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We tend to divide our collections between "European" (or "western") instruments and "ethnic" instruments. I find these and similar terms less and less satisfactory. Even leaving aside (though we should not do so) the American instrument-making firms, our beginners play on Chinese-made instruments, and our professionals on Japanese. "Western" depends on where you stand; it is a correct term in America: it covers that continent and China and Japan to their west, but it leaves out Europe. So far as "ethnic" is concerned, it is becoming a synonym in England anyway, for funny, quaint and so forth, with a strong overlay of incompetent and more than a hint of fake; ethnic food (scatter a little curry powder), ethnic clothes (badly made and ill-fitting), ethnic jewellery (factory made in Birmingham), etc., etc. It is also now coming to be seen as pejorative and insulting by many of those to whom it is applied; before long it will be down there with the lower derogatory terms in English slang, and then we'll be forced to give it up. Most seriously, it is etymologically silly to use it as we do; we are all - and all our arts and artefacts are "ethnic".
May I suggest that we use the term "international" to cover the instruments which are truly international today, those of our (I speak as a European) art and popular music, which are used around the globe from the Tokyo Philharmonic westwards to the Honolulu Symphony, and round the world eastwards from an East Berlin pop group to a West Berlin night club?
And can we take from our Soviet colleagues the idea of using the term "regional" (or "national", but "regional" is better, for often they differ from region to region within a nation) for those instruments which sometimes we call "folk" (not a good term for a sitar or a shakuhachi), "non-European" (a silly expression, since we usually put European non-art-music instruments in the same category) or "ethnic".
Read at the CIMCIM Meeting, Berlin, 11-17 April 1988.
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© CIMCIM 1989.
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