9 - Performing Non-Western Musics

Summary

The 1884 London Health Exhibition was held, its organisers said, to demonstrate the concept of health in the ‘widest possible sense’. As its Official Catalogue noted, the displays would illustrate ‘all the conditions of healthful life, as regards the food of the people, their clothing, and the dwellings in which they live’. The South Kensington buildings were filled with exhibits of ‘healthy’ building materials, examples of public and industrial hygiene, and aspects of education and gymnasia. Dress also made up a large proportion of the display, with fabrics and manufacturing techniques shown next to morbid exhibits of the effects of ‘poisonous dyes’ on the skin and ‘displaced viscera’ produced by tightly-laced corsets. The majority of the exhibits, however, related to food. As Punch wryly remarked, it seemed the ‘great object of nine-tenths of the Exhibitors … to excite the appetite of the passer-by’. Throughout the Exhibition, visitors could examine different methods of food preparation and preservation, see exotic international foods, and even taste these for themselves in the many restaurants inside the building. It was here that the first Chinese restaurant in London could be found, extending out over an artificial ornamental lake in the grounds. And, for diners in this restaurant, as The Times noted, ‘no Chinese banquet is considered complete without music’.

Every day of the Health Exhibition, visitors to the Chinese restaurant heard music by a band of Chinese musicians. But this band was not the only non-Western ensemble to appear at exhibitions in the British Empire during this period. A year earlier, at Calcutta 1883, a Burmese troupe performed daily with an orchestra in a theatre constructed on the far side of the Exhibition grounds. Also in London, the year after the Health Exhibition, the Court Band of the King of Siam appeared at the Inventions Exhibition where they performed three times per week in the Albert Hall. Live performances given by visiting musicians, unlike the depersonalised and decontextualised exhibits of non-Western instruments, allowed audiences to engage with the sonic realities of their respective musical traditions. For many audience members, these performances may have provided a first encounter with the sound of any non-Western music, beyond its representation in European exotic opera or operetta.