John Blacking: An Interview Conducted and Edited by Keith Howard

Abstract

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 has power in itself. Music has no consequences for social action unless it can be related to a coherent set of ideas about self and other and bodily feelings. (A Commonsense View of All Music 1987:35)