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rasa into account what ethnomusicologists have known for a long time, that “art and the equipment to grasp it are made in the same shop” (Geertz 1983:118). On one hand, the individualist claims that works of art are public but their interpretations are private; on the other, the cultural pluralist maintains that both artworks and their interpretations are public, but only relative to a certain public. It may be, as Kraut proposes, that there is no way of logically demonstrating the superiority of one or the other claim (outside of a particular context), and what we must look at are the purposes that each position serves. If our goal is to understand music, there is no question that insiders’ perspectives take epistemological precedence. But if our goal is simply to have a meaningful experience, the choice is a little less clear. Who is to say that, if I let the comments of Beethoven’s peers guide my reactions to his music (to elaborate on one of Kraut’s examples), I will have a richer aesthetic experience? Perhaps I do not share their penchant for pathos, heroism, purity, nobility, the sublime, Nature, and the like. Perhaps I will be repulsed by Beethoven’s music (as, in fact, were some of his peers!). Or, to take a more obvious example, do I really want to know the political and historical subtexts of Wagner’s operas? Difficult questions, indeed. Perhaps one must give up on choosing definitively between the two stances, looking rather at each case individually. Let me simply posit that the more culturally distant one is from an aesthetic artifact or event, the more one stands to benefit from considering carefully what the insiders have to say about it.
Musicians as Insiders In the discussions above I used the word insiders several times. This term is by no means self-explanatory, for it is not always easy to determine who the insiders are. What’s more, whoever they are, they do not always agree with each other. But this does not invalidate the idea that one ought to have, in Kraut’s words, “a commitment to the explanatory importance of the musical perceptions and standards of taste upheld within the particular population which is responsible for the musical event in question” (Kraut 1992:20).20 The fact that there are borderline members, or that there is variation within the group does not mean that the concept itself is invalid (think of Wittgenstein’s notion of categories based on family resemblances); it is simply more difficult to apply. Let us say, then, that as an ethnographer of Javanese music I am looking for insiders. Whom do I choose? A natural first choice, given limits on time, would be
20. While I find that Kraut’s article sets out with great clarity the issues at stake, I do not entirely agree with his position. In particular, I do not believe that there is one correct interpretation, but rather a number of interpretations that “get it right.” Furthermore, I believe that one can accept a wider or narrower range of interpretations depending on the context (only in certain circumstances would one want to say that an interpretation is just plain wrong).