Critical Review: Agawu

Agawu's essay brought up issues involved in the ethics of ethnomusicology--though he refers to himself as a music theorist, not an ethnomusicologist.  This is clearly an area that is very difficult to deal with.  I believe this is because we hold our ethics so close to us.  Though it is difficult to initially give up a western-art-music-centric view of the world, with a bit of thought and understanding it is quite possible.  This, I believe, is largely because of the work done by ethnomusicologists promoting cultural relativism.  The difficulty, I feel, arises mostly from the fact that western art music is such a large part of our culture and heritage, and it is difficult to view unfamiliar music as being equal to something we hold so dear.  

Ethics, though, are different.  We hold ethics far closer than we hold our culture; indeed, ethics are the rules we live our very lives by.  Surely, while music and culture are matters of taste, ethics are based upon something far more important--an internal barometer of right and wrong, given and accepted by all.  Much of western philosophy (and eastern philosophy, to be inclusive) is aimed at verifying and codifying this barometer.  Even if you look at our so called ethical debates, they are not about the barometer itself, but rather where issues fall on it.  Take abortion for example.  The pro-choice crowd argues that fetuses in their second trimester are not considered babies, while pro-life supporters argues that they are.  No one would argue that if the fetus was morally a baby, it would be OK to abort it.  While this is a heated topic, it allows us to see that fundamentally, our society agrees about our ethics, we just disagree on the details of interpretation.  

This is why it is so difficult to accept that other systems of ethics can be legitimate.  Surely, there is one internal system that all humans live by.  It is not that the western way is better, it is that the human way is the only way.  What else could there be?

We know, of course, that indeed other cultures, both past and present, have had drastically different systems of ethics from our current system.  We like to think that we are moving forward, nearing a more perfect system, so that our actions mirror our internal understanding of right and wrong.  Slavery, for example, while once accepted, is now not accepted.  We see this as movement forward, a righting of a wrong, so to speak.  Do we not have the responsibility to use the wisdom our culture has gained through a history filled with tragedy to help other cultures progress without having to suffer as we did?  This is a tricky issue, and leads to my discussion question.  I apologize for straying a bit off topic, and pontificating so much about the nature of ethics, but it seemed warranted.  

Discussion Question: Should the ideals of cultural relativism and bi-musicality be extended to ethical-relativism?  Are ethics somehow above the non-interference policy ethnomusicologists try to adhere to, or should ethical systems that may seem unjust be allowed to continue?  Does it make a difference whether we allow them to go on because we feel we should not interfere with a different culture, or because we want to accurately represent it to the scholastic community?  I would like to stress that I have not yet figured out where I stand on this issue.