Musical Instinct as a Means of Revealing a Person’s Ethnic Identity (following Oliver Sacks’ monograph “Musicophilia”)”

Authors

  • Lilit Karlen Yepremyan Yerevan State Komitas Conservatory

Keywords:

Oliver Sacks, nervous system, perception of music, identity, ethnogenetics, ethnoidentification, unconscious, Оливер Сакс, нервная система, музыкальное восприятие, самость, этногенетика, этноидентификация, бессознательное

Abstract

The article is based on the author’s report at the 23.02.2023 Yerevan conference “Music in the Context of Interdisciplinary Studies ”, which was organized jointly by the Center for Interdisciplinary Specializations operating at the Department of History and Theory of Performing Arts and the Charents Museum of Literature and Art for the fourth anniversary of the Center. The author develops an extremely interesting hypothesis of the famous American neuroscientist Oliver Sacks that music is not just a form of art that a person has to deal with during his life as something existing outside himself, but that music is an inborn human instinct, immanently inherent in his nervous system and operating through the mechanism of genetic memory. On the example of a whole series of real human destinies, through his own hypothesis on the ethnic component of genetic memory, Yepremyan demonstrates the irrational reaction of a seemingly assimilated individual in a different ethnic environment through a violent emotional manifestation of the instinct of musical ethnoidentification. According to Yepremyan’s hypothesis, when a person listens to nationally colored music, their ethnic identity is immediately and unconsciously manifested. This deep-rooted connection to their heritage forms the foundation of their personality, and even in cases of total memory loss, this ethnic identity retains until the final days of their physical existence.

Author Biography

Lilit Karlen Yepremyan, Yerevan State Komitas Conservatory

 (born May 14, 1963, Yerevan) - musicologist, psychologist, sociologist, journalist, translator, genocide scholar, PhD in Arts. She graduated from YSC in 1989 in musicology (Chair of the Theory of Music, classes of Prof. R.O. Stepanyan and Prof. N. V. Deroyan). In 1993 she got a postgraduate degree jointly at the State Institute of Art Studies (Moscow, class of I. R. Eolyan, PhD in Arts) and YSC. In 1995 she defended her PhD thesis at SIA (Moscow). In 2001 she graduated from the Center of training of Practical psychologists at Yerevan State University, in 2006 - from the Caucasian Mass Media Institute in regional studies. In her researches uses methods in the field of musicological and interdisciplinary sciences. Since 1996 she has been holding a series of lectures in psychology, pedagogy, history of music (bachelor's degree program), fundamentals of musical scientific-pedagogical activity (master's degree program) in YSC, also she is Associate Professor (since 2002). Since 1996, she has worked for the newspaper "Novoye Vremya" as a correspondent. She is author of the monograph about the composer Edward Mirzoyan ("Edward Mirzoyan in letters and dialogues", Yer., 2011), she deals with the phenomenon of ethnic tradition, issues of urban folklore, the problem of transgenerational trauma of the Armenian Genocide. She works in the field of interdisciplinary studies, uses methods of other sciences in musicological studies, approaches the problems of musicology from a new perspective. Author of more than 20 scientific articles, including "Ethnocultural Approach in the Sociology of Music", "Features of Ethnic Tradition", "Are we to blame, or "Internalized helplessness" as the death of an "internal agent", "Marginality as Fate ", "Fatal Choice" (to the problem of understanding the vectors of the development of the XX-century Armenian music) and others, more than 500 journalistic articles. She is a practicing psychologist, member of the Composers Union of Armenia (since 1997) and Writers Union of Armenia (since 2016).

References

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Published

2024-08-15

How to Cite

Yepremyan Լ. Կ. (2024). Musical Instinct as a Means of Revealing a Person’s Ethnic Identity (following Oliver Sacks’ monograph “Musicophilia”)”. Musical Armenia, 64(1), 67–73. Retrieved from https://yerazhshtakanhayastan.am/index.php/ma/article/view/280

Issue

Vol. 64 No. 1 (2023): Musical Armenia

Section

Articles