The Body and Gender in Perspective

The Body and Gender in Perspective

Mawusi Foster Eddison

Department of Music, University of Ghana, Legon

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2024.803065

Received: 12 February 2024; Revised: 28 February 2024; Accepted: 04 March 2024; Published: 05 April 2024

ABSTRACT

The concept of body and gender brought contentious discourses in ethnomusicological studies and analysis over the centuries and has become a central issue for consideration in the 21^st century. This discourse is based on gender and bodies’ evolvement in ethnomusicology and how relevant these issues are to 21^st-century ethnomusicologists. The paper employed existing literature to discuss theories and conceptual analysis of bodies, gender, and ethnomusicology from different societies, status, sexual orientation, and value divergence. The findings reiterated that ethnomusicological discourse presently sees the physical body and social body as a connecting process to multiple types of power relations such as social control and gender formation. Most importantly, cultural identity, gender, and sexuality in cross-cultural enclaves such as homosexuality and transgender in Africa pose an ideological, cultural, and legitimacy quandary to ethnomusicologists in the 21^st century. Therefore, ethnomusicological discourse must have a comprehensive method for resolving ethical dilemmas in cross-cultural and social phenomena.

Keywords: body, gender, dichotomy, embodiment.

INTRODUCTION

Many researchers and philosophers in search of a comprehensive concept of the body, held discussions and debates to establish the definition of the body. Anthropological study and analysis traced the history of the body to a history of notions of self, person, and subject and the classification of different bodies inherent in socio-political, or epistemological and methodological discourse. The fundamental assumptions of the body probably have deep roots in the concept of Cartesian Dualism. A French Mathematics philosopher and physiologist, Descartes explained that all entities that exist in the world fall under two categories: mind and body. He referred to the mind as a thinking thing that involves judgment, will, and sense of perception while bodies are tangible physical objects existing in the external world that depend on the mind to survive. He asserted that minds are distinct substances from the bodies’ substance and that the minds affect the bodies (Descartes, 1984). Descartes’ theory met various criticisms and debates as well as counter-theories; however, it forms the basis upon which the 21^st-century discourse on the body continues to thrill.

THE BODY AS MEDIATOR

According to Merleau-Ponty in The Phenomenology of Perception, the body is a mediator of the world, and it shapes a person’s perception and consciousness. He argued that the perception that one experiences are both objective and subjective in the sense that the former both of being a body and having a body is concomitant to people’s understanding, assessment and feeling about themselves. Therefore, the sociocultural norms and expectations which are external to the individual are subjectively embodied. This process of being and having a body that affects people’s understanding, assessment and feeling is correlated to an individual’s quality of life. The latter is not only informed by an individual’s subjective bodily experiences but also informs. In other words, one’s objective experiences of the body are reflexive. The understanding of the body as an object in terms of who individuals are is deeply dependent on the social environment (Merleau-Ponti, 1962).

To know how the body is perceived and experienced, Scheper-Hughs and Lock (1987) posit that three bodies exist. Firstly, there is a self-evident level also referred to as the individual body which is the existence of ‘self’ differentiating an individual from another that receives and experiences health and sickness. The second body which is termed the social body represents the way the individual body or body-self is applied as a natural body about the socio-cultural environment. Again, the social body is also a natural symbol that mediates between nature, society, and culture. The third is the body politic a social construct eminent to reproduction and sexuality. Accordingly, the body politic regulates and disciplines the social body. This classification has given an insight into Harding’s assertion in his reference to Paulo Freire’s quote from Fromm (1972, p. 51), “acting” means “behaving politically”. If performance is acting, then performance is political about the aforementioned statement. This implies that performance is an outward expression of human internal exigencies as part of the social body. Whenever it is acted, it gains the power to cause social changes but failure to do so makes such performance unpopular in society. This means that performance is not limited to the performer only but must be done to achieve its intended purpose as the body politic. Therefore, Performance is active, not inactive. This concept of three bodies as posited by Scheper-Hughs and Lock facilitated by emotion explains the unity of the ‘mindful body’ (1987, p. 6).

Ostenfeld-Rosenthal (2011) states that human beings are divine and have an individuated spirit known as the higher self, evident in different energy bodies such as the physical body, the ether body, the mental body and the astral body. Therefore, human being is co-creators of their existence, and the body is a tool for the higher self also known as the soul to experience and interact with physical existence. O’Neill on the other hand categorizes the body into five as against three and four by Scheper-Hughs and Lock and Ostenfeld-Rosenthal respectively. According to O’Neill, there is the world body, the body politic, the body social, the consumer body and the medical body. These five categories of bodies nonetheless keep the bond between biology and culture through unity (O’Neill, 1985, p.19). Even though authors give different categorizations of the body and reveal fragmented views of the body’s multiple aspects, they all come to the fact of the body’s continuity and pave the way for comprehensive discourse in the 21st century’s debate and giving a further dimension to the study of the body and its evolvement in gender and ethnomusicology. The idea in these categorizations outdoor a clear distinction between the physical body and social body which becomes a connecting process unfolding the multiple types of power relations such as social control, gender, and health. Shilling (1993) indicates that the body’s outer structure is modified by the images attributed to gender-specific ideas in society through individual activities.

GENDER AS AN EMBODIMENT

Csordas put forward an argument in favour of perceiving the body as a subject, an embodiment of culture but not an object. Embodiment, says Csordas, is situated on the level of lived experience and not on that of discourse; embodiment is about “understanding” or “making sense” in a pre-reflexive or even presymbolic, but not precultural, way (Csordas 1990, p. 10). Cultural identity is premised on the strategic essentialism around race and ethnicity (Spivak, 2012), as well as thoroughly exposed to the fluid, dynamic, contested, complex, and malleable deconstructions of these concepts (Hall, 1996). The idea of identity, therefore, explains the differentiation in the acts of the bodies. Referring to the natural and social bodies, Douglas (1978) indicates that both bodies are representative and serve as expressive conduits as well as regulators of the social system. For instance, Butler (2014) asserts that a woman is in a “historical situation” explained the fact that the body suffers a certain cultural construction by a convention of sanction, prescription, and the way the body is culturally perceived.

In the case of the gender binary and heterosexual contrast, for reproduction, cultures are controlled by certain conventions and taboos to regulate and guarantee heterosexual marriages. This in turn produces some kinds of discrete gendered identities and sexualities. Hence compulsory heterosexuality is experienced and maintained through discrete sexes (natural appearance and heterosexual disposition). Douglas contends that the two bodies are unique in nature and experience symbiotic relationships. In other words, the social body “constrains the way the physical body is perceived” (Douglas 1978, p. 70): they constitute different realms of experience; they reflect the physical into the social and therefore, cause the physical to be experienced in social terms. Margaret Lock (1993) in an attempt to explain the social body made a reference to Durkheim in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, he wrote that “man is double,” making a distinction between the universal physical body and the “higher” morally imbued “socialized” body (52): the physical body was a tabula rasa, the “first and most natural tool of man”—an artefact from which the social order was created (171:75). According to Jacobson-Widding (1991), understanding the body means scrutiny of “space” that provide subjectivism. Space is, therefore, a bodily relationship associated with lineage membership, gender, and seniority, and with memory and history, ideology and hegemony, compliance but also subversion both toward local power-brokers and toward the post-colony (Lefebvre 1991).

GENDER CONSTRUCTION

Nannyonga-Tamusuza S. (2009) defines gender as “the dynamic process of assigning roles and defining relations of power and access to authority among people, based partly on the biological definition and partly on cultural traits that are socially determined” (Nannyonga-Tamusuza, 2009, p. 368). Gender definition is not stereotyped instead it is fluid. The determination of gender therefore can be viewed through symmetrical and symbiotic constructs of socio-cultural systems. One recurring theme has been the realization that gender is socially constructed rather than exclusively defined by biological sex. Scholars like Judith Butler, whose writings include “Gender Trouble” (1990) and “Undoing Gender” (2004), have continued to impact this conversation. Butler’s theories of performativity emphasize how cultural norms and repeated behaviours enact and reinforce gender. Butler further alludes that understanding and interpreting gender is contingent on instituted performative acts (a stylized repetition of acts) within time and space devoid of the sense of biological identity. This corroborates the point made by Nannyonga-Tamusuza that “among the Baganda, not every female is a woman and not all males are men. The assignment of gender is based on specific “culturally” assigned roles and identities” (ibid). Like the Baganda, among the Agadziawo (the people of Dodome), a typical traditional countryside village in Ghana, the determination of gender is contingent on social-cultural roles that are assigned to individuals or groups. It must be noted that these roles are assigned in a way that mostly males are forbidden to perform certain female roles. Similarly, females are assigned roles of males but not in all cases. These gender constructs are usually found among royal families and women with special biological traits. Examples are women who gave birth to twins. It is believed that the role of an elderly woman in matters of arbitration is paramount. For instance, in the determination of final judgment for a case, the male arbitrators leave the council with the explanation that they have to consult the abrewa or mama (imaginary old woman) for wisdom. Any final decision reached by the council is deemed to have been the final decision of the abrewa or mama. This assertion is based on a historical event of several years.

Again, elderly women play leading roles in the performance of certain rituals. In the case of widowhood rites, women lead in the performance. At the death of a wife or a husband, women perform the rite for the surviving spouse either a male or female. The council of chiefs and elders is incomplete without the queen-mothers and their respective elders. In most cases, death is not announced until women in the community start the avihawo (dirges). A dirge is a preserve for elderly women in the community. If a man is sighted among the women during the performance of dirges, such a man is termed nutsu nyonu or nyonu gbor me (Man-woman). The same is experienced by a female who joins male performers. She is termed nyonu nutsu (Woman-man). Any female who performs a role of a male that has not been assigned to her is deemed to have violated gender principles and is frowned upon. The female in question will be mocked by males with phrases such as nyonu me doa awa dudo o (a woman does not urinate like a man). According to Kyker, in Zimbabwe, there is the appropriation of the perception that certain musical instruments are preserved for only males. In the process, a female’s attempt to cross the social lines by playing such musical instruments amounts to subversion of an existing social construct. This male exclusivity accounts for conditions such as female marginalization and devaluation as a result of socially constructed gendered interpretations (Kyker, 2014).

Additionally, in Dodome for that matter across many Ghanaian cultural settings, over the years, modernization and urbanization have caused a lot of redefinitions and shaping of gender constructions. Males who travelled abroad and returned to the community take on female roles in conflict with the very norms and values of the society. For instance, males braid hair which in the past could only be done by females. Again, young ladies in defiance of the standards set for gender definition violate dressing codes assuming what was the preserve for males. About Beauvoir, Butler indicates that the stylized repetitive acts comprise bodily gestures, movement, and various symbolic reflections that are either object or subject of constitutive acts (Butler, 1988). Cavanagh (1998), quoted by Koskoff (2014), revealed that there are three levels of performance based on gender: performances that are male or female, those that are more or less egalitarian but where “gender differentiation may occur at the level of style or interpretation,” and the distinctiveness of women’s roles, and, on the other, the complementarity of gender roles” (p55–56).

However, Kyker reiterates that rural women are still victims of circumstances as their urban elite counterparts fight and challenge established gender norms and institutional practices for gender space and visible position among heavily dominated men. Women continue to remain in focus due to the performance of roles inherent in social and culturally constructed gendered roles.

Gender can therefore be conceptualized as a temporarily constituted social identity. As a social construct, gender is, therefore, transformative conditional to not only the performance of the acts but also the mode of repetition and subversive repetition of style. Again, these assigned roles to determine whether one acts like a man, or a woman is dependent on one’s biological, social and cultural inclination concerning religious and colonial-politics predisposition as in the case of women of Baganda. To Ellen Koskoff, gender is defined as a “socially constructed and performed category of human differentiation, but not biological sex as thought by other scholars”.  Davis stated:

…soon a new band of twelve women, dressed as men, arrived without a doubt to add to this tableau the appearance of the sex the festivity lacked. These feigned men commenced then a sort of joust, to contend for and secure the fruits which the other slaves came to throw into the pool. A little boat conducted by female boatmen, equally disguised as men, gave the feigners the pleasure of promenade on the water. (Davis 1986, p160-161)

SEX, MASCULINITY, AND GENDER

Foucault (2012) explores the intricate relationships that have always existed between power, knowledge, and sexuality. He looks at the construction and regulation of discourses around sexuality, which throws light on how gender and sexuality norms and practices are upheld in society. The idea that sexuality is a historically contingent and socially constructed phenomenon rather than a natural or fixed aspect of human existence is one important conclusion that can be drawn from Foucault’s analysis. According to him, numerous institutions and discourses have attempted to control and regulate sexuality throughout history, influencing how it is perceived and understood in society. However, his assertion reveals how power plays a part in the creation of knowledge about sexuality and how some types of knowledge work to uphold the norms and power structures that are already in place.

Feminism according to Koskoff, is a political philosophy in regard to the belief or practice of an individual or a group of people purported to create gender-based inequality. In other words, Feminism implies resistance to inequality irrespective of gender (Koskoff, 2014). According to DeFrancisco and Palczewski (2007) in the chapter titled Gendered /Sexed Bodies used the U. S culture to explain personal space and masculinity. The account reveals that the relative size of one’s body influences the amount of personal space one is allocated. It further observes that masculinity often is signaled by more muscular and taller bodies. The authors wrote:

This is perhaps most obvious in wedding photos of heterosexual couples. Short men often are placed on steps above the women, and tall women often are placed on lower steps or wear flat-heeled shoes. Taller men and men with more muscular bodies are perceived as more masculine; taller women and women with more muscular bodies tend to be perceived as more masculine, and thus their femininity or womanhood is questioned. Of course, there are limits to the power of larger-bodied persons (p88).

A critical analysis of the Feminist theory explains that the determination of sex and sexuality relates to or otherwise embodies certain physiological facts as opposed to gender that assumed social causality underpinning the facticity of the body’s existence (woman’s existence). Simply, Feminist theory explains that sex is not the same as gender. However, the phenomenological theory expresses the fact that the concept of ‘woman”, an embodiment of gender is more understood in the context of a social construct than a naturalistic paradigm as Gremillion wrote:

The vexed question of how to theorize the body as a socio-cultural entity permeates many analyses of body size. The perceived dilemma here turns on a persistent dichotomization of nature and culture that raises difficult questions about the role of human agency in the making and interpretation of bodily forms (Gremillion, 2005, p15).

In Beauty Myth, Wolf (1991) holds the view concerning the effect of the feminist backslash and the redeployment by male institutions of power as a “political weapon” (1991, p. 10). Wolf reiterates beauty as an objective attribute necessary for women’s embodiment and therefore a beautiful woman is and always sought by men among her peers. She sees beauty as an outcast to a universal or natural category, instead, considers beauty as a form of cultural “currency” used by male institutions to limit and control women’s access to power. Reischer and Koo indicate “within this economy, beauty is not merely a desirable asset but a legitimate and necessary qualification for a woman’s rise” (2018, p. 301). In brief, both paradigms (existence and facticity) present a better interpretation of the body encompassing cultural and historical possibilities for phenomenological theory. Therefore, the gendered body must be seen as both the object and subject of the constitutive social agent (constituting meaning and meaning performed or enacted) (Koskoff, 2014).  In allied to this, Butler pointed out that gender as an act needs to be distinguished from a concert act. Accordingly, gender is rehearsed just like the concert act but reenacted and re-experienced as a set of meanings already socially time-honored through repetition. Therefore, the gendered body acts in culturally restricted human space and enacts interpretation within the already existing regulations hence gender performances cannot be associated with the theatrical context. This assumption explains maintaining gender within its binary frame and its permanency (Butler, 2014).

As opposed to a view such as Erving Goffman’s which posits a self that assumes and exchanges various ‘roles’ within the complex social expectation of the ‘game’ of modern life, I am suggesting that this self is not only irretrievably ‘outside’, constituted in social discourse, but that the ascription of interiority is itself  a publicly regulated and sanctioned form of essence fabrication. Gender, then, can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent (p529)

If gender reality is performative (is real only to the extent that it is performed) as assumed by Butler, then critically, there is the need for further discourse on her second assertion that gender is transformative. Inasmuch as Butler expresses her view of the reliance on phenomenological presuppositions such as the concept of “act” to explain gender, she also believes that supplementary politics of performative gender act –re-describing existing gender identities and offering prescription is needed for the reification of gender cores or identities.

Gender is said to be fluid and the fluidity of gender in an African context is relational to lineage, seniority, and motherhood (Oyewumi, 1997). No one is born with gender neither is gender something that one has but something one does and performs (West & Zimmerman 1987; Butler, 1990). However, it is believed that seniority should not only be used in the context of gender definition but also in its contextual application. The term seniority is idiosyncratic in meaning in the sense that an individual takes up and changes positions with time and body as asserted by Bibi Bakare-Yusif referenced by Miescher (2007).

ETHNOMUSICOLOGY IN FOCUS

The study “Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation” by Turino, which examines the social and political aspects of music-making practices in various cultures, is extremely pertinent to the conversation about bodies, gender, and ethnomusicology. To shed light on how musical participation interacts with questions of power, agency, and social hierarchies, Turino highlights the role that music plays in social engagement and identity construction (Turino, 2008). According to Harding, there is a two-layered presentation of the self as a performer; namely ‘body’ (the physical presence) and ‘character’ (a fictional persona) or as an extension of one’s persona (non-persona). It is a question of at which point the performer a performance and what the performer does to become a performance to distinguish between the physical presence and a fictional persona. Harding gives examples such as a chief or wedding couples, where the central figure; the chief, fulfilling a specific role designed to mark his status. This gives him a ceremonial role; in other performance genres, he focuses on himself and plays the self-role rather than a special status. So, in the end, he is “an extension personality” of himself (Cosentino, 1980:55). The performers and their acts are also judged by spectators at multiple levels as part of the repertoire. Sugarman expressed an instance recorded by Gilliant-Smith in her Music and Gender: Perspective from the Mediterranean:

the two Chela (young Rom girls) threw themselves on their knees in front of me and continued to dance with the upper part of their bodies and arms and fingers, at the same time thrusting their faces nearer and nearer mine and using their black eyes with great effect. I then did what was expected of me: I took pieces of money and licked them, stuck them on the foreheads of the girls who immediately got up, and handed the money to the pipe-player as soon as it showed signs of becoming loose. (Gilliat-Smith, 1910, p11, 79).

In the first place, music performance in the African context involves gender considerations. Certain performances involve only females and only males. Some occasions demand both female and male participation. It also gives us knowledge about gender roles in performances; the limit to which each gender can be involved in a performance.

I have already noted how women are sometimes constrained in their viewing, and elsewhere I noted how Tallensi men in northern Ghana lay dawn strict sartorial conditions for participation in certain sections of particular ceremonies (p15).

Significantly, Harding reminds us of ceremonial costumes. This is to say that in African traditions, the costume is one of the most important aspects since it can predict the role of the performer. It is relevant because gender issues in culture and performance guide anyone who intends to research or participate in a particular performance.  Sunardi (2015) premised that “performance contributes to continuous cultural processes by and through which boundaries of gender and sex are negotiated, and that boundaries of gender and sex affect how femaleness and maleness are performed” (p7). This assertion postulates ground for boundaries that indicates gender and sex concepts; in other words, gender and sex ideologies contribute to the restructuring of assumptions about how gendered individuals should look, sound, and behave in the physical body as well as the social body in terms of dressing and the physical spaces of performance and daily life. Gender fluidity in the 21^st century is evident and as a continuous process, despite its challenges and restructuring or redefinition, the set boundaries for shaping these assumptions need regular and persistent reinforcement of cultural ideologies about womanhood and manhood, which occur through performance conventions in the face of imminent weakness – “bodies are sexed by people in terms of the biological sex that they ascribe to bodies and gendered in terms of the behaviours and social roles that they ascribe to sexed bodies” as revealed by Sunardi referencing the work of  Butler (1990, 1993, 1999). Additionally, the gendering of sexed bodies is a delicate cultural construct and negotiable identity through cultural ideologies as indicated by Sunardi in the case of the performers in East Java.

Moisala in his Musical Gender alludes that “as a unique human expression that combines our bodily and cultural identity with idiosyncratic creativity, music provides an interesting setting for gender performance and negotiation in all socio-historical and cultural contexts (Moisala, 1999, p1). His concept is predicated on five assumptions: “(1)music is, like language, a primary modelling system, that is, a system that guides or forms our perceptions of the world or a system on which we model the world around us; (2) music is a bodily art; (3) music is most often publicly performed and, thus, subject to social control; (4) music exists only in performance, even though the norms of performativity are brought to bear on the performer and (5) music can alter one’s state of mind” (ibid; p2). These assumptions serve as a fulcrum for critical observation and analysis for 21^st-century ethnomusicological research on the possible changes that can affect gender organization and the performance of gender music. Therefore, music as expressive art provides the needed platform that allows the possibility for new gender dispositions. According to Moisala, there is a challenge that faces the new paradigm of research in gender studies in music, since both are culturally constructed, however, the better approach to overcome the uncertainties is the need to localize, situate, and place in time gender music discourse.

According to Appadurai (2013), the future in the modern, globalized world is defined by a variety of, frequently conflicting, visions and possibilities rather than a single, linear path. He places a strong emphasis on the cultural influences—such as media, technology, and transnational flows of ideas and images—that shape these futuristic visions. Additionally, issues of power, inequality, and social change are intricately entwined with future imagination concerning various communities’ and groups’ aspirations, hopes, and anxieties for the future on a local and global level, as well as how these imaginaries can influence social and political action. In a similar vein, Stokes (2007) contends that music is essential to the creation of international bonds and identities, acting as a conduit for people and groups to find their place in a world that is becoming more interconnected by the day. Implicitly, cross-border musical practices and genres give rise to hybrid forms and new forms of cultural expression. Music can both support and undermine the power structures that currently govern the world. Therefore, it is employed to uphold cultural identities and challenge prevailing narratives. It also illustrates how political and economic forces can appropriate it to further their objectives. According to Radano (2003), ethnomusicology has been deeply entangled with racial ideologies and hierarchies for a long time. This, he believes has affected the musical traditions that are studied, who is regarded as an authority in the field, and how music knowledge is created and shared. He talks about how racial prejudices have impacted how non-Western music is portrayed and how they have pushed out particular musical traditions and communities. Moreover, the ways that ethnomusicologists have addressed representation and racial issues in their teaching and research have a significant concern. There is therefore the necessity for ethnomusicologists to confront and challenge racialized presumptions and biases within the field by critically engaging with the racial dynamics inherent in the study of music.

The discourses surrounding identity, belonging, and authority in West African societies are significantly shaped by music. Klassen postulates how musical practices function as a kind of expression and communication that both reflect and shape social hierarchies and interpersonal relationships within larger systems of meaning and power (Klassen 2002). Therefore, one important question that faces ethnomusicologists in the 21^st century is cultural identity, gender, and sexuality in cross-cultural discussions. Monson (1995) noted that homosexuality and cross-dressing, of African descent (indigenous and diasporas), there is often a negative correlation with ethnic legitimacy. To Africans, for that matter, the traditional Ghanaian, homosexual practices or otherwise transgendered spectacle is seen or externalized as a taboo. Therefore, in African culture, heterosexual practice is highly valued and internalized. This phenomenon encapsulates gendered ideologies and holdings of cultural authenticity and legitimacy. Monson is of the view that despite the significant acceptance of alternative gender and sexual practices in the African cultural context, discussion of sexuality remains “no goal area” for public discourse. Given this, the difficulty that confronts 21^st-century ethnomusicological research is the ethical dilemma and methodology in researching these cross-cultural and social phenomena for wider acceptance of research findings and conclusions.

Again, apart from transgender, is the after-effect of colonial encounters on gender, race, and sexuality as mentioned by Monson – “with the introduction of Christianity and European education in the late nineteenth century, male dominance in gender construction increasingly came to be questioned…Moreover, the teachings of Christianity challenged the king’s position as the absolute authority and changed the attitude of the subject towards the monarchy notably around issues of sexuality” (Nannyonga-Tamusuza, 2009, p374). The partitioning and reconstruction of societies and cultures leading to break down of bodies contact and cross-cultural exoticism in terms of language and competencies –(during the past century or so, as gender roles and notions of sexuality in these regions have changed in conjunction with the adoption of modernist ideologies, many of these performance-related professions have declined or disappeared (Sugarman, n.d.)), raises serious concern for ethnomusicologists for consideration in the choice of methodologies that can competently reveal the true nature of research – “the challenges of balancing currently fashionable post-cultural notions about gender, sexuality, and religion which may be more absolute and essentialized seem particularly great” (Monson, 1999, p30).

CONCLUSION

The paper reviewed ethnomusicological studies and theoretical analysis of the concepts of the body concerning gender from different societies, social status, sexual orientations and valued dissimilarities. It focuses on gender and its embodiment in ethnomusicology. The review further ascertains the current concerns of ethnomusicologists in regard to gender discourse in the 21st century.

The body as a mediator, even though, different authors give different categorizations and reveal fragmented views of its multiple aspects, they all come to the fact of the body’s continuity and pave way for comprehensive discourse in the 21st century’s debate as well as further dimension to the study of the body and its evolvement in gender and ethnomusicology. The idea in these categorizations outdoors a clear distinction between the physical body and social body which becomes a connecting process unfolding the multiple types of power relations such as social control, gender, and health.

Gender as an embodiment is conceptualized as a temporarily constituted social identity. Therefore, being a social construct, gender is transformatively restricted to not only the performance of the acts but also the mode of repetition and subversive repetition of style; thereby making assigned roles to determine whether one acts a man or a woman depending on one’s biological, socio-cultural, religious and colonial-politics predisposition. More so, re-describing existing gender identities and offering prescriptions is needed for the reification of gender cores or identities.

The 21^st-century Ethnomusicologists remain to answer very important questions that face ethnomusicological studies through the problematization of cultural identity, gender and sexuality in cross-cultural discussions about the after-effects of colonial encounters, partitioning and reconstruction of societies and cultures. Finally, the challenge that faces the new research paradigm in gender studies in music, since both are culturally constructed is the consideration of the choice of methodologies that can competently reveal the true nature of research in the body’s evolvement in gender formation. However, the better approach to overcome these uncertainties is the need to localize, situate, and place in time gender music discourse.

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