www.success-and-culture.net The purpose of this site is to try and get the world to start dealing with the interaction between culture and success in a mature and intelligent manner. Poll: Do you believe culture influences success? Yes 67.5% No 17.3% Uncertain 15.1% - Newest Articles - Per Capita Income Around the World Per capita income figures for the countries and regions of the world. Hind Swaraj, by M.K. Gandhi While rarely read this is Gandhi's most important written work. Civilization and Success The traditional explanation for the noticeable differences in income across cultures was to say that they differed in their level of civilization. - Categories - Civilization and Success Culture is to the group what personality is to the individual. Civilization is to the group what enlightenment is to the individual. By the Numbers A careful examination of the numbers is necessary to understand the relationship between success and culture. Third World and the Underclass The Third World is where the relationship between success and culture is revealed in the most brutal manner. Politics and Success The central political issue of our time is whether or not culture influences success. - All Articles - Per Capita Income Around the World Per capita income figures for the countries and regions of the world. Hind Swaraj, by M.K. Gandhi While rarely read this is Gandhi's most important written work. Civilization and Success The traditional explanation for the noticeable differences in income across cultures was to say that they differed in their level of civilization. Fundamentals of Prosperity This 1920 work by Roger Babson is a classic with in its genre. It promotes the traditional, pre-1960s explanation for the connection between success and culture. Zimbabwe: the World's Largest Test Tube Current events in Zimbabwe are giving us an unprecedented opportunity to measure and judge the effect of white settlement and colonization in Africa. US Incomes by Race, Ethnicity and Religion Average US Incomes by Race, Ethnicity and Religion. Are Calvinists Predestined to Succeed? Max Weber's claim that Protestantism is more conducive to success than Catholicism and that Calvinism is in particular more successful is widely repeated and rarely examined. Wealth and the Recogniton of Culture We need to recognize that culture is the personality of a group or race and we must see culture and having seen it, make it a work of art. The Recipient Class The moral justification for welfare is supposed to be that we are temporarily helping out our fellow man through a rough stretch of road or helping the disabled permanently. If it is to become a system for continually transferring wealth from one group to another the people behind this change owe us an explanation. Culturalism The great taboo of our age is not speaking about race, but speaking about culture. Bourgeois Bourgeoisie is more than just a term of abuse used by the Left, it refers to a real people who led real lives. Selections from the Federal Outlook Selections from a 1960's Rhodesian newspaper. How Africa Underdeveloped Africa Africa is the poorest place in the world. Why? Will Famine Come to Zimbabwe? The end of commercial farming in Zimbabwe could plunge the country into famine. The Tragedy of the Zimbabwe Commons Communally owned property always has and always will suffer from the 'tragedy of the commons' problem. Band Aid Africa recieves $15 billion a year in aid. Is it helping?

African Music: A Modern View

(By HUGH TRACEY)

The African who comes into contact with European music does so at great disadvantage. He is faced with an art form representing two centuries accumulation of the written music of the Western world; he is persuaded, moreover, by the minor exponents of this foreign music that his own culture is barbaric and insignificant and should be jettisoned in favour of the European style which has so strong an associative power in the minds of his teachers.

For his part, he represents the folk music of one village or at most one district. Folk music is rarely if ever analysed by its exponents, and though unwritten Is the natural expression of the musical emotions of the folk from day to day. It is never "old" music in the sense that the music of dead composers is old music, and it is always today's music today, however much it, follows the traditional style of playing. In this sense there Is no old folk music in Africa but only the modern performance of music that accompanies modern customs and expresses modern musical satisfactions. Very few attempts to record and still fewer to write African melodies have been made; these give us only a slight acquaintanceship with African music of past years; apart from them our knowledge of African art form is limited to a description of their instruments and associated customs.

It is quite possible intellectually to know more about African music than any one African minstrel, though it can safely be said that not a single European has the requisite skill either to compose in the African manner or to take a part in African orchestras such as those of the Bachopi xylophones (msaho we timbila) or the Mbira or flute ensembles.

The strong emotive power of music particularly in regard to its associations with religion and custom has been the cause of the wholesale destruction of African music. The European, firmly associating certain melodies and modes with the Christian way of life, has believed that the Christian way of life can only be achieved by Africans when they too associate the same music with the same behaviour. This national exclusiveness in our music is as primitive as that of the Africans whom we wish to save, but it is much more reprehensible.

The African convert, who for a number of reasons gives up his national mode of living, genuinely attempts to fall into line with the teaching of foreign music as something which he imagines represents a higher form of culture. But in this, in common with his teachers, he displays a complete ignorance of the meaning of musical culture. It would argue that art is a commercial commodity to be acquired by all and sundry irrespective of their psychology. National art forms are but the channels through which the psyche of a people can be expressed in symbols best suited to their mentality. They are the flowers to the tree, the natural and generic result of the species. They can only be compared in broad outline upon the lines of a common human psychology, but the symbolism of all art must remain national to achieve its purpose. The deliberate destruction of African art forms by Europeans aided by ignorant though wellmeaning Africans must be deplored by all who comprehend the social importance of art.

Tagore, the Indian philosopher, who died recently, expressed the clash of cultures in these words

"Thus placed between two contending forces (Western and Indian), we shall mark out the middle path of truth in our national life; we shall realise that only through the development of racial individuality can we truly attain to universality, and only in the light of the spirit of universality can we perfect individuality; we shall know of a verity that it is idle mendicancy to discard our own and beg for the foreign, and at the same time we shall feel that it is the extreme abjectness of poverty to dwarf ourselves by rejecting the foreign."

We have now learnt sufficient of African music to know that It has all the characteristics of a great art, though in its present folk stage its potentialities are latent. Its most musical instruments, the Mbira (hand pianos) and Timbila (xylophones), are mechanically and musically sound and economically are well within the reach of the people. Bantu languages are by no means primitive and their tonal structure lends itself to the creation of melody. Their facility in making musical instruments, pipes, bows and percussion, amounts to a national characteristic. Their still active talent for communal composition and improvisation is the envy of the hack musician. Everything, in fact, is in their favour were it not for the irrational attitude of a few Europeans who are destroying African music in favour of an imitation of the national musics of the West. But what can it profit an African if he sings the Hallelujah Chorus, and neglects his own art. Any choir anywhere can sing the Hallelujah Chorus, but only the Bantu can expound their own art. Education can only offer the empty shell without the spiritual organism. If we IlelsISt in our antagonism, the Bantu like his Negro cousin will be left, holding the dead shell to his ears vainly listening for the lost voices of his musical heritage. What is the answer to this impasse? The practical application of twentieth century methods. The recording apparatus has come just in time to do what notation can never do, the exact reproduction it music as expounded by the African folk. We need in Africa the equivalent of a Cecil Sharp research school. It is not without cause that English music has experienced a rejuvenation in the wake of Cecil Sharp and Vaughan Williams. By means of the gramophone we can record African music without the intrusion of our own musical prejudices. We could establish a small research station, preferably wider the auspices of an institution such as the Government Training School at Domboshawa, where every minstrel in the land (and in the ethnic area just beyond our borders between the Zambesi and zLimpopo) could be brought to the research station to record their whole repetoire. As these men are the musicians of the country (as opposed to the common people who sing the refrains), the greatest store of musical talent is reflected in their genius and consequently most of the folk art would be recorded at the station before the more expensive expeditions to the country need be organised.

Records would be carefully stored and copies made on acetate metalbase discs for immediate use at the institute. Suitable record would be sent as "masters" for commercial reproduction and o supply the growing demand for indigenous music in the locations where gramophones are in use or loudspeaker systems installed. At the same time these records would be played to the minstrels to enlarge their experience of their own national art and encourage original composition. In five to ten years sufficient material would have been collected and analysed to formulate a proper school of African music.

Hand in hand with recording would go a research into the musical instruments of the country with tests of local materials to find the best methods of manfacture based on the combined knowledge of the minstrels, and modern sclutice. The economics of the situation demand that the maximum use he made of local materials. It is quite out of reason to suppose that the African will immediately adopt a tempered scale based upon our piano, which at its cheapest costs 1 pound per note for its 88 notes. The Mbira on the other hand costs rather less than 3d. per note and the Timbila is. per note. Orchestras of these instruments accompanied by drums and pipes are within the reach of every kraal school in the country. European instruments cannot compete economically. Guitars and banjos cost from two to ten pounds, even the mouth organs cost from 6s. to 1 pound each.

The carpenter's shop at the research station would demonstrate to potential kraal school teachers the extent of musical enjoyment there is to be found in the simplest of African instruments if properly introduced into their schools at the expenditure of well directed energy alone.

As to the more scientific considerations concerned with the study of modes and scales, and eventually with notation, the research station would soon he able to make practical contributions to African music by measuring with accurate tools the tunings of musical instruments and in time evolve general musical rules from the details presented by independent minstrels who at present work in ignorance of the extent of their culture as a whole.