Reflections on Co-editing Pt. 1: Prof. James Kippen on Music, Dance and the Art of Seduction (Eburon 2013)
In part one of our two-part series on co-editing, Prof. James Kippen discusses his work on the recently-published volume Music, Dance and the Art of Seduction.
Sir Isaac Newton once said that tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy. The one great truism about editing a volume or journal of essays is that one needs every ounce of tact one can muster when negotiating with, managing, and even massaging the wide assortment of egos involved in such a collective enterprise.
Allow me to begin by recapitulating the convoluted history of my own involvement in one such enterprise. I was in part responsible for the edited volume called Music, Dance and the Art of Seduction, published at the very end of 2013 by Eburon Academic Publishers in Delft, The Netherlands. The proposal for this volume emerged at the conclusion of an international conference on music and seduction sponsored by the Arnold Bake Society for the Study of the Performing Arts Worldwide held in Amsterdam in May 2005. The theme had given rise to many worthy (and some not-so-worthy) presentations from all parts of the globe to the question of music’s (and dance’s – after all, these are often entirely inseparable) role(s) in luring and alluring, enticing and beguiling, persuading and convincing, coaxing and cajoling, inveigling, manoeuvering and manipulating – in short, seducing other human beings. Now readers with even moderately advanced arithmetical skills will have noted, with a not entirely unreasonable measure of alarm, the cavernous gap of eight years between the conception and production of this work. One important reason for that delay was the tragic illness and untimely death of my co-editor Frank Kouwenhoven’s wife, Antoinet Schimmelpenninck, for she had been intimately involved in all the behind-the-scenes matters concerning the production of the volume. However, that was not the only reason.
It took a surprisingly long time to find a publisher that would take on Seduction, and years passed by while the proposal was being reviewed first by one and then by another (…and then another) publishing house in The Netherlands. Yet even when Eburon agreed to issue a contract the volume was still far from complete, and this points to some procedural differences between the two co-editors: for my part, I insisted on strict deadlines for the completion of chapters for which I had full responsibility, and I met all of my own editing deadlines, but Frank Kouwenhoven took a far more relaxed view with his contributors, allowing for the very late addition of new chapters and, ironically, finishing his own chapter right at the eleventh hour (although in his case, obviously, there were extenuating circumstances).
Editorially, Frank and I frequently found ourselves on the same page, so to speak, but there were also disagreements: I was highly critical of several proposed chapters that I firmly believed were sub-standard in both conception and execution, and which at the same time failed to contribute critically to the key issue of music’s and dance’s roles in seduction. I rather sternly wanted to get rid of them, favouring instead a more streamlined volume featuring the conference’s best papers, while Frank’s affable, easy-going generosity of spirit inclined towards something more all-inclusive. Inevitably, that would entail a vastly more involved editing process whose efforts had necessarily to be directed not only to issues of language but also, at my insistence, to raising the ethnographic and analytical persuasiveness of some of the weaker contributions. Frank got his way, and Seduction extended to fully eighteen chapters, some of them far longer than they really ought to have been. Moreover, because of my insistence, I found myself with a great deal more editing to do.
We broke the book down into three main sections. The first focussed largely on the biology of musical courtship, and the second on a variety of case studies from different parts of the world including Polynesia, West Africa, North America, China, and Europe. Overall, there were some excellent contributions, and a couple that stood out in my mind were Rokus de Groot’s (Amsterdam University) thought-provoking essay called “Musical Seducers and Music as Seduction” (it begins with Don Giovanni, what else!) and Judith Cohen’s (York University) “‘Con el guleindón – a tocar es xoriguer’: Subtle and unsubtle seduction and courtship in Luso-Hispanic and Sephardic Song”, which I felt really got to the heart of how song works in the processes of courtship and seduction. The third part of the book, the final six chapters, was the portion over which I had sole and complete control because it formed a cohesive body of work on the courtesans of India – a topic close to my heart. This is how I introduced, somewhat provocatively, the figure of the courtesan (x–xi):
Although she clings to a largely undercover, tenuous, highly marginalized, and greatly degraded socio-musical position in today’s sociocultural matrix, the singing-dancing girl must be constructed as an historical phenomenon, albeit one that continues to inform contemporary interpretations of the social and musical substance of India’s performing traditions by providing us with a poignant reminder of the contrast between past performances that were imbued with passion and today’s often rather bourgeois, religiose, antiseptic fare. She has enjoyed sympathy, praise, even exaltation, and yet she has also been subjected to vilification and prosecution for her profession, including systemic colonial abuse and the criminalization of her lifestyle through colonial and neo-colonial legislation…. For the Indian professional female entertainer who sings and dances, who invokes Eros for both spiritual and mundane purposes, has historically been a sex worker whose power to influence her audience, human and divine, is exercised through the seductive movements of her body, the beguiling sound of her voice, and the suggestiveness of her song texts.
My fairly elaborate introduction (x–xix) was intended to contextualize and broadly theorize the six Indian chapters, at least in part because I chose not to contribute a chapter of my own (I had only chaired sessions, panels and discussions, and had not given a paper) since I was convinced these six truly excellent essays were enough on their own. These chapters tackle topics from the accounts of European travellers to India in the 18th century to European operas and ballets of the 19th century that featured courtesan themes to more contemporary aspects of courtesan performance in both the North and South of India: the substance and technique of their seductive songs and dances.
I worked very hard with my authors, and they with me. The editorial process, if it is to be executed well, demands prodigious efforts; at the same time contributors may be asked to go to extra lengths to satisfy conditions they may not have expected. Above all, openness, honesty and respect from all sides are the keys to success. I certainly did experience occasional tensions with my co-editor as well as with some authors, but by keeping the goal of publication firmly in mind, by persevering, and with immense doses of patience, I feel the end product is not only worth all the effort but is also an important contribution to the literature on a rich and fascinating topic – Music, Dance and the Art of Seduction.
As a coda, I should say that I was also on the other side of the editorial table during the production of the volume called Hindustani Music: Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries (Joep Bor et al (eds), Delhi: Manohar, 2010). As a contributing author, I had delivered a paper at a conference in Amsterdam in December 1997. Now, readers with even moderately advanced arithmetical skills will have noted, with an even greater sense of alarm, a hiatus of thirteen years to publication (yes, thirteen!). The one thing I politely but firmly insisted upon with my Dutch editors (just what is it about the Dutch?) was that when publication seemed finally imminent I be allowed to revise my chapter to take account of new research, mostly by me, that had changed our understanding of the historical trajectory of my topic, the North Indian tabla. Newton’s sage epigram on the subject of tact has certainly not been lost on me, whether I am a contributing writer to a volume or its editor. Indeed, all would do well to heed his advice.
