John Blacking
Biographic Data
| ID | 86300 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Blacking |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Blacking |
| SIGNATURE | BLACKING J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 69 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 386 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 68 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1953 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Por uma Antropologia do corpo
Este artigo é uma tradução de "Towards an Anthropology of the Body", de John Blacking, originalmente publicado em 1977. Blacking argumenta pela necessidade de uma antropologia do corpo que vá além das abordagens puramente biológicas ou funcionalistas. Ele defende que o corpo humano é moldado pela cultura e pela experiência, e que as expressões corporais, como a dança e a música, são formas fundamentais de comunicação e construção social. O autor …
Qué tan musical es el hombre
Performing Arts
Música, cultura e experiência
A "musica" e um sistema modelar primario do pensamento humano e uma parte da infra- estrutura da vida humana. O fazer "musical" e um tipo especial de acao social que pode ter importantes consequencias para outros tipos de acao social. A musica nao e apenas reflexiva, mas tambem gerativa, tanto como sistema cul- tural quanto como capacidade humana. Uma importante tarefa da musicologia e descobrir como as pessoas produzem sentido da "musi- ca", num…
South Africa, Republic of
Music, Culture and Experience
Music, Culture, and Experience
One of the most important ethnomusicologists of the century, John Blacking is known for his interest in the relationship of music to biology, psychology, dance and politics. He attempted to document the ways in which music-making expresses the human condition, how it transcends social divisions and how it can be used to improve the quality of human life. This volume brings together eight of Blacking's most important theoretical papers which revea…
Dancing
A Common-Sense View of All Music
John Blacking
For the Venda people of Southern Africa, and for many other African peoples, musical communication in general, and the particular bodily experiences that could be generated by polyphonic performance, were linked to other experiences and ideas. Music can be profoundly moving by means of the resonance that people can establish between the tone-stress and ideal motion of music and the nervous tension and motor impulse of their bodies. But no music h…
Obituary
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Challenging the Myth of 'Ethnic' Music
L'appellation musique « ethnique » est generalement justifiee par le fait de l'anonymat du compositeur (contrairement a la musique « occidentale », mais qu'en est-il quand il existe un compositeur identifie, comme Ida Sakala d'un clan Ngoma, Zambie occidentale)? Analyse de quelques-unes de ses creations (chants de travail pour broyer les grains, un chant de tristesse)
La Collection universelle de musique populaire enregistree, editee par Constantin Brailoiu (1951-1958)
A Commonsense View of All Music. Reflections on Percy Grainger's Contribution to Ethnomusicology and Music Education
Development studies and the reinvention of tradition
Coda
To Dance Is Human
The Context of Venda Possession Music
Miraculous Voices
Ritual sounds produced by the secret men's cult of the Ilahita Arapesh (East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea) evoke feelings which, even to the operators, are mysterious in perceptual origin and therefore iconically apposite to, and validating of, the mysterious "spirit voices" these sounds are claimed literally to be. This paper examines the proposition that certain sounds affect the central nervous system in a manner that arouses feelings of t…
Movement and Meaning
Although is a social fact, I assume that it is derived from species-specific capacities, and that it is therefore part of the human constitution and a basic force in social life, and not merely the consequence of human invention at some particular time and place (Blacking, 1976). Its evolutionary importance as a mode of communication is borne out by the fact that it has not been superseded by verbal language, although clearly verbal language is g…
The Performing Arts
The Structure of Musical Discourse
Themes and Trends in the Study of Black Religion in Southern Africa
Proposal for the establishment of a programme of Middle Eastern music studies
Making artistic popular music
There is good evidence that for over ninety-nine per cent of human history, and for ninety-seven per cent of the time since the emergence of our own species (homo sapiens sapiens) approximately 70,000 years ago, all music was popular, in so far as it was shared and enjoyed by all members of a society. If there were distinctions of style within a society's music, they were accepted as sings of functional or social differentiation rather than as ba…
The Mission of Metaphor in Expressive Culture [and Comments and Reply]
The reappearance of the metaphor concept in ethnologic inquiry suggests the need for a clearer trope-ology than we now possess. Metaphor (and metonym) is defined here as the predication of a sign-image upon any of the set of inchoate pronouns-the essential social subjects. The study of metaphor is the study of the way these subjects take objects unto themselves or are assigned them-the way that, in the parlance of G. H. Mead, they "take the other…
How Musical Is Man
Humanly Organized Sound Music in Society and Culture Culture and Society in Music Soundly Organized Humanity
Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of Venda girls' initiation schools
Music, Culture, and Experience
One of the most important ethnomusicologists of the century, John Blacking is known for his interest in the relationship of music to biology, psychology, dance and politics. He attempted to document the ways in which music-making expresses the human condition, how it transcends social divisions and how it can be used to improve the quality of human life. This volume brings together eight of Blacking's most important theoretical papers which revea…
Miraculous Voices
Ritual sounds produced by the secret men's cult of the Ilahita Arapesh (East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea) evoke feelings which, even to the operators, are mysterious in perceptual origin and therefore iconically apposite to, and validating of, the mysterious "spirit voices" these sounds are claimed literally to be. This paper examines the proposition that certain sounds affect the central nervous system in a manner that arouses feelings of t…
Venda Children's Songs. A Study in Ethnomusicological Analysis
Music, Culture and Experience
How Musical is Man
This article explores the universality of musicality in humans, questioning the very definition of music and its perceived boundaries. Higgins and Blacking argue against ethnocentric views of music, emphasizing the importance of understanding music within its specific cultural context. They challenge the notion of a universal musical language and instead propose that musicality is a human capacity shaped by diverse social and cultural factors. Th…
Música, cultura e experiência
A "musica" e um sistema modelar primario do pensamento humano e uma parte da infra- estrutura da vida humana. O fazer "musical" e um tipo especial de acao social que pode ter importantes consequencias para outros tipos de acao social. A musica nao e apenas reflexiva, mas tambem gerativa, tanto como sistema cul- tural quanto como capacidade humana. Uma importante tarefa da musicologia e descobrir como as pessoas produzem sentido da "musi- ca", num…
The Evolutionary Theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer [and Comments and Replies]
In this paper certain crucial differences between the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer are explored. Particular attention is given to the Lamarckian basis of Spencer's evolutionary doctrine
Fictitious Kinship Amongst Girls of the Venda of the Northern Transvaal
Deep and Surface Structures in Venda Music
The central issue in musical theory is the problem of description. Neither musicologists nor ethnomusicologists have yet devised a system of analysis which is sufficiently powerful to explain what we can know intuitively as a result of experience in culture, namely, the essential differences between the music of Haydn and Mozart, or of the Flathead and the Sioux Indians
Tonal Organization in the Music of Two Venda Initiation Schools
As a working hypothesis, it has been assumed that Venda music is systematic and logically organized, but not necessarily like any other musical system. Some sound patterns may superficially resemble those of other music and could therefore be compared with them; but if similar sounds are found to be the product of different processes, comparison is invalid and misleading. It is for this reason that I have argued elsewhere that interval counts, we…
The social value of Venda riddles
SYNOPSIS Knowledge, understanding and magical power in Venda society: Venda riddles are used in the course of a competitive game for young people. They are educational chiefly because they may be an asset to fuller participation in Venda social life; they are not important as exercises of intellectual skill, and their contents do not appear to instruct or stimulate the imaginations of those who know them. Both riddle and answer are learnt as a li…
Social Borders
Discovery of cultural diversity was catalytic for the development of anthropology, and diversity has remained a justification for anthropology as a distinct way of studying man. Paradoxically, a new kind of diversity in the range of societies studied by anthropologists is now a severe challenge to established concepts and methods. Much of this new diversity results from an increase in the numbers and kinds of social differentiation anthropologist…
Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of Venda girls' initiation schools
1969). Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of Venda girls' initiation schools. African Studies: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 69-118
Verbal Associations in the Analysis of Subjective Culture [and Comments and Reply]
We present a method for comparative culture analysis which undertakes empirical assesment of "implicit" or "subjective" culture through culture-specific meanings and cognitive organization. Verbal association tasks are used to identify high-priority domains in a given culture, to select words representative of these domains, and to asses the culture-specific cognitive organization as defined by the cultural meaning of the words or domains and the…
John Blacking
For the Venda people of Southern Africa, and for many other African peoples, musical communication in general, and the particular bodily experiences that could be generated by polyphonic performance, were linked to other experiences and ideas. Music can be profoundly moving by means of the resonance that people can establish between the tone-stress and ideal motion of music and the nervous tension and motor impulse of their bodies. But no music h…
Rethinking Culture
Culture as a concept has not been fully examined by the profession for some time. This article is a challenge to carry out this examination. It begins by discussing problems in the use of the concept and then goes on to suggest a new way of looking at culture: as a cultural pool, analogous to the gene pool (both culture and genes being forms of storing and retrieving information), from which each individual, each dyad, each group draws its partic…
The Context of Venda Possession Music
Making artistic popular music
There is good evidence that for over ninety-nine per cent of human history, and for ninety-seven per cent of the time since the emergence of our own species (homo sapiens sapiens) approximately 70,000 years ago, all music was popular, in so far as it was shared and enjoyed by all members of a society. If there were distinctions of style within a society's music, they were accepted as sings of functional or social differentiation rather than as ba…
A Biofunctional Theory of Religion [and Comments and Reply]
Religion answers the basic question: What are the realities of the environment in which human existence is to be maintained? "Mythic" or "religious" thinking is a mode of understanding, a clarification of the environment. It is an explanatory apparatus which has evolved as a consequence of the evolution of the associational areas and their interconnections in the cortex of the human brain. Religious experience leads to a picture of the environmen…
Venda Children's Songs
This collection of essays and articles provides a detailed analysis of both the music and the cultural significance of children's songs among the Venda people of the northern Transvaal, South Africa. Among the various topics covered is the role of melody in generating rhythm, something that distinguishes this form of music from that of Venda adults as well as from other genres of African music in general. John Blacking (1928-1990) also wrote How …
Edward Simpson, alias ‘Flint Jack’. A Victorian Craftsman
The Victorians were great collectors. They fortified themselves by collecting other men's land and its products ; glorified themselves with collections of children, relations and pompous civic buildings ; and justified it all with a series of facts collected from the Family Bible, and from accounts of primitive men and Evolution. Their attitude to everything was captative ; and only in moments of extreme distraction were they oblative. Those who …
Por uma Antropologia do corpo
Este artigo é uma tradução de "Towards an Anthropology of the Body", de John Blacking, originalmente publicado em 1977. Blacking argumenta pela necessidade de uma antropologia do corpo que vá além das abordagens puramente biológicas ou funcionalistas. Ele defende que o corpo humano é moldado pela cultura e pela experiência, e que as expressões corporais, como a dança e a música, são formas fundamentais de comunicação e construção social. O autor …
Edward Simpson, alias ‘Flint Jack’. A Victorian Craftsman
The Victorians were great collectors. They fortified themselves by collecting other men's land and its products ; glorified themselves with collections of children, relations and pompous civic buildings ; and justified it all with a series of facts collected from the Family Bible, and from accounts of primitive men and Evolution. Their attitude to everything was captative ; and only in moments of extreme distraction were they oblative. Those who …
Some notes on a theory of African rhythm advanced by Erich von Hornbostel
In an article on African Music written in 1928, Hornbostel offered an explanation of certain features of African rhythms which may puzzle Western ears. Until Hornbostel’s theory has been hammered out and proved true or false—or perhaps true and false, according to its application in different parts of Africa—accurate research into African music is seriously impeded
Eight flute tunes from Butembo, east Belgian Congo
The eight tunes were recorded by Mr. Hugh Tracey on July 24th, 1952, at Butembo, near Lake Edward, North-East Belgian Congo. The performer was Katsuba Mwongolo, a Nande herdsman who roams the highlands on the eastern border of the Congo where the hills run alongside the great western rift opposite the Ruwenzori Mountains. Mwongolo plays the flute all day to his goats and has developed, so they say, a distinct style of his own
African Rhythm
Problems of pitch, pattern and harmony in the ocarina music of the Venda
This paper aims both to describe some features of Venda ocarina music and to relate these findings to a problem of method in ethno-musicology
Fictitious Kinship Amongst Girls of the Venda of the Northern Transvaal
The social value of Venda riddles
SYNOPSIS Knowledge, understanding and magical power in Venda society: Venda riddles are used in the course of a competitive game for young people. They are educational chiefly because they may be an asset to fuller participation in Venda social life; they are not important as exercises of intellectual skill, and their contents do not appear to instruct or stimulate the imaginations of those who know them. Both riddle and answer are learnt as a li…
Arts, Human Behavior and Africa
Obituary
Venda Music
Professor Julius Lewin
The Value of Music in Human Experience
In a Stimulating and comprehensive survey of some of the problems of ethnomusicology, Professor Mantle Hood distinguished three important aspects of our study of music: 1. The function of music as an aspect of the behaviour of man in society. 2. Characteristic musical style identified in its own terms and viewed in relation to its society. 3. The intrinsic value of individual pieces of music viewed in relation to the world of music
Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of Venda girls' initiation schools
1969). Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of Venda girls' initiation schools. African Studies: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 69-118
Venda Children's Songs
This collection of essays and articles provides a detailed analysis of both the music and the cultural significance of children's songs among the Venda people of the northern Transvaal, South Africa. Among the various topics covered is the role of melody in generating rhythm, something that distinguishes this form of music from that of Venda adults as well as from other genres of African music in general. John Blacking (1928-1990) also wrote How …
Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of Venda girls' initiation schools
Venda Children's Songs. A Study in Ethnomusicological Analysis
Tonal Organization in the Music of Two Venda Initiation Schools
As a working hypothesis, it has been assumed that Venda music is systematic and logically organized, but not necessarily like any other musical system. Some sound patterns may superficially resemble those of other music and could therefore be compared with them; but if similar sounds are found to be the product of different processes, comparison is invalid and misleading. It is for this reason that I have argued elsewhere that interval counts, we…
Process and Product in Human Society
Deep and Surface Structures in Venda Music
The central issue in musical theory is the problem of description. Neither musicologists nor ethnomusicologists have yet devised a system of analysis which is sufficiently powerful to explain what we can know intuitively as a result of experience in culture, namely, the essential differences between the music of Haydn and Mozart, or of the Flathead and the Sioux Indians
A Biofunctional Theory of Religion [and Comments and Reply]
Religion answers the basic question: What are the realities of the environment in which human existence is to be maintained? "Mythic" or "religious" thinking is a mode of understanding, a clarification of the environment. It is an explanatory apparatus which has evolved as a consequence of the evolution of the associational areas and their interconnections in the cortex of the human brain. Religious experience leads to a picture of the environmen…
Rethinking Culture
Culture as a concept has not been fully examined by the profession for some time. This article is a challenge to carry out this examination. It begins by discussing problems in the use of the concept and then goes on to suggest a new way of looking at culture: as a cultural pool, analogous to the gene pool (both culture and genes being forms of storing and retrieving information), from which each individual, each dyad, each group draws its partic…
Verbal Associations in the Analysis of Subjective Culture [and Comments and Reply]
We present a method for comparative culture analysis which undertakes empirical assesment of "implicit" or "subjective" culture through culture-specific meanings and cognitive organization. Verbal association tasks are used to identify high-priority domains in a given culture, to select words representative of these domains, and to asses the culture-specific cognitive organization as defined by the cultural meaning of the words or domains and the…
Inyimbo; Songs of the Bemba People of Zambia
The Personality of Ireland
The Mission of Metaphor in Expressive Culture [and Comments and Reply]
The reappearance of the metaphor concept in ethnologic inquiry suggests the need for a clearer trope-ology than we now possess. Metaphor (and metonym) is defined here as the predication of a sign-image upon any of the set of inchoate pronouns-the essential social subjects. The study of metaphor is the study of the way these subjects take objects unto themselves or are assigned them-the way that, in the parlance of G. H. Mead, they "take the other…
Art (38 works) · History (25 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Diverse Musicological Studies (18 works) · Philosophy (18 works) · Visual arts (17 works) · Literature (16 works) · Musicology and Musical Analysis (16 works) · Anthropology (15 works) · Psychology (15 works)