著者

龍村 あや子

出版者

北海道東海大学

雑誌

北海道東海大学紀要. 人文社会科学系 (ISSN:09162089)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1, pp.75-85, 1988

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This article treats the concept 'understanding a different culture', which is very often discussed today in Japan, in terms of music. The author gives at first the following definition : Culture is 1) the whole of the intersubjective meanings and their forms of expression which has been historically constructed in a society; therefore 2) it is always in some degree changeable. This definition is followed by the next one : 'a different culture' is the counterconcept to 'one's own culture' that constitutes one's identity at present. To recognize whether the perceived object belongs to his own culture or to a different one, depends entirely on the 'experiences' of each individual, which build up the basis of his cognitive domain. 'A different culture' means therefore an element of culture or a culture as a whole, which requires a new development of one's experiences in this sense. To meet with a different culture is a real 'encounter'; from that experience a new cognitive field of the indivudual could be constructed. Because music has no material existence and could only be perceived within each individual existence, its 'meaning' in a real sense cannot be fixed. The meaning of music is to be regarded as a 'metaphore vive' in the sense of Paul Ricoeur : It is always a newly created metaphor as a result of the interaction between the music and the listener. When a music talks to us as a foreign culture, it gives us a 'subject' of a sentence, the 'predicate' of which we should create ourselves. Because music could be objectified as a recording, it is possible that it detaches itself from the culture in which it was born and flies from culture to culture like a bird. Therefore there are two cases of the encounter between music and individuals : 1) to get aquainted with music in the culture where it was born, and to understand it as part of the culture as a whole; or 2) to meet with music as a sound system out of the culture where it was born. In this part of the article (Part I) the second case is discussed. To understand music as a different culture is a process of new recognition, in which our memory and fantasy are combined and revivified.