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Exoticizing Discoveries and Extraordinary Experiences:

'Traditional' music, modernity, and nostalgia in Malta
and other Mediterranean societies

Exoticizing Discoveries and Extraordinary Experiences

Exoticisation of traditional festivals and of indigenous music through ordinariness has occurred in Latin America (such as Brazil) and in other parts of the Mediterranean (such as Greece and Spain), and it is worthwhile to pursue some comparisons. In Brazil the exoticisation of the Rio carnival and its harnessing to tourism had already emerged by the 1930s (Taylor, 1982:302). The Rio carnival now provides a terrain of symbols and their articulation over which different segments of their society contest statements and claims about their identity and of brasilidade. In Brazil the upper and middle classes have got actively involved in the transformation of the carnival from a popular grassroots celebration where the samba was an expressive and lived dance, to one where the carnival is a more spectacular carnavalesco - choreographed media-driven display in which individuals pay to be seen. This has generated great opposition. Taylor links this with the important contemporary role of the media in increasingly determining the form of the displays, and class contestation and elite legitimation: 'carnival forms part of an appeal made by the Brazilian rulers to the populace for their support of economic and military elites.......They make this appeal...by invoking legitimation from subordinated groups, the "people"' (1982: 310). Yet as he notes: '"the people", with varying degrees of consciousness, also manipulate the stereotypes about themselves in order to gain access to resources controlled by socially and politically dominant groups' (1982:310). The Rio carnival appears to be vibrant enough to (a) provide a mass of people who can be sponsored by, and then support, coalitions of politicians and other authorities in their political strategies, (b) it is a cultural spectacle by means of which dominant elites can claim to be contributing to community life and thus appeal to the 'popular classes' for legitimation and support through the vehicle of populism, (c) it provides a culturally acceptable framework whereby socially mobile individuals can express and pursue their strategies for social advancement, and (d) it provides a set of symbols over which different class fractions and groups can contest their cultural identities. And finally (e) it is a metaphor for decline, regeneration, authenticity and identity. Through it 'the Brazilians have poured their energies into discussion of the demise of the pure carnival for at least half a century' (ibid: 310-11).

By contrast some aspects of 'traditional music' in Greece were not so much areas of contestation, but symbols of contestation, initially against authority. The revival of rebetika in Greece initiated during the Colonels' rule has been well documented (Beaton, 1980; Gauntlett, 1982; Vamvakaris, 1973). Cowan (1993) has outlined this evolution. Initially the discovery and release of old records, the search expanded to include Turkey and the US. This was followed by a period of scholarship on various forms of rebetika. As Gauntlett (1982) indicates, during this period rebetika became a generic term, standing for various forms of music. In effect rebetika as 'traditional music' was not just being rediscovered. It was being manufactured. The third stage, in the 1980s, was the opening of new clubs where a new, more artistic, form of rebetika was performed. These clubs were sneered at as kulturiarika which Cowan glosses as 'pretentious, artificial, self-consciously cultured' (ibid; 12) as they were oriented towards middle class youth known in Cyprus as voutiro pedia ("butter boys" ), rather than workers or peasants. These clubs, oriented to much the same audience as the Maltese Sunday paper supplement, celebrate the music as much as its discovery.(13) Similar attitudes were also found in Rio. Taylor differentiates between the sambistas (those who 'lived the carnival') and the sambeiros : 'someone who has come to the samba relatively late in life and usually from a social group different from the one which gave birth to the samba' (1982: 304). Indeed he notes: 'for some sambeiros ...fraternizing with members of other ethnic groups and social levels became a statement of radical chic' (ibid: 304).

Inevitably in Greece many intellectuals tried to distance themselves from the popularization of these musical forms whilst claiming that their search for authenticity encompassed the music of the lower classes. It appears that for many intellectuals the music of the lower classes should always be perceived as 'a weapon of the weak'.(14) Rather than criticising the emergence of these new musical forms from the perspective of (historical) authenticity, some intellectuals has attempted to create a more exotic type of music in the name of the popular classes:

'After the war rebetika had become a kind of French music with a bit of bouzouki thrown in. The plebs reacted with their own homely style which later defenders of the purity of the race called "Indianish", "Turkish-gypsy-ish" (tourko-guftiko) or just "gypsiness" (guftia) It's the opposite of archondorebetika ("posh" rebetika). Archondorebetika and elafrolaika ("light popular") is rebetika wearing a European hat, while yiftia is rebetika wearing an Eastern hat' (Dionysis Savvopoulos: 'The Revenge of Gypsiness'. Qouted in Cowan, ibid, 13)

There is much of interest here. The "plebs" (sic) are seen as the repository of 'genuine' music, but they have a more 'oriental' style. This is not something to be expunged (as with Arabesk in Turkey), but rather encouraged. The author ( a musician and intellectual) clearly favours a more oriental type of music represented by 'gypsiness'. It is the popular classes who appear keen to maintain their distinctiveness. One may ask whether this is not also partly a self-projection by intellectuals as the intermediaries and spokesmen of 'popular culture'. "Gypsiness" has long been a metaphor of extreme exoticization - not just in Greece, but also in Spain where Andalusian emphasis on the "Gitano" character of flamenco was used 'to symbolise the substantial cultural contrast between Andalusia and Madrid' (Washabaugh 1996: 81), as well as a vehicle expressing opposition to the Franco regime.(15) It represents a familiar exotic within, and a link with the east. Yet in Greece 'turko-gyspy' is also threatening because of its association with 'nomadism', the "lack of High Culture" and politismos. ('civilization'). In effect it suggests that the idiom of opposition by popular classes to the ruling groups that make up the state, their culture and music, is expressed by the adoption of music from outside the State's borders, and that the Nation State presides over a popular culture to which, and from which, it is alien. Authenticity is to be found not in the westernization of rebetika, but its exoticisazation through its orientalization. Clearly, whether the music was actually a transcription or elaboration of Gypsy music is highly debateable, especially when in such discourses its distictiveness is conjured as symbolising difference and exclusion. As Boissevain wryly notes for another context: 'concern for authenticity does not always extend to history' (1992: 11).

Compare this to the reaction of a professor from Athens university who laments the loss of a classical music formation:

'where, puzzled Prof. Androulakis, had all the young people, the students, the intellectuals, and indeed the smart set and the 'upper class' gone, whose attendance at the opera had been a feature of his own youth? The answer was that they had all gone over to a new 'unified totalising musicopoetic formation in which, higgledy-piggledy, Elytis (Nobel laureate poet) and tsifteteli (belly dancing), Seferis (Nobel laureate poet) and turkogypsy song have been muddled together, and this formation has spread and completely taken over Hellenic music'' (letter by N.K. Androulakis, Professor of Criminal Law, To Vima, 1991, quoted by R. Just, 1995: 304, n. 19)

It is hardly surprising traditional intellectuals react in this way. As guardians of high culture and tradition (paradosi), these are the men of learning and authority. Much like the Ulama in Islamic societies (Gilsenan, 1982), they are the guardians of the 'sacred texts' of society (the buildings, traditions, music, etc) that authenticate the cultural foundations of the state, its genealogy, and its claims to cultural exclusivity. They patrol the boundaries of the cultural to maintain purity against pollution: of language (through the introduction of new foreign words), of new musical themes, of building styles, etc, which represent 'danger' to society, like viruses to a nervous system (Taussig, 1992). This raises two questions: to what extent does this new 'unified totalising musicopoetic formation' represent a genuine challenge to the cultural bases of power within society, and why does this occur.

Such new forms of culture, the 'revitalisation' of rituals as Boissevain (1992) has called it, represent threats to the old bases of political legitimation. But they signify more the shifting bases of legitimation, rather than a serious challenge to the hegemony of power. The new forms of rebetika and new ways of perceiving għana (as well as its changes in presentation and content) are still based on cultural and political mediation, and a supporting body of scholarship. But the criteria have changed. The old system, like the traditional territorial state, was based on fixity, on a model of culture filtering down from the elite, and on the patrolling of boundaries to maintain integrity. The new form, which corresponds to contemporary political realities in Europe with its free movement of capital, people, and services, emphasises deterritoriality and movement - not just from outside traditional boundaries of politico-cultural units but within them. Indeed one can become a metaphor for another. The new form of 'revitalisation of rituals' expresses its play in the conscious manipulation and transgression of boundaries, as a means to explore new forms of the exotic in the midst of popular culture. Cowan suggests this when she notes that the kulturiarika caffes were 'cultural sites', which 'nonetheless manifested the manifestation of both performers and audience for two hitherto repressed aspects of Greek historical experience: the culture of the economic and social margin and that of the Orient' (1993:12-13). Indeed she notes that there has been a progressive breaking down of boundaries.'the plurality of musical approaches, which range from authentic reconstructions of forgotten traditions to a post-modern bricolage, is remarkable' (ibid: 15).