music by Sadie Harrison: performances of traditional Afghan songs and instrumental music. 2003. Metier MSV CD 92084
  • Abdul Wahab Madadi (vocals), Veronica Doubleday (vocals and frame drum daireh), John Baily (2-, 3- and 14-string dutar): Sweet Nomad Girl. Folk Music from Afghanistan. 2005. MetierWorld MW 360-01.
  • John Baily (Rubab): Rag Bhupali. Music for the film Son of a Lion by Benjamin Gilmour, 2008

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Baily: Music Studies and Cultural Difference. Investigating inter-cultural music perception: Messiaen's "Le Loriot" and Afghan reception of birdsong. Goldsmiths College 1997
  2. ^ Baily: Past, Present, and Future, 2002
  3. ^ Concert. From Rubab to Sarod: An Evening of Afghan and South Asian Music. University of Alberta, February 10, 2009  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca  
  4. ^ Both Sides of the Curtain: Discovering the Music of Afghanistan. (PDF; 46 kB) Australian Institute of International Affairs, Melbourne, March 25, 2009
  5. ↑ Lisa Dib: Dr. John Baily - ethnomusicologist extraordinaire. The Dwarf, April 6, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Baily, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English ethnomusicologist
DATE OF BIRTH 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Glastonbury , England