Tuning systems and european colonialism in Africa

Studies of creativity have not traditionally focused on power dynamics, but that is changing. Distributed and participatory approaches to creativity situate individual efforts as part of larger feedback systems from which new ideas emerge, are evaluated and are implemented. These systems include many people and material actors over time, and power is always at play. This article analyzes creativity in service to, in resistance to, and emerging from the colonial encounter, focusing on the role of the piano as a material actor in creative processes. The particular, slightly "adjusted" temperament of piano tuning first suppressed the inheritance of diverse tonal systems in Europe through industrial standardization and then was imposed on the musical practices of southern African communities in the colonial era. The natural tuning systems of the colonized people's own music was, thereby, considered to be "out of tune," providing reason both to devalue and to suppress the non-Western music. At the same time, an English working-class alternative to the tempered tuning system of the piano arose in the tonic sol-fa choral tradition, which was also exported in the 19th century through European migrations to the colonies. And, in spite of the colonial efforts, traditional southern African tonal systems were preserved. More recently, the traditional music and the sol-fa system have contributed to new, complex musical forms, synthesizing those elements with the tempered tuning system of the piano. This is, then, a complex story of shifting power around the evaluation of what is, and is not, "in tune."