Musical Vernaculars and Their Signifying Transformations

When examining issues of nationalism, studies in musicology have tended to oversimplify a complex situation by referring to folk and traditional tunes as signifiers of ethnic or social groups, or even as their key cultural symbols. But a vernacular idiom in music is seldom a static artifact easily available for simple inspection and analysis. Given that the scope of variability is vast and that interrelationships are intricate, the symbolic and interactive meanings between music and society demand a richly contextual approach that embraces the constellation of social, historical, psychological, ethnic, generational, and other conditions that provide access to the complex issues of social affiliations and national identities. The proposed model of the musical vernacular critically revises 18th- and 19th-century notions, wherein national identity was defined by what was considered the only genuine folk music. While the importance of collecting and studying folk materials is undeniable, an overdetermined focus on agrarianism and the bestowal of the collected materials with a fixed, true, or authentic national identity only results in partial understandings and an underestimation or refutation of hybrid or inauthentic materials. It is precisely the hybrid forms, by necessity embedded in changing societies, that more accurately reflect the complex and dynamic nature of vernacular interactions with and within cultures.