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sai-national.org • WINTER 2017 • PAN PIPES 21 MUSIC AND CULTURE the banjo; the banjo became a popular foundation in Bluegrass music. e residents of Appalachia oen used a musical form from their European roots, the ballad, to weave narratives into lyrical tales of their lives and times. ose ballads have continued to evolve, now including songs that address mountain-top removal, labor unions, and the perils of coal-mining. ey reflect current times through a musical filter unique to the culture. Appalachia has found a new voice in the genre-bending music of cellist Ben Sollee. Sollee received classical training in cello at the University of Louisville (Kentucky) before setting out on the musical trail he now blazes. As a child, Ben was greatly influenced by the folk music played by other members of his family. He credits his grandfather for teaching him numerous Bluegrass fiddle tunes, and his father for exposing him to banjo and guitar playing. e musical influences did not stop there: he also credits jazz and blues artists like Otis Redding, Billie Holiday, and Ray Charles for adding to his musical lexicon. e blending of all these musical traditions has led to a distinctive style that has made Ben Sollee an emerging star on the musical scene in America. His music has also given voice to a culture rich in history, but perennially poor in economic resources, as he uses his art to address the need for political and social change today. Another region of America with a distinctive cultural heritage is the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaii has a rich musical history that was shared with and influenced by its Polynesian neighbors. For centuries, its indigenous people used dance rhythms played on various percussion instruments, along with chants, as their primary musical elements. e eighteenth century brought traders to Hawaii from around the world. As a consequence of this cultural exchange, Christian hymns, the guitar, and the ukulele became a part of the musical folio of Hawaii. e ukulele, viewed by many as the quintessential Hawaiian instrument, actually developed as a Hawaiian interpretation of small guitar-like instruments used by Portuguese sailors and immigrants. Another Hawaiian adaptation of European tradition can be found in the musical genre of slack-key guitar. Traditional guitar tunings that evolved in Europe were altered by Hawaiians to more open tunings. e alternately-tuned guitar was then played in a finger-picking style that became a staple of Hawaiian music. e Grammy Awards, the premier awards for musical achievement in the United States, were created in 1959; for the next forty-six years, Hawaiian music was considered only as part of a category known as World Music. Aer years of intense lobbying by Hawaiian-music devotees, the award committee established a stand-alone category in 2005, and immediately, the award winners were the subject of great controversy in the musical community. Since 2005, every award in the Hawaiian Music category has gone to an album of music for slack-key guitar; this has outraged many Hawaiians who claim that this is not truly Hawaiian music at all. Some are even suggesting the category be removed from competition completely. Nate Chinen of e New York Times summed up the controversy in a recent article: "e reality is more complex, involving issues endemic to Hawaii: the tension between culture and commerce, authenticity and appropriation. So along with a small credibility issue for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which presents the awards, the last six years' results have stirred up a larger question of who gets to make real Hawaiian music and by what standards it should be judged." 2 e dilemma over slack-key guitar music highlights an issue that cuts across all artistic and cultural boundaries, i.e., who decides which music represents a culture. Some believe we must consider only the music of indigenous peoples, preserved in what we believe is closest to its original forms, to speak for a culture. Others propose that we allow musical expression to evolve along with the culture it inhabits. Preserving musical expression like a fly caught in ancient tree sap can be unhealthy to the culture it seeks to preserve. Like an insect in amber, the arts, when prohibited from changing, can become mere merchandise or objects of curiosity. As mentioned earlier in this article, entire languages are becoming extinct through the process of global development. e UNESCO Atlas of World Languages tracks over 3,000 languages that it predicts will disappear before the end of this century; this constitutes half of the world's known languages. Composers around the world are turning to these endangered languages for inspiration. One of them, New York City composer Kevin James, developed the Vanishing Languages Project in 2007. James creates extended string and percussion works based on the sounds of endangered languages, using archived recordings of remaining speakers. "He (then) picked through the hundreds of hours of recordings looking for particularly musical passages, keeping an eye out for qualities like cadence, melody, and inflection. "The concept behind this project was to take those qualities–to take the inflections and use those as the basis of music," James says. "…when we speak, the inflection is much more fluid. And the same is true of the melodic aspects of a lot of language, in terms of how much register they cover." When composers reach for words that are unintelligible to all but a handful of speakers on the planet, the very notion of music as a vessel for semantic content is upended. Removed from all context and understanding speech – a constellation of rhythm and melody, resonant vowels and percussive consonants – begins to resemble music." 3 e original, pure artistic expressions of a culture are important to study and preserve; likewise, the evolving artistic expressions of a culture should be nourished. Both are valid communicators of the human experience, and both have tremendous value to the human race. Music can be an essential tool for cultures to sustain themselves – to preserve, nourish, and evolve into the future. Perhaps these examples will inspire other musicians to discover and share ways to nourish living cultures. e composer, Tan Dun, put it this way, "I believe that if a tradition is vanishing, something else has to take its place. If something is dying there must be a way to incarnate it into something new." 4 I would like to express my gratitude to SAI Philanthropies, Inc. for helping this musician "incarnate into something new" through its generous grant. e grant I received through SAI led to the publication of my first book, "Sustaining Living Cultures," published by Common Ground Publishing. I intend to continue evolving and nourishing cultures through music for many years to come. 1 Gebert, Frieda Holland and Gibson, Kevin. "Sustaining Living Culture," Commonground Publishing, Champaign, Illinois, 2010. 2 Chinen, Nate. "Dear Grammy, Is It Hawaiian Enough?" New York Times [New York City] 4 Feb. 2011. Print. 3 Arts, Culture & Media "Composer Kevin James Finds Music in Disappearing Languages" PRI's e World May 17, 2013 · 11:00 AM CDT. 4 Ibid.

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