Singing out of Other Throats: Performing Corsican Polyphony from the Outside In

Through a case study of a summer singing camp in Corsica organised by the Vermont-based association Village Harmony, this chapter explores a series of themes that were of interest to Tullia Magrini (the Italian ethnomusicologist to whose memory this volume is dedicated). These include the interrelationship between individual and social dimensions of music-making, the commodification of the world's music and the resulting loss of referentiality, and music-making as a basic form of being human and experiencing the world. Drawing on interviews with workshop participants and their Corsican teachers, I examine the different processes involved in learning a 'foreign' musical system, mapping this on to features of indigenous musical behaviours and conceptualisations. I conclude by arguing that the American visitors learnt far more than the songs themselves, and that music is not irredeemably condemned to become a mere commodity simply because it is admired, appropriated or embraced by others.