Critical Review #5: Agawu 2003 Chp. 5, Waterman 1952

I spent a lot of my reading time trying to discern if I thought Waterman's article was horribly old-fashioned, out of date, and potentially demeaning to "African" music tradition, or if he was making an honest attempt at legitimizing African music amongst the greater realm of world music, European and American folk and art music included. Agawu's claim that "the choice of an appropriate comparative frame is already ideological" is a good one, although I think it could be argued that Waterman's history of acculturation is not a comparative one but a linear one. Agawu has a very powerful position in the world of ethnomusicology in that he is African, yet has mastered (better than most "Western" ethnomusicologists) the Western styled forms of study and research. I feel like he is easily the most "legitimized" writer we have read on African music because of his well informed and educated insider position. Like the very end of his article stated, however, the problems he outlined in his piece, along with the problems evident in Waterman's article, aren't ever going to end (at least in our Western-centric realm of academia) until "the postcolonial African subjects" have been empowered to represent themselves. Until then, are attempts at "translation" necessary? Or are do we risk overwhelming the "subject" culture with our translated constructs?