ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II provides an overview of developments in the

study of ethnomusicology in the twenty-first century, offering an introduction to contemporary
issues relevant to the field. Nineteen essays, written by an international array of scholars, highlight
the relationship between current issues in the discipline and ethnomusicologists’ engagement with
issues such as advocacy, poverty and social participation, maintaining intangible cultural heritages,
and ecological concerns. It provides a forum for rethinking the discipline’s identity in terms of
major themes and issues to which ethnomusicologists have turned their attention since Volume
I published in 2005.
The collection of essays is organized into six sections:

• Property and Rights

• Applied Practice
• Knowledge and Agency
• Community and Social Space
• Embodiment and Cognition
• Curating Sound

Volume II serves as a basic introduction to the best writing in the field for students, professors,
and music professionals, perfect for both introductory and upper level courses in world music.
Together with the first volume, Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II provides a
comprehensive survey of current research directions.

Jennifer C. Post is Lecturer at University of Arizona School of Music and Honorary Senior Research
Fellow at University of Western Australia.
“Jennifer Post’s Volume I reader appeared back in 2005, and given the speed with which academic
discourse moves forward, an update has long been needed—and this complementary volume
advancing the discipline is indeed necessary. Post has sensibly invited contributions from emerging
scholars as well as senior members of the ethnomusicology community. This volume offers
scholarship ranging in subjects across the globe, picking apart contemporary buzzwords such as
‘rights,’ ‘soundscapes,’ ‘sustainability,’ and ‘cognition.’ This is essential reading for undergraduates
and graduates alike, as well as for the broader profession and all those interested in contemporary
ethnomusicology.”
—Keith Howard, Professor, SOAS, University of London

“When people ask what impact the discipline of ethnomusicology has in our contemporary life,
they should turn to Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II for answers.”
The compelling essays in this book should be required reading for all seeking ways to better our
future from the study of music in culture.
—Janet Sturman, Professor, University of Arizona

“Post has produced an excellent new reader in which a well-selected group of contributors
address key topics in ethnomusicology today, supported by a thoughtful and helpful editor’s
introduction.”
—Anthony Seeger, Professor Emeritus, University of California – Los Angeles
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

A Contemporary Reader, Volume II

Edited by  Jennifer C. Post

First published 2018
by Routledge
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authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
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 Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Redesigning and Redefining Ethnomusicology 1
JENNIFER C. POST

Part I Intellectual Property and Cultural Rights 15

1 Performing Protocol: Indigenous Traditional Knowledge as/
and Intellectual Property 17
BEVERLEY DIAMOND WITH AARON CORN, FRODE FJELLHEIM,
CHERYL L’HIRONDELLE, MOANA MANIAPOTO, ALLAN MARETT,
TAQRALIK PARTRIDGE, JOHN CARLOS PEREA, ULLA PIRTTIJÄRVI,
AND PER NIILA STÅLKA

2 “Justice With My Own Hands”: The Serious Play of Piracy

in Bolivian Indigenous Music Videos 35
HENRY STOBART

3 Modernist Reform, Virtuosity, and Uyghur Instrumental Music

in Chinese Central Asia 53
CHUEN-FUNG WONG

Part II Applied Practice 65

4 From Neutrality to Praxis: The Shifting Politics of Ethnomusicology
in the Contemporary World 67
SAMUEL ARAÚJO

5 The Ethnomusicologist at the Rock Face: Reflections on Working

at the Nexus of Music and Mining 81
KIRSTY GILLESPIE

v
vi • CONTENTS

6 Social Shifts and Viable Musical Futures: The Case

of Cambodian Smot 97
CATHERINE GRANT

7 Medical Ethnomusicology and Psychological Flexibility in Healing,

Health, and Wellness 111
BENJAMIN D. KOEN

Part III Knowledge and Agency 125

8 Birdsong and a Song about a Bird: Popular Music and the Mediation
of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Northeastern Brazil 127
MICHAEL B. SILVERS

9 Music, Environment, and Place in Kam Big Song 141

CATHERINE INGRAM

10 Ecological Knowledge, Collaborative Management, and Musical

Production in Western Mongolia 161
JENNIFER C. POST

11 Music and Non-Human Agency 181

BERND BRABEC DE MORI

Part IV Community and Social Space 195

12 Rethinking the Urban Community: (Re)Mapping Musical
Processes and Places 197
KAY KAUFMAN SHELEMAY

13 Mixed Modes and Performance Codes of Political Demonstrations

and Carnival in Haiti 211
REBECCA DIRKSEN

14 Soundscapes of Pilgrimage: European and American Christians

in Jerusalem’s Old City 231
ABIGAIL WOOD

Part V Embodiment and Cognition 247

15 Time, Gesture, and Attention in a Khyāl Performance 249
MARTIN CLAYTON

16 Speaking with the Body in Nigerian and Cuban Orisha Music:

Musical Movements in Song, Dance, and Trance 267
AMANDA VILLEPASTOUR

17 Gaming the System: Gender Performance in Dance Central 289

KIRI MILLER

Part VI Curating Sound 305

18 Preserving the Past, Activating the Future: Collaborative Archiving
in Ethnomusicology 307
JOHN VALLIER
 CONTENTS • vii

19 “Curating Sound Is Impossible”: Views from the Streets, Galleries,

and Rainforests 319
NOEL LOBLEY

Contributors 329
Index 333
 Preface

In my own research during the last fifteen years I have explored diasporas and homelands in
connection with the construction of nations, applied new mobilities paradigms, and investigated
contemporary views of materiality. I have written about commercial media and its impact on
rural practices, identified significant links between ecological knowledge and narrative responses
to environmental change, and studied local perception of sound and its uses in daily life. I have
collaborated with ecologists and exchanged ideas with climate change scientists, worked with local
peoples at fieldwork sites to explore their responses to change and cultural loss, and acted in vari-
ous ways to provide social, cultural, and practical support for both individuals and communities.
Drawing from history, geography, political science, sustainability science, and embracing the work
of applied ecologists, social anthropologists and sociologists, cultural and political geographers,
and others, during this period I have learned as much about subjects outside my primary area of
training as I have expanded my knowledge in ethnomusicology and developed topics of research
that currently center on musical production in Inner Asia. Like many ethnomusicologists, I reach
into other disciplines to inform and augment my research. Similar experiences, albeit with different
disciplinary, scholarly, and geographic connections, emerge when discussing research with other
ethnomusicologists involved in studies of music or sound who are currently working in various
social and cultural contexts, in rural or urban locations, face-to-face or digitally, and collaboratively
or supportively.
Contributing to the growth of an interdisciplinary field in the twentieth and twenty-first cen-
turies, ethnomusicologists have journeyed along routes that have engaged them with theories,
methods, and themes drawn from diverse sources and subjects. The shared approaches have helped
to build a discipline with a strong scholarly identity and various connections to performance, and
an even deeper attachment to peoples and places, scenes and settings for music and sound events.
While some argue that ethnomusicology struggles with an identity crisis, others recognize that the
discipline’s changing identity occurs due to the unique combination of the scholarly engagement
and interdisciplinary alliances that the shared methodologies and theoretical structures create. Its
practitioners thus reflect and affect the social, cultural, and scientific frameworks that they borrow,
develop, and sometimes change. In the twenty-first century, ethnomusicologists have continued
to expand their reach into even broader areas, both inside and outside the academy, encouraging
musical research to grow and mature in new ways.
Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II celebrates current voices in ethnomusicol-
ogy. When I edited the first volume ten years ago, I was especially interested in highlighting some

ix
x • PREFACE

of the key topics students and scholars were discussing in classrooms and conference halls at the
end of the twentieth century. The earlier collection’s broad divisions addressed commodification,
globalization, media, nationalism, racial and ethnic identities, and social and political action, with
many other topics embedded within (from gender to sound studies); all areas that were contributing
to moving ethnomusicological focus—in pedagogy, especially—away from the geographic divi-
sions that framed so much of the classroom teaching in the twentieth century. Today it is virtually
impossible to similarly represent the body of literature and to embrace as much of the discipline
that ethnomusicologists cover in their scholarship, learning, and music-making in a single volume.
We have grown in numbers and diversity; we are now a larger body of scholars, musicians, and
students around the world exploring music and sound in diverse social settings. The expanding
parameters have also been accompanied by disciplinary growth in conjunction with the many
social and political changes that have impacted musical production in the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries. Articles in this volume include scholarship by authors residing in locations
around the world, including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, Great Britain, Israel,
New Zealand, Norway, and the United States. They represent experiences and scholarly ideas and
ideals documented in the midst of sometimes devastating social, political, and economic events
around the world. The individuals, communities, and nations ethnomusicologists represent and
collaborate with have been impacted in significant ways by these events, and this is apparent in the
writing that has emerged. In fact, some in the generation of ethnomusicologists represented here,
who offered their first research in the early twenty-first century, honed their skills and completed
their fieldwork in the shadow of 9/11 and the tragic events around the world that followed. All of
the articles have been completed in the midst of continuing conflicts in many locations, ongoing
refugee crises, pandemics impacting wide geographic regions, unpredictable and volatile weather
events, distressing levels of poverty, and environmental degradation. Scholars today also struggle
more during their fieldwork with local and state-based restrictions and surveillance. They have
to manage increased involvement of music, news, and tourism industries also documenting and
supporting cultural practice. Those engaged in digitally-based fieldwork must cope with the social
complexities inherent when face-to-face interaction is absent. The articles here express just some
of the ways that approaches to the study of music and sound have developed and changed in the
twenty-first century. Complementing the earlier volume, topics focus on intellectual property and
cultural rights; discuss and exemplify applied practice; investigate the significance of ecological
knowledge and the agency of humans and non-humans; share information on community, sound,
and social space; look at embodiment and cognition; and consider the importance of archives and
sound curation. The new, revised, and reprinted articles written largely during the last five years,
report on musics in urban and rural contexts, utilizing information that is transmitted digitally
and shared face-to-face. The geo-regions are found in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa,
Asia, the Pacific, Europe, and North America. The sections are as follows:

• Intellectual Property and Cultural Rights

• Applied Practice
• Knowledge and Agency
• Community and Social Space
• Embodiment and Cognition
• Curating Sound

Criteria for Inclusion and Organization of the Volume

When the publisher approached me about updating Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader,

the original plan was to create a revised edition, adding some newer articles and retaining some,
 PREFACE • xi

but not all, of the original articles in the collection. Considering the continuing significance of all
the articles in that 2005 collection, and recognizing that there have been many new developments
and trajectories in ethnomusicology since its publication, I determined that a collection largely
of new articles would offer the greatest value to the discipline at this time. Like the 2005 volume,
this is a collection of current articles representing diverse approaches to the discipline for use in
graduate and upper-level undergraduate teaching as well as for general readership in the discipline.
We decided to call this publication Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II.
Recognizing it would be impossible to create a fully comprehensive single volume for the
discipline that represents each geographic region and research area, instead I chose a group of
topics that represent work I believe is especially forward-looking. The articles provide evidence of
an increasingly multilayered-interdisciplinary field and offer links to many of the disciplines that
ethnomusicologists draw from during their research. While I have subdivided the collection into
parts, the articles overlap across the sections as well. I do not suggest that this collection represents
difference in its entirety. Instead, I believe it is a unique record of journeys taken by scholars in the
twenty-first century. Their knowledge has been informed by the comparative musicology of the
early twentieth century, the establishment of ethno-musicology in the 1950s, and the development
of the discipline during the latter part of the twentieth century, which contributed to forging mul-
tiple disciplinary pathways. As I argue in my introduction, I believe this particular generation of
researchers, involving scholars young and old, is contributing to a new direction. They are revising
and redesigning the discipline.
 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all the contributors for their willingness to share their research in this collec-
tion. The quality of their scholarship, applied work, and engagement with music and sound is what
encouraged me to design and complete this project. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their
constructive criticism and support, and Constance Ditzel, music editor at Routledge Press, who
helped me make decisions about how this volume would ultimately be shaped. I would especially
like to thank Janet Sturman, my colleague at the University of Arizona, who was helpful in the
early stages of the project; and a very special thank you to Amanda Villepastour for her critical
comments on my introductory essay, and as always for her ongoing support. In my fourth decade
as a professional in ethnomusicology, I thank once more my many students and colleagues who
have inspired me; among my colleagues, Anthony Seeger, Ellen Koskoff, and Jeff Todd Titon have
been with me as friends, supporters, and valued critics throughout my entire professional journey.
I would also like to recognize the many colleagues I have shared the profession with in the Society
for Ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music, and the British Forum for
Ethnomusicology who have offered enormous support, encouragement, and friendship over the
years. I am so grateful for the opportunities I have had in ethnomusicology as educator working
in both the private and public sectors. In my many journeys to field sites in different locations
in Asia, the Pacific, and North America, my greatest inspiration always comes from my research
partners and their musical communities.
Jennifer C. Post

xiii
 Introduction
Redesigning and Redefining Ethnomusicology
Jennifer C. Post

Ethnomusicology as it is practiced today contributes not only to the continuing growth of a disci-
pline; it engages actors in a process of redesigning and redefining the field. This is not a new concept,
of course, but it is my belief that due to the kinds of changes that are occurring in scholarship,
fieldwork, and views of the definitions and roles of research and researchers today, this is a seminal
period in the history of an approach to the study of music that is currently called ethnomusicology.
In some ways, the new topics and approaches, some of which are represented in this collection,
mark a critical stage in the movement away from the “ethno-musicology” that appeared on the
scene in the mid-twentieth century, the creation of a small group of North American and European
scholars working to refine and even ultimately redirect the attention of some of the earlier nine-
teenth and early twentieth-century comparative musicologists.1 The clearest evidence of this level of
change in this volume appears because many of the articles challenge some of the core assumptions
adopted in earlier decades by scholars such as Jaap Kunst (1959), Bruno Nettl (1983), Alan Merriam
(1964), and John Blacking (1973) that, despite the evolution of the discipline, have been largely
maintained through the generations. Expressed simply, ethnomusicology’s primary subject of study
has been explicitly identified as music, its focus has been on the study of human music-making,
and the methodological basis for research has been fieldwork to support the production of schol-
arly research. What ethnomusicologists study and use as a foundation for their scholarship and
other activities today is defined more broadly than in earlier decades; it includes music, but it may
also focus on sound and acoustic events. Current research also challenges the earlier model with
studies that move easily between human and non-human worlds to recognize, for example, social
relationships between people and things, and even relationships among non-humans, as essential
to understanding musical and sound production (for example see Bates 2012). Fieldwork quite
commonly includes physical and digital sites, “at home” and abroad, and it engages students and
scholars in research and in applied activities. Social engagement solely to benefit a community is
what demonstrates the biggest difference; the purpose of fieldwork today is not always primarily
to produce ethnographic studies for a scholarly community.
Dialogues about the state of the discipline of ethnomusicology, its theories and methods, have
taken place in each decade since the mid-twentieth century, in academic literature, at conference

1
2 • JENNIFER C. POST

meetings, in classrooms, blogs, and on social media. Discussions about its intellectual history,
especially during the last twenty years,2 frequently link us in ethnomusicology uncomfortably to
our colonial histories, the early roots of the discipline in comparative musicology characterized by
scientific objectivity and cultural evolutionism, and the practice in fieldwork of maintaining social
distance between the researcher and the researched.3 In the late twentieth century, its foundation
shaking in the context of a maturing scholarly landscape, some even expressed an “uncertainty”
about ethnomusicology as a separate discipline reflecting divisions between ethnomusicology and
musicology that have existed for generations.4 Stokes suggests that in some ways, ethnomusicology
may be “increasingly conceived by its practitioners as part of a broader discussion in music study,
rather than a theoretical and methodological isolate” (Stokes 2013, 836). At the same time, he also
suggests “ethno” musicology may no longer represent the actions and emphases of many in the
discipline today, for the term “implies a musicology of others, imagined as discrete cultural units
viewed from a scientific distance, or a view achieved from within these other musical worlds. It
assumes clear boundaries, separating ‘us’ from ‘them’” (Ibid., 827). Ethnomusicologists’ insecurity
about the discipline occurs not only with ongoing discussions about its direction and future, new
scholarship that offers changing research practices and new alliances (see, for example, discussions
about theory in ethnomusicology by Rice 2010 and Solis 2012), and during troubled times in the
world, but in a climate of change at educational institutions, and challenges to the discipline in
other academic and public spheres (see Rice 2014; Stobart 2008).
In contrast to discussions about the discipline, the dialogues in Barz and Cooley’s highly
influential Shadows in the Field (2008) occur in the context of a wide range of social interactions
found in contemporary ethnographic work. They take place across time and space, with people
and their music, in cross-cultural contexts, and in academic settings. They represent interaction
with secondary sources, with fieldnotes (and thus with one’s self), take place between researcher
and community members they work with, as well as among ethnomusicologists as social scien-
tists, and between researcher and the multiple or mobile subjectivities and multiple realities they
experience at different stages during their research (Barz and Cooley 2008). Notably, recent stud-
ies demonstrate more attention to the roles of researchers in local social and musical production
in the communities in which they work; they recognize and take greater responsibility for their
impact on communities and individuals, and they have developed ways of reporting that more
fully acknowledges these relationships.
While Barz and Cooley ushered in positive change with discussions around fieldwork, challenges
to the discipline continue. A multilayered example demonstrates just some of the complex issues
that are being managed in classrooms and academic institutions, conferences, and professional
societies, as well as in writing and research. Yet to be fully resolved for students and scholars is
who participates in research and who shares fully in the disciplinary discourses. Three separate,
but related, concerns pertain to the voices and status of people of color in professional work in
North America, Europe, and Australia; the full acceptance of scholarly methodologies established
and used by non-Euro-American scholars; and the breadth and depth of the voices of women in
the discipline. Ethnomusicology was founded and has been maintained in the world of academia
in Europe and North America. It is not surprising, then, that the representation of racial, ethnic,
gender, and sexual diversity in scholarship and professional societies in the twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries has been small. For example, European meetings of ethnomusicologists,
including the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, the European Society for Ethnomusicology,
and topical meetings in several Western European countries in recent years offer few papers by
people whose heritage is not European; diasporic musical traditions are presented instead by
European scholars. In North America, the Society for Ethnomusicology, established in the 1950s,
did not formally address issues of diversity with concrete actions toward change until 2002 when
members and the leadership created sections on Diversity and Difference. During the last decade,
a concerted effort has been made to offer organizational support for research, and involvement of
 INTRODUCTION • 3

a varied population of scholars, especially with the appointment of a Diversity Action Committee
in 2013.5 Their projects are still young and the outcomes not yet clear.
Decolonization, critiquing colonial and postcolonial models, and working to identify alternate
knowledge sources and epistemologies, is a popular research topic in scholarship today. The con-
cerns expressed in the concept embrace shared responsibility for research with local community
members, greater interest in and acceptance of research produced by local scholars, and respect for
methodologies and themes that represent local rather than Euro-American values. Yet hierarchies
in knowledge production remain in ethnomusicology. Scholars who have directly addressed these
issues have had some impact, although literature indicates that there is more work to be done. In
the 1990s and early 2000s, Kofi Agawu challenged Western trained ethnomusicologists who, he
argued, sought to explain West African practices through difference rather than sameness. He
also characterized Western ethnomusicologists’ fieldwork and writing that does not sufficiently
consider indigenous perspectives as colonialist (Agawu 1995, 2003). In 1997 Larry Witzleben
asked, “Is ‘ethnomusicology’ as understood and practiced in the United States and Europe suitable
for or appropriate to the needs of non-Euro-American scholars?” (221) and he argued for greater
acknowledgment and use of indigenous Asian scholarship in the discipline. In 1999 Javier León
identified an academic other in Peruvian musical scholarship and explored a “boundary drawn
between local and foreign styles of research” resulting from “segmentation rather than an inte-
gration of multiple perspectives” (169).6 Fifteen years later, Hettie Malcomson suggested in her
research that power imbalances in Mexican and other Latin American scholarship have not been
corrected (Malcomson 2014). Uneven opportunities for the support of education and research, in
North America, Europe, and Australia versus opportunities for scholars in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America, assures that the imbalance will not be resolved quickly. Accepting difference in research
theories and methods seems to have been difficult for European and North American scholars.
Some of the clearest evidence of this is that recently published articles providing overviews of the
field in sources such as Grove Online, Oxford Bibliographies, the International Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences, and in related resources authored and edited by Nettl (2015), Bohlman (2013),
Stokes (2013), Rice (2014), and Samuels et al. (2010), mostly fail to identify research by scholars
whose education and research was completed outside of Europe and North America. Recently,
Collaborative Ethnomusicology: New Approaches to Music Research between Indigenous and Non-
Indigenous Australians edited by Katelyn Barney (2014) has given authors opportunities to explore
various meanings of collaboration and—most importantly—it has given voice in the work to local
scholars.7 Direct references to entanglements of colonizer and colonized in recent literature by
Mackinlay, Barney, and others, reveals that ethnomusicologists remain caught up in a struggle to
balance uneven relationships between researcher and the communities they study even as they
become more socially and politically engaged in collaborations in locations where they are involved
in research (Mackinlay 2015; Barney 2014, 2016).
The position women have played in the discipline demonstrates another issue. Women have
taken part in ethnomusicology since the early years of the twentieth century in the United States.8
They have played significant roles as scholars offering theoretical and methodological material,
sharing interpretive and analytical knowledge, and demonstrating leadership; yet their work is still
not as fully or widely recognized as men’s. Perusing some of the same recently published articles
referenced above that provide foundational information on the activities and research trajectories
of the discipline, few identify noteworthy research by more than a handful of women, some cite
no women at all in their overviews.9 For example, The Cultural Study of Music is a resource used
widely in ethnomusicology, cultural studies, and other related fields, yet among the thirty-five
chapters, only three were written by women (Clayton et al. 2012). Yet women have provided
significant new pathways for research, social relationships, and reporting; it is widely accepted
that their social roles in communities in which they work are not the same as men’s (Babiracki
2008).10 Women have also pushed boundaries in other ways in their literature. Examples of
4 • JENNIFER C. POST

women’s ethnographic work in the 1990s and early 2000s that played especially influential roles
include Ingrid Monson’s studies on social interactions in American jazz that are both embodied
and performative (Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction, 1996), Michelle Kisliuk’s
reflexivity in her writing about her work with BaAka communities in the Central African Republic
(Seize the Dance! BaAka Musical Life and the Ethnography of Performance, 1998), Katherine
Hagedorn’s experiential approach to studying Cuban sacred cultural forms (Divine Utterances:
The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santería, 2001), Deborah Wong’s examination of music and the
social and political construction of Asian American identities by drawing on feminist theories of
performativity (Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music, 2004), and Tomie Hahn’s exam-
ples of embodiment and cultural knowledge in performance and the field in Japan (Sensational
Knowledge-Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance, 2007). In recent years, women’s roles in
applied ethnomusicology have been strong as well.11 The applied ethnomusicology movement,
its growth and development, has been traced by Klisala Harrison, and it has been described,
discussed, and exemplified by Rebecca Dirksen (2012, 2013), by Kathleen Van Buren (2010), and
by others who offer models for even younger scholars to follow.
In conjunction with greater awareness of the need for more diverse voices in the scholarly
world, there has been considerable development in engagement with public sector work in ethno-
musicology, especially during the last decade. In addition to recognizing long-term positions in
government (such as the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress), museums (such as the
National Museum of Ethnology, Japan), and the music industry (such as the recording industry),
students and scholars are recognizing that work in public education offers significant opportuni-
ties for ethnomusicologists. In recent years, ethnomusicologists with training in education and
those interested in reaching out to educators have received support from programs such as the
online resource Smithsonian Folkways Magazine,12 where multi-media field reports (see Emberly
and Davhula 2014, for example) and tools for teaching that offer educators information linked to
media sources are posted for the public to access. A recent collection in this area that is impacting
curricula and research is The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Musical Cultures edited by Patricia
Shehan Campbell and Trevor Wiggins (2013).
Changes that consider our need to develop greater equity across the discipline with more direct
contributions to ethnomusicology by members of source communities, involvement of researchers
trained both inside and outside the European and American academies, and public and private sec-
tor engagement in the development of the discipline have been part of the evolution of a discipline.

The Volume

Literature identified with ethnomusicology that has been written in a climate of change during a
complex period in our world history is affected not only by the issues noted above but by many
others as well. They revolve around discussions about key topics that include ethnomusicological
and musical theory, diversity, collaboration, social responsibility, and more. Articles in this col-
lection have been grouped to highlight a key area of focus, although throughout the collection the
articles intersect in many ways, and a wide range of topics are covered.

Intellectual Property and Cultural Rights

Ethnomusicologists’ interest in addressing intellectual property, copyright law, and the cultural
rights of individuals and communities grew in the 1980s and 1990s as the popular music industry
expanded geographically and the “world music” movement impacted musicians globally. Key
issues were raised by Anthony Seeger on the ethics of intellectual property (1996) and on the
impact of commodification (2004); by Sherylle Mills on indigenous music and copyright law
 INTRODUCTION • 5

(1996); by Anthony McCann on copyright and common property (2001); and by Steven Feld on
the impact of globalization, commodification, and the world music movement on local musicians
and on ethnomusicologists (1994, 2000). In the same period, Robert Lancefield (1998) reminded
ethnomusicologists of the importance of repatriation and the distribution not only of current
fieldwork recordings but also of the return of heritage materials from earlier scholars, collectors,
and museum personnel. These articles and case studies by others that were inspired by this work
have had a huge impact on research and teaching in the twenty-first century, and they have played
significant roles in applied ethnomusicology discussions. Expanding technologies and opportu-
nities for indigenous and other local communities to engage with mediated music, as well as the
democratization of audio and video production and archiving, have raised new discussions about
music ownership, power relations in the industry, and indigenous peoples’ rights (see for example,
Meintjes 2003; Simonett 2011).
Ethnomusicologists have been drawn to national and international efforts to conserve and pro-
mote cultural heritage, including state-led (and private) tourism industries as well as international
organizations, and they have considered the effect of these actions on local practices. The impact of
agencies such as WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) and of the UNESCO intangible
cultural heritage (ICH) programs has received the greatest response from scholars. While WIPO’s
focus has been on intellectual property and international copyright, UNESCO’s ICH programs have
had an even wider reach. Their Proclamation of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage
of Humanity (2001, 2003, and 2005) and the adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of
Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) in 2003 have engaged nations and local peoples with heritage
conservation and revival programs that have had huge political, social, and cultural implications.
Some of these have resonated widely to impact national ideals and goals, as well as local identities
and aspirations. They have also entered into the research by ethnomusicologists in a number of
ways. Recognizing the breadth of cultural rights lost due to industrialization, globalization, the
development of music industries, and the work of powerful agencies may have also played a role
in encouraging greater ethnomusicological engagement in discussions about rights in general (see
Weintraub and Yung 2009).
In this volume, Beverley Diamond, Henry Stobart, and Chuen-Fung Wong address some of the
cultural rights and heritage issues. Diamond and her co-authors consider contemporary recording
and performance contexts of indigenous peoples to explore the roles and responsibilities of all
members of a community engaged in cultural production, from the indigenous and non-indigenous
artists to culture industries personnel, students, and scholars. They demonstrate that there remains
a disjuncture between cultural practice and any legal protection that is in place for indigenous
peoples from North America to the Pacific. Diamond shares authorship of her article with all the
indigenous and non-indigenous people that provided information: Aaron Corn, Frode Fjellheim,
Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Moana Maniapoto, Allan Marett, Taqralik Partridge, John Carlos Perea, Ulla
Pirttijärvi, and Per Niila Stålka.
In his chapter, Stobart addresses piracy as a political strategy among local musicians as a means
to manage both the colonialist and capitalist power held by transnational media corporations.13 He
traces the effects of piracy on local and regional media markets in the northern region of Potosi,
Bolivia, especially in connection with Gregorio Mamani, an originario (indigenous) musician, and
his productions. Wong’s chapter on musical reform identifies how modernizing efforts of the state,
controlled by the Han majority, have affected music and musical instruments of Uyghur musicians
in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. He reveals a story of modernization, promoted
by the state for Uyghur ethnic musicians as for all non-Han ethnic groups in the country, that is
expressed in Uyghur virtuosity. This form of musical production does not express artistic freedom
but an artistic conception contained in the minority modernization project of the state. At the
same time, Wong suggests, instrument construction and performance can also be seen as a form
of Uyghur nationalist refashioning and resistance to these actions.
6 • JENNIFER C. POST

Applied Practice
Applied ethnomusicologists who work both inside and outside of academia address concrete
problems using ethnomusicological knowledge (Harrison 2014; Pettan 2010). The concept of
applied work has a long history in comparative musicology and ethnomusicological study, but
actual approaches have evolved in response to local and global needs as well as social and political
changes.14 Daniel Sheehy referred to applied ethnomusicology in 1992 as a “conscious practice”
that “begins with a sense of purpose, a purpose larger than the advancement of knowledge” (325).
Influenced by both applied anthropology and public folklore, and unified by its practitioners’ deep
sense of social responsibility, today many scholars agree that applied ethnomusicology is in fact not
a single methodological and theoretical approach but, as Harrison notes, a “set of practices” (2012,
506). Applied ethnomusicologists as advocates and activists, driven by a sense of social responsi-
bility and a methodology that is framed by participatory action, embrace these activities in their
roles as scholars and research partners. Some of their subjects include social and environmental
justice, conflict resolution, social marginalization, health and wellness, cultural sustainability, and
revitalization of musical practices.15 As an example, a formal link between ethnomusicology and
health, healing, and therapy grew in the 1990s and early 2000s; its identity has been framed by
several works, beginning with Marina Roseman’s study of Temiar music and medicine in Malaysia
(1991). Gregory Barz’s study on HIV/AIDS in Uganda (2006) also had a profound impact on interest
in the subject, and it set an example of an applied approach to a local (and international) health
crisis (see also Barz and Cohen 2011). This was reinforced with other studies and collections that
followed, including The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology, edited by Benjamin Koen
(2008). Michael Bakan’s research with autistic children (2009) and Koen’s on health and healing in
Badakhshan (2009) resulted in broader collaboration of ethnomusicology with such fields as music
therapy and alternative medicine, expanding the reach of scholars and practitioners even further.
Reflecting on the subject in 2016, distinct directions have been identified as earlier work in musical
healing, ethno-medicine, and therapy are recognized and used for new research. Relationships
between medical ethnomusicology and cognition are also being acknowledged and promoted.
For applied ethnomusicology in general, two recent volumes providing information on various
projects and approaches include Applied Ethnomusicology: Historical and Contemporary Approaches
(Harrison et al. 2010) and Oxford Handbook for Applied Ethnomusicology (Pettan and Titon 2015)
as well as numerous articles in journals and collections. Together, these developments provide
evidence of the current popularity of the approach and its value to ethnomusicology, to music
study, and to the support of individuals and communities.
In this volume, Samuel Araújo, Kirsty Gillespie, Catherine Grant, and Benjamin Koen illus-
trate approaches to applied work through active engagement. Araújo identifies applied practice
as interactive work that involves researchers and the demands of a community being researched
that ultimately impacts both scholarship and local peoples.16 Addressing the complex relationships
between often politically disempowered knowledge-producers and those with academic authority,
he presents four case studies from his own and his students’ research in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on
samba, Roma people in a local neighborhood, a dance drama practice maintained by northeastern
Brazilian migrants, and efforts to document music in a resettlement community in a local neigh-
borhood. Araújo also offers models for change in disciplinary practice that diminishes academic
authority, especially, and gives greater power to local communities.
Addressing applied practice as an alternative way to engage in ethnomusicology, Gillespie
recounts her experience working with the mining industry in the Lihir Islands in Papua New
Guinea. She offers examples of facilitation skills developed in ethnomusicology used in mediating
relationships between the mining company and local residents, and between residents and cultural
institutions. She underscores the importance of the cultural understanding and strategic skills that
ethnomusicologists bring to the table especially when culture is at risk.
 INTRODUCTION • 7

Grant provides a case study on the safeguarding and revitalization of Cambodian smot (a
Buddhist liturgical practice) in the face of social, political, and economic change. With an eye on
the younger generation, she shares the experiences of one young practitioner of this valued musical
genre. Grant discusses the role of initiatives to safeguard traditional performing arts genres like
smot, calling for the involvement of researchers and others to contribute to its support.
Koen uses some of his earlier findings in medical ethnomusicology to address health and healing
with a focus on adaptive and balance-seeking behaviors in psychological flexibility in pathways to
positive change and healing. He invokes local concepts as part of a plan both for action and applied
research. His case study to illustrate the culture-specific values is from the Pamir Mountains in
Tajikistan where meditative music creates “a multilayered network of flexibility” promoting ben-
eficial health changes.

Knowledge and Agency

Recently, ethnomusicologists have engaged more fully with indigenous and local knowledge and
the agency of humans and non-humans in relation to the natural world. Renewed connections to
threatened biological resources and a growing interest in ecology and sustainability have encouraged
new discussions about indigenous knowledge, addressing both cultural and biological information.
Interest in relationships between music and ecology, and its application in musicology, is generally
traced to the work of composer R. Murray Schafer (1977), while in ethnomusicology Steven Feld
(2012 [1982]) provided both theoretical and methodological frameworks for ethnographers to
build on. While Schafer and Feld approached their subjects differently and initially had separate
goals, ultimately their connections to soundscapes, expressed both directly and indirectly, have
been used to support ongoing concerns about the effects of globalization, industry, climate change,
and environmental degradation on sounds and soundscapes. Drawing also from ecocriticism in
literature, feminist studies, and linked to musicology as well, ethnomusicologists added an eth-
nographic ear in order to identify local concerns. Some research production in ethnomusicology
also demonstrates a strong interest in the study of ecological knowledge and its impact on musical
production.
Some ethnomusicologists have broadened their understanding of how sound is organized,
perceived, and used by also considering the significance of the agency of humans, animals, and
landforms, as well as the products of technologies, such as musical instruments (see Born 2011 on
new materialities). Reports of seamless relationships between human and non-human worlds that
emerge in ritual and daily life involve music and sound in various ways. Recent ethnomusicological
interest in exploring any boundaries there may be between human and non-human realms and
discussing agency draw on the work of Gell (1998), the Actor Network Theory (ANT) of Latour
(2005), and others. Ethnomusicologists such as Marcello Sorce Keller (2012) as well as Bernd Brabec
de Mori and Anthony Seeger (2013) have addressed the subject both practically and theoretically.
In this volume, Michael Silvers, Catherine Ingram, Jennifer C. Post, and Bernd Brabec de Mori
share information on indigenous and environmental knowledge and human and non-human agency
in connection with music. Silvers’s study centers on Luiz Gonzaga, a popular singer in northeastern
Brazil who used music to share ecological information, especially related to prediction of rain in
a region plagued by drought.17 Considering lyrics, music, and cultural history, Silvers discusses
ecological knowledge and the maintenance of musical practices and indigenous and local values
through commercial, popular musical forms.
Ingram investigates specific ways that local songs of the Kam people of southwestern China tie
them to their environment and contribute to maintaining and spreading environmental knowledge
related to the natural world. Exploring lyrics and vocal imitation of environmental sounds, she
illustrates the interrelationship between the human and non-human worlds where the Kam inhabit
the felt emotions of birds and insects and express kinship with landforms.
8 • JENNIFER C. POST

Post considers the scientific and cultural value of locally constructed and maintained knowledge
about biological resources drawn from narrative expression in songs and tunes created and main-
tained by Kazakh residents in western Mongolia. Her article argues for support for collaborative
management schemes to provide greater knowledge for Western scientists who seek to manage lands
populated by local pastoralists, and to encourage local residents to work the land for the benefit of
their communities and for the Mongolian state. Brabec de Mori argues that by essentializing the
human in musical research, non-human elements that are often documented in our work are not
given agency. Exploring agency and intentionality in production of “meaningful sound” among
humans and non-humans, he suggests that the ontologies that we report on demonstrate agency of
non-humans as well. He draws on Steven Feld’s research among the Kaluli in Papua New Guinea
and his own work in Peru with the Shipibo-Konibo people to demonstrate how non-human entities
are causal agents in relation to music.

Community and Social Space

Approaches to the study of community and the actions that occur in social spaces have changed in
recent years due to expanding interest in interdisciplinary connections between cultural studies,
sociology, geography, and other areas during ethnomusicological research. For example, in an article
on musical communities, Kay Kaufman Shelemay (2011) explores the role of music in community
formation and calls for greater attention to the subject by current music scholars. Musical com-
munity, she suggests, is a fundamental concept that over time has been replaced and its meaning
shifted as other ideas (such as scene, imagined communities, and art worlds) became popular. Yet
the notion of community as a collective in music remains foundational to ethnomusicologists’
study of both musical and social processes. Ethnomusicologists have demonstrated that musical
collectivity transforms social space and contributes to constructing identities. These identities are
enacted in space through shared cultural behaviors, whether the social groups are settled, migrating,
or resettled, or are interacting online or face-to-face. Interest in the related subject of space and its
relationship to sound and sociality has also grown with contributions from other disciplines, from
anthropology and geography to the cognitive sciences. Related to this, in a discussion about how
music, sound, and space are used “to create, mark or transform the nature of public and private
experience” Georgina Born (2013) discusses “the generative potential of bridge-building between,
on the one hand, the study of music and sound and, on the other, the study of spatial and social
processes” (2–3). Among the approaches to this topic that ethnomusicologists have introduced
and embraced are geographical perspectives that Born discusses as well. The musical production
of space and the construction of social boundaries; fashioning space to hold identities, to create
a sense of belonging, to exert social control and to enact power, are topics that have developed
during the last several decades in ethnomusicology, and in geography and other disciplines (Born
2013; and see Leyshon et al. 1998; Wood et al. 2007; Smith 1997).
In this volume, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Rebecca Dirksen, and Abigail Wood provide a range of
approaches to viewing community and events in social spaces: through mobility, political action,
and constructing and relating to soundscapes. Shelemay explores community, mobility, and place
in urban Ethiopian diaspora communities in the United States.18 She looks at the dynamic pro-
cesses involved in musical transmission and performance that contribute to generating, shaping,
and sustaining new communities. Drawing frameworks from cultural geography and its attention
to “place-making” as well as community, she explores roles music plays in what she refers to as
“ethnic place-making.”
Dirksen shows how communities are also engaged, and even entangled, in political events in
which they contribute to the expression (and even redefining) of concepts in a changing political
climate. She uses Gage Averill’s earlier work on Haitian music to address (and reassess) Kreyòl
terms anraje (a state of physical and emotional exuberance) and angaje (an expression of political
 INTRODUCTION • 9

engagement) and the relationship of these concepts to musical and civic behaviors during two
presidential elections between 2010 and 2016.
Wood’s soundscape research explores the location-specific sounds and vocal practices in con-
nection with the politics of pilgrimage in the Old City of Jerusalem.19 Her work explores communal
and personal experience and values as residents share physical and auditory spaces that are char-
acterized by collisions and entanglements that ultimately reflect and shape religious experience
for individuals and communities of worshippers. Their shared auditory space bridges public and
private realms in a diverse and densely populated portion of the city.

Embodiment and Cognition

New ethnomusicological interest in embodiment and cognition in performance has yielded signif-
icant new research opportunities for the discipline during the last decade. Among them is gesture
research applied to music, movement, and dance, which draws from various disciplines including
ethnochoreology, musicology, psychology, biology, linguistics, and performance studies. Studies
on gesture as embodied music cognition have been led since 2010 by Rolf Godøy and Marc Leman
in Musical Gestures: Sound, Movement, and Meaning (2010) and Anthony Gritten and Elaine King
in Music and Gesture and New Perspectives on Music and Gesture (2006, 2011). Ethnomusicologists
consider how people perceive, process, and respond to gestures in performance, and how social
and musical meaning is constructed during acoustic and kinetic production. Ethnographically-
informed work that draws on and contributes to gesture and movement by Martin Clayton and
Laura Leante (2013), for example, provides important links to help readers understand music and
movement as it is spatially and temporally, individually and collectively, conceived, experienced,
and interpreted. Approaches to musical gesture using several fieldwork-based examples to illustrate
approaches that engage with visual, acoustic, and cognitive information are shared in an article
co-authored by Gina Fatone, Clayton, Leante, and Matt Rahaim in the 2011 Gritten and King
volume (see Fatone et al. 2011).
In this volume, gesture and embodiment are addressed in articles by Martin Clayton, Amanda
Villepastour, and Kiri Miller. Clayton’s revised article on time, gesture, and attention in Hindustani
khyāl performance in North India explores gestures of both performers and audience members in a
vocal music performance to reveal how all participants at a performance event experience musical
structure.20 Drawing from cognitive psychology and gesture studies, he discusses how gesture,
interaction, attention, and temporal structure in performance can be mapped to demonstrate the
breadth of listeners’ engagement with musical phrases, cadences, and timing.
Villepastour explores corporeal engagement of Nigerian and Cuban performance. Critiquing
comparative research from the two regions, she argues that text has typically taken precedence
over other expressions, and in her study she explores a holistic view of the visual, sonic, and per-
formed devotional practices (including the gestural or movement-related elements). Revising a
model by Kofi Agawu linking gesture, spoken word, vocal music, instrumental music, and dance,
she highlights a less linear conception of movement as coded musical behavior.
Miller’s previously published article on music, dance, and electronic gaming experience explores
how the Dance Central game series (Harmonix Music System) involves its players with gender
performance in both private and public settings.21 Participants are engaged in embodied gender
work as they learn in private yet engage in more public discourse through their interactions in
public-sphere social media contexts.

Curating Sound
Curating sound and conserving field data held in archives and personal collections are topics too
frequently ignored by ethnomusicologists. Yet our archives, museums, and personal collections
10 • JENNIFER C. POST

comprising audio and video recordings, images, manuscript data, musical instruments, and more,
continue to expand. Curatorial responsibilities for these materials involve preservation, organiza-
tion, and promotion of data amassed by researchers, sometimes during decades of fieldwork. The
materials represent significant human and institutional relationships, including collaborations
with individuals and communities. Archival data, when properly stored and indexed, can provide
access to some of the most valued expressive forms in a community. Behind this work are growing
issues of ownership and rights, preservation, funding, and most importantly, repatriation. Ethical
issues related to ownership of materials collected—the promises made and the contracts that spell
out rights for individuals and communities—remain the same, regardless of whether people reside
in a remote village or a dense urban space. While ethnomusicologists in archival positions have
maintained consistent voices, acting as mediators between the world of ethnomusicological activ-
ities in the field and archival realities, the work of those engaged with conservation, promotion,
and repatriation has yet to make the impact needed (Seeger 1986, 1996; Landau and Topp Fargion
2012). Is this due to the ongoing power imbalance between scholar and source communities, and
between institutions and individuals? Lobley (2015) suggests that this issue calls for creative action
in sound curation. In a 2011 article, he provides examples how this might be done using some of
his curatorial work in South Africa and the Central African Republic (Lobley 2011). Returning to
cultural rights discussed at the beginning of this volume, Beverley Diamond’s collaborative work with
indigenous artists and scholars offers a fine model for curation as well. Curatorial actions informed
by ethnographic practice, embedded in educational settings, and shared in creative ways for the
general public, with opportunities for source communities to remain involved (to retain rights to
their sounds, songs, tunes, musical instruments, and narrative information) is the ultimate goal in
today’s ethnomusicologically informed archival world.
The volume closes with articles by two authors presenting subjects all ethnomusicologists need to
consider due to concerns about fieldwork data that is constantly being produced, revised, reused, and
(ideally) returned to source communities. John Vallier and Noel Lobley share information on their
experiences with sound and field data through archival engagement. Vallier argues that sound record-
ing in ethnomusicology has maintained a role in the growth and development of ethnomusicology
as archivists address changing needs. He describes his own recent involvement in archival projects
where he was able to establish collaborative relationships with collectors, depositors, local community
members, organizations, as well as students. He suggests that partnerships between archives and the
diverse communities they represent are necessary for the maintenance of musical heritage.
Lobley discusses the many roles in sound curation, from management to display, interpreting
to developing new content. His focus is on the ethnographically informed curation that he iden-
tifies as a form of story-telling. He asks how music and sound might be used to develop forms of
“collaborative curation.” Ultimately Lobley’s interest, like Vallier’s, is in the long-term relationships
between archives, institutions, and communities.

Conclusion

Scholarship and other activities in ethnomusicology play changing roles in the academic world.
The articles in this collection demonstrate that changes occurring in approaches to research and
scholarly production may challenge some of the core understandings and expectations, theories
and methods, established in earlier generations. In many ways, ethnomusicology and ethnomu-
sicologists are becoming more pragmatic. While most believe this is enormously beneficial for
the discipline, it is most advantageous for the local communities where ethnomusicologists are
involved in research and applied work. Our research has become more collaborative and reflects
a greater sense of social responsibility. As local musicians and their communities are represented
more collegially in our literature, our work contributes to forward movement in the discipline in
 INTRODUCTION • 11

several important ways. While we have always been community oriented in ethnomusicology, and
have acted in one way or another as advocates for individuals and communities we work with, new
pathways also provide different opportunities—and even expectations—for us to act more fully in
human-to-human (and even human-to-non-human) ways, rather than simply being involved as
academic researchers. Thus, possibly most significantly, the end game for scholars and practitioners
does not always have to be academic research. That is simply one of several goals and roles that
ethnomusicologists engage in. In the twenty-first century, many ethnomusicologists have come
down to earth not only with a greater recognition of the roles they play and responsibilities in
their relationships with other people, but by embracing more completely the social and emotional,
kinetic and acoustic lands and landscapes where they work.

Notes
1. These activities have been documented in sources recounting the history of the discipline, including Nettl (2015),
Bohlman (2013), Stokes (2008), Pegg et al. (2001), Myers (1992), and others.
2. See Pegg et al. (2001); Stokes (2008); Reyes (2009); Samuels et al. (2010); Barz and Cooley (2008); Bohlman (2013);
Meintjes et al. (2013).
3. See Barz and Cooley (2008) who identify some of the many ways that fieldwork has developed in the twenty-first
century (where both sites and practices have changed). They discuss the increasing move away from the practice as
an essential component for ethnomusicological research as well. These developments have continued during the last
decade. For additional discussion on this topic see Danielson (2007) and Stokes (2013).
4. See Nettl (2015, 4), but also Stobart (2008); Fox (2008); and Stobart (2008).
5. A Section on Diversity and Difference and a Crossroads Section on Diversity and Difference were both established
in 2002. They also established a translation series (Ethnomusicology Translations) with its first publication in 2015. In
contrast, the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) has built in a system whereby member representation
from different parts of the world is expected. Their leadership, membership, and participation demonstrate diversity
that is significant.
6. Raúl Romero (2001) echoed Javier León when he reminded researchers of the disparity between foreign and local
scholarship.
7. In addition, the journal Collaborative Anthropology has featured a few articles by ethnomusicologists. For examples
of collaborative studies, see research by Treloyn et al. (2016) and Aaron (Japangardi) Corn and Wantarri Jampijinpa
Patrick (2014). See also collaborative work by Andrea Emberly and Mudzunga Junniah Davhula on Venda music in
South Africa.
8. In the history of European ethnomusicology, women began to play significant roles much later.
9. Tim Rice (2010) offers a much more gender-balanced list of resources (and research).
10. Specific themes, methods, and interpretative strategies, first identified by Ellen Koskoff in her 1984 publication Women
and Music in Cross Cultural Perspective, indicate differences in style and reporting.
11. See Koskoff (2012) for a good discussion of the contributions of three women and their ethnographic work to the
development of a feminist ethnomusicology. Women’s leadership in professional societies, in scholarly and public
institutions during the last twenty to thirty years, has had a considerable impact on values in professional societies, in
university curricula.
12. In addition to the magazine, the organization offers Lesson Plans. Some of these have been coordinated by Smithsonian
and the Society for Ethnomusicology.
13. Henry Stobart’s “‘Justice with My Own Hands’: The Serious Play of Piracy in Bolivian Indigenous Music Videos” has
been slightly revised from the original publication in 2014 in Postcolonial Piracy: Media Distribution and Cultural
Production in the Global South (eds. Lars Eckstein and Anja Schwarz), Bloomsbury. Reproduced with permission of
Bloomsbury Press. [This chapter was originally published in the volume Postcolonial Piracy: Media Distribution and
Cultural Production in the Global South (eds. Lars Eckstein and Anja Schwarz, Bloomsbury 2014)].
14. In the ICTM statement, widely cited among applied ethnomusicologists, “Applied ethnomusicology is the approach
guided by principles of social responsibility, which extends the usual academic goal of broadening and deepening knowl-
edge and understanding toward solving concrete problems and toward working both inside and beyond typical academic
contexts” (www.ictmusic.org/group/applied-ethnomusicology). SEM echoes this with “The Applied Ethnomusicology
Section is devoted to work in ethnomusicology that puts music to use in a variety of contexts, academic and otherwise,
including education, cultural policy, conflict resolution, medicine, arts programming, and community music” (SEM:
www.ethnomusicology.org/general/custom.asp?page=Groups_SectionsAE).
15. A “Music in Development” program, established at SOAS (School of African and Oriental Studies), University of
London by ethnomusicologist Angela Impey is increasing awareness and activities in this significant subject area.
16. Samuel Araújo’s “From Neutrality to Praxis: The Shifting Politics of Ethnomusicology in the Contemporary World”
was originally published in 2008 in Muzikološki Zbornik 44 (1): 13–30. Reproduced with permission.
17. Michael Silvers, “Bird Song and Song about a Bird: Popular Music and the Mediation of Traditional Ecological
Knowledge in Northeastern Brazil” was original published in 2015 in Ethnomusicology 59(2): 380–397. Reproduced
with permission of the Society for Ethnomusicology.
12 • JENNIFER C. POST

18. Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s article “Rethinking the Urban Community: (Re) mapping Musical Processes and Places” was
originally published in 2012 in Urban People 14(2):207–226. Reproduced with permission.
19. This revised version of “Soundscapes of Pilgrimage: European and American Christians in Jerusalem’s Old City” was
originally published by Abigail Wood in 2014 in Ethnomusicology Forum 23(3):285–305. Reproduced with permission
of Taylor & Francis.
20. This revised version of “Time, Gesture and Attention in Khyāl Performance” was originally published by Martin Clayton
in 2008 in Asian Music 38(2): 71–96. Reproduced with the permission of University of Texas Press.
21. Kiri Miller’s “Gaming the System: Gender and Performance in Dance Central” was originally published in 2014 in New
Media & Society 17(6). Reproduced with permission of SAGE.

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 INTRODUCTION • 13

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 Part I
Intellectual Property and Cultural Rights
 1
Performing Protocol
Indigenous Traditional Knowledge
as/and Intellectual Property
Beverley Diamond with Aaron Corn, Frode Fjellheim, Cheryl
L’Hirondelle, Moana Maniapoto, Allan Marett, Taqralik Partridge,
John Carlos Perea, Ulla Pirttijärvi, and Per Niila Stålka1

“Indigenous knowledge exists; intellectual property is invented or created.”

(Greg Young-Ing)2

Indigenous people have a particularly troubled history where the commoditization of their
knowledge is concerned. Mainstream culture has often appropriated and profited from the use
of their images (as sports logos, for example), their technologies (the igloo or the canoe) as
symbols of nationhood, their environmental knowledge as key to new medical breakthroughs,
or even their DNA as essential data in the human genome project. Because of the seriousness
and urgency of these matters, there has been stronger pressure to think of culture as commodity
in recent decades than ever before. There have been discussions about the misfit and yet, the
occasional utility, of the concept of “property” for Indigenous knowledge. Many have pointed
to the narrowness of “copyright” that offers no protection to oral traditions,3 invests ownership
in individuals, and does not recognize the variety of creative roles played by humans or other
beings including spirits. For the most part, nor do IP systems account for collective ownership
(an Indigenous nation, clan, family, etc.), the responsibilities for maintaining song knowledge,
the rights to speak about or teach song knowledge, and situations/places in which specific songs
or genres may or may not be used. Clearly, Frith and Martin’s contention that “there currently
seems to be a radical disjuncture between the law and the social practices it supposedly governs”
(2004, 213) still pertains.
Nonetheless, progress has been made with regard to recognizing Indigenous traditional knowl-
edge as a human right. A global achievement in this regard is the United Nations Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), which was ratified by 144 nation states initially.4 While other
articles in this Declaration address the right to practice, revitalize, and teach cultural traditions, the

17
18 • BEVERLEY DIAMOND

article that pertains most directly to the control of traditional knowledge as well as contemporary
creative expression is:

Article 31—Indigenous people have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop
their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well
as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and
genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral
traditions, literatures, designs, sport and traditional games and visual and performing arts.
They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property
over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.

Since the late 1990s, studies abound that track discussions with elders on the vital importance
of traditional knowledge for sustaining human communities as well as ecologies, on matters of
appropriation, on colonial removals of ceremonial material, bans on traditional practices or lan-
guages, or on digital copying (Bell and Napoleon 2008; Lai 2014). Scholars have written about and
“drawn out” Indigenous customary law (Borrows 2010; Corn 2013; Reed forthcoming), sometimes
in relation to repatriation projects, or they have documented shifts in international law vis à vis
Indigenous law5 (e.g., Janke 1998; Anderson 2009; Coombe 1998, 2009; Bell and Paterson 2009).
In the wake of the Declaration, many protocols for respecting TIK have been created and published
on websites created by arts collectives and/or Aboriginal organizations,6 as well as governments
and international agencies such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Specific
protocols for song are among them.
In other cases, scholars have been taught protocols from local practice: from elders who
were kind enough to work and teach alongside. In the northwestern United States, an import-
ant figure in this regard has been Upper Skagit Elder Vi Hilbert who has played a significant
role in cultural revitalization initiatives in her region. Ethnomusicologist Laurel Sercombe
has recently written about an intercultural initiative that Vi Hilbert undertook to commission
a symphony based on two traditional Lushootseed songs “as a gesture toward ‘healing a sick
world’” (2016, 148). The care with which Vi Hibert chose and shared specific songs that had
been gifted to her, and her instructions to the composer Bruce Ruddell indicating that it was his
responsibility to feel the spirit of the songs but not “violate” the songs by replicating rhythms
or melodies, are instructive and inspiring moments of respectful practice. John Carlos Perea,
whose performance is referenced below, noted that Sercombe’s article “also addresses ‘Native
copyright’ as opposed to Western ‘legal’ copyright not just in terms of ownership but as those
ideas effected the composition process.”7
Anthropologist Andie Palmer (Palmer 2007, 55) has also shared lessons learned from Elder Vi
Hilbert regarding her presentation of First Nations songs in the classroom, a particularly germane
topic for ethnomusicologists and music educators:

She let us know that before she ever played a song for us, she thought over why we might
need to hear it.
She always prepared the way and put us in a ready frame of mind to listen. She would tell
us that we were going to hear a song and that the song was a gift, a treasure.
She would describe her familial relationship to the singer and tell us a little about what
she appreciated about the person.
She would then describe the purposive action of the person who had recorded the
song—who it was recorded with, who the person stated he or she had recorded it for, what
the stated purpose of the song was.
She would tell us how thankful she was that someone had thought it important to record
the song.
 PERFORMING PROTOCOL • 19

She would express gratitude that this person had recorded the song so that we could hear it.
She would discuss restrictions that might have been placed on the recording or auditing
of the song and explain why we were currently able to hear the song and the decision that
had to be carefully made by the singer to record it.
She would introduce the singer as someone present, including, where warranted, directly
addressing him or her as a relation.
When she turned the tape recorder on, she would listen, standing quietly and attentively.
When the song was over, she would turn the tape recorder off, pause, and thank the person
whose voice we had listened to.

In ethnomusicology, as in many other fields, issues relating to access, ownership, intellectual property,
control of knowledge, control of commodification, fair compensation, and damaging appropriation
now have a prominent place. To some extent, academic studies have pointed up the many misfits
between Indigenous concepts of song authorship, ownership, and legal regulations (Mills 1996;
Seeger 1996). While local concepts and protocols vary, the importance of collective ownership (by
clan, family, or nation) is perhaps the most widely shared of these differences relative to the Western
world’s concept of intellectual property. Authorship by non-humans—animals or spirits—is another.
Less widely discussed are distinctions between the author and owner, as construed for instance by
the Saami of Scandinavia who recognize authorship of their traditional joiks but regard the person
(or thing) that is joiked to be the owner, recognizing that the person represented should have control
over the uses of that representation. Other studies demonstrate the mistrust that Indigenous singers
and song makers have for Settler regulations. Mistrust may be voiced in attitudes toward contracts
(Scales 2012, 174–180) or evident in practices such as piracy by Indigenous entrepreneurs (Stobart
2010). Many studies of Indigenous song practices to date have focused on issues of appropriation
and strategies for acquiring legal protection. Anthony Seeger has drawn attention to the fact that
“inequality, and the relationship between ‘knowledge providers’ and ‘intellectual property rights
owners’ often resembles that found in earlier relations between developed countries and colonies”
(1996, 87). In work by Steven Feld (1996, 2000), Nancy Guy (2002), and Thomas Hilder (2015), as
well as the widely reported case of Solomon Linda, composer of “Mbube” (see e.g., Bachner 2005),
we have become aware of lucrative rip-offs of archival recordings, become savvy about the dangers
of residual contracts, and vigilant of definitions of spaces akin to “commons” or concepts such as
the “public domain.” Archival recordings have often been the focus of attention, since there was no
legal protection for recordings until 1972 in the United States.8 The practices of collectors and the
motivations that Indigenous people have had for working with them have been the focus of some
“restudies” (Coleman and Coombe with MacArailt 2009). Trevor Reed’s studies of Hopi legal cases
have unfolded the limitations of copyright law, customary law (variously defined in different national
contexts), and Indigenous law (Reed 2015) in protecting ownership of the “ancestors’ voices.”9 Hilder
(2015) has documented Saami responses to appropriation in public meetings, print materials, and
performance. The vital work of studying case law and uncovering cases of appropriation must con-
tinue. In most of these cases, however, the terminology and framework for thinking about creativity,
authorship, and ownership still reflect legal language and definitions.
The current article, on the other hand, is more concerned about documenting how Indigenous-
defined protocol actually plays out in contemporary recording and performance contexts. I do
ethnography at the very points of disjuncture to which Frith pointed. I aim to fuel conversation
among Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, promoters, students, and scholars. I argue that pro-
tocol as reflected in both the business of making a record and the crafting of a staged performance
provides frameworks for thinking and performing the responsibilities of creativity, authorship and
intellectual property, not just intraculturally but cross-culturally as well. These frameworks which Jeff
Corntassel has called “everyday practices of renewal and responsibility within native communities
today” (2012, 86) avoid or redefine the language of property, ownership, and copyright that delimit
20 • BEVERLEY DIAMOND

IP regimes, language that may contribute to a “politics of distraction” (Ibid.). I attempt not just to
assert, but to think through a broader spectrum of creative roles, responsibilities, and relationships
implicated in the making of song and other forms of expressive culture. While my focus certainly
should not preclude attention to legal recourse for appropriation, it should perhaps precede or at
least accompany such attention.10 At a point where Indigenous law is beginning to have an impact
in international forums11 such as WIPO where sui generis rulings12 are gaining support and at
various levels of policy making, ethnomusicologists’ studies of performing protocol may be useful
beyond the academy. At the very least, a shift in the frameworks for our conversations will better
align with Indigenous scholars who are working to find the best strategies for cultural resurgence.

Performing Protocol in the Making of a Recording

With regard to Aboriginal music, commodification can have both positive and negative results for
Indigenous communities seeking ownership of expressive property. A recording can document
ownership more legibly than oral transmission and thus provide a basis for challenging inappropriate
uses. Some groups have extended this logic further by working to create large digital databases13 as a
means of protecting traditional knowledge. Such projects as the Joik Archive Project (Hilder 2015)
or the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia (Corn 2012) have not
only claimed archival materials for Indigenous people but, by recirculating the digital fi les, have
led to revitalization, improved documentation, and the uncovering of repertoire “missing” from
earlier archival collections. Perhaps the most comprehensive and utopian vision of the potential
of archival recordings was drafted as the Garma Statement on Indigenous Music and Performance
which called upon the Australian government “to support and sustain Indigenous performance
traditions through the establishment of Indigenous Knowledge Centers, and to recognize the
National Recording Project as a National Research Priority.”14
On the negative side, however, recording technologies have facilitated the rampant marketing
of unidentified collections of Indigenous sound clips for use by film-makers, advertisers, or others
(see Théberge 2003). Anthologizers of Indigenous music have also been problematic, since care
has rarely been taken either to acquire permission from or to pay creators or performers or others
who have a claim on ownership (Hilder 2015 documents one instance).
Here I examine various conversations and negotiations involved in “getting permission” to use
each of twenty-four tracks on the CD that accompanies my book Native American Music in Eastern
North America (2008). When I agreed to write a volume on Aboriginal music in the north and
northeastern regions of North America for the Global Music series of Oxford University Press, I
sought advice about protocols as well as how best to fulfill my responsibility to give back to the
communities. I created an Aboriginal Advisory Committee to ensure that my representation was
presented in dialogue with the views and suggestions of Inuit and First Nations authorities. This
turned out to be an active exchange and a really rewarding collaboration for the three members of
the committee and myself. Together we decided to contribute royalties from the sale of the book to
the Aboriginal Scholarship fund at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta, a center that established
ground-breaking programs for Aboriginal artists since the mid-1990s.15 This decision to ensure
that sales revenue would return to Indigenous creators led many to reduce or waive the licensing
fee they would otherwise have charged. Since there wasn’t much money involved, the negotiation
of permission was based more on principles than on payments.
The behind-the-scenes problems and the shortcomings, as well as the successful interactions
concerning each track, reveal a complex array of issues—some relating to “copyright” and others to
Indigenous knowledge. It is instructive to contemplate how conversations about access went, how
agreements were or were not reached. The process made me cognizant of the sorts of relationships
that were expected and of my responsibilities for maintaining those relationships. Our discussions
 PERFORMING PROTOCOL • 21

shed light on concepts of collective ownership as well as individual authorship. With an eye to their
efficacy, I observed new types of gate-keepers who mediate access. I noted that different groups
exerted control at different stages of the research and publication process. At the project’s end,
one of the few generalizations I can make is that legal ideas of copyright and community-based
customary law are not regarded as antithetical but are intertwined and layered in peoples’ practices.
In selecting music for the Global Sound CD, I was, of course, aware of readily available material
on legal Internet download sites. So the book has an iMix and a Smithsonian Global Sound track
list in addition to a CD.16 Because there was substantial powwow music available on iTunes, for
instance, there is none on the CD. This also accounts for the fact that the majority of iMix tracks are
“traditional.” Some high profile performers, including Sadie Buck’s group, the Six Nations Women
Singers, and a number of artists on SOAR or Silver Wave, are in the iMix rather than on the CD. In
fact, most of the CD recordings are indies or field recordings. The Internet mixes, however, raise
the same issues of second party licenses that we have encountered elsewhere in our discipline.
Artists are not aware of royalties from downloaded iTunes sales—probably because the revenue
is very small and hence not paid at regular intervals—and more recent streaming services such as
Spotify present exponentially less revenue for musicians.17
Twenty of the twenty-six tracks on the CD were reproduced from existing CDs, largely inde-
pendently produced. Copyright on the songs themselves is not indicated for more than 50 percent of
the tracks. This is worrying since the artists would have no recourse to law without having indicated
copyright. Copyright on the recordings, on the other hand, is usually in the name of an indepen-
dent company (sometimes the artist’s personal tax shelter). It is interesting that, relative to the First
Nations material, the Inuit recordings are more often copyrighted by governmental institutions.
This pattern reflects both an interest in Arctic exploration (including arts research in Canada since
the 1970s) but may also indicate governmental interest in Arctic sovereignty in the late twentieth
century.18 Song-makers—a designation that has different social connotations than “composers”—
and producers sometimes jointly copyright a recording. The rest of the tracks are field recordings.
My first contact was usually either through the Aboriginal advisors or individuals I knew
through previous or current work. The negotiations were not always easier in those cases and
several cold calls to those I had not previously met resulted in very straightforward arrangements.
In the majority of cases, authority for the songs I wanted to use on the CD was vested in family
members of the original singers. There was often discussion about which family member ought
to make the final decision. There were lots of conversations about lives and mutual friends, of
course. Negotiations with artists were similar. Few have agents and even when they did, they
generally preferred a personal conversation or a visit before the OUP permission form would be
signed. With regard to relationality and responsibility, it is not surprising that many of the culture
bearers wanted face-to-face conversation before deciding whether to give permission for the use
of a recording. While this was possible in some cases, it was simply not feasible for all. The most
difficult calls were to an Inuit community where I did fieldwork decades ago but had not visited
for a long time. Singers whom I had recorded were mostly no longer alive or no longer in that
community. In one case, I never did get past a hamlet council administrator who simply refused
permission without contacting the families I was trying to reach. There was the most suspicion,
then, about someone who claimed to have known people but had not visited for a long time. I had
legal authority to use my own audio collection of drum dance songs but couldn’t secure family
endorsement in this case. I resorted to a website collection for the Inuit drum dance examples in
the book. The information on it is muddled and hard to use, and particularly frustrating since I
had legal copyright for excellent material on my bookshelf.
New institutions and individual roles are emerging for cultural mediation. Where such roles
have not been defined, as in the case just described, the negotiations are very unpredictable.
Where they are clearly defined as intercultural, as in the case of Avataq Cultural Foundation, the
“tribal historians” of the Penobscot, or the regional “Mi’kmaq Ethics Watch”—analogous to the
22 • BEVERLEY DIAMOND

Research Ethics Boards at our universities—the story was different. These mediators were easy
to work with, knowledgeable about issues, and vigilant but not obstructive. In many cases they
were comprised of respected elders or authorities who were given responsibility for overseeing
research that impacted their communities. These new Canadian based overseers relate in some
ways to the whanau principle that Linda Tuhiwai Smith describes as a means of keeping Maori
values centerd in research. She describes whanau as “a way of organizing a research group, a way
of incorporating ethical procedures that report back to the community, a way of ‘giving voice’ to
the different sections of Maori communities, and a way of debating ideas and issues that impact
on the research project (2012, 189).
These seemingly mundane interactions raise several issues. One is the point in the research
process at which control is exerted. The Mi’kmaq Ethics Watch generally reviews research pro-
posals at the outset but delegates permission for publications to family. Furthermore their reach is
not entirely clear; the Mi’kmaq group is Nova Scotia based but groups in other parts of Mi’kmagi
(Mi’kmaq territory) are not required to recognize their authority. The one Innu track,19 on the
other hand, was given an immediate authorization by a former chief of a community whom I knew
and called for advice. The Innu nation, like the Mi’kmaq, scrutinizes new research very diligently
though with much more emphasis on economic impact; and they are vigilant about “elder fatigue.”
They front-load the permission process while Haudenosaunee looked separately at each stage.
While different modes of collective ownership were asserted as I expected, I was often surprised
by the emphasis on individual authorship. The rights of the collective and the individual, then,
are not contradictory, but both need recognition as parts of the creative process in most cases.
Perea observed that, “one has to navigate individual rights and responsibilities to understand how
that sense of collectivity is created and performed.”20 The separation of authorship and owner-
ship, then—a separation that Saami make explicitly, as noted earlier—is not unusual. Consider
Haudenosaunee ehsgá:nye21 songs—women’s shuffle dance songs. While “composers” of new songs
are often known, singers assert that all these traditional songs belong to the Haudenosaunee as
a nation. When Sadie Buck taught a course on her music/dance traditions at my university, my
students were shocked when she told them, at the end of the course, that the ehsgá:nye songs they
had made up (as course assignments) were now Haudenosaunee property and they did not have
the right to sing them outside of the class context. I was surprised then when individual authorship
was the biggest concern in negotiating the Haudenosaunee tracks. Sadie suggested we use one
of her own songs since she could give permission for that. She sees fusion as the way to be both
respectful of tradition and financially successful as a creative artist. On one occasion, she explained:

If I create a women’s dance song, I can’t own it because it belongs to the people. So fusion is
the only way we can own anything we create. All the music of Bones [an Aboriginal Dance
Opera she composed with an Anishnabe colleague, Alan Deleary] I own.

An ehsgá:nye performed by another group was taken to the singers for consideration. The main
composer decided to give permission but another singer had also contributed to the song mak-
ing. Both had to consider independently whether to grant permission. About the same time, we
approached one child of a late singer for permission to use a live recording that had been issued on
an independent CD. That family decided that each child of the singer must be consulted but that
the eldest child should make the decision about song use (and photograph use in a second case).
Other families adopted similar decisions to ensure that all were consulted.
Another instance where individual authorship but collective rights were both part of the con-
versation were Inuit throat songs (as they are usually called in English; the Inuktitut names vary
regionally). Most of this repertoire is considered quite old and can be widely shared and taught
by everyone. Taqralik Partridge notes that throat songs imitating the “poor little puppy, a saw, the
river, the dog and polar bear” are performed by both throat singers in Nunavut and Nunavik as
 PERFORMING PROTOCOL • 23

well as Nunatsiavut where throat singing was recently revived. But the matter of permission to use
this repertoire has become more vexed with its popularity, particularly the transnational success
of Tanya Tagaq, a Borealis Prize-winning22 singer who has now recorded with Bjork, the Kronos
Quartet, and other well-known artists. While Tagaq is an Inuk,23 she did not learn the repertoire
in the traditional way but initially used home recordings as source material to imitate. She usually
performs solo, ignoring a defining characteristic of throat singing: a duo often interlinking in a
close canon a beat apart. (She has become a very skilled traditional throat singer, however, often
performing with a close relative as partner).
Inuit women assert that there is knowledge of who authored specific throat songs. “Elder
Mary Sivuaraapik from Puvirnituq made up a song/throatsong that is very popular, especially
in Nunavik. . . . Another example that is considered to be ‘owned’ by someone is the song of the
bumble bee.” Taqralik explains, further, that these are mostly ones made in recent decades by
known individuals or partners and “there is some contention among throat singers” as to whether
“other people should be allowed to perform them or not. It is not clear who should be credited for
what.” Taqralik notes that, “people are learning throat singing from all different kinds of direc-
tions. Where there was no throat singing for so long . . . people do not know what a traditional
protocol might be.”
I have encountered some women who would prefer to work for a group copyright solution
whereby some money comes back to communities. The Avataq Cultural Institute (with offices
in both the northern community of Inukjuaq and the southern metropolis of Montreal), which
both advocates for Inuit rights and negotiates recording access, was not obstructive about giving
permission, in spite of the intensity of debates in which they also participate since they had helped
organize an Inuit throat singing convention some years ago as a vehicle for discussing ownership
issues. Unlike the widespread sharing of the throat singing repertoire and paradoxically, the young
council clerk that blocked my ability to ask families for permission to use the Inuit drum dance
songs I had recorded years ago was assuming group authority for a genre that is usually carefully
acknowledged in performance to be individually authored. “This is the song of Sigguq, made when
his daughter was born”: That sort of acknowledgement is commonplace when the drum dances
or pisiit are performed in the community. The main point here is that the process of negotiating
is often a series of layers, some involving collective rights and some addressing individual own-
ership issues, and some intermediaries are more knowledgeable than others about specific genres
or individual songs.
Even this single project, then, raised important issues about the specificity and individuality
of Indigenous protocols and the way such protocols were seen not as oppositional but as layers of
responsibility, evolving with the shifting ground of media, social roles, and institutions. Some of
the lessons learned were congruent with the ways protocols were performed at the Global Spirit
concert to which I now turn.

Performing Protocol On Stage

The Global Spirit concert was part of an ICTM Colloquium on Indigenous Music and Dance as
Cultural Property: Global Perspectives that I organized in 2008. This event involved three days of
presentations, discussions, workshops, and performances by Indigenous and Settler academics and
Indigenous culture bearers from eight countries. We attempted to follow certain protocols at the
overall event; for example, “music” was at times a discourse in addition to words, and we began each
day in a good way with song, to help our minds be as one. The Global Spirit concert was arranged
with the professional help of Anishnabe Denise Bolduc whose many roles—on granting agencies,
as an event organizer, promotor and program builder, and film-maker—in various Indigenous
music revitalization initiatives in Canada have been transformative. The concert was open to the
24 • BEVERLEY DIAMOND

public and attracted a sizeable audience from Aboriginal sectors as well as Settler supporters of
Aboriginal arts in the city of Toronto. The event was of particular interest for this study since some
performers told me they would demonstrate how Indigenous protocols work with regard to both
traditional and contemporary music.24
This indication of “performing protocol” made me pay attention differently than I might oth-
erwise have done. The protocol issues their performances addressed included: the responsibilities
of song knowledge; place and the affect of “guesthood”; distinctions between authorship and
ownership; song lineages; process of gifting song and establishing respectful collaborations; vocal
mimesis and other means of sonic relationality. They were also conscious of the new relations
and responsibilities entailed in this international Indigenous context. With the permission of all
participants, the colloquium was filmed, enabling a close review of stage talk, repertoire choice,
and presentation as I prepared this article. An initial draft was circulated to the musicians who
responded with great generosity and provided more information and insight. Most agreed to be
recognized as co-authors. A forthcoming documentary will complement and perhaps more clearly
indicate the issues discussed below.

In Active Relationship with the Land

John Carlos Perea (Apache, German, Irish) opened the concert by stating that he was “honored and
humbled by the responsibility to sing here on another peoples’ land.” Indigenous land acknowl-
edgements have become commonplace at many institutions in the last ten years but Perea’s single
sentence differed from the rather formulaic texts that most universities use in 2017. He emphasized
“responsibility” and the timbre of his voice conveyed that the affect of being a guest was palpable –
the emotional weight – of knowing place, not just as ground, but as grounding. The Maori band,
Moana and the Moa Hunters, on the other hand, did an antiphonal call in heightened speech by
which visitors are invited to their marae, or meeting house. Such a protocol enables communication
by speaking relationally about the meeting of both lands and peoples: “Our mountains greet your
mountains, our rivers greet your rivers, our tribes greet your nations.”
While some performers stated explicitly that, on stage, they do not perform “tribal” songs that
are used in ceremony, others selected specific traditional repertoire that mapped an ongoing and
active relationship with “country” (as the Indigenous Australians say) and with the spirits of the dead
who continue to speak to the living through song and dance. Certain songs, the performers told
us, may be available for broader circulation. Australian Allan Marett, for instance, with didjeridu
accompaniment by Yolngu elder, JN Gumbula, presented certain songs from the wangga repertoire
of Aboriginal people of the Kimberley region of northwest Australia. While wangga are used in
ceremony and have spiritual significance since most are given to the people by spirits of the dead,
Marett describes wangga as “a highly flexible genre, associated in formal ways with ceremonies asso-
ciated with death and renewal, by metaphorical extension with other formal ceremonies that mark
other major life changes, and by further extension with occasions that celebrate social change and
interchange” (HYPERLINK “C:\Users\pforce\Desktop\Post 15031-1025\copyedit review\15031-
1025-FullBook.docx” \l “Ref_114_FILE150311025001” \o “(ManLink):Marett, Allan. 2005. Songs,
Dreamings, and Ghosts. The Wangga of North Australia. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
UserName - DateTime: wfs-4/25/2017 7:36:04 AM”2005, 77). As an event that sought social change
through international interchange, the Colloquium of which the concert was a part, was, then,
an appropriate venue for wangga. On stage, Marett explained that he had been given the right to
sing these specific songs in public. The specific songs that he performed included one with the
text “You will look after it,” an admonition from the spirit world to the living who are encouraged
to look after the earth and in our concert context, a broader implication that caring for the earth
is part of caring for Indigenous cultural knowledge. He described his second song as a popular
one that has versatile uses; the text is simply “I’m singing this song for the sake of the song.” In his
 PERFORMING PROTOCOL • 25

book on wangga, he describes how this particular song is used at a variety of intercultural events
(HYPERLINK “C:\Users\pforce\Desktop\Post 15031-1025\copyedit review\15031-1025-FullBook.
docx” \l “Ref_114_FILE150311025001” \o “(ManLink):Marett, Allan. 2005. Songs, Dreamings,
and Ghosts. The Wangga of North Australia. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. UserName -
DateTime: wfs-4/25/2017 7:36:04 AM”2005, 88–92 and 125–6). Ethnomusicologist Aaron Corn
performed with Dr. JN Gumbula and was equally conscious of choosing repertoire appropriate
for an international and intercultural event. The genre of manikay that Corn has studied is some-
times described as a “public” genre since it may be performed at a wide array of events. Although
manikay songs, like virtually all Australian Indigenous ceremonial songs, were given to the living
by the original Ancestors, each series is owned by a clan or language group which has the right
to perform them in a variety of circumstances and for a variety of audiences. Dr. JN Gumbula
asserted this right as he sang the songs at Global Spirit, explaining how each focused on a specific
bird or animal. He elucidated what Corn has taught and written about: that Australian indigenous
ceremonial law is a system through which humanity is defined, ancestral lineages are reckoned,
and rights to country are evidenced through the human ability to sing and dance in the traditions
of ancestors. This system of codifying generations of knowledge about the ecologies found on
country enabled humans to survive and thrive in Australia for scores of millennia before British
colonisation, and gave rise to formal musical structures that aesthetically echo the heterophonic
individuation of natural forms. Ownership as relationality was acknowledged in several other
performances. Cheryl l’Hirondelle thanked the Missi.

Authorship, Ownership, Lineages and Legacies

As already mentioned, a number of Indigenous peoples separate the notion of authorship and
ownership, each in their own way. As described earlier, the Haudenosaunee own traditional songs
as a First Nation but also know individual song makers, while the Sámi acknowledge the person or
place that is joiked as the owner of the joik, even though they too know individual joik composers.
At the Global Spirit concert, several performers emphasized lineages, another important concept
for Indigenous people (and arguably for other oral traditional bearers). Lineage is significant in
that it recognizes authorship but focuses attention on cultural transmission, an especially sig-
nificant focus for people who suffered the loss of language and culture in the course of colonial
assimilationist assaults. John Carlos Perea was one who focused on song lineage, in a song about
residential school that he learned from his primary powwow teacher Bernard Hoehner-Pȟeží,
his mentor who was a boarding school survivor. It tugged at the heart strings: “Won’t you please
take this picture of me and remember me. For I am going far, far away. I may never return, so
please don’t forget me.” Forced removal, assimilation, and abuse of children as young as four
years of age was commonplace for over a century in Canada and the US. “We’re just coming to
grips with that,” John-Carlos told us he sang it “for the children so that they know this history.”
Similarly, he concluded his set with a jazz medley that he described as a “Jim Pepper history les-
son.” It honoured Muscogee saxophonist Jim Pepper as an important Indigenous contributor to
jazz as well as African American allies and influences, Ornette Coleman who supported Pepper
and John Coltrane who influenced Perea among many others. John Carlos wrote about “Wichitai
To,” Pepper’s biggest hit, for both his doctoral dissertation and the symposium of which Global
Spirit was a part.
Inuit sound poet Taqralik Partridge presented a poem in honor of the beloved Inuit song-
writer Charlie Adams who was also a “residential school” survivor. He was a success story—artist,
broadcaster, Indigenous spokesperson. Every Inuit in the Canadian north knew the words to all
his songs, she told us. I knew him, too. I was saddened and shocked when she told us that Charlie
ended up on the streets of Montreal where he tragically lost his son and died himself only a short
while before our concert.
26 • BEVERLEY DIAMOND

The Scandinavian joik performers similarly chose repertoire that demonstrated significant
lineages. An example was Ulla Pirttijarvi’s song “Chalkko Niillas,” whom she discovered on an
archival recording. She was convinced, on the basis of the timbre of the man’s voice, that this was
her relative and when she did ancestry research she found that she was right. He was a shaman and
she continues spiritual and healing practices. Frode Fjellehim accompanies her with both live and
computer generated riffs but in improvised interludes, he uses both voice and gesture to describe
the larger-than-life persona of the shaman, Chalkko Niillas. Frode voices sounds that sometimes
imitate animals or machines. At the end of his interlude depicting the shaman, he playfully ref-
erences the movie industry’s go to for sonically representing Indigenous shamanism with a short
bit of Tuvan-like overtone singing. In the hands and voice of such a skilled performer, mimesis is
highly original. This performance not only speaks to a specific lineage for Ulla, but demonstrates
that, unlike many indigenous groups, the Sámi are very aware of archives. I know of two people that
keep hundreds of old recordings on their laptops and others, like Ulla who have sought out their
ancestors to bring the past into the present. Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Métis-Cree) brought energy and
a rich voice to the stage as she introduced herself in her own language, acknowledging lineage by
calling out to a language-teacher in the audience, telling us that learning Cree is a lifelong endeavor.
She explained that one name for Métis translates as “[they] own themselves; they are their own
bosses.” Upon reading the first draft of this chapter, Cheryl explained further:

The word I would have used is ka tipȇyimisowicik. I’ve continued to learn what the term
means. . .  . The term refers to being “free” which from nȇhiyawin cosmology is better described
as “self-control” or a “dynamic state of balance.” . . . The Metis didn’t have an Indian Agent
(guarding and starving them), so they were their own bosses.

The concept of property and ownership has similar nuances in other Indigenous languages. In
Innu aimun, for instance, kanuenimeu (to possess or own something)25 means to take care of it
or look after it. Already the issue of ownership is troubled in translation. Or is it? Property is also
multi-valent in English, used to mean a characteristic or defining trait as well as the belongings of
someone. To own oneself, then, is to embrace one’s identity; honor it, trust it, use it, and take care of it.
Sharing “ownership” of her repertoire, Cheryl called out to friends in the audience26 who were
members of Anishnabekwe Singers, a women’s ensemble in which she participated before her current
group M’Girl and she also acknowledged an elder who encouraged them as women to sing at the
drum. She learned repertoire from them as well as from the Naytowhow family of Sturgeon Lake
First Nations, Saskatchewan, a Cree family who adopted her into their family.
For the final song in her set, Cheryl expanded the circle of relations further. She sang a remake
of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” the very title of which troubles Indigenous-Settler
relationships. Cheryl describes how she and Joseph Naytowhow remade the song as a round dance
with Cree lyrics. Inviting the audience to get up and dance, Cheryl suggests that the song reminds
us that we are all responsible to the land as a living being not as a nation state. Cheryl elaborated:

The style of song I sang was in the picîciwin song form, which is a ceremonial song form.
Though because it has Cree and English lyrics, it can be considered more of a 49er. It was
composed by myself and Joseph Naytowhow in 2006 and recorded by M’Girl on their album
Fusion of Two Worlds and is entitled: Kitaskinanaw (our land, together). Joseph and I have
since amended the lyrics (2011–2012) and recorded it as a bonus track to our re-release of
our album Nikamok and have also revised the title of the song to: kitaskîhkanaw (this fake
land). The “fakeness” is referring to the nation state construct known as “Canada” (sic) and
is playing with one of the two ways of saying “reserve”—“fake land” aka “leftover strip of
land” i.e., not our “real” pre-contact year-round life-sustaining terrain. The song however,
is still meant as inclusive, but more of a call for awareness and a reminder about relating to
land as a living being who we are related to opposed to being nationalistic.
 PERFORMING PROTOCOL • 27

Aisle space in the fixed-seating hall was limited, enabling a few side steps in one direction and back.
“Hold hands with someone you like; that’s how we keep the Nation strong,” she quipped playfully.
She made reference to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Guthrie, well-known for his
opposition to copyright and his urging people to sing his songs anywhere, any place, may have
had Indigenous ancestry, she told us. What does this have to do with the round dance? She started
the traditional song in Cree but after several repetitions, she switched to the English Canadian
lyrics for “This Land”: “from Bonavista to Vancouver Island . . .” not Woody’s lyrics nor any of
the Indigenized variants of the song text that one finds on YouTube. “Sing along,” she called out.
Whose land is “this land” when its tune is a Cree round dance? Can we consider song ownership
without considering land and other domains of ownership? “I’ll leave you with that song because
we all have roles and responsibilities,” she concluded.
Many made reference to those not with us any longer, those who had inspired or encouraged
or otherwise enabled the music we heard to come into being. At this event, creativity was clearly
conceptualized as the product of many. The performance of authorship and ownership was far
from the Western lone genius model.

Respectful Collaboration: Gifting and Sharing Song

Songs have always been learned from other groups of people in Indigenous communities as in
others. But how should that exchange take place? Long-standing traditions of gift ing song and
inviting others to join the circle were modelled at the Global Spirit concert. Equally important
traditions of supporting one’s relations were enacted by those who accepted the gifts. It was,
of course, easier for some traditions to come together than others. The groups that chose to
do traditional song were not expected to become part of pop arrangements. Others had fluid
practices and impressive skill as both improvisers and/or quick learners. John Carlos Perea asked
Frode Fjellheim to improvise a frame drum part in support of his third “piece”—the aforemen-
tioned jazz medley, extending the relations of his repertoire choices that were described earlier.
The choices, Perea noted, “were definitely made with the idea of asserting Native ownership
within the realm of jazz.” That is, to complicate “the relations that are not often acknowledged”
in jazz history.
John Carlos added the voice of the eagle, playing block flute in Moana Maniapoto’s perfor-
mance of “Kahu,” a song about a competition between a giant eagle and a hawk. Moana’s band
had guitar and one back-up singer on this occasion; “Moana and the Tribe” would have been
a larger ensemble in New Zealand but we had budget constraints and they kindly agreed to
perform with a pared down ensemble. So how welcome it was that John Carlos, Ulla Pirttijärv,
Cheryl L’Hirondelle, and Sarah Pocklington were ready and able to join the ensemble. Cheryl
L’Hirondelle and Sarah Pocklington27 learned Maori lyrics in order to sing back up while Ulla
Pirttijärvi added a joik line to “Titia To Hoe/The Seed Will Not Be Lost.” “Dip your paddle
deeper, let your courage ride the helm,” they sang. Ulla’s distinctive joik timbre and traditional
style were powerful as the song referenced “the ancient ones chanting.” Moana gifted this song
to Ulla, since Ulla guards that “seed” of traditional knowledge in her own life, and to Canadian
Métis singer Sarah Pocklington. She dedicated the performance to Maori activist Sid Jackson, a
trade unionist who fought for the rights of workers but also actively opposed apartheid in South
Africa (convincing the All Blacks soccer team not to play there until apartheid ended). Moana
compares him to John Trudell and Malcolm X. Musically, the contrasts between the women’s
voices and particularly Ulla’s improvised counterpoint was, in my view, an inspired part of this
collaboration. The grand finale was a main space for sharing and inviting in. The song “Ancestors”
was hard hitting, referencing confiscated lands and colonial assault on Indigenous languages
and naming practices. The refrain, “Walk the talk of my ancestors, walk the talk of my tipuna,”
was a confluence of international Indigenous voices, with John Carlos’ powwow voice soaring
over the ensemble.
28 • BEVERLEY DIAMOND

Ownership as relationality was acknowledged in several other performances. Cheryl l’Hi-

rondelle thanked the Mississauga First Nation on whose land the performance took place. Amy
Stillman, leader of the Hawaiian ensemble, thanked the people of the Great Lakes for being
so welcoming. “Performing protocol in a concert is pretty routine for hula,” Amy noted. She
explained that she began their “set” with an oli chant that is “a supplication to Laka, asking that
the performers/students be protected from unintentional harm that may come from mistakes.”
Her group sang “Na Wai Nui ‘Elima” a song made for her ensemble that references the region
of the Great Lakes that bridge the Canada/US border, “a region,” as she describes it, “that has
allowed us to sustain and pursue our lives and livelihood.” She performed with dancers from
Toronto who make the journey to Ann Arbor, Michigan to study with her.
Saami joiker Per Niila Stålka sang several joiks to places that he associated with his relatives,
including his grandfather and his mother, as well as with the reindeer that are central to the
lifestyle of his people. In this way, he mapped kinship onto the land. He also alluded to issues
of property when he performed a joik to a noiadi (shaman) named Ramsell who “put all his
belongings in a small chest and hid it away on the mountain.” He continued to explain that the
mountain was called the Bank of Ramsell and that “it is still a ‘Bank’ because it is a good place
to hunt moose.” In this way he asserted the bounty of the land and the importance of an active
relationship among those who live on earth as an equivalent to the “wealth” of property.

Naming the Larger History of Cultural Dispossession

The aforementioned references to residential/boarding school survivors already raise the broader
issue of cultural dispossession. Repertoire choices for Global Spirit connected the theft/appropri-
ation of expressive culture to broader issues including removal from land, denial of the right to
speak one’s language, or continuing colonization effected by discriminatory government policies
for health and education. Ulla and Frode (with the digital technology he controls on stage) turned
to such serious issues later in their set. One number, done a cappella, speaks of the past, present,
and future but they are not linear: “After us new people are coming. They are living in the old
time.” The next described the horn hats worn by Saami women and associated with shamanism,
before Christian clergy forbid the wearing of them. Ulla suggested the hats might now be reclaimed
along with the spiritual skills they symbolized. These pieces, as well as aforementioned repertoire
by Taqralik Partridge speak to the losses incurred when European institutions were dominant, but
they point to potential recovery as well.
The hardest hitting social critiques, however, were performed by Moana Manipoto’s ensem-
ble, one that doesn’t easily fit genre categories of the global music industry, a common problem
faced by Indigenous performers. Moana notes that in New Zealand her work is simply described
as “Maori music” although categorized as “world music” in international contexts. The stylistic
array she performed at Global Spirit often included the rhythmic Maori speech of haka, the genre
associated with warriors.28 These elements along with reggae-influenced arrangements arguably
make connections between the struggles of Pacific Islanders and resistance movements elsewhere.
Her pride in being Maori is evident in moko, the spiral patterns unique to Maori, which were tra-
ditionally carved into the skin that were clothing designs and screen projections for the concert
and in the use of poi balls that twirled rhythmically in patterns that interpret the lyrics and choral
storytelling. Moana’s band was, at the same time, the most “pop” in its arrangements and the most
direct in terms of social critique. They moved fluently from English language lyrics to Maori ones.
“Singing in your language is a political statement,” she reminded the audience.29 “We don’t do any
tribal material on stage; we keep ceremonial song separate from stage performance,” explained
Moana, “but we like to take elements.” She conveyed a proverb: “The seed that is sown of ancient
origins will not die, will not be lost.” One song lamented the loss of men from a Maori battalion
in WWII, men who embodied so much cultural knowledge. A reggae influenced song described
 PERFORMING PROTOCOL • 29

violence in post-independence East Timor, a region that is now a tourist destination. Each verse hit
harder with the grim facts: “Dili town is burning. Timor is on her knees. Where there’s been years
of occupation who are we to have expectations/Arms from America/Cold shoulder from the world.
Is it any wonder?” Another song in their set described the Moriori people of the Rekohu Islands
(the Channel Islands on most maps). The Moriori suffered from inter-clan warfare but established
a Peace contract that has been a model for over a century. In school, however, they were taught
that they were extinct. Culture loss and the honoring of a generation who suffered and died were
paired again. The pop style is a strategic choice for social critique of course since audiences will
hear hard-hitting messages in an easily audible form.

Reframing the Discussion of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge

and Intellectual Property

Many considerations of Indigenous rights as they pertain to expressive culture have focused
on protection and restrictions that would prevent inappropriate uses of traditional knowledge.
Protection for “intellectual property” has been properly the focus of international agencies such as
UNESCO or WIPO. The widespread approval of the UN’s Declaration on the Right of Indigenous
Peoples reinforces traditional knowledge as a human right. While their initiatives have influenced
the development of many “protocols” and have created valuable frameworks for recognizing the
control of expressive culture as a right, they speak necessarily and urgently to the commonalities of
Indigenous culture. Nevertheless, this work should be complemented by attention to the localized
ways ownership is conceptualized in Indigenous languages, enacted by musicians, and reliant on
the specific histories and complex responsibilities that performers and recording artists honor.
Ethnomusicologists are positioned particularly well to pay attention to the detail, the nuanced
differences, that law glosses over. Our research usually leads us to know about individual songs,
dances, and images, understanding how they may be purposeful in specific ways and documenting
those who are authorized to use those specific expressions, those who have clear responsibilities.
Such purposefulness and responsibility is how traditional knowledge sustains Indigenous cultures
and, the environments where they are based. Furthermore, we must think about responsibility
and reciprocity in our work,30 whether we make small-scale plans for ensuring the proceeds of an
audio recording might benefit the community or whether we engage in repatriation initiatives.
Both the process of negotiating permission for tracks on a CD and the performances at Global
Spirit demonstrated how “all my relations” governs protocol relating to ownership. On-going
relationships with individuals, families, and communities are central. Where these have not been
sustained, there is every likelihood that it will be difficult to get appropriate “permission” from the
right people for the use of sonic material. On the other hand, the new types of mediators within
Indigenous communities or regions are often providing appropriate scrutiny and advice, and ulti-
mately facilitating negotiations about contemporary uses of audio recordings of traditional song.
The rights to contemporary song remain, for the most part, with the performers, although there
are many governmental and commercial stakeholders who may also be involved in negotiations.
Like the CD project, the Global Spirit concert also attended very carefully to individual song
histories and lineages and the histories they record. Individual creators as well as those who have
authority over the use of the song, the portability of rights, and the modes of appropriate transfer
of rights were carefully acknowledged and honored. In part, the strategy of detailing song lineages
on stage is simply making history that disproves the stereotypes of Aboriginal music as timeless
and anonymous, or worse, as having disappeared. In part, it is also a story of the colonial injustices
that influenced the style or the trajectory of specific songs. Additionally, however, it sometimes
demonstrated that creation extends to non-human beings and to the departed. Even in the case
of the Australian Aboriginal songs, such as individually owned wangga and clan-owned manikay
30 • BEVERLEY DIAMOND

songs performed by the Australian contributors to Global Spirit, generalizations about the genres
were complemented by attention to the choice of specific songs deemed appropriate for this inter-
cultural and international occasion. Furthermore, the purpose of song linked to both the specific
responsibilities assumed by or given to the performers with the relations that they articulated or
strengthened through their performances.
These two case studies suggest new angles/sites for ethnography and add nuance and complexity
to discussions of sonic creativity, authorship, and ownership. The complex ways in which individual
histories, traditions of honoring, strategies for sustaining traditional knowledge, gestures of soli-
darity, and critiques of colonial dispossession intersect are all related to authorship and ownership.
They reveal the immense variety of practices among different First Peoples, variety that is often
homogenized in discussions and documents thus far. As a means of respecting the complexity
while also engaging both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in discussion of what needs to be
done, I suggest reframing the topics of discussion to be more congruent with the strategies of the
musicians described in this chapter, strategies that are in line with current Indigenous activist-the-
orists who are seeking the best means of fostering Indigenous resurgence. Such a reframing might
not only enable intercultural debate but also demonstrate the wider applicability of Indigenous
approaches within our discipline and, as a result, be more compelling in efforts to lobby for moral
and legal recognition.

(1) Replace “authorship and ownership” with the place of humans and other-than-humans in
the creation, reception, and transmission of song. It has certainly been significant when
laws have been modified to recognize communal ownership of song, or even in rare cases
non-human or spirit sources. Such recognition, however, does not imply that the individual
and the collective are irreconcilable. Such a discussion would allow for the immense variety
that exists in Indigenous law to be honored. Not only would the interspecies and spirit roles
be necessarily recognized by this reframing, but so too the various technologies that are also
part of creation, reception and transmission. The different modes of creation, reception, and
transmission for specific genres and specific songs would equally be accommodated in the
conversation. Considering humans in relation to a wider sphere of inspiration and support
for sonic creation would enable some problems that current artists face to be reconsidered.
The Saami distinction between the author of a joik and the owner (traditionally the person
joiked) would clearly suggest not an either/or solution but a more inclusive one. Both need
to be recognized but each has distinctive responsibilities. It would also recognize the sig-
nificance of keeping song lineages and honoring them in public spaces, including academic
publications. Furthermore, the relationship between song and environmental ecologies would
be clearer.
(2) Complement research on Indigenous rights with attention to the responsibilities of
Indigenous knowledge.31 This would discussion of the purposefulness of song. In the case
studies I presented, songs were employed as a means of thanking and honoring, as wit-
nessing and authorizing (i.e., as vehicles of “law” in the language of some First Nations), as
environmental interaction, as parts of spiritual and/or ritual processes, as ways of enliven-
ing and engendering positive energy, or as vehicles of social commentary that might lead
to conflict resolution or productive change in a community. “Restrictions” on the uses of
songs, then, are not arbitrary or punitive but tied to the responsibilities that individuals
or groups have and to their capacities for fulfilling those responsibilities. Such consider-
ations would enable a better understanding of why some Indigenous communities might
avoid using any ceremonial repertoire on stage while others identify certain traditional
repertoire as specifically useful in intercultural contexts; why some groups might allocate
specific responsibilities to individuals such as elders with deep experience and knowledge
but other groups might at times embrace newcomers with the skill and capacity to assist
 PERFORMING PROTOCOL • 31

them in the maintenance of a tradition that helps sustain their community. It would also
raise consciousness among the non-Indigenous artistic community who may wish to use
Indigenous style references (arguing “artistic freedom”) by questioning the purposefulness
of their work, the people who will benefit from that work, and the intercultural impact.
(3) Shift the discussion of traditional knowledge and intellectual property to the many forms
of relationality implied by those constructs. As Veit Erlmann eloquently articulated in his
introduction to the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Pre-Conference Symposium (2015) on
Music, Property, and Law,32 while the language of law may not make it explicit, all con-
cepts of property reference “deeper relationships between being, the environment, and
the body.” “Property” as a concept that implies exclusive access or colonial appropriation
would each be re-thought in relation to purposefulness and responsibility. Ownership as
“taking care of ” or taking responsibility for the self or another would similarly be situated
in those discussions, accommodating such things as sharing and gifting. The more nervous
relations of imitating, parodying, borrowing, or stealing would similarly be discussable,
as the terms of relationality could be more easily tied to considerations of respect and
commitment. So too the juxtaposition of culturally diverse style elements that are often
targets of criticism33 but are also, as argued by some, the means of putting multivocal
stories side by side. Style references may originate in traditional genres but they may be
combined with mainstream pop (be it rock or reggae) or voiced in timbres that hint at
hymn-singing, jazz, or mele, to name only a few possibilities. Song texts may incorporate
different languages and arrangements may draw on instrumentation from many parts of
the world: these are so commonplace in the twenty-first century, particularly as markers
of world music, that their efficacy as socio-political commentary is often questioned. But
the discussion would have also to consider what Australian Indigenous theatre producer
Rachael Swain has asserted, that the “co-presence of multiple stories” is a remarkable tool
for reflecting on colonial experience (2014, 175). Similarly, Métis scholar June Scudeler34
observes that Indigenous creators “countered colonization by taking what they chose
from all the cultures to which they were exposed” (2016, 2). Sonic combinations that are
intentionally disruptive in productive ways, as with L’Hirondelle’s round dance version of
“This Land” discussed earlier, would be understood more broadly. More attention would
be paid to the power relations enacted when cross-cultural collaboration occurs, a topic
that has been broached in recent studies by Dylan Robinson (2012) and Russell Wallace
(2012).

Finally, it is imperative that discussions of theft in relation to intellectual property be reframed—

as the performers at the Global Spirit concert did—in relation to the broader spectrum of colonial
dispossession. This is recognized in relation to Indigenous resurgence initiatives but also vital for
envisioning a future where indeed “This Land” is an Indigenous round dance, but if Settlers are
respectful, they might be invited to join the dance.

Notes
1. Musicians who played in the concert discussed in the “Performing Protocol On Stage” section of this paper were sent
an earlier draft of the paper. Almost all responded generously, not only correcting some errors but also expanding
upon the repertoire and relationality that they modelled in this concert. In the spirit of my Brazilian colleague, Samuel
Araújo, and others who urge that academics share authorship as a significant act of decolonization and an accurate
reflection of how ethnographers come to know, I name them as co-authors and thank them for their substantive con-
tributions—both during the concert itself and in the discussion we have had recently—to that section of this chapter
in particular.
2. Opsakwayak Cree scholar Greg Young-Ing has served on a number of international bodies concerned with Indigenous
rights and protocols governing traditional knowledge. He describes debates and challenges in the University of
Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 36/4: 1077–85, 2015.
32 • BEVERLEY DIAMOND

3. Of course, this is a problem for oral traditions of all sorts, worldwide, and not specifically an Indigenous issue. See
McCann (2001), for instance, for discussion of attempts to exert copyright control over orally transmitted Irish tradi-
tional music.
4. In 2007 the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand did not endorse the Declaration but all have subse-
quently done so. The Declaration is not legally binding, however, and so positive action on its principles has been
slow. In Canada, a number of the 94 Action Items stemming from the Truth and Reconciliation on Indian Residential
Schools refer to the Declaration and the Canadian government committed in 2015 to realizing these Action Items. The
international implications are often complex. In Canada, First Peoples did not endorse the 1982 Canadian Constitution
and this has worried the UK that claims from Canada would be brought to the British Parliament.
5. “Customary law” is also commonly used to refer to any socially based regulations that operate outside of formal
legal systems. Indigenous law, however, is preferred by many since it implies a nation-to-nation relationship between
Indigenous people and the nation states where they reside. It is symbolically significant that the recommendations of
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools in Canada, use “Indigenous law” throughout;
the first author on the TRC documents is distinguished Supreme Court Justice and now Senator, Anishnabe Murray
Sinclair.
6. Among the many are: Australian Council for the Arts (2007), “Protocols for producing Indigenous Australian music”
(www.australiancouncil.gov.au); Library of Parliament, Government of Canada (2004), “Indigenous Traditional
Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights” (http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/281250/publication.html); Union
of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (2000), Protecting Knowledge. Traditional Resource Rights in the New Millenium
(Vancouver: Union of BC Indian Chiefs); Oxfam Australia (n.d.), “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural
Protocols” (www.reconciliation.org.au/raphub/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/respect-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-
islander-protocols-oxfam-australia.pdf); Arctic Council (n.d.), “Traditional Knowledge Principles” (www.saamicouncil.
net/fileadmin/user_upload/Documents/Eara_dokumeanttat/Ottawa_TK_Principles.pdf).
7. Email communication August 3 2016.
8. Some protection for recordings was available in Canada by 1921 but the language was obscure. I am not familiar with
the history of such laws in other countries.
9. His work parallels a growing awareness in some quarters of how “customary law” and the legal regimes of nation states
are, to some degree, mutually influential (e.g., Webber 2009). Reed (2016), however, also draws out the limitations in
relation to specific cases such as the ownership of Laura Boulton’s recordings of Hopi ceremonial songs.
10. John Carlos Perea noted, upon reading a first draft of this paper, that “without this kind of balance, we get caught in
the legal language which is not our laws but the laws of the colonizer” (Email communication July 12, 2016)
11. There have now been a number of critiques based on the challenges that communities face in dealing with international
programs such as UNESCO’s “Masterpieces” initiatives or their more recent call for “representative lists.” See past
conference programs of the International Council for Traditional Music for examples.
12. Recognition of situations that are outside legal systems because they are unique and without parallel in the dominant
society.
13. This logic parallels that of UNESCO whose projects of listing representative examples of Intangible Cultural Heritage
has been similarly motivated.
14. The statement was created by a forum of key indigenous and non-indigenous stakeholders. See www.aboriginalartists.
com.au/NRP_statement.htm (last accessed 04/08/2016).
15. The author of the only other book in the Global Music series on Native American music (Perea 2013) confirms that
royalties from his book also go to a Native scholarship fund; in his case, at San Francisco State University where he
teaches.
16. The series was published at a point when iTunes was a major source for commercially produced music, including
powwow music and some contemporary Indigenous music. Of course, streaming has largely replaced this mode of
access. Changes in technology recast issues of access and ownership in every case.
17. One source of information about revenue from these sources is an article in The Guardian, April 3, 2015. The
article links to statistics from Information is Beautiful where sales needed to make a US minimum wage of
$1,160 are graphed. The graph shows that 143 copies of a self-pressed CD, 1,229 iTune downloads, and 4,053,110
Spotify streams would be required to attain that income level. www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/03/
how-much-musicians-make-spotify-itunes-youtube
18. A more traumatic instance of the Canadian government’s interest in claiming a “peopled” Arctic as theirs involved
the relocation (without medical or other support services) of several groups to the very remote and environmentally
harsh areas that became the communities of Grise Fjord and Repulse Bay (see Wakeham 2014).
19. I was aware that the Innu “nikamun” were not appropriate for public dissemination and so did not consider including
one of these songs on the textbook CD.
20. Email communication August 2016.
21. The orthography conforms to the most recent Cayuga dictionary edited by Carrie Dyck and colleagues (2002). Some
earlier publications, including my own, spelled the genre as “eskanye.”
22. The Borealis Prize is awarded in Canada for the best “indie” recording of the year.
23. Inuk is singular; Inuit is plural.
24. Hilder (2015, 154) has documented a similar event on cultural exploitation and appropriation held in Rovaniemi,
Finland, where Saami star Mari Boine critiqued global imperialism on stage.
25. www.innu_aimun.ca
 PERFORMING PROTOCOL • 33

26. Cheryl explained further, with reference to Neal McLeod’s concept of “narrative memory” that oral traditions, social
relationships, and places are intrinsically related in memory. She added that she “likes to be as inclusive as possible.
The word kȋyanaw—“all of us, together”—hints at this kind of radical inclusivity.”
27. A member of the Canadian Indigenous trio Asani.
28. Moana describes haka as “a traditional performance often associated with battle (and accompanied by a bloodcurdling
chant) wrongly described by westerners as ‘dance.’” The concept of warrior in the Maori language is multi-valent,
including those who are brave, bold, victorious, experienced, accomplished, adept, competent, skillful, and capable.
29. Earlier in her career, she criticized the radio and TV in New Zealand for blacklisting any music with Maori lyrics. See
Mitchell 2001, 280–281.
30. The Research Center for Music, Media, and Place is one small institution that makes agreements to pay fees equivalent
to “mechanical rights” fees (in Canada) for the use of archival recordings. In Canada, the Canada Council’s Aboriginal
Music program has also been a source of compensation for public performance.
31. Not only did the participants involved in both my case studies strongly suggest this, but Indigenous theorists have
articulated such a shift (e.g., Corntassel 2012, 92).
32. Pre-conference symposium, Society for Ethnomusicology in Austin Texas, 2015.
33. Even those who are sympathetic to Indigenous control of traditional knowledge and who are invested in understanding
how legal and customary laws relate—often see contradictions in hybridity. Michael Brown for instance addressed this
issue in his influential book Who Owns Native Culture? He writes:
Scholars interested in hybridity call attention to the ways in which people in the developing world grab ideas,
objects, and technologies from the industrial West and reshape them to suit local needs. No longer is this mixing
of traditions seen as evidence of cultural decline or acculturation. Ironically, many of the peoples whose hybridity
has been so enthusiastically documented become upset when it is their own culture that begins to flow elsewhere.
(2003, 5)
34. She writes about the work of Cree dancer Rene Highway and his brother, the musician and playwright Tomson
Highway.

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 2
“Justice with My Own Hands”
The Serious Play of Piracy in Bolivian
Indigenous Music Videos
Henry Stobart

The sense of injustice surrounding the use of copyright legislation to control the circulation of
knowledge and culture, especially by large transnational media corporations in the global south,
has been well documented by scholars and is the target of considerable activism (Story et al. 2006).
In this context, piracy sometimes emerges as a means to confront powerful and greedy transna-
tional corporations associated with capitalism and colonialism. For example, in a blog entry titled
La Descolonización de la piratería (“Decolonization through Piracy”)1 the Bolivian blogger Dario
Manuel (from El Alto, La Paz, Bolivia), presents piracy as a political strategy to weaken the structures
of economic and epistemological domination, so that—as it were—the colonial capitalist monster
bleeds to death. He entreats his readers to:

keep photocopying books and buying pirated VCDs and DVDs in order to devalue the
colonial culture industries who make themselves rich from our trees and the apocryphal
ignorance lumbered upon us, according to the logic of taking away our light in order to
replace it with an adulterated light. Negating this colonial strategy of domestication requires
us to pirate (read “to decolonize”) this modern Western mode of thought which is a parasite
on our cultures.
(dariomanuel.blogspot.com 13.11.2007)

Even when not approached from such a strong ideological perspective, it is clear that media piracy
is almost inevitable in emerging economies where incomes are low, media products are expensive
(sometimes identical in price to advanced economies), and digital technologies are cheap (Karaganis
2011). In addition, pirate distribution networks are immensely more efficient than formal ones in
such economies, allowing access to a far greater variety of knowledge and cultural products than
otherwise available. Accordingly, it is common to hear piracy justified, in terms of global justice.
For example, in the words of a Bolivian student from a lower middle class family: “We’re all pirates,
but it is necessary. It is made necessary when you take into account the social environment in which

35
36 • HENRY STOBART

we live, and the poor country into which we have been born” (my translation). More generally, the
acceptability or even celebration of music piracy is often supported by the argument that artists
usually acquire little benefit from the sale of recordings or from royalty payments, as rights are
customarily signed over to the record label or media corporations. Accordingly, the common claim
by (industry-motivated) anti-piracy campaigns that media piracy causes direct material harm to
artists and individual creators is often presented as fallacious. Instead, such discourse highlights
how unfettered circulation of recordings often increases artists’ visibility, fan base, and opportunities
for the economic mainstay of live performance (Yar 2008, 616). The free and informal circulation
of recordings may indeed prove an effective business model for certain genres with lucrative live
performance opportunities (Lee 2012; Lemos 2007). But to over-generalize this model or celebrate
it as the way out of the current crisis in copyright would be naїve. For example, for studio-created
music without a live equivalent, or genres involving small audiences or large musical forces,
this model is likely to be economically disastrous (Lebrecht 2008). As the case study below will
demonstrate, pirating music in the global south may represent the justice of decolonization, but
it can also pose enormous challenges for low-income music creators and entrepreneurs. It is the
strategies adopted by a Bolivian indigenous musician to seek “justice” and confront the challenge
of piracy which forms the focus of this chapter. Yet, in this artist’s music video productions, the
serious message of anti-piracy becomes a focus of creativity, humor, and entertainment.

Bolivia: A Pirate Ecology?

Arguably, the relative affluence and strict copyright enforcement of certain regions of the global
north permits piracy—when not directly identified with criminality—the luxury of assuming an
aura of subversive romance, connected with notions of free culture and opposition to privatized
monopolies (Dawdy and Bonni 2012). Yet, in parts of the global south where access to full-price
recordings is beyond the budget of the majority, piracy may carry rather different connotations,
often connected with necessity and postcolonial resentment rather than romance or idealism. Such
is the case in Bolivia, the focus of this chapter, which counts among the poorest, least developed, and
most economically informal countries of Latin America, and where I estimate that levels of optical
disc (VCD, DVD, CD) piracy approximate 90 to 95 percent.2 In 2007–2008, when the research for
this chapter was undertaken, domestic Internet penetration in Bolivia was among the lowest in
South America, with online access largely restricted to public Internet cafés. This meant that music
piracy mainly took the form of optical disc copying rather than digital downloads. Over the 2010s,
smartphone ownership has grown exponentially, so this situation has transformed.
A policy that confronts international copyright norms, in favor of access to knowledge and
culture, might seem a logical path for Bolivia’s current—at the time of writing—MAS (“Movement
Towards Socialism”) government. This is headed by the country’s first indigenous president, Evo
Morales, who entered office in 2006 following a landslide election victory and was re-elected, by
an even larger margin, for a second term in 2009, and then for a third term in 2014. As he came
to power, Morales presented himself as Washington’s “worst nightmare” and he has continued to
espouse a project of cultural revolution and decolonization, whilst being explicitly opposed to
global capitalism and neo-liberalism. However, from a cultural perspective, there is little revolu-
tionary about Bolivia’s Intellectual Property policy: It is a signatory to TRIPS (1995), maintains
a National Intellectual Property Service (SENAPI), its music copyright law dates from 1991 (ley
1322, derecho de autor), and the only notable departure in the new Constitution (ratified in 2009)
is the recognition of “collective” creation.
Rather than explicit policy, Bolivia’s high levels of piracy reflect lack of enforcement by successive
governments. Alongside the political unpopularity of aggressive anti-piracy campaigns, many of
Bolivia’s key institutions (including government departments and universities) would find it almost
 “JUSTICE WITH MY OWN HANDS” • 37

impossible to operate without pirated software and photocopied books. Several costly campaigns
were mounted by the large-scale phonographic industries in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but
police corruption, legal loopholes, and lack of state support rendered these largely ineffective.
Also, major civil unrest in 2001 and 2003, largely targeted against multinational interests in the
country, would have ensured that anti-piracy was both a low priority and that it may have been
interpreted as collaboration with the foreign powers (c.f. Wang 2003, 149). By 2003 all the major
international record companies had closed down operations in Bolivia and only Discolandia, of the
three major established national record labels, was still producing recordings, albeit with a greatly
reduced staff (Stobart 2010). Nonetheless, I estimate that the quantity of recordings produced in
Bolivia—especially in the form of the VCD music video—has increased since this time, in part
reflecting the emergence of new low income markets and the greater affordability of production and
playback equipment. Most such production, which varies considerably in quality, is undertaken in
small-scale digital studios and is financed by the artists rather than the studio. Little of this work is
registered for copyright and the informal nature of certain studios means that counterfeit copying
sometimes supplements production work or serves as a source of start-up capital. How, then, do
musicians and small-scale musician-producers fare in Bolivia’s ecology of predominant piracy?

Gregorio Mamani: Confronting Piracy and Reducing Prices

This chapter focuses on the anti-piracy strategies of the Bolivian originario (“indigenous”)3
charango-playing singer-songwriter Gregorio Mamani Villacorta (1960–2011). It builds on eleven
months of ethnographic research (2007–2008) based in the city of Sucre, where Gregorio Mamani
lived with his family, during which I participated as an unskilled assistant in the production of
three VCD (Video Compact Disc) music videos. To reflect our close personal interaction and
friendship, hereafter I will refer to Mamani using his first name, “Gregorio.” (He died suddenly
and unexpectedly at a tragically young age in 2011). Gregorio was brought up, and lived until he
was nearly thirty, in the originario (“indigenous”) community of Tomaykuri in the Macha region
of northern Potosi, moving permanently to Sucre in the 1990s. His trajectory as a recording artist
dated back to the late 1980s and included dozens of audio cassette releases of charango songs and
of rural music (under the group name Zura zura) produced by the Borda label in Cochabamba.
In around 2000 he created his own label CEMBOL (“Center for Bolivian Music”) and from the
proceeds of a successful tour of Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia in around 2005 he created a digital
home studio dedicated to making VCD music videos and largely consisting of cheap second-hand
digital equipment (Figure 2.1). Close involvement in politics, which included his production a widely
circulated cassette and VCD of campaign songs for the election of Evo Morales, indirectly led to his
employment in 2006 by the Prefecture for the Department of Chuquisaca, based in Sucre. However,
after only one year—and just before I commenced research in Sucre—he resigned from this post
and returned to his career as a musician. Gregorio was a forceful, idiosyncratic and pioneering
character, and a particularly outspoken opponent of music piracy. This outspoken opposition to
music piracy led me to research this phenomenon in depth and to appreciate both its social benefits
and its wider impact on the Bolivian music industry (Stobart 2010).
Arguably the most significant measures adopted by Gregorio to confront piracy were (a) reducing
the retail price of VCDs to match pirate prices, (b) personal and family distribution to key regional
markets, and (c) screen printing VCD discs with the CEMBOL logo alongside a short video clip on
certain productions informing consumers how to distinguish between (screen-printed) original and
(blank) pirated discs. As I wish to focus on more creative and psychological aspects of Gregorio’s
campaign here, I will reserve detailed discussion of these two latter themes for other publications.
Nonetheless, it is important to highlight how personal distribution to market stalls by artists (or
family members) can create mutually dependent relationships or friendships with vendors and
38 • HENRY STOBART

Figure 2.1 Gregorio Mamani in his home studio

offer opportunities to police the sale of their work. Aware that overpricing is a key ingredient of
music piracy, low-income originario artists, such as Gregorio, have competed with piracy through
price reduction; radically decreasing or even removing the price differential between an original
VCD and a counterfeit copy. In part this can be seen as a pragmatic response to price cuts resulting
from exponential growth and competition within the pirate market. Nonetheless, major national
and international labels have often chosen to make few concessions on price, partly due to their
reliance on international sales—partially explaining their collapse in Bolivia (Stobart 2010).4 Despite
his outspoken opposition to music piracy and the fact that price reductions limited his profits,
Gregorio recognized the need for his work to be affordable for his low-income audience and was
critical of the “excuses” given by larger labels for failing to drop their prices. The challenge was to
achieve a sustainable balance, where on the one hand prices were low enough for consumers to
have access to his work and, on the other, artists and producers could recoup and make a modest
profit from their investment.
In the 1990s the CD was largely restricted to the middle classes and it was common for originals
to retail for around 100Bs (c. US$12.00) each (see Table 2.1). When the VCD (Video Compact
Disc) appeared on the popular low income market in around 2003,5 accompanied by affordable
playback equipment—usually made in China or Taiwan—each disc retailed for around 30Bs
 “JUSTICE WITH MY OWN HANDS” • 39

Table 2.1 Overview of Disc Pricing over Time and Wholesale/Retail

Price reduction of original discs/cassettes (typical prices)
1998 retail price of CD = 100Bs (c. US$12)
2003 retail price of VCD = 30Bs (c. US$3.50)
2008 retail price of VCD/cassette = 10Bs (c. US$1.30)
— wholesale price (in case) = 6Bs (c. 78 US cents)
Typical prices of counterfeit discs (2008)
Retail price of pirated VCD (in case) = 10Bs (c US$1.30)
Retail price of 3 pirated discs (in bags) = 10Bs (c. US$1.30)
Typical prices of counterfeit discs (2008)—price per disc
Bulk-buy (100+) wholesale price in Desaguadero market, Peru = 1.20Bs (c. 15 US cents)
Wholesale price paid by local Bolivian vendors to distributors = 2Bs (c. 26 US cents)
Retail price per disc (when 3 purchased together) = 3.3Bs (c. 43 US cents)

Figure 2.2 Market stalls in the frontier town of Desaguadero

(c. US$3.50). Considerable profits were possible at this time, both for producers and pirates, leading
to an explosion in the market, but also rapid decline in prices. By 2007 the typical retail price for
an original VCD was 10Bs (c. US$1.30) and counterfeit discs, when offered in plastic presentation
boxes, were typically sold at the same price. However, when these same discs were sold in small
plastic bags, alongside their printed color paper labels (laminas), their typical retail price was three
discs for 10Bs (c. US$1.30)—approximately 3.3 Bs (c. 43 US cents) each. Most low-price counterfeit
discs of this kind, featuring music originally produced in Bolivia, were mass produced in Peru
and shipped into Bolivia via the frontier town of Desaguadero (Stobart 2010). In April 2008, I
encountered Bolivian distributors in Desaguadero paying a wholesale price of 1.20Bs (c.15 cents)
per unit, and then selling these discs on to local vendors in various parts of Bolivia for 2Bs (c.26
cents) each (Figure 2.2). Among the wholesale discs on sale in Desaguadero, I came across pirated
40 • HENRY STOBART

copies of several of Gregorio’s VCD productions, including one on which I had collaborated as an
unskilled assistant a few months earlier.
Clearly, originario artist-producers have no chance of competing with the prices of Peruvian
mass-produced counterfeit discs. Indeed, the raw material costs paid by Gregorio exceeded these
prices: In Sucre he paid around 1Bs (c. 13 cents) per blank CD disc and 1Bs (c. 13 cents) for the
printing of each color-printed cover sheet (lamina). Nonetheless, as many vendors sold discs in
plastic display cases for 10Bs, he was able to compete with this price by selling his VCDs to vendors
for 6Bs (c. 78 cents) in a display case (or for 5Bs without). Even if the price of 10Bs was the same
for consumers, vendors could potentially increase their profit margins considerably by using cheap
counterfeit discs from Peru (or copied locally) rather than those purchased from Gregorio. I will
examine some of Gregorio’s strategies for confronting this problem below.

Psychological Campaign: Appealing to Consumer Sentiment

Alongside educating consumers about piracy, Gregorio used psychological pressure to dissuade them
from purchasing counterfeit recordings. The following text, taken from the insert of an audio cassette
released in 2001, emphasizes that that piracy was already a major concern before the explosion of the
originario VCD on to the market in around 2003. Whilst the VCD’s arrival undoubtedly escalated
the scale of counterfeit copying, audio-cassette piracy was already well established in Bolivia—as in
many other parts of the world (Manuel 1993). Compared to anti-piracy notices elsewhere, Gregorio’s
text is strikingly poetic, melodramatic, and nostalgic, as if an art form in itself. It draws powerfully
on metaphor and appeals directly to the sympathies and sentiments of his audience; pricking the
reader’s moral conscience. It is also remarkable how the text identifies the promotional potential
of piracy and its origins in the over-pricing of original recordings. At this time, such points were
rarely admitted by major media corporations, let alone openly stated in their anti-piracy campaign
literature. These references, alongside addressing the reader as “brother/sister,” highlight Gregorio’s
attempts to appeal to the empathy, understanding, and good nature of his audience as fellow Bolivians.
In this way, he milks a popular national discourse that presents Bolivians as honest and generous,
despite their poverty which is seen to result from other nations’ greed.

No to piracy, of this humble music, he who falsifies copying the colours and forms of this
work may be called moths to music.
The case is against the violence of piracy, which kills and harms drinking the blood from
the lungs of artists and composers, losing them their merits and honours.
Because of pirates our Bolivian artists have been devalued by musical sound production
industries.
Because of piracy, no longer is the work and sacrifice of songwriters and composers rec-
ognized economically and with income for those to whom it belongs, as it was in the past.
But on the other hand, due to piracy artists achieve greater promotion and fame whilst,
nonetheless, becoming poorer than ever and without benefits; singing whatever for a pittance
or nothing.
All those of us who live from the music business place our hands on our chests and speak
to your heart in silence and remind you of Bolivian artists.
Nonetheless piracy has also appeared due to the high price of productions in this country
of original sound [recordings]
With thanks from your friend: Gregorio Mamani Villacorta
Selection Translated from Spanish from
Audio Cassette Insert: Gregorio Mamani con su cancionero
(“Gregorio Mamani with His Songbook”), 2000 (Dated 2001)
 “JUSTICE WITH MY OWN HANDS” • 41

Gregorio appeals to national sentiment even more explicitly in the presentation clip which opens
the first edition of his VCD of the “First GPFONPO Festival” in 2004 (which I discuss in more
detail). The scene opens to the sounds of Gregorio’s song Celosa Celosay and a man arriving at the
door of an office, presumably to start work. Gregorio is seated at a desk in the office and playing
his charango along with the song and on seeing the man greets him as “director” and invites him
to enter. The “director” asks Gregorio what “rubbish” he is listening to and Gregorio retorts that it
is “our” (i.e. Bolivian) music. The director then replaces Gregorio’s cassette of Bolivian folk music
with a recording of North American pop music, asserting that “this is music” and highlighting his
status as a “high level director.” Gregorio angrily exits with his instruments and in the next scene
is shown in a state of deep despondency, lamenting his compatriots’ low esteem for the nation’s
music. Looking directly into the camera, he appeals to his Bolivian “brothers” and “sisters” to value
national music by not purchasing pirated recordings. See “Entrada de Presentación—Gregorio
Mamani” http://youtu.be/FMDbWSRz4vk.

D. Good morning Gregorio.

G. Good morning director. Come in.
D. What rubbish are you listening to?
G. This is our [Bolivian] music!

[The director removes the audio cassette Gregorio was listening from the machine and replaces
it with his own. We hear the chorus “shake it, shake it like a polaroid picture” from the 2003 song
“Hey Ya!” by the US group OutKast.]

D. THIS is music. I’m a high level director. Good grief!

[While the director dances, with rather undignified moves, to the song. Gregorio walks
out carrying his instruments with an annoyed expression. He is then shown in a different
location in close up playing the charango and with a forlorn expression. He stops playing
and speaks directly to camera]
G. Ahhh . . . What is to become of our country? We are rich, but we don’t know how to make
the best of it. But, esteemed Bolivian brothers; if you truly love our music, first look at
this original VCD [showing a VCD in a display case]. The only concrete way you can help
singer-songwriters of our music is by not buying pirate discs. Now, when you buy pirated you
help the antisocial usurpers. Like that you help enrich the traffickers of our music at the cost
of our [the artists’] sacrifice.
Do this for us to inaugurate the first national festival of GPFONPO of music, of our folklore,
and autochthonous, cultural, and native [styles]. In the hope of a better level of understanding
from all Bolivian brothers/sisters. Thank you.

Through this video clip Gregorio plays on national anxieties about the powerful influence and
preponderance of mass mediated popular culture, especially as purveyed by large US multina-
tional media corporations. Such allusions are likely to have struck a chord with the dynamic
social movements of Bolivia’s largely low-income and indigenous population, which by 2004 had
gathered huge momentum. Fundamental to this discontent was widespread opposition to foreign
and multinational exploitation of national resources which had crystallized in major civil con-
flict around the so-called Water Wars (2001) and the Gas War (2003). These movements ousted
president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in 2003 and were to lead to the landslide election victory
of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005. Gregorio became an increasingly
active and outspoken supporter of the Morales campaign; indeed, his recordings of campaign
songs were widely circulated and probably very significant to the growth of popular support for
Morales.6 While Gregorio’s anti-piracy video clip may be seen to identify with the low-income
42 • HENRY STOBART

popular indigenous classes, it also critiques the failure of educated middle class Bolivians to value
and support national culture. Indeed, it remains common for educated middle class people to
disparage the kind of charango songs Gregorio played as “rubbish” (basura), favoring instead
international music and artists, that carry far greater cultural capital within Bolivia’s hierarchical
society.7 In the clip, Gregorio casts the “director” as ridiculous and undignified. He is seen to
flaunt class status but is ignorant and uncaring about his nation’s culture; in short the director is
“unpatriotic.” Through this juxtaposition, Gregorio identifies himself with his humble low-income
audience of Bolivian “brothers” and “sisters,” who express their patriotism and regional identity
through supporting regional artists and by not buying pirated discs. This already potent message
was undoubtedly heightened and shaped by the dynamic social movements of the time and by
the escalating campaign for the election of an indigenous president. Let us now turn to another
aspect of this GPFONPO video compilation which further highlights the link between anti-piracy
and indigenous social movements.

Promoting Solidarity Among Originario Artists

The VCD, from which the above video clip was taken, presents itself as the first festival of
GPFONPO—Gran Peña Folklorica Nacional de los Pueblos Originarios (“The Great Assembly of
National Folklore of Originario Peoples”). It features a selection of regional performers of varying
renown, and the cover of the first edition declares that the VCD is dedicated “to the best interpreters
of the charango in the procession of artists.”8 The following text appears on both editions of the
VCD, its rhetoric merging the struggle against piracy with wider revolutionary mobilizations:

DE TODOS PARA TODOS FROM ALL TO ALL

MOVIMIENTO DE LUCHA THE MOVEMENT OF STRUGGLE
ALTO LA PIRATERIA Y HALT PIRACY AND
CORRUPCION EN EL PAIS CORRUPTION IN THE COUNTRY

CENTRO CULTURAL DE LA CULTURAL CENTRE OF BOLIVIAN MUSIC

MU[S]ICA BOLIVIANA
CEMBOL es una producción originario CEMBOL is an originario production
Lucha por el bienestar del Pais Struggle for the wellbeing of the country

Si nuestros Gobiernos, si nuestros Padres, no
lograron forjar Nuestra independencia, soberanía
Social, económica y cultural como artistas
cantando y gritando nosotros lo forjaremos. Por
qué somos la fuerza y la semilla de donde nació
Bolivia, por Patria libre que siempre sonamos.
If our Governments, if our Parents, do not manage
to attain Our independence, [and our] Social,
economic and cultural sovereignty as artists; [then]
singing and shouting we will accomplish it ourselves.
This is because we are the force and the seed from
which Bolivia was born, as a free homeland which
we will always make heard.

It is notable that no reference to Evo Morales appears on this VCD, except spoken by Gregorio’s
ten year old son David in the introduction to his song “No bebas papcito” (“Don’t drink dad”).
David was hugely popular as the child star Vichito Mamani and the spoken words—which were
clearly scripted for him by Gregorio—simply express support for Morales, gratitude to Gregorio
for organizing the festival, and opposition to piracy. What I wish to highlight about this VCD pro-
duction (and the festival that it purports to document), is its initiative to create solidarity among
originario artists. As Gregorio emphasized to me on many occasions, originario artists needed to
work together to counter piracy but also to improve their social conditions and to protest against
 “JUSTICE WITH MY OWN HANDS” • 43

their marginalization by the national music rights society, SOBODAYCOM (Bolivian Society of
Music Authors and Composers). This need for artist solidarity was also explicitly expressed in
a pamphlet published by Gregorio that outlined the effects of music piracy and the lack of state
protection for the country’s “millenarian musical culture.” Asserting that it was “time to call for
justice,” the pamphlet called for the urgent convening of “a first national meeting of originario artist
composers of the Bolivian nation.”
In short, Gregorio’s outspoken position was fundamental to provoking debate among orig-
inario artists and to catalyzing solidarity. Over subsequent years, associations of charango
singer-songwriters gradually emerged in the cities of Cochabamba and Sucre, and in 2007 the
umbrella organization ASCARIOBOL (Cultural Association of Indigenous Originario Artists of
Bolivia) was founded. Although, by this time, piracy was only one of the issues on artists’ agenda,
ASCARIOBOL made national news with its first “Day of the Artist” on 27th April 2008, when
an estimated 10,000 musicians and dancers processed through the streets of La Paz to the presi-
dential palace. Although a pioneer, Gregorio’s idiosyncratic and irascible nature, his inability to
compromise, and his insistence on only participating in the organization as president, ultimately
meant that he remained largely isolated from ASCARIOBOL. Nonetheless, several members openly
acknowledged that Gregorio had been the spark that had brought ASCARIOBOL into being and
some even campaigned for him to become Bolivia’s minister of culture. In light of this history,
the VCD of the first—and only—GPFONPO Festival, in 2004, would appear to be one of the first
concrete manifestations of originario artist solidarity in the face of piracy.

Provoking Resentments

In the previous examples I examined how Gregorio confronted piracy by appealing to the loyalty,
good nature, and patriotism of his audience and through motivating solidarity among originario
artists. Nonetheless, feelings of loyalty and group solidarity are often accompanied by antipathy
to others, and in the following example we see how resentment is provoked and redirected against
music piracy. In the song “A la Mar” (“To the Sea”), from his 2008 VCD 30,000 Chanchos (30,000
Pigs), Gregorio explicitly invokes the “War of the Sea”—a reference that almost any Bolivian will
instantly relate to the War of the Pacific (1879–1883). In this disastrous conflict with Chile, Bolivia
lost its access to the sea; a loss that remains a deep and painful scar in the Bolivian psyche. The
most decisive battle in the conflict—in which the war hero Eduardo Albaroa was shot dead—took
place at Calama on the 23rd March (1879). This date continues to be commemorated each year,
with flag-lined streets and parades, in many parts of the country. At the same time as provoking
resentment over Bolivia’s lost access to the sea, the video images in “A la Mar” feature the violence
of ritual fighting (tinku). The tradition of tinku fighting during religious festivals is found in many
parts of the Northern Potosi region, but the largest and best known takes place in the town of
Macha during the feast of the Holy Cross in early May. Numerous groups of warriors playing jula
jula panpipes and singing charango songs in the cruz style—as heard in this recording—converge
on the town from surrounding rural communities (Stobart 2006). This includes groups from the
village of Tomaykuri, some three hours walk from Macha, where Gregorio grew up and lived until
he was nearly thirty. In other words, tinku fighting and its associated music were very much part
of Gregorio’s culture and in the video he approaches tinku as an insider, juxtaposing its violence
with comic elements. Since at least the 1980s, tinku fighting has been the object of much—often
exoticist—outsider fascination, attracting a stream of national and international tourists, photo-
journalists, and film-makers. Tinku has also given rise to a national folkloric dance, found in urban
folklore processions throughout the country, which imitates regional dress and parodies fighting
to invented music and choreography (Goldstein 1998). In contrast, Gregorio was one of the first
regional artists to commercialize, celebrate, and champion the rural song style accompanied by
44 • HENRY STOBART

Figure 2.3 Gregorio Mamani posing with a charango

the charango and associated with tinku, which is quite distinct in style and sonority from that of
the nationally ubiquitous urban tinku genre (Figure 2.3).
The song, “A la Mar,” not only stirs up resentment over Bolivia’s loss of maritime access to
Chile, but also invokes conflict through its numerous video clips of tinku fighting and seething
crowds filmed during the feast itself. The music and video images are dynamic and arresting
from the outset; Gregorio’s slow motion leap transitions into the energetic synchronised jump-
ing and stamping (zapateo) dance characteristic of the cruz song genre (Stobart 2006, 89–90).
We see combat between pairs of women, pairs of men, and neighboring villages (Churikala
and Colquechaka) and there is sometimes a sense of complete mayhem. Against this visual
bombardment, the song is heard sung in Spanish; an exception for this VCD on which most
songs are in the indigenous language Quechua. This detail suggests that Gregorio’s anti-piracy
message was aimed at a more urban audience who would be less familiar with Quechua. The
song is divided into three verses: The first links going to the sea with lovemaking, pleasure,
and sensuality; flowers and lips tasting of pomegranate. These sensory pleasures vanish in
the second verse to be replaced by a sense of loss and nostalgia: “Why do you sing no more?”
The culprits, we are told, who have taken away this source of pleasure—just as the Chileans
“stole” Bolivia’s access to the sea—are those who dishonestly sell and buy counterfeit record-
ings, leading artists to live in poverty. In the final verse, Gregorio appeals to the president
(Evo Morales) for “justice,” but as copyright law is not enforced he threatens to take the law
into his own hands, using tinku tactics.
 “JUSTICE WITH MY OWN HANDS” • 45

Song: “A la Mar” (“To the Sea”) Track 4 from VCD 30,000 Chanchos (June 2008)
Ujuyyy, tengo 80 hijos en 10 mujeres, Ahoy! I have 80 children from 10 women,
Listo para la guerra del mar. Ready for the war of the sea.
Ijayyyy, t’akan t’akan t’akan, Look out, [the fighting is] scattered all around,
qhari qhari pura, warmí warmi pura, Men against men, women against women,
Uqlla karaju. Altogether now dammit!

Verse 1—Invocation of lovemaking sensuality

A la mar a la mar, te voy a llevar.
Para ver para ver, si sabes amar.
La vida es pa[ra] gozar, no para guardar.
La vida es pa[ra] reír, no para llorar.
Cholita kusquiña vamos por espinar.
Flor de tañí tani, color granadita.
Dame tu boquita, sabor granadita.
To the sea, to the sea, I’ll take you.
To see, so see if you know how to love.
Life is to enjoy, not to store away.
Life is for laughter, not for tears.
Girl from Cuzco, let’s go to Espinar (province).
Tañí tani flower, colour of pomegranate.
Give me your mouth, flavor of pomegranate.

Verse 2—Invocation of nostalgia, blame, sympathy for artists

Por mi preguntan, ¿por qué ya no cantas?
Sabes cual [el) razón, porque ya no canto,
El que compra falsos, ellos son culpables.
El que vende falsos, ellos son culpable.
Los canta autores, extrema pobreza,
Sin ningún respaldo, ni seguro social.
En mi propia tierra, no hay la justicia.
They ask me “why do you sing no more?”
Do you know the reason why I sing no more?
Those who buy fakes, they are to blame.
Those who sell fakes, they are the culprits.
Singer songwriters [live in] extreme poverty,
Without any support, nor social security.
In my own country, there is no justice.

Verse 3—From justice to threats and retaliation

Señor presidente, te pido justicia,
La piratería, tanto hace daño,
Si no hay justicia ¡ya saben quién soy!
Con mis propias manos, me haré justicia.
Si quieres puñetes, si quieres patadas.
Si quieres con piedra, sé tú me haces daño
Mister president, I ask you for justice,
Piracy causes such harm,
If there’s no justice; they now know who I am!
With my own hands, I will reap justice.
If you want fists, if you want kicks.
If you want it with stones, I know you harm me.

Through the course of the song the anti-piracy message is further emphasized using screen text
(in Spanish). The words “Halt piracy dammit. . . . He who damages this work will pay dearly. Justice
will be done with my own hand”9 gradually move across the screen during the first verse and into
the instrumental. Similarly, during verse two we are cautioned: “Halt falsifying CDs. Say No to
piracy.”10 During the instrumental between verses two and three, video images of tinku fighting
with stones (rumi tinku) are shown; a particularly dangerous practice which regularly results in
fatalities, despite the authorities’ attempts to outlaw it. During this stone fighting episode text appears
on the screen warning the viewer that “this fight is Deadly,” thereby setting up the action that is
played out through the course of the final verse. In this sequence, Gregorio is shown thumping
his tinku opponent—speeded up for comic effect—and then hurling a stone at him. His adversary
then appears prostrate on the ground—blood dripping from his mouth, as if vanquished in mortal
combat. Gregorio performs a victory dance beside the body and, as a final flourish, disdainfully
kicks away his opponent’s fighting helmet (montera). Meanwhile the screen text reads: “Gregorio
Mamani is not looking for problems. He’s looking for those who fake his work and for counterfeit
buyers [compradores truchos].”11 See “A la Mar—Gregorio Mamani” http://youtu.be/TpcgAhUt1_U.
46 • HENRY STOBART

The resulting music video is both threatening and hilarious; it is serious and playful. Viewers
can scarcely miss the Gregorio’s message: He will not hesitate to use violent means, if necessary, to
protect his work from piracy. However, the communication of this message is, at the same time,
highly entertaining—a kind of anti-piracy art form, which conveys meaning at a multiplicity of
levels. Much humor also surrounded the production and filming of this track, several sequences
of which I filmed under close instruction from Gregorio. At his request, my ten- and eight-year-
old sons (dressed in tinku outfits) appear alongside him in the opening sequence and much was
made of the bull’s blood collected from an abattoir shortly before filming. This anti-piracy enter-
tainment clearly went down well with local viewers; indeed one urban Bolivian friend described
it as brutal—a Spanish expression which conveys the sense of “awesome” (as well as “brutal”).

Violent Acts: “Justice with My Own Hands”

In the previous example, Gregorio exploited his originario (indigenous) identity as a “noble savage”;
honest and moral, whilst potentially fierce and mortally dangerous. This is supported by the reality
of rumi tinku—stone fighting—which results in fatalities almost every year. But the spoof fatality that
ends the video, and Gregorio’s play acting, is calculated to provoke laughter; it is light-hearted and
playful, even of the underlying message is serious. As noted above, having radically reduced prices
to make the retail cost of original and pirated VCDs identical (when sold in a presentation case), the
primary target of Gregorio’s anti-piracy message was not so much consumers as vendors. By purchasing
Peruvian mass-pirated disks or making copies themselves and placing these in presentation cases,
vendors could potentially make a profit of around 7Bs (US$1) per disc, compared to 4Bs (52 cents)
from an original supplied by Gregorio. Established market vendors in the main areas where Gregorio’s
VCDs were sold were sure to know that Gregorio’s threats, albeit clothed in humor in Gregorio’s 2008
“A la Mar” music video, were entirely serious. His scandalous actions were infamous and stallholders
would have been familiar with his first VCD dedicated to music of the Macha tinku (Capital Tinkuy
de Macha 2005). In this video, Gregorio documents his retaliation for a vendors’ repeated piracy of
his music in a shocking and concrete way, expressing his identity as a violent Macha warrior.
This notorious sequence occurs in the first song on the disc, titled “Miski Imilla” (“Tasty
Lass”)—the pseudonym by which Gregorio’s wife is presented on various recordings. In both
the video and Quechua/Spanish song text, Gregorio strategically essentializes himself as brutal
and “detested”—abandoning any sense of nobility or humor. He appears as bellicose, bullying,
sexually crude, and chauvinist; brimming with unrestrained Macha masculinity. The first spo-
ken words and sung verses are full of crude sexual references, with musical instruments—the
pinkillu flute (an obvious phallic reference) and the charango—presented as the actors in sexual
interactions and violence to women. The video shows a cockfight and images from the actual
feast in Macha, where Gregorio is seen to knock over a girl in the crowd (probably originally
unintentionally) and comment “that’s how I am.” After entreating Mach a warriors to go into
battle, he is shown with blood around his mouth singing the classic lines from this song genre:
“Somos, somos, Macheñitos somos. Hijos de la patria, bolivianos somos ” (“We are, we are,
Machas is what we are. Children of the nation, we are Bolivians”). But rather than finishing
these well-known couplets in the usual way, he sings “Kicks and punches, we are slaughterers.
When there are pirates, we’re sackers.” At this point the video images move from the context
of tinku fighting in Northern Potosi to a street in the city of Cochabamba. Decked out in tinku
battle dress, including a montera ox-hide fighting helmet, Gregorio is seen to stride up to a shop
selling pirated VCD discs and to tear discs from the display rack while the female vendor vainly
tries to stop him. He then throws a rock through the screen of a television set and attempts
to smash a stool before strutting away. The remaining verses are variants of well-known Cruz
genre song texts, that evoke tinku fighting and which are often heard sung by men during the
Feast of the Holy Cross in the town of Macha.
 “JUSTICE WITH MY OWN HANDS” • 47

“Miski Imilla” (“Tasty Lass”)

(Spoken text in italics)
Ijayyy misk’i pinkillu
Misk’i imillaq waynan karaju
wanka tusuchi
q’upa viguti karaju.
Ijayyyy, patanta patanta
Ulla, ulla, ulla karaju.
Charanguituypata, llik’i wasa sutin,
Chulitanpatataq, misk’i imilla sutin,
Chutasta chulasta, jisp’ayta sut’uchin.
Pitaq nuqa jina, tukuy imán quchin,
Machamán chulasta astakipan quchin.
Así suy
Alistarse yuqallas, warak’as
Somos, somos, Macheñitos somos,
Hijos de la patria, bolivianos somos.
Patada y puñetes, matadores somos,
Vamos haber piratas, saqueadores somos.
Bruirrrrr. Ni supaypis manchachikunchu.
Ahora sí piratas, asesinos, granputas karaju
Saqueo, saqueo karajuuuu.
Hey! Sweet pinkillu flute
He’s the lover of Tasty Lass dammit!
The rebel who makes you dance
Filthy whiskers dammit
Go for it! Up with those feet [jump in dance]
Ulla, ulla, ulla dammit!
My charango’s called “back breaker”
And its girl is called “Tasty Lass”
In dress, in pollera skirt, makes urine drip
Who, like me, gives her the works?
Kidnaps and gives it to the Macha girls
That’s how I am!
Get ready with your slings lads
We are, we are, Machas is what we are
Children of the nation, we are Bolivians
Kick and punches, we are slaughterers
When there are pirates, we’re sackers
Brrrrr! And not scared of the devil
Now you’ve had it pirates, assassins whores
Sack and spoil damitttt!

Macha plasamanta, pitaq presidente From the square in Macha, who’s president?
Elujituq wawan, chaymá presidente I’m Eulogio’s son, that’s who is president
Tumaykurimanta, aqui estoy presente From Tomaykuri, here I am present
Chiqnisqa yuqalla, chulantin presente Detested lad, present with his girl

Jaku karaju. Arrrrr, chakis karaju, chakis karaju.
Ufhayyy, kallinta kallinta turri plasaman, karaju
Haber maytaq Phichichuwa karaju.
Esta callecito, otra callecito,
Capital del tinku, Macha callesitu,
Jinamá nuqayku, takiq tusuq kayku.
Rumi parapipis, sayaq pichu kayku,
Jayt’a patadita muchu pichu kayku.
Ahora si karaju, takay a karaju, takay a karaku.
Jayyy ulla, ulla karaju. Uqhariy, uqhariy
rumiwan, rumiwan wasaykuy karaju.
See “Miski Imilla—Gregorio Mamani” www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTeN_8_IGns
Let’s go dammit. Arrrrr, move those feet dammit
Running, through the streets, the square with the church
tower dammit!
Where are Phichichua community’s dancers?
This street, another street
Capital of tinku, the streets of Macha
That’s what we are, singers and dancers
Even in the stone fighting we hold firm
With all the kicking our chests are firm
Now go for it dammit!, hit dammit, hit dammit!
Look out “ulla, ulla” dammit! Pick ‘em up, pick ‘em up,
duck the stones dammit.

There is no humor in the video images of Gregorio smashing up an actual shop. Rather, this
footage, filmed for him by his son, was designed to shock, provoke fear, and provide evidence
that—as a Macha warrior—he was ready to undertake “justice with my own hands.” This example—
intentionally captured on video—was by no means the only time Gregorio smashed up the stall of
somebody who repeatedly pirated his work. He told me how, when distributing his recordings to
market stalls—especially in the lowland Chapare region—some vendors would purchase multiple
copies of his discs (“some took five units from me, some twenty or twenty-five, up to a maximum
48 • HENRY STOBART

of thirty”) whereas others would buy a single disc. When he returned several months later, those
who had previously bought a large batch would typically request more. However, vendors who
had purchased a single disc almost never wanted more, and their stalls would often display many
pirated copies of his work. In these cases, he told me that he would politely ask the stallholder to
refrain from pirating his work. If on his next visit the vendor still did not buy original discs and
persisted in pirating his work, Gregorio would issue a much more serious warning. When vendors
continued to ignore his warnings, he would take far more drastic action:

On the third time I went armed, loaded with stones in my rucksack and wearing my montera
fighting helmet. [I thought] “I’m going to scare the hell out of these bastards. Now I’m really
angry.” It really pained me all this work, all I’d had to invest, all the sacrifice I had made. . . .
[So, I would ask] “Why do you do this to me? Why? You should buy originals from me. You
just bought one from me, and now there’s all this lot you are selling—nothing but piracy”—and
still they weren’t bothered. Right away I’d put [a stone] kak! through their television, and go
off shouting. Some hit me or took me off to the police, but the police didn’t know what to
do when we arrived at their office.
(Interview: Gregorio Mamani, December 2007)

On these occasions, Gregorio ensured that he carried with him a copy of the Copyright Law (Ley
1322—Derecho de Autor). If taken to the police station by angry vendors, he would present this
document to the officers, stating that his legal rights had been infringed. Whilst admitting he had
also “committed an error” by damaging the vendor’s property, he would ask how he was to protect
his rights if the police did not uphold the law. This usually led the police to accept the vendor’s
wrongdoing and to send Gregorio away without penalty or requirement for compensation, albeit
reproaching him for his “delinquency.” Smashing up stalls was very unpopular among vendors—
who sometimes responded by throwing stones at Gregorio to create a kind of Macha-style rumi
tinku battle in the markets of Chapare—but it powerfully communicated the message, as does the
video, that Gregorio was not afraid of resorting to violent means to protect his interests. In such
action, he capitalized on his indigenous (originario) identity as a fearsome warrior of ayllu Macha,
playing on deeply held urban fears about the imagined violence and unpredictability of indige-
nous people (Harris 2000, 141). This dauntless self-presentation contrasts vividly with the sense
of powerlessness expressed to me by Carmelo Gutíerrez, the (urban, non-indigenous) owner of
GC Records, a Cochabamba-based label dedicated to producing music videos of originario music:

On one occasion I stumbled across [a vendor selling fake copies of my recordings], right?
It made me really furious that this guy, right there next door to my business, was selling
pirated recordings. So I got really angry; grabbed and tore up all that was mine. I smashed,
snatched and smashed, right? I said, “You guys just don’t know how much it costs to produce
this material, do you? It doesn’t cost you anything, does it? So at least show some respect,
when you are right next door to me.”
Well, they said to me, “We didn’t make these, we bought them. Go off and control the
border [with Peru]. That’s where they bring them from, don’t they?” So, what happened? Ten
people turned up, just like that, and instead of me doing it to them, they wanted to beat me
up! . . . All I could do was grab [my stuff ] and escape.
(Interview: Carmelo Gutíerrez; CG Records, Cochabamba)

This example not only highlights Gregorio’s boldness of character and his exploitation of indige-
nous identity but also elucidates some of the ways that within piracy ecologies self-justification and
the defense of personal interests are played out in local day-to-day contexts, with “wrongdoing”
often deferred to others. I often heard stallholders identify the criminality of piracy with Peruvian
 “JUSTICE WITH MY OWN HANDS” • 49

mass-producers, even though nationally-produced VCDs were actively selected and despatched
to Peru for copying by Bolivian vendors.
During my research with Gregorio in 2007–2008 he did not undertake further destruction of
market stalls. However, the three VCDs on which we worked together all included anti-piracy screen
text warnings that the piracy of his work would result in “justice with my own hands.” Gregorio
was a strong and determined personality who was not afraid of making enemies or of causing an
outrage; indeed he spoke with pride of how his attacks on the stalls of pirate vendors had provoked
a “scandal” that was even reported in the newspapers of the Bolivian capital, La Paz.12 Perhaps,
having proved to vendors that his warnings were not empty threats, he could afford in his later
work to approach his anti-piracy campaign in a more creative, light-hearted and entertaining way.

Conclusion

We might expect original DVD and VCD discs to be more widely available in the shops and market
stalls of Sucre’s beautiful colonial city center, frequented by the city’s middle classes and tourists.
Although such surroundings might promise the “secure zones of authorized consumption” dreamed
of by the media industries (Sundaram 2009, 135), in reality original recordings were almost entirely
absent. By contrast, many original recordings were available in the less affluent and sprawling
Mercado Campesino (peasant market) in the city’s periphery. Such a pattern clearly contests any
simple correlation between piracy and poverty. However, in contrasting these two retail environ-
ments, it is important to point out that the purely pirated discs of the city center offered a much
greater variety of musical genres; a large proportion being of mainstream national or international
origin. Almost entirely absent from such stalls was the work of regional originario musicians, and
my requests for the recordings of Gregorio Mamani were usually met by blank expressions, high-
lighting the strong class-based associations of particular genres. While a good number of stalls
in the Mercado Campesino—as in the city center—only offered pirated recordings, a considerable
number stocked original recordings of regional originario genres, sometimes alongside a selection
of pirated international music. Almost every such stall offered a variety of recordings by Gregorio,
mostly originals; it was evident that here, unlike the city center, he was a household name.
A number of factors, relating back to the various anti-piracy strategies described above, might
help explain why original recordings were so widely available in the less affluent Mercado Campesino
but almost entirely absent from Sucre’s city center. Firstly, the policy of small-scale regional pro-
ducers, like Gregorio, to drastically reduce wholesale prices to make recordings affordable for low
income consumers was critical, even if ultimately unable to compete with the rock-bottom levels
of pirates. Larger-scale national and international labels or rights holders have usually been unable
or unwilling to reduce their prices to locally affordable rates, meaning that piracy has become
the only option for city center vendors. The Bolivian middle classes, who frequent Sucre’s city
center markets, may be relatively affluent compared Gregorio’s low-income originario audience,
but average incomes are still probably five to ten times lower than in Europe or the United States
(c.f. Karaganis 2011). In addition, the piracy networks that supply city center vendors are hugely
more efficient than official distribution channels, offering a diversity of musical genres and films
previously unimaginable for most Bolivians. As one highly-educated published author enthused to
me: Piracy “permits anybody to acquire works which cannot be accessed through formal means.”
Secondly, a much greater sense of “social intimacy” and interaction is found between the artists,
vendors, and audiences of regional originario music than is usually possible in the marketing of
mainstream national and international genres. This “sense of participation in a shared commu-
nity” (Condry 2004, 358) may involve feelings of loyalty and concern that musicians receive the
economic recognition they deserve. Personal participation in the distribution process by regional
originario artists often entails relationships of mutual interdependence, trust, or even kinship with
50 • HENRY STOBART

vendors. Such close interaction, alongside strategies such as flooding the market on the release day
and screen printing discs, also enables artists to police the sale of their work and to protest against
its unauthorized replication. City center vendors, by contrast, are less likely to have direct contact
with the artists whose work they sell, especially in the case of international recordings. During
my research, consumers and vendors in Sucre’s city center were subject to very little anti-piracy
discourse or pressure. Although aware of its illegality, most consumers to whom I spoke consid-
ered piracy as a huge “boon” or “benefit” (ventaja) in their lives.13 Nonetheless, one middle-class
Sucre-based musician, who regularly travels to Europe to perform, described piracy as “the cancer
of music.” He told me that his group’s work was regularly pirated in the city center and, as they
could not even recoup production costs, they had abandoned making recordings to sell in Bolivia.
However, with their experience of European tours and CD prices, there was little sense that the
group had considered radically lowering prices or working with the vendors or were particularly
concerned to grow their national audience and attract (relatively low paid) engagements at home.
Thirdly, we might wonder how much Gregorio’s consciousness raising and psychological cam-
paign—with its poetry, appeals to patriotism or resentment, ludic threats, and brutal actions—
impacted on vendor and consumer attitudes and practices in the Mercado Campesino. In many
respects, Gregorio’s anti-piracy campaigning was unique as regards creativity, relentlessness, and
variety in approach. No other artist went to such extremes, nor turned the “play of piracy” into the
focus of such interest and entertainment; indeed the creative richness he employed might be seen
to transform anti-piracy into an art form. His approach certainly seems a great deal more creative
and entertaining than, for example, the UK’s “Knock off-Nigel” anti-piracy videos (c. 2007) that
aimed to shame viewers into buying originals, or the many other industry funded campaigns which
spuriously connect media piracy with organized crime, drug-trafficking, or terrorism (Govil 2004).
By contrast, Gregorio’s discourse and strategies—albeit highly melodramatic—were for the most
part culturally relevant and accurate. He dropped prices to the absolute minimum, he informed
and identified with his low-income audience, and he targeted the sharp end of his campaign pre-
cisely at those vendors who chose to maximize profit at the expense of artist-producers. It is hard
to be sure how much Gregorio’s campaigning contributed to the existence of several groups of
stalls in Sucre’s Mercado Campesino selling original VCDs of regional originario music. Ultimately,
reduction in price and personal distribution to vendors by the artists and their families may have
been much more significant.
During my eleven months of research with Gregorio, based in Sucre, I participated in the
production of three of his VCD productions. The first, titled Zura zura, featured rural Carnival
music, and had both a limited potential audience and short market window of around one month
in the run up to Carnival (Stobart 2011). A pirated “special edition,” produced in Peru, was in
circulation around two weeks after this VCD’s release (Stobart 2010, 44). Gregorio estimated that
he sold around 2,000 VCDs before it was pirated, and that his total profits (after direct costs) for
his two months of production work amounted to approximately 4,000Bs or US$530 (calculated
at 2Bs or 26 cents per disc). Even though this was disappointing for Gregorio, other producers of
originario music told me that they rarely sold more than 1,000 originals. For the second production
on which we worked together, Exitos de Ayer y Hoy (Hits of Yesterday and Today), which mainly
featured old recordings of Gregorio’s classic huayño songs to which he added video, estimated
sales were around 4,000 (i.e. profits of around 8,000Bs or US$1,060). For our final production,
30,000 Chanchos (30,000 Pigs), which featured the music of the Macha tinku, and on which the
song “A la Mar” appears (see previous discussion), Gregorio estimated that 6,000 copies had been
sold by the time I left Bolivia around one month after its release (i.e., profits of around 12,000Bs
or US$1,590). To my knowledge, neither Gregorio’s second nor his final production was pirated
over the main post-release sales period. Even if he exaggerated the numbers of VCDs sold, the
figures hugely exceed those given to me by other artists and studios. It must be remembered that
each production involved several months of constant work and that many other indirect costs were
 “JUSTICE WITH MY OWN HANDS” • 51

involved. Whilst the return from his best-selling VCD was considerably more than the earnings of
most other rural migrants in Sucre, it was by no means a fortune; indeed his family’s lifestyle was
extremely modest and money was a constant worry. As Gregorio pointed out, live engagements
tended to pay much better. For example, a typical fee was 2,000Bs (US$260); half this would be
shared with the two accompanying guitarists (500Bs each), while he would take 1,000Bs (US$130)
as leader, soloist, and songwriter. Nonetheless, such booking for live performances were few and far
between; around five in my eleven months of research. In this context, viewing recordings purely
as a form of promotion, rather than as a significant source of income, presents a very bleak picture
for musician-producers such as Gregorio.

Acknowledgements

This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Gregorio Mamani. Many thanks to his family and
the many friends and other consultants in Bolivia who generously contributed to this research.
Also, special mention goes to Cassandra Torrico, who initially suggested focusing my research on
Gregorio; he certainly enriched our lives and those of countless others. I also gratefully acknowledge
the support of the British Academy (www.britac.ac.uk) and the UK Arts and Humanities Research
Council (www.ahrc.ac.uk).

Notes
1. This summarizes four key points from an essay of the same name by Victor Hugo Quintanilla Coro (source not cited).
2. CIA The World Factbook, Bolivia. www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bl.html (Accessed
15.7.13).
3. Originario is the term of choice used by many highland Bolivians to reflect an identity that transcends traditional
racial, class, community, and ethnic lines (see Grisaffi 2010).
4. Parallel import, where authorized low-price media destined for particular low-income regional markets is sold in full
price high-income markets, has been a major disincentive for the price reduction (Wang 2003, 181).
5. Some consultants estimated the arrival of the VCD on the Bolivian market as somewhat earlier; in one case 1997.
This suggests that at first VCDs were limited to an exclusive and expensive niche market. They did not arrive on the
low-income originario market until several years later. For example, in 2002 the stalls from which I regularly purchased
originario music only offered audio cassettes. When I returned to Bolivia in 2004 these same stalls were dominated by
VCDs, which had eclipsed the cassette.
6. These campaign songs were released first as an audio cassette in 2004 and then as a VCD music video in 2005.
7. This was very evident from the tastes of children in the private schools in Sucre that my children attended. Interest
in national music was largely restricted to dancing in folklore parades and a few major national groups, such as Los
Kjarkas. To have expressed interest in regional folk musics would have attracted ridicule. For similar examples of the
way that particular musics are constructed as “bad” or “trash,” see Washburn and Derno 2004.
8. Intriguingly, on the label of this first edition of the VCD, the photograph and name of Bonny Alberto Terán—arguably
the most famous artist of the genre—is covered over using a white correction pen and the word Protesta (Protest)
appears hand written in red pen, suggesting that the enterprise was surrounded by controversy.
9. Alto [sic] la piratería carajoo . . . El que hace daño este trabajo pagara caro. La justicia será con mi propio mano.
10. Alto [sic] la falsificación de CDs. Dile no a la pirateria carajo.
11. Gregorio Mamani no busca problemas, buscaron los que hacen fasificaciones este trabajo y los compradores truchos.
12. Nonetheless, he could not provide specific dates and I have been unable to track down these newspaper reports.
13. To my knowledge, no anti-piracy campaigns or raids took place in Sucre’s city center during my field research. If they
had, they would probably have been undertaken by third-party employees hired by recording companies. Actions of
this type mounted in earlier years elsewhere in Bolivia were largely ineffective and tended to provoke resentment rather
than sympathy for the music industries.

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 3
Modernist Reform, Virtuosity, and
Uyghur Instrumental Music
in Chinese Central Asia
Chuen-Fung Wong

Introduction

The analytical focus of this essay is the repertoire of instrumental musical works composed or
arranged during the second half of the twentieth century in China’s northwestern territory known
today as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. A vast majority of these works, written with an
explicit modernist and civilizing mission to “improve” the music of the minorities, employ devices
and styles that are derived from nineteenth-century European art music as introduced via the
Chinese incomers and reform-minded minority nationalists; often performed on instruments that
have undergone substantial changes in construction, timbre, and performing practices. Reified
traditional styles and musical devices, such as irregular meters and microtonal/non-diatonic inter-
vals, are often featured as repackaged ethnic flavor to decorate works that otherwise are composed
using predominantly European procedures.
The examples studied in this essay come from the music of the Uyghur, who are Turkic-speaking
Central Asian Muslims and today one of China’s fifty-five officially recognized minority nationalities.
Much of Uyghur music making over the past few decades has been caught up in issues of Chinese
stereotyped cultural representations and the minority assertion of ethno-nationalist identities.
Meanwhile, continuities between the classical muqam, the most high profile Uyghur traditional
music genre, and other Central Asian traditions, such as the Tajik-Uzbek shashmaqām, have branded
Uyghur music as among the most stylistically distinct in the Chinese minority soundscape. This has
often lent itself to scholarly inquiries that conveniently overlook processes of musical changes and
acculturation. While much has been written on the styles and politics of modern ethnic orchestras
in China (Yu 2011) and folkloric ensembles elsewhere (Buchanan 1995), issues of modernization
remain largely of marginal interest in music scholarships inside and outside the minority region.
Musical modernity is understood here less as a set of musical attributes that characterize a
particular historical period than as an ideological trope that informs the musical choices of per-
formers and audiences, a trope that, as Fredric Jameson (2013, 34–37) puts it, is “self-referential, if

53
54 • CHUEN-FUNG WONG

not performative.” What makes a style, a composition, or a musical instrument modern, in other
words, is often subjected to continuous social and aesthetic repositioning by its performers and
audiences against a multitude of modernist ambitions and consciousness. I will look at modernist
musical strategies in marginal cultures more in terms of their dialog with broader cultural discourses
and less as mere emulation of Western European art music. Part of my concern in this essay lies
in the engineering of the performing bodies in relation to the production of the modern minority
soundscape. In particular, this essay takes a closer look at the virtuosic capacities that have been
built on the musicians and manufactured for their instruments, as well as the reformist ideals that
have served the emergence of modern Uyghur musical consciousness since the 1950s. At its core
is a drive to render the music of the ethnic minorities comprehensible—and hence transparent
and predictable to outsiders—in order to create anew a modern minority music tradition that
is derived yet unambiguously distinct from its premodern formations, and to enable a modern
Chinese enterprise of composing, performing, and teaching music that serves broader national
and political ends.

Modernist Reform

Soviet/Russian cultural influences have made their ways into Chinese Central Asia via the Ili
Valley across today’s China-Kazakhstan border since at least the turn of the twentieth century.
This is marked in the performing arts, for example, by the adaptation of the iskiripka, or the
Western violin, in Uyghur music in the early 1920s as well as the creation of modern Uyghur
musical dramas in the 1930s and 1940s in Ghulja (Memtimin Hoshur 2014). It was not until the
Chinese Communist takeover in 1949, however, that Uyghur musical modernization became
systematized as an official undertaking often with explicit sociopolitical goals. I have argued
that such a project has assumed the role of cultural enlightenment by first identifying certain
traditional minority cultural practices as inferior and then by introducing a series of seemingly
benevolent undertakings, often by the incoming Chinese, in order to raise the minorities to a
higher level of civilization—a regular theme in much of the post-1950s minority representation in
China (Wong 2012, 41–42). In music, this has often meant the introduction of such European art
musical devices as functional harmony, equal-tempered tuning, orchestral texture and format, solo
virtuosity, clean timbre, standardized repertoire, written notation, and professionalized training
and performing troupes to performing arts.
Elsewhere I have written about the case of the Uyghur rawap, a skin-covered plucked lute
that is closely related to the Uzbek rabāb and Tajik rubob and at least also etymologically to the
various Central Asian and Middle Eastern rubab plucked lutes. The Uyghur rawap is made out
of one single piece of hollowed-out (oyma) mulberry wood (üjme yaghichi), often decorated
with inlaid bone throughout the body and curved barbs ( münggüz or qosh münggüz, which
symbolizes goat horns) at where the fingerboard and resonating chamber meet. A small plastic
triangular plectrum (zexmek) is used to pluck the strings. The rawap’s rise to prominence in
modern China is entangled in what Donna Buchanan (1995, 381) calls the “complex interface
of cultural heritage, aesthetics, political ideology, nationalism, and socio-economic change
embodied in the history of music professionalism in twentieth-century culture.” The rawap
assumes multiple identities in Uyghur musical life today. In professional concert-stage perfor-
mances and conservatory training, it is one of the most progressive instruments performed in
a variety of solo, ensemble, and orchestral settings, supplied today with a large repertoire of
composed or rearranged pieces that exhibit virtuosic qualities. In more traditional and ama-
teur settings, particularly in the Uyghur territory’s south, the rawap remains a quintessential
accompanying instrument for the singing of sacred or semi-sacred genres such as dastan epic
and qoshaq poetic singing by Sufi mendicants called ashiq; its narrative capacity still has broad
 MODERNIST REFORM, VIRTUOSITY, AND UYGHUR • 55

resonance today. A number of the rawap’s premodern qualities are preserved today in the
instrument’s regional types found in Khotan, Qumul, and the Dolan towns of such as Merkit
and Maralbéshi. These include the use of gut strings with lower tension running along a fret-
less fingerboard (deste) (or one with non-equal tempered fretting) and a resonating chamber
(kasa) covered with goat, donkey, or deer skin, producing a mellower and suppler timbre. A
number of tuning possibilities exist, and the instrument is usually held at a lower position,
closer to the abdomen rather than the chest. The premodern rawap advances a distinctive
rustic, folk imaginary that identifies it against other Uyghur instruments such as the bowed
fiddle satar (which is associated more with court traditions) and the two-string plucked lute
dutar (which is primarily a domestic instrument).
Reformist ideologies since the mid-century have considered most of these acoustic qualities
obsolete and demanded improvements to equip the instrument with modern concert capac-
ities and, to some extent, to facilitate the composition of symphonic-style works. This is best
illustrated by the re-construction of the two modern rawap types, the Kashgar rawap and the
chaplima rawap (or Uzbek rawap, which is believed to have originated in Uzbekistan in the
1940s), as commonly used among professional musicians today. In these two instruments,
gut strings are replaced by the more durable steel strings to allow for tighter stretching; and
in the case of the chaplima rawap, sympathetic strings are all eliminated to achieve a cleaner
timbre. A thin steel string is used as the highest melodic string on the Kashgar rawap, which is
fixed at middle C, producing a bright and penetrating sound in the higher range. Tunings are
standardized,1 and the resonating chamber is now covered with python skin to ensure stable
tension. A lengthened fingerboard is introduced to accommodate more frets (currently fixed
at around twenty-eight) that are equal-tempered. All these changes have brought a new sound-
scape, one that is brighter and more capable of concert-hall acoustics and ready for a wider
range of techniques and sound qualities. Composer Pettarjan Abdulla describes the new rawap
types as “better looking, newer, and more scientific than folk rawap types, with fine timbre,
[large] dynamic range, and accurate fretting.” All these, he writes, “have substantially enhanced
[music’s] expressivity” (Pettarjan 1980, 1). The improved rawap types are often contrasted with
the older ones, which are often rejected as “poorly made with unrefined materials, reflecting
primitive skills, and lacking standard shapes”—all of which have “impeded the development
of the rawap” (Song 1987, 20).
As if to compensate for the loss of the tradition, the decorative patterns inlaid on the fingerboard
and resonating chamber—previously made of animal bone or horn; now mostly plastic—have
become more elaborate and complex on the body of the rawap over the past few decades. This
is true also for most other Uyghur instruments, which are today much more densely decorated
with ornate, reified “ethnic” patterns than they were in the mid-twentieth century and earlier.2
Instrument makers of the older generation, while sometimes proud of the “progress” made in the
craftsmanship, confirm that there has been an increased demand in recent decades for the deco-
rations on the instruments to be more elaborate (interviews with Exmetjan 2005 and Tursuntay
2009, 2013), so much that sometimes these instruments appear like their miniaturized versions
popularly sold as souvenirs at tourist sites. This represents a decorative excess that relates closely
to the modernist project: While traditional Uyghur instruments are rebuilt and played to sound
more and more Western, their bodies are shaped to look increasingly “authentic” and “traditional”
in the eyes of their audience—an ascribed ethnicity that resonates with other aspects of modern
Uyghur music making.
The two prominent Uyghur bowed strings, the ghéjek and the xushtar, best illustrate such sonic
schizophrenia that has characterized much of the Soviet/socialist Chinese modernist reform in
the past century. The modern ghéjek is a spike fiddle with a spherical resonating body that is made
of coconut wood. It has four melodic strings tuned in fourths and no sympathetic strings over
a fretless fingerboard. The premodern ghéjek types, as seen among Dolan musicians and also in
56 • CHUEN-FUNG WONG

Qumul, feature over half a dozen sympathetic strings and a skin-covered resonator. The ghéjek
was officially “improved” in 1955 to explicitly mimic the Western violin: Sympathetic strings
were removed to produce a pure and clear timbre; the four melodic strings were tuned to the
standard G-d-a-e’ violin tuning (sometimes G-d-g-c’); and the original, relatively simple bows
were replaced with the modern violin bow.3 The spherical resonator was initially covered with
python skin in order to create an “ethnic” sound. But that ethnic flavor was later considered by
the reformers and musicians excessively nasal and thick. The python skin was then moved to the
interior of resonating box, stretched over a small wooden frame (not visible from the outside),
and the resonating body is covered with a thin piece of wooden board at the front, retaining a
mellower skin timbre.
It is another bowed fiddle, the xushtar, that embodies such divergence between the sound
and the body to its fullest extent. The word xushtar is derived from Persian, meaning “eight
strings.” The xushtar today looks like a chubby viola with a slightly curved, belly-shaped
resonating body with a pair of f-shaped sound-holes. The instrument is rested on the left
thigh with an inverted U-shaped spike when performing. It has four metal melodic strings
and no sympathetic strings; the four melodic strings are tuned and placed exactly like those
of the Western violin, running above a violin-like fingerboard. The origin of this instrument
is somewhat obscure: It is believed to have existed over a millennium ago and later somehow
disappeared. Instrument maker Exmetjan began a project in the 1960s to reconstruct this
ancient instrument from fresco paintings as seen from the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves
(located somewhere between Turpan and Pichan and consist of approximately seventy caves
dating from roughly the fifth to the ninth centuries A.D.). After numerous experiments, he
eventually created a soprano xushtar in 1975, which roughly resembles the xushtar today.
Here the fabrication of an age-old instrument that has already died out is comparable to the
case of the Chinese four-string plucked lute ruan (which was created in the 1950s based on
millennium-old printed sources): Both are utterly modern inventions that draw on sources
from an imagined musical past to validate.
To sound further like the violin, two more modifications have been made to ghéjek over the
last decades to “improve” its timbre. First, the seven sympathetic strings that had originally been
placed under the four melodic strings were all removed,4 giving rise to a pure and clean timbre
produced by the melodic strings, which simply are violin strings (while the ghéjek uses thicker
strings). Second—and most notably—in the 1990s, a thin piece of wooden board was inserted
vertically (parallel to the strings) inside the resonating body, dividing the interior chamber into
two: the curved belly at the back, and the flat resonating chamber at the front. According to
Exmetjan, this was done in order to further emulate the timbre of the violin, because with this
wooden board inserted, the actual resonating body is the violin-like fl at chamber at the front,
and the curved belly becomes nothing more than a mere decoration that retains some of its
“ethnic” appearance. A tenor xushtar, bass xushtar, and double-bass xushtar were subsequently
created in the 1980s as counterparts to the Western string family.5 Exmetjan once described to
me proudly how the xushtar sounded exactly like a violin: “If you stay behind the door,” he said,
with a slight embarrassing smile on his face, “you wouldn’t be able to tell whether it’s a xushtar
or a violin. The xushtar can produce a very clean and good timbre in the higher registers; the
ensembles need that” (interview with Exmetjan, 16 June 2005). Today the xushtar shares the
same repertoires of solo, virtuosic pieces with the ghéjek, which consists primarily of muqam
excerpts (usually the faster sections such as jula and the instrumental sections called merghul of
the dastan songs), new compositions, and tunes adapted from folk music as well as the Western
violin repertoire. Musicians are often simultaneously proficient in both instruments, although
in larger ensembles where there is multi-part instrumentation the xushtar is generally preferred,
and the ghéjek is seen more frequently in the performance of muqam and other traditional genres
in smaller ensemble settings.
 MODERNIST REFORM, VIRTUOSITY, AND UYGHUR • 57

Virtuosity

Musical instruments, as sound containers, “maintain physical contact with the originating human
bodies, effectively serving as appendages of them” (Zecher 2007, 7). The modernist qualities as
materialized on minority instruments are similarly made corporeal on the performing bodies of the
musicians. A few of the modifications of the rawap are attributed to the legendary virtuoso Dawut
Awut (1939–2007), who is synonymous with the modern rawap tradition. He was among the first
who adopted a standing, forward-leaning performing posture, in which the rawap is held high up
against the upper chest with both the right elbow at a more acute angle to facilitate further sound
projection. The right wrist, now bent at a more acute angle, moves rigorously to drive the strumming
and plucking patterns. This is most clearly heard in modern compositions as tremolo passages that
impersonate sustained melodies and legato phrasing otherwise performed on a bowed string or the
human voice, a technique said to be introduced to the rawap by composer Ösmanjan (1932–1990)
from the three-string Mongolian plucked lute shanz, or sanxian in Chinese (Gao shouxin and Fu
shengsong 1994). The plectrum (zexmek), previously rectangular and made with cow’s horn, is now
a small piece of thin plastic triangle with sharp edges to ensure swift and agile motion.6
Accompanying all these modifications is the emergence of virtuosic performers during the
latter half of the twentieth century. The concept of virtuosity as I employ it here refers broadly
to the celebration of technical brilliance and the exhibition of extraordinary performing abilities
associated with concert-stage performances, as formulated around the mid-eighteenth century in
Western Europe and introduced to various Soviet-influenced territories to serve national projects
of musical modernization. There is no indigenous Uyghur term for virtuosity. An approximate
literal translation would be “yuqiri maharet” (high skills), and virtuoso would be “mahir sen’etkar”
(skillful artist). The concept of a technically outstanding musician who assumes the prominent role
as musical genius or talented master certainly existed in traditional Uyghur society. Yet the modern
notion of a concert-stage soloist showcasing progressive styles on modified traditional instruments
(often in a concerto format against orchestral accompaniment) had been unprecedented until the
mid-twentieth century.
Uyghur virtuosi are often celebrated for their somewhat superhuman performing capacities. The
late tembur master Nurmuhemmet Tursun (1957–2004) is said to have practiced sixteen hours a day
until his fingers bled. Likewise, Dawut Awut’s artistry and contribution is realized today primarily in
the context of the technical and stylistic stretch he put on the rawap as well as the untiring, prolonged
practicing routine he cultivated. The same can be said of ghéjek virtuoso Ekrem Ömer (1963–2012),
who had been the concert-master of Xinjiang Song-and-Dance Troupe (founded 1962)—the most
high-profile, state-sponsored professional ensemble of which Nurmuhemmet Tursun and Dawut
Awut were also members—until his untimely death in summer 2012. Ekrem is said to have got a
thick callus between his thumb and index finger and over all his fingertips, developed from fre-
quent bleeding after prolonged practice. He is known also for applying violin finger exercises on
the ghéjek to advance his techniques. In a much watched videotaped performance of “Xinjiang zhi
chun” (Spring in Xinjiang), a Chinese appropriated virtuosic piece written in a pseudo-Uyghur
style in the mid-1990s,7 Ekrem is seen performing as a soloist on the ghéjek against a small Uyghur
ensemble. The rapid-fire solo lines, played with bowing and finger techniques clearly adapted from
the violin (particularly in the uplifting first and final sections as well as the cadenza-like passages in
the middle section), is heard against the colorful, quasi-ethnic costumes he put on and his blissful,
pleasing smile, as is common in most concert-stage performances today. Altogether it exhibits a
uniquely passionate fusion of playful amusement and hyper-virtuosic mastery that reminds the
audience of the performance of Roby Latakos (b.1965) and some other contemporary Romani/
Gypsy violinists. This manifests once again the divergence between the aural and the visual on the
body of the musical instruments as explained earlier: Here the modernist soundscape is accom-
panied by the reconstitution of the musician’s body as visibly “ethnic.”
58 • CHUEN-FUNG WONG

Indeed, the remade rawap has lived a professional concert life in modern China unparalleled by
most other minority musical instruments. It has also sustained a modern national narrative that rec-
reates the instrument as a powerful icon in Uyghur cultural expression. A milestone of such national
musical professionalism is “Méning Rawabim” (My Rawap), a single-movement concerto for the
rawap and the orchestra—the first of its kind—composed in 1963 by Uyghur composer Qurban
Ibrahim (b.1927), a prolific composer well-versed in Western musical language, and premiered
the following year by Dawut Awut, who also created the extensive cadenza. A standard showpiece
frequently programmed in public concerts and recitals today, this piece epitomizes the finest of
Uyghur musical modernity to many of its performers and audiences. It is indeed not uncommon
for modern Uyghur compositions to be named after their solo or idiomatic instruments, usually
by attaching a possessive suffix to the name of the instrument. Other notable examples include the
rawap solo “Sayra Qeshqer Rawabi” (“Sing! Kashgar Rawap”) by Obul Ashim, the album Temburum
(My Tembur) (2004) of the virtuoso Nurmuhemmet Tursun, and the famous soloist Abduréhim
Héyit’s recent nine-CD album Duttarim (My Dutar) (2012), which is also the title of a well-known
folksong and a solo for the dutar.8 The auto-/biographical narratives embodied are intimately linked
to the modernist techniques and devices employed in these instrumental works. In my analysis of
Dawut Awut’s performance of “Méning Rawabim,” I suggested that the concerto, together with the
newly modified solo instruments and their enlightened soloists, works self-reflexively to advance
a distinctive sonic imaginary that makes the listeners mindful of how a traditional instrument has
been reinvented and elevated to a unifying national icon. Straddled between the pre-socialist and
the modern eras, Dawut himself is indexical of this transformation. Simultaneously a guardian
of the centuries-old tradition and a pioneer of the national modernization project, he effectively
sublimates Uyghur musical identity from its premodern associations with locality and genres to
one that relies more on figurative means of constituting a national collectivity in the modern era
(see Wong 2012).
A number of otherwise orally transmitted pieces—some idiomatic to the rawap, others rear-
ranged from folk tunes—have also been transcribed and reinterpreted to incorporate challenging
techniques, standardized form and length, and regularized rhythm and meter. Some of them
received even more substantial changes, including the use of ternary-derived forms, pronounced
dynamic contrast, equal-tempered major/minor modes, and Western orchestral arrangements. A
brief examination of “Tashway,” a much performed rawap solo, shall illustrate the point. Named
after the nineteenth-century Uyghur musician and ashiq Tash Axun,9 the melody of “Tashway”
is associated with Sufi rituals and frequently heard on the rawap.10 At least two instrumental
versions of the piece exist in the rawap repertoire today. What most musicians refer to simply as
“Tashway” is an arrangement in the 1960s by Qurban Ibrahim. The arrangement is based on a
reworked melody, upbeat and duple-metered, laid out in functional harmonic progression in the
minor mode, unfolded in regularized rhythm and phrases with standardized length played with
noticeable dynamic contrasts. In almost all recordings and live performances I have come across—
ranging from solo to full orchestral arrangement—the frame drum (dap) is featured throughout to
accentuate the uplifting duple meter. Most conservatory students are taught only the new version
today, and this piece has also become a standard in senior recitals and concert-hall performances.
I learned this piece from my rawap teacher Alimjan Qadir at the conclusion of my yearlong study
at Xinjiang Arts Institute in summer 2005.
The older version of “Tashway,” on which Qurban Ibrahim’s arrangement was based, which is
rarely taught at conservatories and heard in public performances today, sounded quite different.
It features a loose ritornello form with irregular metrical accents, slower tempo, less dynamic
contrast, and more straightforward motivic ideas. Figure 3.1 shows the first thirty-eight measures
of the piece (introduction and roughly the first refrain) transcribed from a recorded performance
of Dawut Awut. The transcription shows frequent metrical changes and syncopations, features
that characterize many traditional Uyghur instrumental pieces. Phrases are of uneven lengths,
 MODERNIST REFORM, VIRTUOSITY, AND UYGHUR • 59

Figure 3.1 “Tashway” (or “Kona Tashway”), a traditional composition for solo rawap; transcription of the first thirty-eight
measures (roughly introduction and the first refrain) according to performance by Dawut Awut (1939–2007) as recorded on
the album Méning Rawabim (Nawa Ün-Sin 2006); transcription by author. Tempo is approximately MM=112–126. The
note head x refers to uncertain pitches or strumming on the sympathetic strings on the rawap (not all strumming actions
are notated). Dynamic change is minimal. The Arabic numerals refer to phrases, within each of which the motive and its
variations are marked with brackets.

constructed based on repetitions of very short motives (two to four measures as notated, represented
by the Roman numerals) played three or four times, each is ornamented, augmented, or diminished
(represented by the brackets). The overall structure is one that is typical of many Middle Eastern
and Central Asian classical traditions: Each new phrase explores a higher register and returns to
the initial, low register before it moves up another level, until the melodic culmination arrives at
its peak; the melody then returns slowly to the initial register to conclude the piece. Somewhat
ironically, the new arrangement of “Tashway” is so far removed from its original that this older
version is now called “Kona Tashway” (“old” Tashway) in order for it to be distinguished from the
new and now-normative version.11
After I had learned “Tashway” (the new arrangement), somewhat self-confidently, I asked my
teacher if I might also learn the older version. He refused, and explained that “Kona Tashway”
would be too difficult for me. His answer caught me by surprise. It had appeared to me, rather
clearly, that “Tashway” was the more technically challenging one. Most of my fellow students at
the conservatories majoring the rawap had been taught only the new arrangement, which had
also become a standard in senior recitals and was frequently rearranged for virtuosic solo or
60 • CHUEN-FUNG WONG

concerto-style staged performances. My teacher’s answer appeared to suggest an understanding

of difficulty that is distinct from its modern realization as rapid runs and tremolos, broader range,
dramatic tempo and dynamic contrasts, and so on. That prompted me to think more seriously
about issues of technicality and virtuosity in this repertoire of modernist compositions.
The adaptation of the European Romanticist ideal of musical virtuosity in socialist performing
arts around the world throughout the twentieth century presented a paradox. Virtuosity, with its
promises of individualism and liberating heroism, appears to be at odds with the socialist state’s
collectivist agenda. I suggest we broaden the scope of musical virtuosity by seeing it not only as
an onstage event but more comprehensively also as a cultural process that seeks to engineer the
bodies of both the performers and the musical instruments. Specifically, I ask the question of how
minority virtuosity in socialist China has cultivated a new kind of musical technicality, one that
is built upon the language of the nineteenth-century European art music, exercised through the
state-controlled institutions of music conservatories and professionalized performing troupes.
The de-contextualization of traditional music as a result of this process demanded musicians
to unlearn styles, techniques, and practices that had been passed down from generation to gen-
eration, and to acquire a new set of skills for the creation of a new traditional soundscape for the
minorities. Professional musicians frequently find themselves playing one set of pieces at conser-
vatories, official ensembles, and public concerts, and another set at private gatherings and more
domestic settings—a minority “double life” I have explored in another case study (Wong 2013).
The technical and stylistic requirements for these two repertoires are often so different that young
musicians who come to conservatories with previous family music training in the traditional style
today frequently feel compelled to unlearn the older performing practices and be reacquainted
with a new set of requirements. This is the case with the young rawap soloist Alimjan Obul, who
explained to me that he had learned most of the older rawap pieces from his father, a respected
musician in Khotan, before attending the Arts Institute as a rawap major, during which he largely
left the old repertoire behind. Now an instructor of the rawap at Xinjiang Normal University and
a concert soloist, he only plays these traditional pieces—which he and his father insist, again, are
more difficult than the newer ones—with his father at home and at family gatherings (interview,
18 June 2013). This is also the case of my rawap teacher who, despite being a professor of the rawap
at the Institute, maintained an active performing life after work—at weddings, drinking parties, and
private gatherings—as a highly competent performer of the dutar plucked lute and the iskiripka
(violin) in the regional style based in his hometown Ghulja in the northwest.
The notating of music played a crucial role in this relearning process. It facilitates the objec-
tification of musical knowledge in order to attain a kind of autonomy in instrumental music. To
reform-minded musicians, traditional music may now be learned via descriptively notated scores
and means that rely less on oral transmission. No notation of “Kona Tashway”—and other pieces
in the traditional rawap repertoire—has hitherto been published (except for a basic transcription
from the 1960s published in an anthology; see Liu 1990, 171–173), while the notation of “Tashway”
(the new arrangement) is widely available, in both cipher and staff notations, including one that I
used to learn at the Arts Institute (Alimjan, Qadir 2004). A quick overview of the scores published
for pedagogical use since the early 2000s—which normally include scales, arpeggios, and newly
composed pieces aimed for finger exercises—should demonstrate that older versions of these rawap
pieces are almost entirely absent in the teaching and learning of professional musicians at conserva-
tories today.12 One would be hard pressed to find young performers today who can still play “Kona
Tashway” and other pieces in the traditional repertoire. If I were to learn “Kona Tashway” from my
teacher, he would have to teach me without notation, something that was explicitly discouraged at
conservatory teaching. Ultimately, the new style is considered easier to learn by many traditional
musicians not because it is technically less demanding—quite the opposite is true, indeed—but
because of its predictability and transparency to outsiders, something that has declared the tradi-
tional apprentice-based, orally transmitted learning obsolete.
 MODERNIST REFORM, VIRTUOSITY, AND UYGHUR • 61

Meanwhile, in ensemble settings, individualist playing styles and aesthetics as well as practices
of interactive heterophony have been overwhelmed by similarly homogenizing strategies such as
rhythmic simplification, synchronized tempo and dynamic contrast, homophonic-derived tex-
tures, and sometimes the presence of the conductor. On a visit I made to a rehearsal session of the
Xinjiang Song-and-Dance Troupe in July 2005, during which the musicians were rehearsing for an
upcoming performance in September that would celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region, musicians were asked to play in sections and individual parts in a
recording studio in order to prepare the accompanying tape for the ceremony. The ghéjek soloist
and concertmaster Ekrem Ömer explained to me that they were going to finger-sync on stage with
prerecorded cassette tapes, because some of the sixty-odd performers were retired or semi-retired
and would not be able to play with the demanding techniques required for the pieces. The music
director of the recording sessions was a Han Chinese who was introduced as a famous recording
engineer in Beijing. He instructed the performers not only on technical recording aspects but
also on everything from dynamics to tempo, playing techniques, and even ornamentation styles.
He derided the performers for their amateurish behavior, such as the excessive chats during the
recordings, and compared them unfavorably to the “much more professional” performers in
Beijing. Musicians of the troupe initially seemed to be subservient, until in one particular session
when the player of the double-reed sunay, a Uyghur, who had failed to satisfy the director after
almost a dozen attempts on one single short musical phrase, confronted him with a displeased
expression. The Chinese director first demanded, in Mandarin, “this piece is about the Tianshan
Mountains; I want the weidao [a Chinese term that means taste, smell, or feeling; an approximate
Uyghur translation is puraq] of early morning on the Tianshan Mountains.” The sunay player
replied, rather discontentedly, “what kind of weidao is this? It’s not Uyghur weidao.” A similar
disagreement took place between the director and Ekrem when they were recording a solo passage
on the ghéjek. Ekrem interpreted the melody with extensive melodic embellishment in medium
tempo. The director frowned and instructed that this passage should be played with tightened
tempo and denser notes. Ekrem laughed helplessly, and played as the director had instructed.
What Ekrem eventually played on the ghéjek sounded exactly like a standard virtuosic violin solo,
and the director was very satisfied.

Conclusion

In many important ways, the modernist professional style promoted by the Chinese state
for its minorities is comparable to the ideal of virtuoso espoused by Richard Wagner in Der
Virtuos und der Künstler (The virtuoso and the artists, 1898 [1840]), in which he argued that
the virtuoso, as the “highest merit of the executant artist,” is someone who is engaged in the
“pure and perfect reproduction” of the “composer’s intentions,” with “total abstinence from all
inventions” (111). The virtuosity preferred by the Chinese state is likewise not so much con-
ceived to be an unbound expression of individuality and artistic freedom, but rather one that
is practiced as an exercise of the state’s minority modernization project and should therefore
be properly contained. The virtuoso’s body, for the state, should thus appear like an instru-
ment for the execution of an idea that is primarily not his own.13 It is not surprising that these
professional performing troupes remain some of the most tightly controlled organizations in
China; minority musicians in these troupes have been considered among the most recalcitrant
and regularly requested to attend political lessons.14 The dismissal of Nurmuhemmet Tursun
(1957–2004), who is arguably the most revered Uyghur virtuoso in the twentieth century and
beyond, from the Xinjiang Song-and-Dance Troupe after the notorious New Year Concert in
2001 (and his subsequent premature death in 2004) further confirms the aggressive maneu-
vering of modernist style and musicians in China.15 As Susan Bernstein writes about Wagner’s
62 • CHUEN-FUNG WONG

ideal virtuoso, “[t]he proper characteristic of the virtuoso is to have no proper characteristics”
(1998, 86). To the Chinese state, virtuosity is both desired and dangerous, and thus should
be carefully managed.
The manipulation of the virtuosic performing body is intimately linked to—and facilitated
by—the rise of instrumental music as the embodiment of progress in minority music. As Gary
Tomlinson (2003, 39) writes, “[t]he idea of instrumental music as an autonomous, nonmimetic
expressive means, together with the emergent formation of modern conception of the discrete
musical work, invested new and substantial powers in the written form of the work.” Instrumental
works are thought to bear the “truest revelation of the composer’s intent, the unique and full
inscription of the composer’s expressive spirit.” The decontextualizing of Uyghur instrumental
music explained above has similarly worked towards a reconstitution of meaning often discursively
framed as reflecting the “intent” of the composers and, in our case here, the master performers
who played prominent roles in the compositional process (such as Dawut Awut). Uyghur virtuosi
are remembered by their audiences primarily because they are innovators—as “authors” rather
than “mere reproducers of music” (Cook 1998, 13). The orality embedded in premodern per-
forming practices is now subsumed by the notating, recording, and standardizing strategies in
modern performance, which serves effectively as “text” for the creative inscription of meaning.
To many in the audience, this has rarely meant passive acceptance of Chinese influences and
erasure of indigenous elements, let alone defilement of cultural heritage. Indeed, the modern
styles in Uyghur music performance represent as much a perpetuation of early Central Asian/
Uzbek influences, symbolized, in our case, by the introduction of the chaplima rawap and the
modern ensemble format from Uzbekistan before the Chinese takeover in 1949. Long considered
a pioneer in Turkic musical modernity, Tashkent and a few other Central Asian modern music
centers remain popular destinations for professional and pop Uyghur musicians to renew their
performing and compositional skills.
It is then important to understand modernity less as an overwhelming condition in a particular
historical period but as presenting an interesting paradox to marginal cultures: The progressiv-
ity as embodied in the virtuosic style, while arguably less authentic, is at once a hopeful vehicle
for minority performing arts, long perceived by the Chinese as less advanced, to sublimate its
marginality to a modern national collectivity to enter the modern world of music traditions. The
progressive soundscape pioneered by these minority virtuosi and other musical modernists may
usefully be heard as operating to pry open a space for the assertion of a cosmopolitan belonging
that is simultaneously nationalistic. This is evidenced in part by the overwhelming popularity
of these virtuosi, who often appear as national heroes, and their works and performances consid-
ered the pinnacle of music history. A computer software generated picture of Ekrem Ömer posted
on the hugely popular Uyghur entertainment website Ependim shortly after his death in 2012
shows how his audience chose to remember him: Ekrem, dressed in glossy, quasi-ethnic costume,
is figured prominently in the picture playing, somewhat contemplatively, the modern ghéjek as a
soloist against a digitally assembled background of not one but two orchestras—a Uyghur orchestra
on the right and a Western orchestra on the left.16 The modernity as perceived by many minority
musicians is one that is inclusive, less bound, and not opposite to what we commonly call “tradi-
tion.” The virtuosic qualities and performing techniques are also rarely perceived as superfluous
or subordinate to premodern, traditional styles, let alone mere imitation of European art music
or Chinese modern styles.
As anthropologist Louisa Schein writes in her study of the ethnic Hmong people in southwest
China, in performing modernity, minority actors “confounded their consignment to the role of the
impoverished, rural, tradition bearers and strove to make membership in the prestigious category
of modernity less exclusive, more negotiable” (2000, 233). Minority modernism in China should
therefore be more precisely understood as a negotiated outcome between the state’s minority
 MODERNIST REFORM, VIRTUOSITY, AND UYGHUR • 63

enlightenment project and the assertion of ethno-nationalism through modernist strategies

appropriated by the elites of the marginal groups. This echoes again Schein’s observation that the
concept of progress among the Hmong people in China was not antithetical to their pursuit of
more ethno-nationalist interests (ibid., 277). Modern virtuosity is as much a social practice as it
is musical and physical; it is achieved collaboratively between the progressive soundscape and the
trope of authenticity as engineered for the performing bodies of the musician and the instrument.
Traditional sounds often come into the picture as important sources for the nationalist refashioning
of modern musical procedures. The new technicality that accompanies social changes and political
resistance is what demands a closer scrutiny in the scholarship of Chinese minority music. For
many contemporary Uyghur musicians, being modern—and credibly so—remains an important
strategy to engage stereotyped representation in everyday life under Chinese occupation. The
individualist heroism often identified with prominent Uyghur instrumentalists—and vocalists,
too—should prompt us to pay more attention to modernist styles as an important means for
subaltern empowerment.

Notes
1. The six sympathetic/drone strings on the Kashgar rawap are arranged according to circle of fifths, from outer to inner,
as G, D, A, E, B, and F. The chaplima rawap has a pair of outer double course steel strings tuned to D, a pair of middle
double course steel strings tuned to A, and an inner single gut/silk string tuned to D.
2. Refer to Abduqeyyum Mijit (2013, 51) for a brief discussion of the variety of inlaid patterns decorated on Uyghur
instruments today.
3. Chinese musicologist Wan Tongshu (1986, 95) writes, “After the ghéjek was reformed [in 1955], its range and volume
were enlarged. The original timbre is preserved, but is improved to become more pure and subtle. Most of the fingering
and bowing techniques of the violin are [now] playable on the ghéjek. . . . Not only can the ghéjek be used to perform
the beautiful folk tunes, it can also be used for the dance music with wide range, programmatic music, and Western
string pieces.”
4. The tuning of the seven sympathetic strings is D-F#-G-A-B-d-f# (Zhou Ji et al. 1996, 2280).
5. In the case of song-and-dance troupes, they are often arranged into sections of first xushtar, second xushtar, and
so forth, resembling the string family in the Western orchestra. According to Qurban Seley, a retired professor
of ghéjek and xushtar, the timbre of the tenor xushtar is not satisfactory, so most of the professional performing
groups today switch to the cello when they need lower-register stringed instruments. (Interview with Qurban
Seley, 31 May 2005)
6. Parhat Dawut, interview with the author, June 2009; see also Abdusami 2001, 63–65; Song 1987; Zhou Ji et al. 1996,
2273 for more on Dawut Awut; and my own article (Wong 2012, 48–54).
7. “Spring in Xinjiang” (Chinese: Xinjiang zhi chun) is composed in 1956 originally for the violin by Chinese composers
Ma Yaoxian (b.1938) and Li Zhonghan (b.1933) with elements borrowed from Uyghur music. It was later adapted on
the ghéjek and made into a standard piece in its repertoire. The video is widely available on the Internet through Chinese
and Uyghur video streaming sites; here is one on YouTube: [www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5c-v_wFjrg] (accessed
15 March 2016).
8. Read about Abduréhim Héyit in Finley 2013, 206–221.
9. There exists multiple conflicting biographical accounts of Tash Axun; see Wong (2016).
10. Harris and Dawut recall seeing a performance of the piece at a shrine pilgrimage event at Ordam Mazar in 1995 (Harris
and Dawut 2002, 105).
11. A recording of “Kona Tashway” may be found on Méning Rawabim (Nawa Ün-Sin 2006) performed by Dawut Awut,
whose interpretation has also become standard. A few other early modern pieces popularized by the recordings of
Dawut Awut, such as Gündipay, Qadir Mewlan, and Shadiyane, have come to be known as the core of the traditional
repertoire of the rawap (Dawut Awut 2006). The newer version, “Tashway,” is widely available in numerous commercially
released Uyghur music recordings with various instrumentations. Staff notation of the new arrangement “Tashway” is
available in almost all published rawap notations; see Alimjan Qadir (2004), for example.
12. The most widely used of these today is Alimjan Abduqadir’s Rawap Dersliki (Rawap lessons) (2012), which is based on
a previous edition, Alimjan Qadir’s Uyghur chalghulirining bir yürüsh tékhnikliq nezeriyisi we orunlash usuli: Rawap
(Techniques and methods of Uyghur instruments: Rawap) (2004).
13. A vast majority of Uyghur instrumental virtuosi I have interviewed and come across are male. The masculinity asso-
ciated with the modern concert solo tradition deserves a closer look and is beyond the scope of this essay.
14. Refer to Wong (2016, 96–97) for two instances of such political education. Uyghur musicians in many performing
troupes in Xinjiang, including a few teachers and informants of mine at Kashgar Song-and-Dance Troupe, were also
taken to attend political lessons immediately following the Urumqi Riot in summer 2009.
15. See Harris (2005, 641–642) for brief description and analysis of the incident.
16. Ependim [www.apandim.com]. Accessed July 1, 2013.
64 • CHUEN-FUNG WONG

References
Abdughéni Abduweli. 2014. Uyghur Rawabidin 99 Kün (99 Days of Uyghur Rawap). Ürümchi: Shinjang güzel sen’et-foto süret.
Abduréhim Héyit. 2012. Duttarim (My Dutar). Ürümchi: Millet Ün-Sin Neshriyati.
Abdusami, Abdurahman. 2001. “Qiantan Weiwu’erzu tanbo yueqi rewapu” (Brief Notes on Uyghur Plucked Instrument
rawap). Xinjiang yishu 1: 63–65.
Alimjan, Abduqadir (Qadir). 2012. Rawap Dersliki (Rawap Lessons). Ürümchi: Shinjang ma’arip.
Alimjan, Qadir. 2004. Uyghur chalghulirining bir yürüsh tékhnikliq nezeriyisi we orunlash usuli: Rawap (Techniques and
Methods of Uyghur Instruments: Rawap). Ürümchi: Shinjang sen’et inisitituti.
Bernstein, Susan. 1998. Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Buchanan, Donna. 1995. “Metaphors of Power, Metaphors of Truth: The Politics of Music Professionalism in Bulgarian
Folk Orchestras.” Ethnomusicology 39(3): 381–416.
Cook, Nicolas. 1998. Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dawut, Awut. 2006. Méning rawabim (My rawap). Ürümchi: Nawa Ün-Sin Neshriyati. CD.
Finley, Joanne Smith. 2013. The Art of Symbolic Resistance: Uyghur Identities and Uyghur-Han Relations in Contemporary
Xinjiang. Leiden: Brill.
Gao, shouxin, and Fu shengsong. 1994. “Xuewuzhijing Yiwuzhijing: Weiwu’erzu zuoqujia Wusimanjiang” [Uyghur Composer
Osmanjan]. In Zhongguo jinxiandai yinyuejia zhuan, Xiang Yansheng, ed., 284–292. Vol. 4. Shenyang: Chunfeng wenyi
chubanshe.
Harris, Rachel. 2005. “Reggae on the Silk Road: The Globalization of Uyghur Pop.” The China Quarterly 183: 627–643.
Harris, Rachel, and Rahile Dawut. 2002. “Mazar Festivals of the Uyghurs: Music, Islam and the Chinese State.” British
Journal of Ethnomusicology 11(1): 101–118.
Jameson, Fredric. 2013. A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present. London: Verso.
Liu Guiying. 1990. Zhongguo shaoshu minzu chuantung yueqi duzouqu xuan. Beijing: Renmin yinyue chubanshe.
Memtimin Hoshur. 2014. Ili Uyghur Tiyatirining Chiliqi (Ili Uyghur Theatre). Ürümchi: Shinjang yashlar-ösmüler neshriyati.
Mijit Abduqeyyum. 2013. “Uyghurlarning chalghu eswab yasash téxnikisi” (The Techniques of Making Uyghur Instruments).
Shinjang Sen’et Inistituti ilmiy zurnili 2: 44–54.
Nurmuhemmet Tursun. 2004. Temburum (My Tembur). Ürümchi: Nawa Ün-Sin Neshriyati.
Pettarjan, Abdulla. 1980. Rewapu duzouqu xuan (Selected Solos for the rawap). Ürümchi: Xinjiang renmin chubanshe.
Schein, Louisa. 2000. Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Song, Bonian. 1987. “Wode rewapu wo shengming de chuntian: ji weiwu’er rewapu yanzoujia dawuti” (My rawap, the
Spring of My Life: On the Uyghur rawap Performer Dawut). Renmin yinyue 11: 19–20.
Tomlinson, Gary. 2003. “Musicology, Anthropology, History.” In The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction,
31–44. London: Routledge.
Wagner, Richard. 1898 [1840]. Der Virtuos und der Künstler (The Virtuoso and the Artists), Translated by William Ashton
Ellis. In Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, Vol. 7: In Paris and Dresden, 108–122. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner
& Co.
Wan Tongshu. 1986. Weiwu’erzu yueqi [Uyghur Musical Instruments]. Ürümchi: Xinjiang renmin chubanshe.
Wong Chuen-Fung. 2006. “Peripheral Sentiments: Encountering Uyghur Music in Urumchi.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Uni-
versity of California, Los Angeles.
Wong Chuen-Fung. 2012. “Reinventing the Central Asian Rawap in Modern China: Musical Stereotypes, Minority
Modernity, and Uyghur Instrumental Music.” Asian Music 43(1): 34–63.
Wong Chuen-Fung. 2013. “Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop: Minority Modernity and Popular Music in Northwest China.”
Popular Music and Society 36(1): 98–118.
Wong Chuen-Fung. 2016. “On Tashway and Uyghur Instrumental Music.” Paper presented at Chinese Music and Hong
Kong: A Symposium in Honour of Professor Yu Siu Wah (January 16, 2016).
Yu Siu Wah. 2011. “From National Music to Pan-Chinese Music: The Modern Chinese Orchestra and Its Surviving Con-
texts.” In Music and Culture (Seoul) 24: 207–245.
Zecher, Carla. 2007. Sounding Objects: Musical Instruments, Poetry, and Art in Renaissance France. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Zhou Ji et al., ed. 1996. Zhongguo minjian qiyuequ jicheng: Xinjiang juan [Anthology of Chinese Instrumental Music:
Xinjiang]. 2 vols. Beijing: ISBN Center.
 Part II
Applied Practice
 4
From Neutrality to Praxis
The Shifting Politics of Ethnomusicology
in the Contemporary World
Samuel Araújo

This chapter addresses the field of ethnomusicology in view of new epistemological scenarios
emerging out of post-colonial situations, demanding that old roles played out through research
(insider/outsider; engaged native/neutral foreign observer) be thought over carefully and replaced
by new, more politically articulate ones. I will first refer to a set of assumptions and problems
affecting the field’s theory and practice in the contemporary world, reflecting not only the critique
of a series of modernity’s illusions with the supposedly neutral character of the human sciences
but also the limitations of post-modern criticisms to the latter. As argued here, and despite their
certainly well-wishing intentions, such criticisms have fallen short of effectively theorizing, not to
speak of counteracting, the asymmetrical power between knowledge-producing, though politically
disempowered, communities and a world largely shaped by commodity forms, some of which mate-
rialized in the authority of certain academic discourses. Finally I will briefly present four distinct
cases from my own research engagements in Brazil, attempting to illustrate how local community
demands have affected their respective objectives and approaches, opening up potential issues on
the way of a new disciplinary praxis.
It should also be warned that although these issues have been raised by a growing literature on
seemingly marginal sub-areas eventually called applied,1 collaborative, and participatory research
in ethnomusicology, I refrain from using any of such terms to qualify my object—the socio-political
implications of face-to-face music research—as such, since in my view even those who believe in
“pure” or “neutral” research are opening, intentionally or not, ways of application in and through
their work, triggering such categories of distinction would just reveal a matter of degree and not
really of substance.
Simultaneously I intend to highlight the political substance and epistemological consequences
of new research contexts and roles as one area with potentially ground-breaking contributions
toward the emergence of a more balanced social world, i.e., one in which knowledge will hopefully
emerge from a truly horizontal, intercultural dialogue and not through top-to-bottom neo-colonial
systems of validation. This choice is strongly rooted in my own personal experience in coordinating

67
68 • SAMUEL ARAÚJO

an academic unit that has maintained a four-year collaboration with a communitarian organization
in Rio de Janeiro, attempting to devise forms of community’s self-empowerment and counter-
hegemonic forms of organization through music research on local social memory and sociability.
During this so far stable collaboration, our joint research team has experienced moments of high
hopes in a new type of music (or ethnomusicological) research, despite the enormous challenges
it may face under mostly adverse conditions.

Modern and Post-Modern Modes of Musical Ethnographies

Assuming the risk of attempting to draw a necessarily broad characterization here, commensurate
to acknowledging that there are many possible modes of doing ethnographies of musical practices,
we will approach first a more conventional (meaning long legitimized, academically speaking)
mode I shall call modern, as it is inspired by humanistic models consolidated in and through
modernity. The researcher in this case is usually an individual tied in some way to an academic
institution, equipped with academically oriented theories, methods, and research categories. He
or she defines (1) research focuses and goals, as well as (2) the nature of data to be “collected,” after
a period of “immersion” in “another” cultural reference system, (3) “collects” the necessary data,
with, to some extent, native collaboration, (4) “translates” the data (i.e., through comparisons with
his/her own cultural referents), something which is eventually done with native help, and, finally
(5) interpret these data in the more coherent as possible manner, generating a textual form to be
published under the researcher’s exclusive authorship.2
Contrastingly, one might place a reflexive mode (or “post-modern,” if you may), in which the
researcher is still an individual who (1) defines his/her initial focuses and goals but all the other
subsequent steps will present differences to some degree in comparison with the previous outline.
He/she (2) will define and redefine the nature of the data to be collected through a persistent dia-
logue, negotiation, and approximation with his/her “chosen society”; (3) “collect” and “translate” data
with systematic native help; and finally (4) interpret them with native collaboration (collaborative
editing) aimed at a publication still to be authored by the researcher his or herself, despite the fact
that native voices are granted greater credit and growing complexity as compared to conventional
ethnographies, as well as a relative space to diverge from or even to contradict the credited author.3
However, this chapter is concerned with a third and progressively expanding mode of musical
ethnography, intensely “participatory” indeed, in which both native and academic researchers
(subject positions sometimes merged in one single individual) negotiate from the start the research
focuses and goals, as well as the nature of the data to be gathered and the type of reflection they
require. They highlight community demands which may be potentially met with the research
results, and during which natives both gather and interpret the data that results in diffusion through
collective authorship in various academic and non-academic contexts. In addition, non-academic
natives and academics of different social origins develop reflections on the dialoguing process
that permeates the research. Finally new focuses that arise from this reflection open new research
interests and suggest new forms of diffusion beyond the conventional ones.4

A Brief Note on Applied Research in Social Anthropology

The term applied, used as a diacritical sign of the anthropologist’s intervention in the cultures he/she
works with, can be traced to the nineteenth century, with British anthropologist L. Fox Pitt-Rivers’s
use of the term back in 1881, while the institutionalization of an applied anthropology as a subject
matter in universities came as early as the 1920s, with Radcliffe-Brown’s first courses under that
heading at the University of Cape Town, South Africa (for a good historical overview, see Gardner
 FROM NEUTRALITY TO PRAXIS • 69

and Lewis 1996). Its basic goals by then were to provide trained personnel to posts in the colonial
administration as a way of counterweighing difficulties or even failures in public policies; in other
words, political and administrative problems seen as related to ignorance of cultural differences
between administrators and administrated peoples. While both the legitimacy and asymmetry of
this relationship were to remain for the most part unquestioned, it opened a new job market for
trained anthropologists and at least one reputed ethnomusicologist, John Blacking (see Byron 1995).
The 1930s and 1940s would see an expansion of applied research in anthropology, leading
to the creation, in the United States, of the American Association for Applied Anthropology, in
1941, pioneering the emergence of similar organizations elsewhere (Gardner and Lewis 1996).
This professional society also launched the first publication dedicated to applied research, Human
Organization, which is still available today and, since the late1990s, in free-access online form.
However, despite its expansion and relative acceptance as an academic field, applied anthropology
has always been met with a certain disdain in so-called “pure research” circles, which have mainly
called the former into question for its intervention in the studied peoples and cultures. According
to anthropologist Eric Wolf:

Applied anthropology, by definition, represents a reaction against cultural relativism, since

it does not regard the culture that is applying anthropology as the equal of the culture to
which anthropology is to be applied.
(Wolf 1964, 24)

In other words, cultural relativism, as much as anthropology’s main currents up to the 1970s, has
quite often taken as granted the non-interventionism and neutrality of anthropological methods
and techniques, a modernity’s fantasy timely criticized within anthropology in the 1980s.5 On the
other hand relativists were not entirely off the mark when they criticized applied anthropologists’
frequently uncritical acceptance of “modernization” or “development,” two euphemisms for deferral
to commodity-driven worldviews and, at its extreme, to aid counter-insurgency initiatives, as the
framework of their research.
It is perhaps unnecessary to bring up here, too, the relative discredit surrounding applied research
in the academic milieu vis-à-vis pursuing “pure research” in the social sciences. These illusions as
already suggested above were to dissipate under the post-modern turn in anthropology, although
the latter never really challenged academic authority in assuming to full extent the debate on
anthropology’s interventionism in the studied cultures, since to do it in full length would probably
undermine the very structures of academic work as we know it (see, for instance, Jacobs-Huey 2002).

Applied Ethnomusicology in Perspective

The emergence of new scenarios of interaction between researchers and researched community’s
demands has occupied a narrow, but unquestionably growing, space in ethnomusicological liter-
ature and practice. Among the several factors behind this increasing visibility, I will point out, on
one hand, the anthropological critique of ethnographic practice as an instrument of neo-colonial
domination in the current context of world political economy (e.g., problems posed or reawakened
by the so-called post-modern anthropology such as the crises of representation, of ethnographic
authority, etc.); on the other hand, it becomes more and more common the assimilation of research
techniques (sometimes learned from academic researchers) by carriers of cultural traditions, which
articulate scholarship and socio-cultural activism, in order to maintain control of the reproduction
or reinvention of their respective worldviews. Thus, the case studies presented in the literature may
perhaps be roughly split into two main tendencies: (1) collaborative efforts developed by academic
researchers and/or researched community members in search of recovering and preserving the
70 • SAMUEL ARAÚJO

memory of tradition, which are made viable through access to archives and collections housed
outside the community space; through oral history; through access to and storage of iconographic,
phonographic, visual or audio visual records; through the formation of musical groups, educational
projects, etc.; (2)The second is the creation of community’s teaching and research institutions, as well
as databases maintained by the communities, with or without partnerships with governmental or
third sector institutions. A common element in all of these possible situations has been the relative
distancing from research models oriented toward goals defined exclusively or at least ultimately
by the outside researcher (see Ellis 1994) and an epistemological turn toward perspectives in
which community control over the generated knowledge is always at stake—although not always
congruent with mainstream academic discussions.
Beginning with the first tendency outlined above, let me remind you of an entire volume of the
US-based periodical Ethnomusicology (1992) dedicated to the discussion of new arenas for eth-
nomusicological work outside academia; these new fields of action have been alternatively called
“public sector,” “applied,” “active,” or “practical” ethnomusicology. As stressed by the volume’s
editor, each one of these categories is, by definition, sensitive to public interest and to the flux of
knowledge generated outside the boundaries of traditional research institutions, thus reinforcing
“music producers and musical cultures in collaborative projects that present, represent and affect
the cultural flux of music the world over” (Titon 1992, 315). Among the various contributions to
this issue, I would highlight two: (a) The one by Anthony Seeger (1992) on legal problems regard-
ing intellectual property in a world dominated by royalties and trademarks, and discussing the
role of ethnomusicologists in the mediation process in defense of communities’ rights to eventual
outcomes of commercialization and diffusion of their traditions; (b) the article by Daniel Sheehy
emphasizing the importance of ethnomusicology “in ‘feeding back’ with cultural models to the
community which conceived them” (Sheehy 1992, 333).
In fact, ethnomusicology has always been punctuated by collaboration between researchers or
academic institutions and musical communities in specific projects of interest to those commu-
nities, such as commercial recordings, public presentations in new contexts, etc. As short-term
experiences, such activities have usually depended on the establishment collective trust on the
researcher, quite often stemming from a previous longer-term project with goals defined by the
researcher (frequently a thesis or a dissertation).6
The second type of situation mentioned above, however, may demand from the ethnomusicolo-
gist an involvement of unpredictable duration and intensity, as well as assuming the risk of raising
issues not seen as welcome in the academic sphere, such as, for example, his/her observance of
interdict issues or of certain forms of knowledge diffusion. It is redundant to say this may easily
jeopardize a research career evaluated by criteria such as number of publications and a production
that may be judged exclusively (so one is told . . .) by standardized, peer-reviewed professional rules.
In contrast, one such way in which both anthropologists and now a few ethnomusicologists
have developed more horizontal participative strategies in their research activity has implied the
adoption of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s ideas on dialogic knowledge building. A basic dis-
tinction underlies his approach to this issue: one between a situation in which the student remains
the self-conscious subject of the cognitive operations making possible the emergence of liberating
knowledge, the teacher acting as a mediator of the process, and another one he termed “banking
education” in which the student remains primarily as object of the teacher’s knowledge transference,
a knowledge produced by a distant Other, in many cases foreign or even hostile to the student’s
cognitive backgrounds (Freire 1970, 1996).
An interesting experience in this sense was discussed in a special 1994 issue of the journal The
World of Music comprising articles on music research and the ethical concerns it raises among
indigenous peoples of Australia. The general objective of all contributions was precisely to bring
to the fore the new roles and new research contexts emerging at a moment in which indigenous
peoples were intensifying their struggles for political and cultural autonomy, as well as for the
 FROM NEUTRALITY TO PRAXIS • 71

maintenance or rescue of their ancestral territories. Although space limitation here does not allow
a more encompassing appraisal of the panel, it is worth noticing the introductory piece by the
late Catherine Ellis (1994). She recollects her initial involvement, as an academic researcher, with
indigenous peoples and their respective musical cultures, her progressive engagement in short-
term community-driven projects, and finally the creation of the Center for Aboriginal Studies
of Music at the University of Adelaide in 1975, resulting from a project collectively conceived by
the ethnomusicologist and indigenous musicians with whom she had been working. Its aims, she
continues, were to offer the world indigenous views of music-making, through continuous research
and teaching of musical practices by and to both indigenous and non-indigenous community
members, as well as to provide a new context for students in general to study music in general.
Being an initiative inspired to a great measure in Paulo Freire’s pedagogical thinking, Ellis
explains how the research and teaching strategies passed through a process of systematic negotiation
with indigenous community councils. This, she points out, eventually led to practices which were
foreign to academic “ethics,” such as interdicting speculation on and diffusion of given repertoires
outside the community proper since both outcomes were considered concerning or threatening to
the well-being of an entire society. In such context, as well stressed by Ellis, tradition cultivation
intersperses the construction and reconstruction of indigenous identities and the struggle for rights
to land, health, housing, education, etc. in the scope of the encompassing national society. This
approach, as acknowledged by the late Australian ethnomusicologist, presents a series of paradoxes7
while we, academics, keep ourselves attached to scientific paradigms and evaluation criteria still
dominant in the academic field. But, she adds, overcoming such paradoxes through patient, tor-
tuous, and radical intellectual changes may lead to innovative syntheses between indigenous (or,
expanding, the argument non-academic) and academic thought processes.
Thinking over my own research experience with musical traditions in Brazil, I find evident a
progressive move evidencing a considerable transformation of research scenarios toward growing
and more politically charged demands placed by communities upon academics, which I will attempt
to illustrate below with four case studies.

New Scenarios and Roles in Samba Research

In between 1988 and 1990 I worked on my dissertation on samba in Rio de Janeiro (see Araújo
1992), focusing on the so-called samba schools—huge carnival associations, encompassing about
4,000 participants each—which compete annually for prizes and attract a great deal of tourist
interest around the world. Pursuing a doctoral degree abroad at the time, and consequentially con-
strained by the usual research limitations faced by most outside researchers, I followed some basic
principles of participant observation, centered on one of these associations and reflecting critically
with my interlocutors, mostly musicians, on the role of music-making in the production of social
meaning out of a myriad of interests, encompassing from worldwide TV broadcast copyrights and
local organized crime activity to state propaganda and community self-esteem. In general terms,
this research was conducted amidst a commercially overvalued context, generating accusations
targeted at the abandonment of tradition and the selling out of community values, oftentimes, if
ambiguously, vocalized by samba songwriters identified with the roots of samba (samba de raiz).
There had even been an attempt, in between 1975 and the mid-1980s, toward empowering tra-
ditional samba forms through the creation of a new type of samba school devoted to both research
and creative activity—still existing but of little repercussion at the time my fieldwork was being
carried—the Grêmio Recreativo de Arte Negra Escola de Samba Quilombo (see Cabral 1997).8
Wishing to work on oral histories constructed with selected samba musicians as a way of mapping
out questions the available literature seemed to overlook, I opted for individuals who had main-
tained a relatively long involvement with samba practices, some of which expressed—not without
72 • SAMUEL ARAÚJO

a certain ambiguity—firm disagreement with the current scene; others accepting the changes as
they may fit new conjunctures, new anxieties; both seen as legitimate as the traditional ones. While
the research project remained, until its final stages, under the academic researcher’s control, its
pertinence to the researched communities is to this date yet to be asserted.
However, as soon as I settled back in Rio after graduation (1992), and visiting one of the people
who helped me more substantially with my fieldwork, himself a respected composer and carrier of
the community’s social memory, I was asked to check out a novelty in his Salgueiro9 house that had
resulted, he said, from my insistent questions and his patient search for documents and records to
answer them. He had transformed his home into a local reference center (or, as he called it, a small
“museum”), covering up the house walls with documents on the samba school memory, an idea
that had occurred to him about two years earlier, after being bothered by an insistent researcher
(me) for some months in a row. After this meeting, I tried to put forward a longer-term research
project, which should ideally be negotiated with community members, around the Freirean notion
of the academic as a mediator of knowledge generated by the community, resulting in the expansion
of the incipient musical memory center that had already been built. Nevertheless the aggravation
of social and racial apartheid in Rio de Janeiro following still obscure facts surrounding the State
government 1992 elections, with dramatic effects being felt to this day, suddenly made such enter-
prise, as defined by my interlocutor, “unadvisable.” Eventually he felt compelled to move out of
the community, of whose samba school he had been a co-founder and a respected leadership for
decades, still living far away from it today.
Recently, however, relatively favorable conditions made possible, since 2006, for the university’s
Ethnomusicology Lab to start a new, ongoing joint project with a locally-based NGO on Salgueiro’s
socio-musical memory, which will hopefully be able to benefit from his personal archives.

New Scenarios, New Roles: Gypsy Music and Dance in Rio

Back in 1995, while advising a master’s thesis research at the university, the student in question
mentioned his participation in private parties among calom-speaking (derived from the calom
language spoken by ciganos in Portugal) gypsies in the neighborhood of Catumbi, Rio de Janeiro,
involving what had impressed him as very peculiar music and dance styles. Having manifested my
curiosity in seeing and hearing them somehow, the student showed me first a community-made
video. As my curiosity grew after watching the video (both music and dance seemed just too close
to long abandoned nineteenth-century models mentioned in the literature), and after the student’s
intermediation, I was invited by the community not only to participate in but also to document a
fiftieth-year marriage anniversary party that was about to take place. Their proposal allowed me
to shoot a video for research purposes as long as I returned them a master copy so they could dub
it for interested community members. Among this predominantly elderly group of people, there
was a generalized feeling that their identity-defining traditions would disappear with them, since,
in their perception, the younger generations, comprising a majority of mixed marriages with
non-gypsies, tended to shy away from cultural practices marked off by social stigma. The proposed
agreement between us was one which allowed documentation of music and dance, as well as of the
participants and their socializing during the party, simultaneously available for academic research
and for community purposes—perhaps to be taken later as a source of its own strengthening.
My first measure was a more attentive watch of the community-made video, attempting to better
understand the flux of the event itself and also of the community’s possible expectations from my
own video shooting. Having in mind Hugo Zemp’s precepts for ethnographic video-making (Zemp
1988), I tried to adequate the documentation procedures to the existing conditions.10 The unedited
result was at some point presented to a few community members who made several comments
during the show, some of which were deeply emotional due to the reassurance that only elderly
 FROM NEUTRALITY TO PRAXIS • 73

people still participated, or death of some participants a few days after the party, while others
expressed their happiness in the face of their chance (perhaps the last one) to socialize and of the
beauty of their music and dance.
This experience eventually took the course of public presentations on the research results in
both national and international academic symposiums (Araújo 1996; Araújo and Guerreiro 1996),
at least one of the former being attended by community members. To some extent both academics
and community members felt their mutual interests in a complementary relationship: the former
could undertake an exploratory study of a little-known aspect of a musical practice cultivated in
Brazil, while the latter could obtain a valuable record of cultural traditions seen as vital in a moment
of profound transformation of their community as well as of the society-at-large in which they
lived. Although occasional meetings between the researchers and community members still occur,
no further research-related collaboration took place.11

New Scenes: The Documentation of a Brazilian Dance Drama

A master’s degree advisee developed her thesis research on the use of rabeca (a Brazilian fiddle-type
instrument) in the Cavalo Marinho dance drama, a kind of play structured on a relatively prescribed
set of music-and dance, originally performed around Christmastime. The focused group was formed
by migrants from the interior of Paraíba state, in the Northeastern region, whose oldest members
had been settled for about thirty years close to the state capital city of João Pessoa.
Replacing urban occupations, such as school security guards or construction workers, for their
older rural ones as either cowboys or agricultural workers, its members had to adapt their cultural
traditions to new situations: events unlinked to Christmas (e.g., stage shows academic congresses
or in tourist venues), usually low cash payments by State agencies or commercial interests (as
opposed to just food, drinking, and shelter in the older rural settings), and uninformed audiences
with little if any understanding of what went on in the play.
It is perhaps unnecessary to emphasize the group’s difficulty and, at times, revolt in having to
deal with these situations, which placed them almost invariably in a disadvantageous position to
negotiate their interests (adequate conditions and payments, show time, etc.). In 1997, before the
CD proposal reached them, Cavalo Marinho members had decided to try a new direction through
the building of a legally recognized cultural organization, with help from a university professor
with a relatively long record of engagement with the brinquedo (lit., toy; also self-entertainment,
play), a designation commonly used among the group. This association was thought as a form of
making viable a series of projects, including a video documentation project by then approved by
the Ministry of Culture, but waiting for more than a year for the release of the necessary financial
resources.
In the same year, 1997, I had received a proposal for an audio CD documentary related to the 500
years of cultural exchanges between Brazil and Portugal. My advisee and I presented the proposal
to Cavalo Marinho members through its acknowledged leader, Mestre Gasosa. From the beginning
the negotiation was meandrous, involving a series of phone calls mediated by the university pro-
fessor already mentioned. At some point there was an agreement that a contract should be made
and underwritten by both the Portuguese recording company, one academic researcher (me), and
the group musicians participating in the recording, in attempt to avoid previous experiences in
which their rights had been, as they put it, disrespected.
The idea of a contract had, however, a series of implications that were nearly impossible to
settle over the phone (see, once again, Seeger 1992). Fortunately, the negotiation was made more
fluid as the university professor recalled my own period of residence, professional activity, and
political activism in João Pessoa between 1980 and 1985. The conditions and dates for recording
were then defined, and they were made in an amiable atmosphere, the group having decided to
74 • SAMUEL ARAÚJO

record a representative sample of the music performed in each of the three parts of the brinquedo
(an integral documentation would perhaps demand a longer series of CDs), something they had
been regularly doing for some time in their new performance contexts (e.g., fifteen-minute pre-
sentations during academic conference coffee breaks).
During this process—which is still developing—the group’s or, better, Mestre Gasosa’s strategy,
mediated by an academic, seemed to involve a constant, and often complicated, synthesis in between
the evocation of a collective memory (encompassing repertoires, older performance contexts,
and frustrating experiences with both phonographic and video-making projects) and attempts
to form new references for action in a transformed world. In this framework, the CD could open
(and indeed opened, not always for good) opportunities for the diffusion and continuity of their
expressive work, but mainly to contribute to other forms of organization and intervention that
would hopefully assure them more social control over their own creative resources.
What seemed a good prospect turned, however, into an intricate social issue. The audio CD was
released under the title Cavalo Marinho da Paraíba (IN Susana Sardo, ed., A Viagem dos Sons Vol.
12. Vila Verde: Portugal; 1998). After the consecutive deaths of Mestre Gasosa, group leader, and
fiddle player Mestre Artur da Rabeca, the group saw a dispute over name ownership to develop
between Mestre Gasosa’s son, Dinho (who was also a dancer with the group since childhood), and
Mestre João, who played the Mateus character and was one of the singers, along with Gasosa in the
recording. In his attempts to keep the Cavalo Marinho alive, something which involved keeping
the name consecrated in the CD release and teaching younger people the songs or showing fiddle
tunes to players not familiar with the repertoire, Mestre João named the group after the CD’s title,
which became the centerpiece of the copyright suit (see Lima 2004).12
Intriguingly enough, although understandably, the lawsuit does not involve either the record-
ing company nor the researcher who acted as mediator—both of which signed a contract with
the musicians, signaling that the dispute remains exclusively one over name ownership, using the
CD as perceived evidence of rights. So, it seems to me that this episode demonstrates that, even
if not calling into question the ethics of the recording, including its diffusion and commercializa-
tion, the political implications of punctual, short-term research, even when ethically and socially
responsible, does not account for the ever expanding relationships between peoples and the reified
products of their labor.

New Scenarios: Working for and with a Community at Maré

As reported elsewhere (Araújo et al. 2006), Ethnomusicology Lab of the Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro has established, since 2003, a partnership with CEASM (Center for the Study and Solidarity
Actions of Maré), a NGO created by residents within a socio-politically disenfranchised area of Rio
de Janeiro with an estimated population of about 135,000 people, comprising from relocated slum
populations of Rio and unskilled migrant labor (the majority of which from northeastern Brazil),
to a population of about 1,000 Angolan young students and middle-aged war refugees. High rates
of unemployment and the profitability of drug trafficking delineate the broader social contours
in the Maré area, leading to a harsh routine of police raids, corruption, drug wars on territories
between factions, and traffic-dictated curfews.
Our partner organization was, by 2003, one of the highest visible community-based NGOs in
Rio, with a considerable infrastructure (classrooms, well-equipped administrative offices, computer
rooms, library and various types of database) and a strong focus on the preparation of Maré young-
sters to the yearly admission exam in public universities (reputedly the best in Brazil and free of
charge). Its main focus requires, in its representatives’ perception (middle-aged, university-trained
residents or former residents of Maré), that exam-centered skills be complemented with other skills
that may enrich the experience of youngsters. CEASM’s particular expectations from our joint
 FROM NEUTRALITY TO PRAXIS • 75

project were that the formation of local youngsters to document Maré’s musical output, eventu-
ally leading to the creation of a local musical reference center, might reinforce both the subjects’
self-esteem and experience in another musical program or yet in other related areas such as dance,
history, story-telling, etc.

The Project

A first version of the project was prepared by a university-based team of two teachers, one former
graduate student, and three currently enrolled graduate students. The main points of departure
were: (1) the positive feedback (in ethical, dynamic, and even epistemological terms) from the pre-
vious small-scale experiences in alternative modes of ethnography, with focuses jointly defined by
university researchers and members of the focused societal groups, and the involvement of some of
the latter in several stages of the research proper (e.g., as interviewers, “fieldworkers,” “translators”
of local linguistic variations, etc.); (2) emphasis on whatever locally based musical resources are
available; (3) the considerable accumulated experience in sub-fields termed “applied,” “advocacy,”
and “participatory” within the social sciences, ethnomusicology included, and the increasing
availability of related literature; (4) the institutional support from the university and also from
some of its business partners (e.g., the giant state-owned oil company) within a political context
of increased awareness of the disparaging social, political, and economic imbalance between the
very rich and the poor in Brazil, an overall trend leading the first industrial worker ever to win
presidential elections in the Americas to take office in 2003.
Intense discussions with NGO representatives (educators, historians, and administrative per-
sonnel) led to the development of a one-year research project restricted to two sub-areas of Maré
and involving three basic stages: (1) twice-a-week encounters with a group of twenty Maré-resident
youngsters selected among second-grade student volunteers, aimed at the development of a con-
ceptual basis as well as of research focuses and tools. Following participatory action models (but
particularly the one proposed by Paulo Freire), the university researchers act in this case as medi-
ators of discussions among the youngsters on relevant musical subjects and categories for music
research; (2) the actual audio and audiovisual documentation of musical practices and interviews
with representative individuals; (3) the building of a public database within Maré, located at the NGO
headquarters, and the development of outreach programs aimed at its residents and at the general
public (each one involving certain specificities such as questions on the range and type of diffusion).

Issues Emerging in Dialogic Research

As a huge number of potential research topics have emerged in the discussions in these four
years, I would like to share at least a few of them here. Differences in musical backgrounds and
experience were among the most immediately self-perceived traits within the group, revealing
from the start a quite significant feature of Maré: its widely diversified soundscape, to use com-
poser Murray Schafer’s well-known metaphor (Schafer 1977). The most admired genres may be
generally described as Brazilian popular musics (mainly Rio de Janeiro’s samba and pagode, or
the Northeastern forró) and international trends such as rap, rock, and reggae, but also include
clusters of African pop (among Angolans), evangelical gospel songs or the local equivalent to
“gangsta rap,” the so-called “proibidão” (i.e., highly forbidden). It is probably redundant to say
that each of these genres may be “the” exclusive pick or intersect one another in one individual’s
particular choice repertoire, while the main sources for musical experiences encompass radio and
TV broadcasts, music recordings from both licit and illicit sources, public (e.g., religious services,
funk balls) and private performances (rock rehearsals, private parties), indoor and outdoor events.
76 • SAMUEL ARAÚJO

Taste distinctions have shown to maintain correlations with age, religious affiliations, schooling,
occupation, the proximity of the drug business putting some youngsters at social risk, and also to
the period of residence within Maré.
It is relevant to notice too that the initial revelation of such differences, as it might be expected,
provoked a great deal of meaningful silence (Freire 1970) during the first encounters. Little by
little, however, a number of interaction strategies proposed by the university team (e.g. showing
documentary videotapes recording different sound practices within the Maré area and simulated life
history interviews with project participants) led the student researchers to increase their awareness
of the content of each other’s preferred styles. Little by little, new kinds of interaction (including
musical ones) between these youngsters have started to develop, including the creation—and
maintenance since then—of a politically committed Carnival group since 2005, Se Benze Que Dá
(Bless It, So It Passes), an allusion to Carnival parades through the dangerous drug-traffic divides.
This leads to an issue emerging strongly in the discussions: the impact of violence (much more
than hunger, or the lack of either job or leisure opportunities, which is not to say these are not strong
concerns) on social life in general, but particularly on musical ones. Violence, in the discussions
among youngsters, is often understood as a sub-product of drug-trafficking and/or police action.
Quite significantly, the majority of examples of violence in the youngsters’ accounts are illustrated
with significant sounds. On the other hand, they often emphasize the term sound to describe
local practices that might otherwise be deemed as musical, which has led us (university and Maré
researchers) to entertain on the continuity of the sound spectrum in Maré (Schafer’s soundscape,
but also Araujo’s acoustic labor [1992]), from gunfire, church loudspeakers and war commands,
to everyday speech and more or less ritualized sound performances.
Physical violence and terror notwithstanding, violence appears more often under the form of
symbolic violence (Bourdieu 2001; Wacquant 2004). This form is spotted back-and-forth by Maré
residents in their own downplay of their cultural output, perhaps as a result of years of actions
aimed at what “the community lacks,” in which the content provider is usually an outsider. When
he/she ceases, for one reason or another, his/her collaboration with local institutions, he/she leaves
behind a sense of frustration or simply a vacuum.
Symbolic violence also appears under the form of concepts made up from outside perceptions
that “freeze,” so to speak, social practices, failing to recognize or, in Bourdieu’s terms, misrecognizing
practical strategies as categories that make no sense in the real world. This has serious implications
since the on-going discussions have revealed different internal uses within Maré for established
categories used in academia, side by side with frequently used, socially pertinent local categories
which remain absolutely absent in scholarly studies of the masses or of the poor. That should leave
us wondering about the relatively innocuousness of many labels and object-centered approaches that
pervade the literature on popular music cultures in Brazil vis-à-vis a highly significant, while largely
ignored, praxis emanating from stigmatized daily struggles for physical and emotional survival.
In a response to this challenge, one of the greatest achievements so far in this project has been
the collective engagement of the joint research team in reconsidering older and elaborating new
research categories based on the community’s research experience, resulting in the production
of texts, some of which are already published in prestigious academic journals, and other forms
of newly qualified actions which transcend the worn-out dichotomies between “neutrality” and
“interventionism,” “political” and “non-political” realms.

Final Remarks

In conclusion, one might risk saying, as a provocation to debate, that it is imperative to scrutinize
more carefully forms of musical research still based on the modes of ethnography made “conven-
tional” in the colonial world, or even the so-called reflexive work done in the post-colonial context.
 FROM NEUTRALITY TO PRAXIS • 77

This questionable legacy, which entails legitimizing the discourse of academic interpreters while
reducing the focused peoples’ power to resist their transformation into objects, has been basically
translated as (1) fetishized musical products and processes (i.e. defined and naturalized in terms
of ideologies which are usually foreign to the focused communities); (2) a slight reconfiguration
of academic authority without challenging standards of authorship; and (3) public policies (e.g. on
world and national heritages, research agendas, training programs, etc.) which stress the hegemony
of academia, attributing to its agents (i.e. researchers) the responsibility of defining, preserving,
and promoting musical diversity (see, for instance, Gonçalves 1996).
As many of our colleagues already know, to build up a contrasting legacy constitutes an enor-
mous challenge. Invoking Paulo Freire once again, researchers keep themselves aware that musical
processes and products are permanently mediated by power relations, demanding constant action/
reflection, and not allowing stable theorizations in the course of part-time interactions aimed at
individual authorships in search of academic authority.
Concomitantly it becomes clear that reviewing radically the process of knowledge production
requires extreme application, in the sense of politically conscious engagement, to changing pub-
lic policies in favor of social movements that may be able to build a new knowledge-producing
praxis. This will require, as already in practice here and there around the globe: (1) the creation
of opportunities to enable communities currently marginalized from the knowledge produced
on themselves to interact with and to participate not as active interlocutors in world forums; (2)
the formation of joint research teams comprising natives and non-natives as well as academics
and non-academic personnel; (3) new self-critical forms and uses of musical documentation,
fostering public debates on the history, identity, and values of peoples; (4) development of new
capacities amidst communities previously deprived of access to those capacities (e.g. audiovisual
documentation, idealization and management of sound archives, use of technologies etc.), and the
reinforcement and/or building of diffusion centers of local knowledge and repositories through
community-based organizations and institutions.

Notes
1. The term applied was the one adopted in the 39th ICTM World Conference (2007) double-session in which a first draft
of this paper was first presented in public and from which a Study Group on Applied Ethnomusicology was proposed
and finally created. I thank Svanibor Pettan, panel co-organizer, and fellow panel members Sooi Beng Tan, Patricia
Opondo, Maureen Loughran, and Jennifer Newsome for the fruitful cross-cultural perspectives on our mutually distinct
cases and approaches.
2. This accounts for, broadly speaking, the model found in one of the more influential books of the 1960s in the field of
ethnomusicology (Merriam 1964).
3. This model is even more liable to broader characterizations than the previous ones since its politically sensitive impulse
elicits a myriad of responses in terms of research ethics, principles, and procedures. But a good initial survey of such
reactions, as appearing in musical ethnographies, is found in a collective publication organized by Barz and Cooley
(1997).
4. A growing number of examples can be found in the literature since at least the 1990s (e.g. Ellis 1994; Impey 2002;
Lassiter 1998, 2004; Cambria 2004; Araújo, 2006; Araújo et al. 2005a, 2005b, 2006).
5. Among a plethora of pertinent titles, one should bear in mind a few seminal contributions by Fabian (1983), Clifford
and Marcus (1986), Marcus and Fischer (1986), and Clifford (1988).
6. I will comment a bit more on this issues when discussing my case studies further in this paper.
7. Among these paradoxes, one may be faced with the emergence of newly empowered academic subjects (e.g. the so-called
native researcher), the critical acknowledgement of community-established ethical limits to research conducts, and
the relativization of traditional signposts of academic legitimacy such as peer-evaluated publications, theses, disserta-
tions, etc.
8. I.e., Recreational Black Art Club Quilombo (community-states founded by self-freed, formerly enslaved people during
the slavery era) Samba School.
9. Hillside community, home to one of the largest and oldest samba schools of Rio.
10. Having no previous first-hand knowledge of the ritual structure of a marriage anniversary party (or even if there was
any formal prescription for it), and with confirmation that the video shooting would be possible arriving a few hours
from the beginning of the party, the only machine available was a home VHS camera hired at a commercial video
rental store.
78 • SAMUEL ARAÚJO

11. Quite recently, gypsy communities and their culture were elected priority in terms of documentation projects funded
by the Ministry of Culture.
12. Before the CD release, Mestre Gasosa used to call his Cavalo Marinho “de Mestre Gasosa” or “de Bayeux” (an allusion
to their hometown). The latter was, however, contested by another Cavalo Marinho group based in the same town.
The reference to the state of Paraíba was then thought initially by researchers and musicians as a clearer marker of
geographical origin, not as a trademark.

References
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Rio de Janeiro. Ph.D. dissertation in Musicology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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Encontro Anual da ANPPOM, 93–97. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ.
Araújo, Samuel, and Guerreiro, Antônio. 1996. “Samba cigano: uma etnografia musical da comunidade calom do Rio de
Janeiro.” In Anais do IX Encontro Anual da ANPPOM, 131–135. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ.
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Rio de Janeiro.” Unpublished paper presented at the symposium Direito Autoral de Imagem, Som e Produção de Con-
hecimento (Copyright, Image, Sound and Knowledge Production), Departamento de Antropologia, Universidade
de São Paulo.
Araújo, Samuel. 2006. “Violência como conceito na pesquisa musical; refele- xões sobre uma pesquisa dialógica na Maré,
Rio de Janeiro.” Revista Transcultural de Música 10. http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/articulo/148/a-violencia-co-
mo-conceito-na-pesquisa-musical-reflexoes-sobre-uma-experiencia-dialogica-na-mare-rio-de-janeiro
Araújo, Samuel and members of the Grupo Musicultura. 2006. “Conflict and Violence as Theoretical Tools in Present-Day
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287–313.
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Cabral, Sérgio. 1997. As escolas de samba do Rio de Janeiro. 2nd ed. enlarged. Rio de Janeiro: Lumiar.
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pesquisa comunitária no Rio de Janeiro.” Anais do IV Encontro da Seção Latino-Americana do IASPM, Rio de
Janeiro, Universidade Cândido Mendes/Pontifícia Universidade Católica/Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de
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cology and Participatory Action Research in Northern KwaZulu Natal.” Samuel Araújo, ed., Yearbook for Traditional
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and Accountability among ‘Native’ Anthropologists.” American Anthropologist 104: 791–804.
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 5
The Ethnomusicologist at the Rock Face
Reflections on Working at
the Nexus of Music and Mining
Kirsty Gillespie

Introduction

Ethnomusicology and mining appear as completely different fields of work. Ethnomusicology

is generally understood to be about the study of music in its cultural context;1 mining, and
resource extraction more broadly, is about removing resources (such as minerals and fossil
fuels) from the ground. These fields do, however, share a common ground that is just as much
literal as it is figurative. This chapter traces my experience as an ethnomusicologist working
with the mining industry, exploring a unique application of the discipline of ethnomusicology
outside of academia. As such, it interweaves a narrative of personal experience with broader,
more removed reflections on the possibilities of working at the nexus of music and mining. This
approach to research can be considered an example of applied ethnomusicology, understood
as “the approach guided by the principles of social responsibility, which extends the usual
academic goal of broadening and deepening knowledge and understanding toward solving
concrete problems and toward working both inside and beyond typical academic contexts”
(Harrison and Pettan 2010, 1).
In recent years there has been an increased momentum around applied ethnomusicology
not only because of the interest in making research directly relevant to communities—and by
extension more explicitly ethical—but due to an interest in employment in ethnomusicology
beyond the traditional halls of academia. Building on previous work that advocates for the eth-
nomusicologist’s engagement with mining and other like industries (Gillespie 2013), I describe
the ways in which my work as an ethnomusicologist has intersected with the work of the gold
mining company operating in the Lihir Islands of Papua New Guinea. The ethnomusicologist
is described as a facilitator between the company and the people, between the people and
cultural institutions, and between other academic disciplines. The chapter contemplates the
challenges and benefits of this kind of engagement, and reflects upon it as a pathway within
applied ethnomusicology.

81
82 • KIRSTY GILLESPIE

Lihir as a Mine Site

Before we begin, it is important to describe the site for this particular case. Mining looms large
on the Lihir landscape. There are four permanently inhabited islands in Lihir Island Group—
from north to south Mahur, Masahet, Malie, and Aniolam (also known as “Niolam” when the
definite article is not used)—and it is the largest of these, Aniolam (meaning “the big place”) that
currently hosts mining (see Figure 5.1). The gold mine there has been in operation since 1995
(the preparation for the mine’s operation beginning many years before that), and it has had a
dramatic impact not only on the local economy but on the infrastructure, including healthcare
and education (see Figure 5.2).
There is an exceptionally comprehensive body of anthropological work that addresses the pres-
ence of the mine in Lihir. This research incorporates both traditional and applied anthropological
domains; most researchers that have worked in Lihir have been engaged by the mining company
there in some way, either as direct employees or consultants, and some have written about their
experience (see Macintyre 2001).2 A number of social impact reports for the company have been
written by anthropologists (see for example Filer and Jackson 1989; Macintyre 1996; Macintyre
and Foale 2003), and it can be said that these reports themselves have fed intense anthropological
interest in the Islands. Even an ethnography written on and about Mahur, the most remote island
in the group—that is, the island furthest away from the mine—cannot avoid reference to it (see

Figure 5.1 Standing on the shores of the northern-most Island of Mahur, looking across at Masahet, the lower-lying Malie,
and Aniolam
Photo by the author (2007)
 THE ETHNOMUSICOLOGIST AT THE ROCK FACE • 83

Figure 5.2 The town centre, Londolovit, Aniolam

Photo by the author (2011)

Hemer 2013). Mining in the Lihir Islands has affected everyone’s lives there in some way. Therefore,
any study of the music of Lihir is destined to intersect with mining in some way. It is, however, an
explicit engagement with mining—and the mining company—to which I now turn.

“So Why Is This Rock Important Anyway?”: Facilitating Communication

between the People and the Company

The first research projects I conducted in Lihir (over the period 2008–2010) were projects funded
directly by the mining company in Lihir (at the time, Lihir Gold Ltd), in which I was engaged as
a consultant. The very first project, the Lihir Traditional and Contemporary Songs Project, was
a repatriation and recording project in response to the discovery of wax cylinder recordings of
Lihir music made in 1908 (see below and also Gillespie 2017 for a comprehensive account of this
project). The following year I was engaged as co-facilitator and translator on the Stepping Stones
for Heritage workshop, a project canvassing the concerns of Lihir people around their changing
cultural heritage, which culminated in the Lihir Cultural Heritage Plan discussed further below
(see also Bainton et al. 2011). In 2010 I began the Lihir Oral Literature Project, bringing in an inde-
pendent grant to supplement the documentation of Lihir pil, a narrative form incorporating song.
It is significant that the Community Relations department of the company at the time I began
work on Lihir was particularly receptive to research into Lihir culture; at least two people heading
up the department (signing off on the projects I was involved with) held doctorates in anthropology;
84 • KIRSTY GILLESPIE

a third was then postdoctoral fellow conducting his research in Lihir in close association with the
company. This anthropologist, Nicholas Bainton, was to become a close colleague and associate, and
the key person who advocated for my research work in Lihir. Thus, the research environment for
work on heritage issues was particularly conducive for the ethnomusicologist, and the importance
of this internal support cannot be understated.
My initial sporadic employment with Lihir Gold Ltd grew into a fully funded position paid for
by the company and based at the Center for Social Responsibility in Mining, part of the Sustainable
Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland, Australia. This position fell under the existing
research services agreement between that center and the company, an agreement whereby research
was conducted that would be of value to the company and also to local stakeholders, that would
help strengthen the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and objectives while
also contributing to industry knowledge and academic literature more broadly.
The area of CSR has been a notable growth area across the mining sector in the last decade
(see for example Franks 2015). The establishment of Performance Standards by the International
Finance Corporation (IFC) as part of its Sustainability Framework is seen to be a key benchmark
for companies (see also Bainton et al. 2011, 87–88); IFC Performance Standard 8 is dedicated
to cultural heritage and lists its first objective as “to protect cultural heritage from the adverse
impacts of project activities and support its preservation” (IFC 2012). In relation to mining, the
International Council on Mining and Metals has, since 2003, requested its member companies to
adhere to ten sustainable development principles, with Principle 3 being to “Uphold fundamental
human rights and respect cultures, customs and values in dealings with employees and others who
are affected by our activities” (ICMM 2016). These standards and principles have been consolidated
with guidelines published for the industry, in particular the Rio Tinto guide Why Heritage Matters
(Bradshaw et al. 2011). Lihir Gold Ltd were keen to comply with this considerable shift in industry
approach; their application of CSR in relation to my work was to respect and support the heritage
of the people on whose lands they operated (see also Gillespie 2013, 183–185).
It became apparent to me very early on in my engagement in Lihir as to what the ethnomusi-
cologist could provide the company, and this centerd on a specific site in Lihir known as the Ailaya
(see Figure 5.3). This large rock formation is located in the center of the mine—or rather, mining
occurs all around (and somewhat into) the rock. The contrast in the landscape is spectacular:
The Ailaya reaches upwards, covered with vast green vegetation, while all around it is the barren
wasteland and deep cavernous pit of a decades-old mine. On one of my earliest visits to Lihir I
became involved in a conversation with one of the company’s senior geologists about the Ailaya,
and he asked me: “So why is this rock important anyway?”
I almost reeled back in shock. How could someone with so much responsibility about what
is and is not mined in Lihir actually not know the significance of the Ailaya? But I realized that
he hadn’t received the entre into Lihir culture that I had. As an ethnomusicologist, the music of
Lihir was my entry point, my way of understanding the Lihir worldview. And on my very first
visit to Lihir in 2007, before I had even been engaged in any employment capacity at all, I had
been sung to about the Ailaya. While I sat by the water on the island of Masahet, waiting with
my companions for a boat to take us back to Aniolam, I had asked a group of elders about the
Ailaya. They sang me the song form tsure, a rangen or mortuary ritual song whereby the spirit
of the deceased is sung into the Ailaya, essentially the portal to the afterlife (see Figure 5.4). A
close analysis of the song text later revealed to me how important every detail of the landscape
was on that journey, and subsequent recordings of that song genre showed how the changes in
the landscape by mining activities actually brought about changes to the song text (a sample song
text and translation is published in Bainton et al. 2012). Understanding the tsure song form, then,
is key to understanding the Ailaya.
Thus the Ailaya and its songs became for me a focal point in the facilitation of an understanding
of Lihir culture by the company. In addition to the publication of an academic article on the topic
Figure 5.3 The Ailaya
Photo by the author (2007)

Figure 5.4 Karl Burit, Alois Gramnot, Fred Deklam and Peter Toelinkanut singing Tsure on Masahet
Photo by the author (2007)
86 • KIRSTY GILLESPIE

(Bainton et al. 2012), representation of the Ailaya in song was a climatic point in the exhibition
Musical Landscapes of Lihir that I curated in 2013 with the Lihir Cultural Heritage Association
and museum director Diana Young at the University of Queensland Anthropology Museum (one
of the Lihir cultural heritage activities emerging from the Lihir Cultural Heritage Plan, discussed
further below and in Gillespie 2016). In a far corner of the gallery, in a corner painted in gold
(visible in the background of Figure 5.7), we placed a video showing still shots of the Ailaya before
and after mining while a contemporary tsure recording was played over the top. The subtitled text,
where the singer asks the deceased’s spirit to wait for passing cars before crossing the road into the
Ailaya (where previously there was no such development; the road is visible in Figure 5.3), clearly
brought home the message: Even something as intangible as song cannot remain undisturbed by the
impact of mining. This message has filtered through to become public knowledge about Lihir—a
consultant heading to Lihir for the first time in late 2014 recounted to me the story of a rock he
had heard about and how the songs associated with it had changed with the changes in the mined
landscape—and so this type of academic outreach can be considered effective.

Doing Heritage: Between Cultural Institutions and the People

As mentioned earlier, my work in Lihir formally began with a project on the repatriation and
documentation of Lihir song. The genesis of this project was in the discovery of wax cylinder
recordings of Lihir song made in 1908 by German museum anthropologist Otto Schlaginhaufen.
I learned about their existence through the Australian National University (ANU) historian Chris
Ballard who had been reading Schlaginhaufen’s account of his visit to Lihir, published in German
(Schlaginhaufen 1959). Ballard shared this account with me on my first visit to Lihir in 2007 while
he was there conducting a cultural heritage assessment as part of the social impact assessment (SIA)
process for expansion of the mining operation (for more information on the SIA process that gave
rise to this work see Banks 2013). From our knowledge of the German language we understood
that recordings had been made; on Ballard’s return to ANU he engaged Hilary Howes to provide
a formal translation of the relevant text. Communication with PNG ethnomusicologist Don Niles
pointed to the most likely institution in Germany to hold these recordings; a publication by the
Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv indeed confirmed that the recordings were held there (Ziegler 2006)
and contact was made with curator Susanne Ziegler for copies of the recordings to be sent to
Lihir (for more on the process of repatriation and the resulting song documentation project, see
Gillespie 2017).
Prior to this project, people in Lihir had not known of the existence of these recordings. The
available information about them was published in the German language, not a language generally
known in Lihir, thus rendering the information inaccessible to Lihir people. In addition, requesting
copies of the recordings, while possible for anyone to make, would have been challenging for a Lihir
community member, since repatriation of recordings was an unfamiliar process which required
ready access to telecommunications and a secure postal system (which, though this infrastructure
existed on Lihir at the time, was more reliable outside of the islands). I had leant considerably upon
my networks, not only at ANU but through Niles and Ziegler, who were known to me through our
mutual membership of the International Council for Traditional Music. My role then, as facilitator
of this information and ultimately this connection between Lihir and the Berlin Phonogramm-
Archiv, turned out to be crucial to the process of acquiring copies of these recordings. This role
was expected of me: The outsider researcher as someone who could be utilized to support Lihir
cultural heritage projects had been spelled out in the Lihir Cultural Heritage Plan (Lihir Cultural
Heritage Committee 2009, 10–11).
Similarly, one of the key drivers behind the exhibition Musical Landscapes of Lihir was the discovery
of the largest collection of Lihir artifacts held outside of Lihir. Lihir anthropology student Patrick
 THE ETHNOMUSICOLOGIST AT THE ROCK FACE • 87

Turuan had, during his studies at ANU in 2009, compiled a list of institutions around the world that
held Lihir objects (in turn drawing largely on information provided to him by Michael Gunn of the
National Gallery of Australia). Using this work as a starting point, I was able to make contact with sev-
eral of these institutions, including Museum Victoria (Australia), Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg
(Germany), and the Auckland War Memorial Museum (New Zealand). While these institutions had
admirable collections, it was the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, USA, which trumped
them all, with over seventy items registered as being from Lihir (see Figure 5.5). I was finally able

Figure 5.5 Some items from the Field Museum’s collection, attributed to Lihir
Photo by the author (2011)
88 • KIRSTY GILLESPIE

to visit the Field Museum in 2011, en route from the International Council for Traditional Music’s
World Conference in St John’s, Canada. I spent two days in the museum taking photographs of the
collection and its documentation, and being taken through the museum’s wider collection.
While I was struck by the impressiveness of the Lihir collection at the Field Museum, I was
equally struck by the absence of cultural information about the objects (many of which, impor-
tantly for the ethnomusicologist, were used in performance). It occurred to me that this could be
a mutually beneficial relationship: While the Field Museum could provide us with all they had on
the collection, including quality photographs of the items, we (the members of the Lihir Cultural
Heritage Association and myself) could provide them with important information to augment
their existing documentation (see Figure 5.6). This exchange of information went ahead, and a
relationship was established which led to the loan of the most transportable and the least fragile
items of the Field Museum collection for display in the Musical Landscapes of Lihir exhibition. In
a glass case of their own, they provided the other climatic point of the display (Figure 5.7).

Figure 5.6 The author demonstrates to Field Museum staff how one of the items is to be used for beating the Galamit
(Log Drum)
Photo by Christopher Philipp (2011)
 THE ETHNOMUSICOLOGIST AT THE ROCK FACE • 89

Figure 5.7 Glass cabinet display within the exhibition Musical Landscapes of Lihir
Photo by Carl Warner (2013)

In the early stages of this relationship with the Field Museum, myself and the Lihir Cultural
Heritage Association had traveled around Lihir schools with a portfolio of images from the Field
Museum collection to raise awareness about cultural heritage in Lihir (see Figure 5.8). Teachers
expressed interest in using some of these photographs in the classroom, so once the exhibition
had been launched, hundreds of copies of the catalogue were sent to Lihir, most for distribution
among Lihir schools. These catalogues featured several objects from the Field Museum collection,
as well as contemporary items that had featured in the display.
Again, accessibility of information and networks were key factors in setting up this relation-
ship between the Field Museum and Lihir. In addition, it was the mobility of the researcher
(and the funding afforded them) that drove these developments. While we spoke of the possi-
bilities of bringing members of the Lihir Cultural Heritage Association from Lihir to Chicago
to experience the collection themselves (and perhaps contribute to a revamping of the Pacific
display in the Museum), this did not eventuate. For, around this time, things began to change
for the cultural heritage program in Lihir, namely around funding. I will shortly address this
and other challenges that working at this nexus between music (as cultural heritage) and mining
has brought; but for now let us turn to the third and final facilitator role, which has academia
in its sights.
90 • KIRSTY GILLESPIE

Figure 5.8 Showing images of items in the Field Museum to Lihir schoolchildren
Photo by Adrian Tavarai (2011)

Between Music and Other Disciplines: Facilitating Interdisciplinarity

As the ethnomusicologist well knows, studying music in its cultural context requires more than
the study of music itself; ethnomusicology is a discipline that requires one to transcend traditional
disciplinary boundaries. At the most fundamental level the discipline shares boundaries and prac-
tices with anthropology, but one can also add linguistics, history, material culture, and cultural
heritage studies as cognate disciplines. Other disciplines too are also drawn upon depending on the
context and focus of the research. While there is an emphasis on the ethnomusicologist becoming
conversant in these related disciplines, another way to cover the additional intellectual territory
required is in collaboration with other scholars.
My work in the Lihir Islands has been the embodiment of interdisciplinary, collaborative prac-
tice. I have already described my initial engagement in Lihir being the result of collaboration with
an historian (Chris Ballard) and an anthropologist (Nicholas Bainton); to this mix was added a
cultural heritage specialist (Nicholas Hall) for a team-led survey of the views of Lihir people which
culminated in the above-mentioned Lihir Cultural Heritage Plan, a document summarising what
is valued as important in Lihir culture and what steps need to be taken to maintain this cultural
heritage into the future (Lihir Cultural Heritage Committee 2009). This document captured the
ideas for a number of projects that have since been realized, especially around the facilitation of
information about Lihir culture held in institutions around the world, and the education of others
about Lihir culture (and the promotion of Lihir culture) through avenues such as the Musical
 THE ETHNOMUSICOLOGIST AT THE ROCK FACE • 91

Landscapes of Lihir exhibition—an example of an interdisciplinary project incorporating music

and material culture—and the film Kabelbel which documents the canoe-making tradition on the
island of Masahet (Batty 2015).
Most recently in the chronology of Lihir cultural projects has been interdisciplinary collaboration
with linguists. A concern often expressed by Lihir people, both in conversation and formally in the
Lihir Cultural Heritage Plan, is that development (specifically, though not explicitly, that brought
about by mining) in the Lihir Islands has affected their language. This, plus my own observation of
language change in Lihir song texts and a similar hypothesis, led me to embark upon a pilot project
to explore the effect of mining on language change in Lihir (with preliminary findings published
in Gillespie 2014a). While ethnomusicologists often embark upon linguistic training and gain lin-
guistic experience (learning other languages and studying and translating texts, such as the lyrics
of songs or general dialogue around music) there can be a limit to the ethnomusicologist’s ability
to meet the needs of the people in regards to language change. From my preliminary research it
soon became obvious that a larger project would need to be extensive and involve both linguists
and social scientists in order to fully understand the extent of language change against a backdrop
of development and demographic change. It is hoped that this link between language change and
mining specifically can continue as a topic for future research, both in Lihir (see Gillespie 2014a,
115–116; Bainton 2015, xxiv) and elsewhere.
The Lihir Cultural Heritage Plan expressed the need for Lihir language resources, including
agreement on the orthography of a language that has several, perhaps six, dialects (Bainton 2015, xxi;
Schlaginhaufen 1918–19, 20). In 2012 Rene van den Berg from the Summer Institute of Linguistics,
a key institution for language documentation and support in Papua New Guinea, was called upon
to run a workshop in Lihir to pursue a standard orthography and to create a picture dictionary (see
Figure 5.9). Simon Ziegler was also present with me at this workshop; his expertise in ethnography

Figure 5.9 Rosemary Tohielats, of the Lihir Cultural Heritage Association, and the author at the Lihir dictionary workshop
Photo by Simon Ziegler (2012)
92 • KIRSTY GILLESPIE

and linguistics as well as his native mastery of the German language led to his being engaged to
translate the key existing text on the Lihir language—a grammar written in German by missionary
Karl Neuhaus who lived in the Lihir Islands between 1933 and 1944 (Neuhaus 1954, 2015). A copy
of the original grammar had been obtained through the ethnomusicologist’s networks—in this case
through a colleague at ANU, Malcolm Ross, a master in Austronesian languages who had kindly
lent me a microfilm copy of this extensive document when he had first heard of my interest in Lihir.
While the translation of this document is primarily to serve the Lihir community, it is of course
valuable for the ethnomusicologist in coming to an understanding of Lihir language as expressed
in song, as well as general documentation of Lihir culture.
Working at the interdisciplinary level—both as an individual transcending disciplinary bound-
aries and as part of collaborative teams with scholars from different disciplines—may appear
to be a diversion from the core focus of the discipline, but it can also enhance the work of the
ethnomusicologist and his or her relationships with the people with whom they work. A case
in point is my work on gender and mining in Papua New Guinea. In my first year of working at
the University of Queensland within its research services agreement with Lihir Gold Ltd, I was
asked by the company to write a report on contemporary issues facing the women and youth
of Lihir (Gillespie 2011). This came about in part because of the relationships I had developed
with Lihir people during my music research but also because of the skills (in fieldwork, in lan-
guage, and in conducting interviews) that I had developed over several years of working in the
country as an ethnomusicologist. The people I encountered and the experiences I recorded in
order to write this report were many and included accounts of sorcery and physical violence
but also empowerment.
One interviewee, who had been known to me for several years as an employee of the company’s
Community Relations department, described to me (in the language of Tok Pisin) her experience
of taking the domestic violence she was experiencing into her own hands. After being beaten
by her husband on several occasions, she recounted to me how one night she hit him across the
head with a block of wood (“mi bin paitim em wantaim wanpela hap diwai”) and declared that
she would buy herself back again (that is, pay his relatives back all the money they had paid
her family for “brideprice,” the traditional customary payment upon marriage) with the money
she had earned as a mining employee. This threat, she said, put an end to the violence, at least
temporarily. At the end of the interview, when I was taking my leave, she spoke passionately
about how glad she was that this research was taking place, and how important it was. She died
of an undiagnosed illness not long afterwards, and her words remain with me. I continued to
work on research into gender and mining with colleagues both in Lihir (Kemp et al. 2012) and
at a national level with a symposium in the nation’s capital, Port Moresby (Gillespie 2014b).
While these projects represent a move away from music research, they help paint a more detailed
picture of the cultural context in which music is performed and also honor the commitment of
the ethnomusicologist working in an applied context to respond to the concerns of the people
whose traditions they study.

Challenges in Working at the Rock Face

The unusual pairing of music and mining brings with it certain unique challenges, but a fun-
damental one shared by many ethnomusicological projects is funding. As described above, in
the early stages of working with the mining company in Lihir, projects were paid for directly by
the company through the operating budget of the Community Relations department as part of
its cultural heritage management program. This model of funding, however, was seen as unsus-
tainable; from a capacity building point of view, having Lihir people manage and fund their
 THE ETHNOMUSICOLOGIST AT THE ROCK FACE • 93

own projects was the desired end goal. It was proposed that this take place through the work
of the Lihir Cultural Heritage Association and funded by a grant associated with the Integrated
Benefits Package (IBP). The IBP is an agreement between the mining company operating in
Lihir, the Lihir landowners, and the government, and it is to be reviewed every five years. The
2007 review of the IBP included a grant of K100 million (at the time of writing approximately
US$312 million) which was to be used for the Lihir Sustainable Development Program (LSDP)
(Newcrest Mining Ltd 2015a, 2015b). The LSDP consists of a large portfolio of projects that
include education and health, and cultural heritage.
Once the Lihir Cultural Heritage Association was established, it was proposed that the projects
under their name also be funded by the LSDP, rather than directly by the company. However, the
IBP agreement has been in a state of flux since it was last scheduled for review; the parties involved
have not been able to reach an agreement to formalize the arrangement for the management of
the agreement. This has had implications for the LSDP, which has become conflated with the IBP
in the general discourse around funding on Lihir. Administration of monies for the various pro-
grams funded by the LSDP (including cultural heritage) has been largely suspended at the time
of IBP reviews. While the company has stepped in on occasion to pay directly for some projects
in urgent need of completion, it is understandably reluctant to do so when monies are already
allocated to such projects. At the time of writing, the agreement was still under review; while the
current arrangements of the agreement continue to be in place during this time, politics and a lack
of strong governance around the management of the LSDP has affected the activities of the Lihir
Cultural Heritage Association, as well as other projects.
Even if a more sustainable model for running the cultural heritage program was not sought,
even if the mining company operating on Lihir was prepared to directly fund every project, this too
would eventually prove unsustainable. At the company level there have been funding challenges:
In late 2010 Newcrest Mining Ltd took over the mining operation from Lihir Gold Ltd, and in the
following years both internal and external factors led to a significant reduction in the company’s
operating budget, which was to have an effect on employees and shareholders as well as locally-
based programs such as the cultural heritage program on Lihir. At this time the long-standing
research services agreement with the University of Queensland also came to a halt due to the
company’s need to reduce expenditure, and as a consequence the ongoing cultural heritage pro-
gram lost its formal external support. Any researcher or cultural practitioner who partners with
industry (not only mining) is subject to factors well outside their control, and often not remotely
connected to the nature of their work, and this is a significant challenge to the success of projects
they are involved with.
Another challenge to the effective running of projects has been personnel. Again, it is undesir-
able and unsustainable for people outside of Lihir to manage cultural projects in the longer term
(though as described above, those based outside of Lihir have been integral to projects due to their
knowledge and networks). The Lihir Cultural Heritage Association was set up largely to support a
group of Lihir people to undertake cultural projects, and includes a variety of people, from elders
based in their villages to people employed by the mining company. This variety is designed to
bring about a complement in skills: Elders might have a stronger connection to local knowledge
while those participating as employees with the mining project have office-based skills and ready
access to technologies such as computers, printing facilities, and the Internet. The engagement of
most members of the Association with projects has been challenged on a number of levels. Both
people in the village and in the company office are time-constrained: Those at home have many
community affairs to attend to, and those working in the company office are largely working on a
rostered, “fly-in-fly-out” arrangement, where they are absent for blocks of time. This has impeded
the management and execution of projects. But it is perhaps those who are both significant leaders
in the community and also company employees who experience the most severe challenges to their
94 • KIRSTY GILLESPIE

involvement. These people are subject to considerable pressures from two often conflicting worlds
and thus not only their time but their morale can be compromised.
The Lihir Cultural Heritage Plan published in 2009 was ambitious and captured the wishes
and dreams expressed by Lihir people as well as more practical and achievable ideas. As such,
several of the ideas and projects listed there have not yet materialized. One such project is the
establishment of a cultural center. In the process of forming the Lihir Cultural Heritage Plan,
association committee members had been particularly inspired by stories of cultural heritage
activities in Vanuatu, another Melanesian country, where several of the consultants working
with the association on their plan had also worked. Cultural heritage projects are well estab-
lished in Vanuatu, and the Vanuatu Cultural Center is a significant beacon for the region (see
for example Bolton 1994; Taylor and Thieberger 2011). It was proposed that a cultural center
be built in Lihir. Conversations took place around where it might be located: The island of
Masahet was proposed by association members who were based there as a location removed
from the mining operation (and thus more connected to their culture) but yet also reasonably
accessible, and others thought that a location in the mining town of Londolovit on the island
of Aniolam would better serve the non-Lihir population who were likely to utilize it (indeed,
the need to educate non-Lihir people about Lihir culture was seen as a key purpose for the
cultural center and indeed for most projects listed in the plan), as well as being a more prac-
tical option in terms of infrastructure such as power and water, and the possibility of utilizing
existing buildings. The question of gaining access to land for the site and funding to build the
structure were significant issues that immediately stalled the project. The fact that discussions
have not resumed and/or progressed since that initial enthusiasm suggests that a cultural center
is not seen by Lihir people to be important enough to pursue (see also Bainton et al 2011, 98).
Perhaps it is the continual strength in Lihir performance culture that renders such a permanent
structure redundant.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have described one example of an extraordinary location for the ethnomu-
sicologist. There are now more ethnomusicologists than ever, and people are looking for new
ways to continue using their skills. Also, in times of global financial uncertainty, people are also
looking for alternative ways to fund ethnomusicological projects. This case study contributes
to discussions around alternative ways of doing ethnomusicology; in this case, engaging with
mining. In this setting, the ethnomusicologist is not only a documenter of musical traditions but
also a facilitator between the mining company and the people, between the people and cultural
institutions, and between other disciplines. The ethnomusicologist can also be drawn into other
research projects around the mining operation but rather than being seen as diversions, these
can be embraced as experiences that enrich and broaden cultural understanding and consolidate
relationships with the people whose culture is being researched. Challenges also exist in con-
ducting ethnomusicological work in the mining setting, and these include the administration of
funding, local politics, external factors specific to the industry, and the engagement of personnel
both at a company and community level.
As our discipline broadens and explores new avenues such as those offered by applied ethno-
musicology, there are increasing opportunities for varied kinds of work. It is perhaps ironic that, in
the mining context, there has been ample wealth and infrastructure to undertake cultural heritage
projects to support culture that is seen to be at risk precisely because of the industry’s inherent
process of wealth creation. But this is a situation that the ethnomusicologist can embrace, utilizing
this funding for the benefit of local people and their culture—those who should benefit most from
mining in their lands.
 THE ETHNOMUSICOLOGIST AT THE ROCK FACE • 95

Notes
1. This is the definition adhered to by the Society for Ethnomusicology (www.ethnomusicology.org).
2. See Le Meur (2015) for a succinct overview of anthropological approaches to mining.

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and Local-Level Development: Examining the Gender Dimensions of Agreements between Companies and Communities,
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pological Forum 25(4): 405–427.
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Museen.
 6
Social Shifts and Viable Musical Futures
The Case of Cambodian Smot1
Catherine Grant

For centuries, the musical, social, and liturgical practice of smot (also “Cambodian Buddhist chant-
ing” or “Cambodian Dharma songs”) has played an important role in Buddhist ritual in Cambodia.
Traditionally performed by a solo singer of either gender, smot is sung in Khmer (the language of
the majority Khmer people of Cambodia), Pali (the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism,
now extinct as a mother tongue), or a combination of both. The poetic texts typically refer to
the Buddha’s life and teachings, traditional Khmer stories, and religious and moral principles—
especially that of gratitude to one’s parents. According to Walker:

the expressive melodies and lyrics of these Dharma songs are intended to evoke the aesthetic
experiences of stirring (Pali: saṃvega) and stilling (Pali: pasāda); that is, being stirred by the
shocking frailty, misery, and futility of life and being stilled by the serene trust that practicing
generosity, living ethically, and cultivating the heart will lead to liberation.
(CLA 2014a, n.p.)

Historical contexts for smot include funerals and cremation and memorial ceremonies, where
it comforts those who are bereaved; private healing ceremonies, where it serves to comfort the
dying; and monastic contexts, such as Buddhist ceremonies, devotional rituals, and holy days. To
the extent that it is practiced at all (and its vitality is a key theme of this chapter), smot continues
to play an integral function in these Cambodian Buddhist end-of-life ceremonies and rituals. The
educational and social utility of smot are key to understanding the genre. Smot perpetuates the
teachings of the Buddha in contemporary Cambodia; teaches love and respect for one’s parents and
the elderly; and brings solace, healing, and enlightenment to performers and listeners. Phoeun Srey
Pov, a younger-generation smot performer, describes the functions and contexts of smot like this:

Smot is to educate people! We don’t chant it only for funerals but at the occasion of many
other ceremonies. We can chant either in Khmer or Pali, and using many different vocal styles

97
98 • CATHERINE GRANT

and rhythms. For example, during funerals, we chant about the three characteristics of life:
impermanence, suffering and unreality, and during the gratitude ceremony, we chant about
our parents’ good deeds, and that one has to be grateful to them. Also, we have many Dharma
songs talking about Buddha’s life, that we chant during Buddhist ceremonies in pagodas.
(22 January 2014; www.cambodianlivingarts.
org/news/smot-poetry-chanting/)

A characteristically Khmer genre in the minds of many of its practitioners and listeners, with a
history of least four centuries (Walker 2012), smot is deeply and closely associated with Cambodian
identity. Smot teacher Keot Ran feels it important to keep smot strong because “this is our tradi-
tion, our culture, of being Khmer . . . [smot] is who we are and it is attached to what we are doing”
(interview, 22 February 2013). However, in some ways the situation of smot in twenty-first-century
Cambodia is precarious. Drawing on observations and interviews I conducted with artists and others
over eight months’ fieldwork from February 2013 to December 2015 (reported on in Grant 2014a,
2016, 2017), as well as the limited existing scholarly research on smot (e.g. Walker 2011, 2012; Bader
n.d.), this chapter reflects on the current situation of smot and its future prospects in a rapidly
changing contemporary Cambodia. I include a relatively extended account of the experiences of
one young urban smot singer in order to illustrate some of the challenges and opportunities facing
the next generation of smot artists, in whose hands and voices lies the future of this tradition. I also
briefly reflect on the role of “outsiders” in the revitalization of smot and how the efforts of scholars
and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) to support the genre interconnect with wider applied
ethnomusicological concern to safeguard and promote music traditions “at risk.”

The Contemporary Practice of Smot

Compared with certain other Cambodian music traditions (most obviously, the ubiquitous pinn
peat), the extent of smot practice was modest through the twentieth century, but the genocide
curbed its practice even further. Few smot masters2 survived Pol Pot’s heinous regime (1975–1979),
which systematically eradicated traditional cultural practices from everyday life and saw the death
of an estimated 90 percent of artists throughout the nation (Sam in Sam et al. 1998, 209). Some
famous smot practitioners who remarkably managed to survive this period—like the monk Hun
Horm (later known as Hun Kang) (1924–2007) and Prom Uth (d. 2009), “locally renowned for
his stunning dusk-to-dawn performances, and a rice farmer most of his life” (CLA 2014b, n.p.)—
have only recently passed away. Although some middle-generation artists (prominently Keot Ran,
Figure 6.1) are actively teaching and highly devoted to maintaining smot as a social and cultural
practice in their communities and more widely, few have developed the skill and knowledge of
smot texts, repertoire, theory, aesthetics, and performance practice that fully capture the depth
of the tradition. Especially since documentation of smot (audio and visual recordings, photos,
written notes, other resources) from the pre-Khmer Rouge era is very limited, the death of each
elderly master means the loss of a hugely valuable resource in the intergenerational transmission
and perpetuation of the genre.
No systematic mapping of the practice of smot has been carried out. Bader (n.d.) reports that
during fieldwork in 2010, artists (and recordings) were located in several monasteries, and that
some monasteries provided training in smot. Several individual artists reside in Phnom Penh,
and at least one concentrated group of smot practitioners, in Kampong Speu province, remains
active. Walker (2012) refers to a “network” of smot teachers and performers, both in Cambodia
and (to a lesser extent) in the diaspora. During my own fieldwork in late 2015, during which I was
consultant to the Intangible Cultural Heritage section of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts,
the Ministry was making concrete plans for a systematic inventorying of the intangible cultural
 SOCIAL SHIFTS AND VIABLE MUSICAL FUTURES • 99

Figure 6.1 Keot Ran sings smot on temple grounds, Kampong Speu Province
Photo by the author, 22 February 2013

heritage of Cambodia. Such an undertaking, if carried out, would likely identify further individuals
and communities that practice smot.
Thus, although smot may remain relatively integrated into cultural beliefs and practices in
small pockets of regional Cambodia (and among a small circle of artists in the capital city of
Phnom Penh), many Cambodians know very little about the tradition—particularly those of the
younger generation. Despite its integral historical function in Buddhist practice, and the fact that
over 95 percent of the population still identify as Buddhist (CIA 2015), smot lies at a crossroads.
Ongoing shifts in attitudes to traditional cultural practices (both musical and religious), as well as
socioeconomic and sociocultural circumstances that are vastly different in contemporary Cambodia
from the pre-Khmer Rouge era, mean that smot is necessarily taking on new forms and functions in
order to survive. Younger artists are exploring and engaging with innovative modes of transmission
100 • CATHERINE GRANT

and performance that better align with their needs and wishes, and that may signal a more viable
alternative future for the genre.
One example of a major contextual shift in the practice of smot (indeed, in the practice of all tra-
ditional Cambodian performing arts) is the pressing concern of younger artists to ensure reliable and
sustainable opportunities and mechanisms for making a living from their skills (Grant 2017). Young
Cambodian people are increasingly turning from rural, agrarian ways of life toward urban study and
job opportunities, particularly those in the capital city Phnom Penh. Earning money remains a primary
concern for many: A significant proportion of the Cambodian population encounters or experiences
poverty in their daily lives (UNDP 2013). Thus, many younger people do not have the luxury of engaging
in artistic pursuits for leisure or pleasure alone but try to use their skills as a means of income-generation,
whether in support of their own study or living costs or their families in the provinces.
By way of illustrating some of these socioeconomic issues specifically around the contemporary
practice of smot, in the next section I present the edited transcript of an interview I held with a
twenty-two-year-old smot singer whose given name is SreyNy3 (see Figure 6.2). The interview

Figure 6.2 Smot artist SreyNy

Photo provided by the artist, used with permission (July 2016)
 SOCIAL SHIFTS AND VIABLE MUSICAL FUTURES • 101

took place in Phnom Penh on 30 September 2015 in the context of a research project I was then
conducting, which explored the relationship between socioeconomic circumstances of young
people (under thirty) and their engagement with traditional music (reported upon in Grant 2016).
At the time, SreyNy was involved with the programs of Cambodian Living Arts, a NGO founded
in the late 1990s to support the revival and development of traditional local performing arts and
culture; as host organisation for my research, CLA facilitated my meeting with SreyNy. During our
interview, which lasted around two hours, I invited SreyNy to share her experiences and reflections
on her learning and performing smot. She chose to speak mostly in English, though a professional
interpreter was available throughout our talk. A couple of weeks later, I met with her again to review
this reworked transcript, which I had shaped into a more narrative format, retaining SreyNy’s own
words as far as possible. SreyNy suggested some additions and amendments, which have been
incorporated in the version presented here.

Profile of a Young Practitioner

My name is SreyNy and I’m twenty-two years old. I’m from Kampong Speu province. There are six
children in my family, three boys and three girls. I am the fourth child. My parents are rice farmers. My
father is also a military physician. I think he received his education, maybe even a degree, before the
Khmer Rouge. My mother was raised in the provinces, and she has had less education than my father.
My father was not trained as an artist, but he knows how to sing. When I was young he taught
me some popular Cambodian songs, like those of Sinn Sisamouth. I decided I wanted to be an artist
when I was about nine or ten. At that age, I knew how to sing some songs, including one I especially
loved from the 1960s that I heard on the radio and TV, and the ones my father taught me.
Two of my older siblings, my second brother and my third sister, loved singing too. They started
learning smot together in 2004. They learned at a class nearby where a lady, a smot singer, taught as
part of the programs of an arts non-government organization. Sometimes my brother and sister sang
smot at home. At first I didn’t like it, but after a while I grew to love it. My siblings explained to me
the meaning of the songs. From watching films on TV, I had thought that smot was about ghosts, and
I was afraid of it. But it’s not about ghosts at all; it’s to educate people to be grateful to our parents
who take care of us as little children, and to our ancestors who have passed away.
At times when I was still young, I lost hope about being a singer. I thought, “I’m poor, I’m not
beautiful, I don’t have fair skin, so maybe I’m not be fit to be an artist.” But when I was in secondary
school, before I’d had any singing lessons, there was a performance competition at the English class I
went to. I sang, and I got first place. So my hope returned. Before that event, I thought that you needed
to be beautiful or rich to achieve success. But afterwards I began to believe that what a successful artist
really needs is ability, and that’s why I started to hope again that I could be an artist.
I joined the smot class about three or four years after my siblings did. There were thirteen people
in my class. When I’d been learning for three or four years, I finished Grade 12 and graduated from
high school. That was in 2011. My smot teacher liked my voice and wanted me to learn more about
smot, and for me to have more opportunities. I didn’t know yet whether I could study at university—I
thought my parents might not have enough money. Also, at first my father didn’t want his daughters
to study at a higher level, just my older brother. But my brother didn’t want to go to university, and
my father was very angry. When I graduated from high school, and asked my father whether I could
study at university, he said I could go if I also got a job, because he couldn’t afford to support me
entirely. I heard about a scholarship program through Cambodian Living Arts and I applied, and I
was successful. Now I’m in my last year of my Bachelor of English. The scholarship pays my university
fees and gives me a living stipend too.
I can live off the stipend, but I also try to earn money in other ways, so I have more money to support
my family. Two years ago I taught around thirty students smot, young children who couldn’t afford to
102 • CATHERINE GRANT

go to school, at an organisation in Phnom Penh. It was called Cambodian Volunteers for Community
Development, CVCD for short. I taught an hour a week, and I was paid $504 per month. Cambodian
Living Arts and CVCD had a contract about teaching music and other arts, but after I had taught
there for about two years, the contract expired. Now CVCD doesn’t teach music or any of the arts
any more. I was sorry about that because by teaching smot, I could help young people learn about it.
Until recently, I also sang smot and classical wedding music in a show for locals and tourists at the
National Museum here in Phnom Penh. For three years, I performed twice a week, and earned $10 per
performance. In some months there are five weeks, so I could get $80 or $90 per month. But now the
contract has expired and the performances stopped, maybe because not enough people were coming
to support them—I’m not sure why. I feel sad about that because we won’t be able to show foreigners
and other people our traditional art forms any more. Also it means that we artists cannot earn as
much money. I think some performers in those shows might stop being artists now, because they can’t
get enough money to support themselves or their families. Artists are not rich. I have one friend who
performed in those shows who has quit her degree in performing arts to open a small grocery store.
So I lost these two sources of income, and that will be difficult. But I can still earn money from
singing smot. At nearly every Buddhist ceremony in Cambodia we can smot,5 and there are many
kinds of these ceremonies, so I can still smot about eight or ten times a month. Sometimes the monks
or others at the pagoda call me up and invite me to smot at these ceremonies. I get paid for singing
smot, but the amount is up to the organiser. They could give me $15, or they could give me $100 or
more. Usually I would receive $20 to $30. It’s not predictable, like fees for wedding music. I also have
two private smot students, but they don’t come regularly.
I sing classical wedding music at wedding receptions too, as part of a group. We give the name card
of our group to wedding hair, make-up, and beautification businesses so they can be in contact when
they need us. Sometimes the organizer of a wedding ceremony contacts us directly. Most people get
married between October and about June or July, so I earn most of my income during that period,
when I might be asked to sing five or ten times per month. Occasionally, in high season, I can even
sing at a wedding in the morning and in the afternoon I go and smot. But it is irregular work. I am
just trying to figure out how I can use my singing ability in order to survive as an artist. I really want
to be an artist, and to support myself and to be successful in my career.
That’s why I have this idea to set up my own business when I finish my university studies. My
dream is to open a business that relates to my smot and classical wedding music skills. It would offer
customers packages, not only music but also hair and make-up and other services for weddings and
other ceremonies. I’ve discussed the idea with my sister and her husband, and another friend of ours
who sings smot, and they plan to invest with me. So it seems I have persuaded my sister to return to
the artistic life! When she learned smot as a child, she never wanted to be an artist for a living. She is
a housewife, and her husband is a soldier, but they both have a background in smot. They met in the
smot class! My sister tells me that when I go to sing in ceremonies, and sometimes even meet famous
people there, she is proud of me. In our business, if we bring together other smot artists to sing with
us, in that way our ceremonies will become more interesting, and the business will develop. I strongly
believe that we can be successful in this business operation. I have another friend with a smot business,
but mine will be different. Maybe sometimes I will ask her for ideas.
I will need some skills to manage my business. I already can smot, so I am well equipped with that
already. English might not be directly related to my business, because I will just operate locally. But I
am studying English for tourism, English for management, and English for business, and I hope what
I learn in that way could help me run the business too. I need to understand more about decoration
for receptions too, but the friend of ours who might be our business partner has some experience
supervising wedding receptions, so he knows something about that.
Occasionally a TV channel or radio program has invited me to come and smot for them. They
interviewed me too on radio, but didn’t give me much time to talk about myself as an artist. If they
had, it might have helped my reputation and helped me be more widely known. There’s recently been
 SOCIAL SHIFTS AND VIABLE MUSICAL FUTURES • 103

a contest on Bayon TV for people of all ages who have performance skills in the traditional art forms
mahaori, smot, pleng kar boran, and yike. It’s on TV just once a week for an hour, but it runs for many
months. Next year it’s the turn of mahaori and smot again, and I want to try to compete. The prize is
10 million riel.6 The show doesn’t have the same prestige as Cambodian Idol, but for the competitors’
relatives and friends it’s exciting, and it might help me become better known as a smot singer.
At first my parents didn’t want me to be an artist. They said that girls could not be artists, and
that it would mean I couldn’t make a good living in future. They also said that when girls get involved
with the arts, they can get themselves a bad reputation. They were thinking about young female pop
singers, who sometimes give bad favors in return for receiving money and other kinds of assistance to
become famous. But when the staff from Cambodian Living Arts came to visit my house in Kampong
Speu, my parents understood this was not what my music interest was about. They were very relieved.
Now they see my successes and they’re happy about me being a singer.
So far I am the only one in my family who has gone to university. All my brothers and sisters, except
the youngest one, have finished high school. They don’t want to study more, only work and earn money.
They mostly still live in Kampong Speu province, though my younger sister lives in Phnom Penh with
her husband and works for a motor company. My eldest and second-eldest brothers are both married
and live in our village; the eldest is a farmer, the second is a factory worker. In Phnom Penh, I live
with one of my relatives, a distant cousin who has a big house, so I don’t have to pay rent. There are
about ten people living in the house, mostly relatives of ours. I am happy there, but after I graduate
from university or get a good job or get married, I will move away.
I think it’s more difficult for traditional artists to earn a living than for contemporary artists. For
smot, it is really difficult. I don’t know why, but some people in the provinces really dislike smot; I think
they are afraid, thinking it was only about dead people. But the Bayon TV contest I mentioned before
has helped people in the provinces become a little more knowledgeable. Now that I live in Phnom
Penh, I want to operate my business here, because I feel there’s more opportunity than in the provinces,
and I think people here like smot more. Also, I can earn much more money for a smot ceremony here,
so as long as my business is successful, I will earn more in Phnom Penh. But I also have the idea of
providing my services free of charge in rural areas, because I know that people there are poor, and I
want them still to have smot even if they can’t afford it.
In the future, I don’t know what exactly will happen, but I can say I won’t have to depend on my
family. I already financially support my family just a little. My father earns some money as a freelance
physician—his friends and acquaintances know that he has some medical knowledge and sometimes
request his advice for simple matters—but he is getting older now and is not well, so he doesn’t work
much. He doesn’t have enough money to support my younger brother to study at university, so I want
to do that. My youngest brother is in grade 10, and wants to be a medical doctor. I think that’s a good
plan, because then he could take care of our family. He never learned music and has no aspirations
to become an artist, though he is very musical. In his free time, he uses buckets and pots as musical
instruments and mucks around and makes a racket with them. We have three or four cows for our
work in the rice fields, and when my brother goes to tend them, he always sings along the way.

The Vitality of Smot

In twenty-first-century Cambodia, socioeconomic and cultural circumstances differ vastly from

the pre-Khmer Rouge era, and the challenges are many. Disposable income is a rarity, particularly
rurally: Around 20 percent of the population lives in poverty, with higher rural incidence and a
significant percentage of people only marginally above the official poverty line (World Bank 2015).
While many young people, like SreyNy, pursue secondary or higher education or employment in
bustling Phnom Penh, their families are often in no position to offer financial help and may instead
expect that their city-residing offspring support them. It is no surprise then that young performers
104 • CATHERINE GRANT

like SreyNy hope and expect to generate income through their artistic skills—which after all, require
enormous and long-term investment of time and effort to build.
Yet despite the best efforts of NGOs and their various teaching and performance programs, the
cultural industries in Cambodia are full of ongoing challenges. SreyNy’s difficulties in finding sustain-
able employment as a smot singer through NGO initiatives and in other ways are broadly indicative
of the contemporary experience of traditional musicians in Cambodia (particularly in the capital
city; Grant 2016). Outside of Phnom Penh, the situation is not always easier. For smot as for some
other genres, the not uncommon practice of replacing live performers with recordings in ceremonial
village contexts—ostensibly resolving both the shortage of practitioners and the expense of hiring
them—further limits non-urban performance opportunities and undermines artists’ ability to gen-
erate income from their skills, thereby fuelling the very problem it seeks to overcome (Grant 2017).
The difficulties of finding sufficient sustainable employment is one of several key issues SreyNy
raises relating to the vitality and viability of smot as a contemporary artistic and social practice.
Another is that of learning and teaching smot. Since the destruction of traditional arts and the
death of most proficient masters during the Khmer Rouge regime, regaining effective intergen-
erational transmission of smot has proven difficult. The traditional master-apprentice method of
transmission has all but collapsed;7 and with traditional music not taught in the standard school
curriculum, opportunities for young Cambodian people to learn smot are very few. The main
driver of transmission-based safeguarding initiatives for traditional music is the NGO sector—most
prominently Cambodian Living Arts (CLA, some of whose archiving, education, commissioning,
training, and performance programs were mentioned earlier).
CLA’s school-based smot education program in Kampong Speu province, where SreyNy first
learned, is the biggest and arguably most successful transmission initiative for the genre. In
collaboration with CLA, the school in Chrey Ho Phnoa village is leading somewhat of a smot
revival within its local community. In early 2014, around 300 students attended one CLA-led
smot workshop-demonstration at the primary school, and smot classes are offered several times
a week as part of the high school curriculum, each class with around forty to sixty students (see
Figure 6.3). In August 2015, the high school implemented a new semester-long smot syllabus,
complete with printed learning resources. Some learners are not only recreating traditional smot
songs, but also creating new ones, like CLA scholarship student “Boramy,” whose composition
to educate youth about the dangers of drug use was performed at the Chrey Ho Phnoa school
workshop-demonstration (CLA 2013). Renewal of the genre in this way signals its potential to
adapt to contemporary contexts, and maintain relevance and value in an ever-changing social and
cultural landscape. However, even this successful program hangs in large part off the fact that a
proficient smot teacher (Keot Ran) lives in the village nearby. The vast majority of other young
Cambodians are not so fortunate to have proximity to a skilled active teacher.
The problems posed by employment instability and the shortage of proficient teachers and
learning contexts are compounded by a disinclination of many young people (in particular) to
become involved in smot. In general, the attraction of smot is negligible for youth: The genre is
not easy to learn, requiring years of dedicated effort and training to master the unique, complex,
and challenging style; other responsibilities (like study or income-generating activities) take
priority; and Western and/or popular contemporary music is more alluring than traditional per-
forming arts, which are often seen as backward or old-fashioned (Grant 2014a). Adding to the
musical challenges of smot are the texts in Pali (no longer spoken as a mother tongue anywhere
in the world) and/or Khmer; but even when in Khmer, the vocabulary and structures used can
be obscure or obsolete. Thus, the sounds, words, and meaning of smot texts are unfamiliar to the
average learner, who must come to grips with both the difficult pronunciation and the meanings
of the texts. (This also presents a challenge for listeners and audiences, who without education
may not easily understand the meaning—and therefore arguably the value—of the tradition.) In
engaging with smot as a child, then, SreyNy is an exception to the norm. The involvement of her
siblings in musical activities, as well as the opportunities available to her through the geographical
 SOCIAL SHIFTS AND VIABLE MUSICAL FUTURES • 105

Figure 6.3 Smot teacher Keot Ran (seated, front center) with assistant Suon Srey Oun (standing, right) teach smot to
students at Chrey Ho Phnov High School, Kampong Speu Province
Photo by the author, 27 June 2014

proximity of the smot classes, provoked her initial interest in the genre. That interest was then
sustained through her own commitment and perseverance, the encouragement of her teacher, and
her modest successes in a competition, securing a university scholarship, and gaining some level
of paid employment through her skills.
SreyNy also refers to two threats to the vibrancy of smot that relate to constructs around the
genre, rather than infrastructural, economic, or resource challenges. The first of these relates to
gender: It is less acceptable for Cambodian girls and women to engage with the traditional music
genres than their male counterparts, for reasons primarily relating not to the cultural appropri-
ateness of female participation in specific genres but rather the social role of girls and women in
Cambodian society (an issue well beyond the scope of this chapter). The other is the propensity
of smot to generate fear; it is not uncommon for Cambodians (particularly children) to be afraid
of smot due to its strong cultural associations with death, dying, and end-of-life rituals. Walker
observes: “Dharma songs sometimes use shock to stir the hearts of the listeners. The shock is never
for its own sake but rather to connect listeners to the reality of suffering, transience, and death”
(2012, 525). Phoeun Srey Pov, like SreyNy a successful young performer, echoed SreyNy’s initial
fear of smot, which she overcame only through her personal involvement in learning:

Before I started studying with teacher Koeut [Keot] Ran, I would [be] afraid every time I
would hear Smot, especially during funerals. I thought that Smot was about death only.
I understood this was wrong when I joined the class in Kampong Speu province.
(22 January 2014; www.cambodianlivingarts.
org/news/smot-poetry-chanting/)
106 • CATHERINE GRANT

These sentiments of fear remain a barrier to building greater practitioner and audience bases
for smot.
These various socioeconomic and ideological challenges to smot may make its future seem
grim, especially considered in conjunction with its contained geographical scope, scarcity of quality
documentation, and limited local capacity to implement much-needed sustainable, locally-driven
safeguarding activities. However, various measures are being taken to bring “new life” to “this
treasure of Khmer, Buddhist, and world culture” (Walker 2011), as I describe in the closing section
of this chapter.

An Eye to the Future

In Cambodia, safeguarding measures for smot and other traditional performing arts genres have
been underway since at least the late 1990s, when the serious threat to the viability of much of
Cambodia’s intangible cultural heritage was recognized in earnest (see e.g. Sam et al. 1998). As
per SreyNy’s narrative, nowadays most learning opportunities for smot occur through NGO pro-
grams. Despite the challenges of encouraging young people to engage with the genre, school-based
initiatives in particular have begun to increase awareness and understanding of smot, at least in
pockets of the country. These initiatives result in greater understanding and appreciation of the
genre not only directly among the young participants, but also among their peers, families, and
the wider community, with whom they share what they learn. In this way too, negative constructs
that pose a threat to the sustainability of the genre (like fear due to its association with death) may
be broken down.
Some entrepreneurial young learners of smot are making efforts to combine their musical
knowledge and skills with business acumen. Despite the serious and ritual nature of the tra-
dition not easily lending itself to popular promotion, SreyNy’s intentions to establish a small
business around her smot and other singing skills underscore not only the economic necessity
but also the ideological willingness of young artists to explore new ways to practice their art.
Some young practitioners have already begun to build a name via social media and local TV, like
Phoeun SreyPov (Figure 6.4), in her twenties, who enjoys considerable TV and press coverage
locally (see for example James 2014), has performed internationally, and has managed to build
a successful small business that revolves around the genre. In being entrepreneurial in their
artistic activities, SreyPov and SreyNy are by no means alone; young Cambodian musicians
are exploring innovative ways of generating income through their skills, not least to overcome
the challenges of irregular and inadequate employment (CLA 2014c)—underscoring the need
for programs that train artists in business management and related skills (a topic I explore at
more length elsewhere; Grant 2016).
National and international promotion through performances, festivals, and the media are
another important mechanism for ensuring a strong future for smot. Smot has recently been
the subject of two short documentary films (Neang 2011; CLA 2015); it appears (albeit briefly)
in one of the acclaimed ongoing “Cambodian Living Arts On Stage” shows at the National
Museum of Phnom Penh; and it has been profiled in the local, national, and even international
media. As SreyNy mentioned in her interview, one of the national TV channels (Bayon) has
newly established a competition for the performing arts where smot and other artists have an
opportunity to display their skills and talent. Internationally, smot performances have been met
with appreciation in Australia and the United States (see e.g. Jinja 2009), and a performance
featured as part of Prim Phloeun’s TEDx Phnom Penh talk on the transformation of Cambodia
through the arts (Prim 2011). Promotion and dissemination activities like these not only foster
understanding in Cambodia and beyond of the nature and value of smot, but, like more explicitly
 SOCIAL SHIFTS AND VIABLE MUSICAL FUTURES • 107

Figure 6.4 Smot artist Phoeun SreyPov, who Is building a business around her smot skills
Photo provided by the artist, used with permission (July 2016)

educational initiatives, can also help to break down certain unfavorable constructs around the
genre, including its perceived obsolescence.
Despite these various successes, challenges remain in ensuring smot finds relevance and
continued practice into the twenty-first century. Several of these have been described above,
including the social shifts and processes of urbanization and modernization that make earning
an income a priority for city-dwelling young people. To date, governmental support has been
more ideological than practical; while the government acknowledges the value of Cambodia’s
traditional performing arts and the importance of revitalising them, the very minimal budget
of the relevant Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts renders it unimpressive so far as solid action
towards safeguarding cultural heritage. The release of the first National Cultural Policy (Ministry
of Culture and Fine Arts 2014) promises to serve as a compass toward more concrete govern-
mental action. However, some of the intentions stated therein (such as the formal incorporation
of performing arts and culture into the school curriculum) are likely to require considerable
time, resources, and sustained commitment to develop and implement. Meanwhile, action
108 • CATHERINE GRANT

may be taken to support smot at the grassroots level (most likely with the support of NGOs,
at least for now)—perhaps most obviously by stimulating local community-based and youth
knowledge and interest in the genre.
In this context, in the short to medium term, researchers and other “outsiders” may have an
important role to play in supporting a viable future for smot, particularly in collaboration with
the continued efforts of NGOs. An illustration is the US scholar Trent Walker, at the time of
writing a PhD student in Buddhist Studies at the University of California Berkeley, whose six
years of research into smot as a research student and performer led to creation of his website
Stirring and Stilling: A Liturgy of Cambodian Dharma Songs (2011). The website (which hosts
performances of an extensive set of smot songs, texts, and English translations) is part of a suite
of recent efforts to document smot and other “rare” traditional Cambodian genres. Another
such effort is the “Archiving Project” of Cambodian Living Arts, in which Walker was also
closely involved, which resulted in a set of CDs that have been made available free of charge to
Cambodian artists, communities, and arts organizations (CLA 2014a, 2014b). Documentation
and archiving projects like these are valuable not only in creating a repository of knowledge
for smot (an urgent task, as elderly masters pass away or become unable to teach) but may
also feed into other safeguarding initiatives, now or in the future: raising funds and grassroots
support for educational programs, breaking down constructs that inhibit full engagement with
the genre, and building local patronage and performance opportunities, for example. Although
the potential for scholars to make a real contribution to safeguarding or revitalising “at-risk”
genres is extensively acknowledged in recent applied ethnomusicological research into music
endangerment and sustainability (e.g. Grant 2014b; Schippers and Grant 2016), as yet, in the
Cambodian context this potential remains largely untapped.

Closing Words

In general, many practitioners of smot are keen to ensure that the tradition remains a sustain-
able artistic, social, and religious practice into the twenty-first century. Teacher Keot Ran says:
“I wish to see young generations keep learning Smot and preserve it. If nobody takes care of
this endangered art form or if no one learns to chant, one day Smot will disappear” (22 January
2014; CLA website). In many ways, the challenges facing smot, and efforts to maintain it, have
parallels all over the world, as individuals and communities strive to sustain or revitalize their
cultural expressions that for various reasons have come under threat, against the wills of the
communities concerned (UNESCO 2003). In the case of Cambodian smot, it seems one of the
biggest challenges is “not only how to make sense of the present meanings of living culture, but
also how to understand the broader context of changing social, political and economic forces
that affect the future viability of intangible cultural heritage at the local level” (Denes 2013, 8). As
Denes observes, supporting sustainable futures for musical and other cultural traditions is not a
matter of resisting or rejecting change but rather about developing appropriate approaches and
strategies that align with inevitably ever-shifting contemporary realities. For smot, considerable
recent socioeconomic and cultural changes in Cambodia pose ongoing challenges. Yet the signif-
icant effort of young practitioners like SreyNy in exploring contemporary avenues for learning,
performing, and disseminating this tradition is one factor that surely augurs well for its future.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to SreyNy and the other smot artists who spoke with me (and sang for me!) during my
fieldwork in Cambodia; to Chap Vithur and Sopheak Sun for interpreting assistance; and to Yon
 SOCIAL SHIFTS AND VIABLE MUSICAL FUTURES • 109

Sokhorn, Frances Rudgard, and the team at Cambodian Living Arts for administrative support.
This chapter is based on fieldwork conducted between 2013 and 2015, financially supported by the
Australian Academy of the Humanities and an Endeavour Australia Research Fellowship of
the Australian Government.

Notes
1. The account in this chapter of smot singer SreyNy first appeared in condensed form in the author’s article “Socioeconomic
Concerns of Young Musicians of Traditional Genres in Cambodia: Implications for Music Sustainability,” in the jour-
nal Ethnomusicology Forum (available at www.tandfonline.com). Reprinted here in revised and expanded form, with
permission of the publisher.
2. In Cambodia, “master” is typically reserved for those artists who learned their skills before the Khmer Rouge era.
3. All interviewees were given the option of using a pseudonym or their real name; SreyNy asked that I use her real given
name.
4. All dollar figures through SreyNy’s interview are in USD, one of two currencies used in Cambodia (the other being
Cambodian riel).
5. “Smot” can be a verb as well as a noun.
6. Roughly US$2,500.
7. Exceptions arguably exist. One promising student under Keot Ran’s tutelage is her teenaged grandson, who also learns as
part of the school-based classes SreyNy mentions in her interview—though whether this constitutes a master-apprentice
relationship in its time-honored sense is moot.

References
Bader, Rolf. n.d. “Buddhism, Animism, and Entertainment in Cambodian Melismatic Chanting smot: History and
Tonal System.” http://systmuwi.de/muwi_research_Comparative_Musicology_Cambodia.html (accessed
February 18, 2016).
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geos/cb.html (accessed February 18, 2016).
CLA (Cambodian Living Arts). 2013. Website. www.cambodianlivingarts.org (accessed February 18, 2016).
CLA (Cambodian Living Arts). 2014a. Moments in the Buddha’s Life: Cambodian Dharma Songs Performed by Prum Ut.
[Booklet and CD]. Phnom Penh: Cambodian Living Arts.
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Penh: Cambodian Living Arts.
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September 26, 2015).
 7
Medical Ethnomusicology and
Psychological Flexibility in Healing,
Health, and Wellness
Benjamin D. Koen

Over the last decade, psychological flexibility has gained in importance across disciplines in the
health and social sciences as a conceptual frame to explore and better understand diverse cultural
and clinical practices of healing, health, and wellness. In this chapter’s case study, priming a state
of psychological flexibility is musically accomplished through the preeminent genre of meditative
music among the Pamiri people of Tajik Badakhshan,1 known as maddoh (or maddáh). Through
maddoh, which is simultaneously a performance of devotional music and an experience of med-
itation, participants deeply engage specific cultural exemplars found in the surrounding natural
and built environment, the local belief system, poetry, prayer, and the music, which work together
to create a multilayered network of flexibility that promotes multiple types of change, including
healing transformations.
To highlight the role that flexibility plays in health and healing within the context of maddoh,
I build upon Hinton’s discussion of culture-specific exemplars and representations that evoke “the
therapeutic or healing effect: an increase in psychological flexibility” (Hinton 2008, 121). Flexibility
exemplars can be seen to create cognitive links that bridge the gap between a present state (illness)
and a desired state (health), and which thereby “may cure by being promoters (or, put another way,
‘primers’) of the desired quality” (Ibid.). The potential power of exemplars to prime the desired
quality relate to both culture-specific meaning and dynamics as well as culture-transcendent prin-
ciples and processes. Hence, while the discussion here is focused on exemplars in Pamiri culture, the
culture-transcendent principles and processes to which they relate with respect to health and healing
can be applied in culturally diverse contexts of research and applied practice (see further Koen 2009).

Medical Ethnomusicology

Medical ethnomusicology is a broad and innovative field of holistic and integrative research,
applied practice, and performance concerned with music, medicine, healing, health, wellness, and
culture. Building from a holistic conceptual framework that comprises the biological, psychological,

111
112 • BENJAMIN D. KOEN

social, emotional, and spiritual factors of health, wellness, healing, illness, and disease, medical
ethnomusicology aims to advance knowledge with respect to the efficacy of music, sound, and
related practices in healing, health, and wellness, and apply that knowledge to benefit people. Most
recently, in my research and lectures, I have highlighted the role of music and the expressive arts
in sustainability and development, social healing, and wellbeing. Although a host of health issues
has long been a central concern in the discourse of sustainability and development, it has largely
overlooked the multiple roles of music and the expressive arts in health, wellness, and healing.
Medical ethnomusicology draws on a diverse array of fields across cultural studies and indigenous
knowledge systems; holistic, integrative, complementary, alternative, and conventional medicine;
the health, physical and social sciences; and music research, performance, and the expressive arts.
A central aspect of the work of many medical ethnomusicologists is to apply and practice diverse
forms of music and healing and to employ music in ways to improve health or wellbeing in one
or more areas of the biological, psychological, social, emotional, or spiritual domains of life (see
further Koen 2014a, 2008; Barz and Cohen 2011).
Some research in medical ethnomusicology has employed psychological and cognitive flexibil-
ity to investigate how music and related practices can be understood to create a dynamic state of
potentiality in participants from which healing can occur and wellness promoted (see for example
Hinton 1999, 2008; Jones 2010; Koen 2005, 2006, 2009, 2013a). More broadly in ethnomusicology
and medical anthropology, several scholars who investigate music-based healing and related phe-
nomena can also be seen to greatly contribute to our understanding of the roles of psychological
flexibility though that specific term is not invoked. Important examples include the bodies of
work by Marina Roseman, Judith Becker, Steven Friedson, Gregory Barz, John Janzen, and Jean
During. Additionally, the approach of cognitive ethnomusicology, pioneered by Margarita Mazo
and developed by Udo Will, Jonathon Berger, Gabe Turow, and the present author, among others,
has also contributed to our understanding of how music and cognitive processes can promote
flexibility in performers and listeners.

Psychological Flexibility

Three broad areas of psychological flexibility are fundamental to health and wellness, and refer to
(1) psychological processes of change, (2) a psychological or holistic state of potentiality, and (3)
the ability to adapt or traverse psychological domains (Hinton 2008; Kashdan 2010; Koen 2009;
Rozanski and Kubzansky 2005).
Marina Roseman’s benchmark research (1991) into the healing sounds, beliefs, and local eth-
nomedical practices of the Temiar people of peninsular Malaysia, while not specifically invoking
psychological flexibility, stands as a key foundational work in ethnomusicology where the same
dynamics involved in priming multiple kinds of flexibility are engaged to facilitate healing trans-
formations. Devon Hinton’s doctoral dissertation (1999) was the first in-depth research to invoke,
apply, and expand flexibility theory as a conceptual frame for indigenous musical healing practices.
His study of a traditional healer among the Isan people of Northern Thailand showed not only how
local belief, symbol, and metaphor are key components of ritual healing but also how psychological
flexibility is central to a process of embodiment and mimesis where Isan healing music mirrors
and represents deeply valued aspects of the natural environment and laden words of the healer,
all of which prime a state of psychological, physical, and emotional flexibility. This in turn sets the
stage for effecting healing transformations in the patient.
Hinton’s (2008) chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology, “Healing
Through Flexibility Primers” fleshes out flexibility theory, drawing together several relevant
threads from research in anthropology, neuroscience, health science, and ethnomusicology to
show how psychological flexibility is important for health within diverse cultures and that it is
 MEDICAL ETHNOMUSICOLOGY • 113

promoted through multiple means, music being the most understudied and perhaps the most
powerful. He suggests that music-based healing practices provide “a sort of cognitive workout,
a hyperkinetic induction of . . . an ability to view from different perspectives or to generate
more possible solutions, more possible action paths, or more attention sets” which can lead to
healing outcomes (2008, 159).
Other works that have developed the concept of flexibility have focused on emotional flexi-
bility as a key aspect of psychological health (Clore and Ortony 2000; Rozanski and Kubzansky
2005), somatic correlates of flexibility where stress is shown to decrease psychological flexi-
bility (Dreisbach 2006), and nervous system correlates of psychological flexibility, where for
example, increased vagal tone results from relaxation and meditation practices (Cysarz and
Büssing 2005).
In a recent review of key research on psychological flexibility, Kashdan refers to “a number of
dynamic processes that unfold over time [that] could be reflected by how a person: (1) adapts to
fluctuating situational demands, (2) reconfigures mental resources, (3) shifts perspective, and (4)
balances competing desires, needs, and life domains” (Kashdan 2010, 2). Building from Rozanski
and Kubzansky (2005), who advocate for a paradigm of flexibility in the research and practice of
psychology, Hinton gives a concise definition, stating that psychological flexibility is “the ability
to shift in order to adaptively adjust to a given context” (2008, 125). He further articulates three
steps, or the “triphasic structure of psychological flexibility” that entails shifting the emotional or
analytic lens through which an event or situation is viewed (2008, 124). The three steps of this “set
shifting” are: (1) Disengage, (2) Contemplation of Choice, and (3) Selection. In addition, Kashdan
points out that psychological flexibility interventions are not only effective treatments “for people
suffering from disorder, they can [also] be used to increase well-being at the personal and even
societal level” (Kashdan 2010, 19).
In the case of maddoh performance in Pamir, beyond the cultural exemplars of flexibility in the
natural and built environments, the belief system, local poetics, and meditation, I also examine
two aspects of the music’s form and metric structure that promote psychological flexibility: (1)
the overall movement and shifts of energy from one section to the next across the three sections
that comprise maddoh (monáját, haidari, setáyesh); and (2) the symbol of “five,” which forms the
pre-eminent exemplar of psychological flexibility in the culture, and which is found within the
musical structure of maddoh, wherein its distinctive, rhythmic framework is based on “five,” is
expressed as five flexible and recurrent accents that frame the third and most dynamic section of
the performance. I demonstrate that these aspects of the music play a key role in priming psy-
chological flexibility and thus promote healing. Moreover, I suggest that investigating how music
primes flexibility is a useful analytic approach that can further our understanding of music and
healing, and that music, as a quintessential primer of psychological flexibility, merits further study
within ethnomusicology and related disciplines.

Methods

In the broader project from which this article comes I employed an integrated methodology of
in-depth participant-observation field research methods including formal and informal interviews
in the local language (Persian),2 performing and studying with local musicians, and collaborating
with local physicians and traditional healers in treating patients. I used ethnomusicological tech-
niques including audio and video music recording, transcription, and analysis of music, prayer,
poetry, and song, as well as physiological experiments.3 I also engaged and benefited from col-
laborative translation of maddoh poetry, as well as in-depth interaction and discussion regarding
my analyses and interpretation of cultural, musical, and medical material by local participants,
musicians, healers, physicians, anthropologists, and ethnomusicologists.
114 • BENJAMIN D. KOEN

The Five Factors Conceptual Frame

Biological, Psychological, Social, Emotional, Spiritual

The conceptual frame that was the basis of The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology (2008)
and the conference that was its precursor4 represents a key movement in the broader discourse of
medicine, the healing arts, and studies in health and wellness. Namely, the importance to view a
human being holistically and as comprising the biological, psychological, social, emotional, and
spiritual domains of life, rather than being more narrowly defined only as a body, body-mind,
or a biopsychosocial entity. In principle, similar views are typical across numerous traditional or
indigenous systems of belief and medicine. In most localized and culture-specific systems, it is
most often the case that an intervention’s efficacy is limited to those living within that system as
it is not conceptualized and structured to accommodate scientific experimentation to discover
knowledge that can be generalized beyond that cultural pale. Such is the case in Pamir, however,
underlying the music-based healing practices are cultural-transcendent principles and processes
that are common across cultures and scientific models (see further Koen 2009; Hinton 2008).
In the present study, illness and healing etiologies correlate with the five factors. That is, on one
hand, illness and disease are rooted in or caused by an imbalance or breakdown in one or more of
the five factors; and healing can occur (i.e., health, wholeness, and balance being restored) through
an efficacious engagement of one or more of the five factors. Indeed, as a holistic model, when one
factor is engaged, all factors to some degree are engaged.
By invoking the term five factors I aim to move the discourse from a more static and theoreti-
cal formulation of these five aspects, domains, or dimensions, into the field of action and applied
research—that is, any potential benefit that can be seen through the lens of the conceptual framework
below, can only, by definition, be practical and beneficial if it is factored into one’s life, whether
employed in the service of a patient, client, research subject, community, or one’s self.5 Moreover,
the five factors can be viewed as ways of understanding and effecting healing transformations in
the whole of a human being and do not suggest distinct, separate, and unrelated categories—quite
the contrary. In other words, each factor can give insight into the other factors and the whole of
a person’s being with respect to health, illness, or the path towards healing. Likewise, one cannot
expect to heal or cure a human being afflicted with an illness or disease by symptomatic treatment
alone. That is not to say that symptomatic treatment cannot be part of healing; indeed it can. What
is key is to consider how symptomatic treatment might be placed within the whole of a person’s
being and how such treatment, if at all, relates to the process of restoring balance and health and
not only alleviating symptoms.
Further along this line of thinking, and building upon the above-mentioned literature that
positions psychological flexibility as a core feature of health, each of the five factors can be seen
principally as a factor of flexibility or a flexibility factor. This further opens a resonance with the
complex of flexibilities presented in Devon Hinton’s model “Psychological and Somatic Dimensions
of Flexibility” (Hinton 2008, 126). From this vantage point, illness, imbalance, dysfunction, disease,
and subsequent breakdown in any of the factors can be described as a lack of flexibility, or rigidity;
and alternatively, wellness, balance, proper functioning, health, and subsequent vitality can be
described as a return to and a high degree of flexibility.

Rigidity Is Illness, Flexibility Is Health

The above frame of thinking leads to two interrelated propositions: Rigidity leads to or is illness;
and flexibility facilitates or is health. This, however, notwithstanding the potential deleterious effects
of music on mental and behavioral health, most notably in the case of children and youth—that
 MEDICAL ETHNOMUSICOLOGY • 115

is, music is not necessarily and absolutely health engendering; it can have the opposite effect of
promoting a malignant psychology when it carries a degrading message (Penn and Clarke 2008)
and which facilitates a person being “stuck in a state” of rigidity. As Hinton observes:

Pathology is often an inability to adaptively change psychological sets, to change emotional

and attentional set, or to change the type of attentional object. One remains stuck in a
worry-oriented mode, continually thinking of certain subjects; remains in a dejected state,
thinking of negative past events and negative self-evaluations; or remains angered, thinking
only of the slight and of ways to gain revenge. One is unable to disengage from the current
attentional object, the current emotional set, or the current action plan to consider and
enact other options.
(Hinton 2008, 125)

Considering the beneficial attributes of music, a core potential of flexibility can be seen as being
efficacious at both the causal and symptomatic levels. Flexibility connects to music in two central
ways. First, music shares the same five factors described above (see Koen 2009). Second, music
facilitates flexibility. Thus, we can discuss factors of bodily flexibility, psychological flexibility,
emotional flexibility, social or relational flexibility, and spiritual flexibility, each of which can be
“primed” by music. In addition to psychosocial processes that engender flexibility, music and the
expressive arts stand out as pre-eminent ways of teaching flexibility within cultures: “A culture
promotes psychological flexibility through various means: dance, music, visual culture, metaphors,
socialization, and psychology. . . . Priming means to ‘predispose to enact some action’; in psychology,
a certain cognitive set is said to be primed, meaning that its activation is promoted . . .” (Hinton
2008, 136). When the action to be enacted is directed toward healing or has a healing effect, then
we see that priming a state of flexibility in service of healing can be a powerful catalyst.

Flexibility Factors

As I have stated in detail elsewhere (Koen 2008, 2009), the process of internalizing musical meaning
is not limited to the body but also includes the other factors of one’s being—hence, I have preferred
embeingment over embodiment to highlight the depth and scope at which music can activate flex-
ibility networks. Hinton goes on to state the following:

The question then becomes how one can activate a flexibility state and its network. Flexibility
networks are built up from experiences but tend to be more malleable than, for example,
a trauma memory. Positive emotion networks that promote certain ways of acting might
be called action networks, action modules, or action schemas. . . . Positive action schemas
are activated and maintained by multiple modalities: body state, as in posture (stooped),
muscular tension, or joint stiffness; voice cadence; self-schemas; and images. One can help
a person in a negative affective state by changing the features that maintain that network . . .
by directly inducing a positive, adaptive action network or schema. One could refer to the
flexibility module as all muscular, brain, autonomic nervous system, and memory structures
that when activated produce flexibility. In a network, the activation of one part will activate
all the others.
(Hinton 2008, 158)

If we consider culture-specific music-based healing practices or rituals as flexibility networks that

provide the psychological, social, emotional, somatic, and spiritual context wherein one can be
fully immersed in a state of flexibility,6 we can begin to appreciate how such a state can constitute
116 • BENJAMIN D. KOEN

a fertile ground from which healing can emerge. In other words, the flexible state is not only indic-
ative of health, it is also one of potentiality, where transformation and healing can be experienced
and from which health can emerge.

Healing and Illness Etiologies in Pamir

In Pamir, local healing and illness etiologies relate to two broad areas: (1) Health and disease are
viewed as having their roots in the physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual dimensions of human
life; (2) All illness and disease can be viewed as resulting from a lack of baraka (spiritual energy or
vital force that sustains life, heals, and blesses); and all healing and health can be viewed as the result
of a strong presence or increase of baraka. Although baraka is viewed locally as culture-transcendent
and universal—that is, all living things are believed to be sustained by and are able to convey varying
degrees of baraka, certain aspects of Pamiri culture are believed to have a special degree of power
with respect to their potential to convey this energy, including for instance, the Pamir Mountains,
certain rivers, springs, and water; special kinds of spiritual music; sacred words, spiritual poetry,
and religious scriptures; mystical or spiritual figures; the words, music, ceremony, and singer of
maddoh; and prayer and meditation.
In treatment, while a remedy is matched to the diagnosed cause, for instance, an illness caused
by food poisoning (a material origin) will be treated with a material medicine, such as an herb,
pharmaceutical, or naturopathic material approach; nevertheless, all illnesses potentially can be
treated through the energy of baraka, which itself represents and engenders flexibility, change,
and transformation. In the context of maddoh performance, the distinct state of consciousness
created in participants where baraka can increase and flow more powerfully can perhaps best be
described as a specialized state of meditation. For example, as one maddoh performer commented
to me, “before I begin to play [the rubab] in maddoh, my mind and my [whole] self is already in
a state of meditation . . . then with the music it continues, the same state of meditation continues.”
To explore the exemplars of flexibility in the ritual performance of maddoh where such a poten-
tiality can bring forth healing, I shall move from the broad to the specific—that is, from exemplars
in the natural environment (the Pamir Mountains, rivers, waterfalls, and springs), to those in the
built environment where maddoh is performed (the maddohkháne), to aspects of material culture
that constitute key components of the ritual complex (musical instruments, tumár prayer amulets),
and laden sonic structures of the music—all of which, in conjunction with the cultural poetics of
Pamir, create a flexibility complex that can be exploited for the purpose of healing.

Poetics of Place

The Natural and Built Environment

The Persian language, the mother tongue of Tajikistan, is a poetic language par excellence. Beyond
the subtleties of sound, silence, rhythm, meter, tone, intonation, cadence, melodic flow, among
other aspects, which heighten the emotional affect of the language, one must consider the pervasive
role of poetry in all aspects of life in Persian-speaking cultures, a role that is perhaps difficult to
understand if one is not familiar with the language and culture.
For all experiences great and small, poetry lives in Persian-speaking cultures and serves as one
of the most dynamic and fluid ways of evoking meaning, considering alternative interpretations of
events, changing attentional sets, and shifting one’s focus. As the building blocks of the language
and poetry, words, even one word (e.g. a name of a person, place, thing, or quality) for example,
can serve as an exemplar and activate a flexibility network.
 MEDICAL ETHNOMUSICOLOGY • 117

The Pamir Mountains themselves are exemplars of flexibility—the mountains as a whole,

individual peaks, valleys, and areas—each can have a laden associations in the culture that evoke
networks of meaning, which link to cultural poetics, social and individual life experiences. Hence,
invoking one of the names of the mountains can have the effect of evoking the desired state. Among
the names of the Pamir Mountains are kuhestán (mountain-land) and bám-e jahán (the roof of
the world), and Badakhshan (land of rubies); there is also the multivalent term kuheján, which
means mountain of the beloved. The term ján has multiple meanings, including beloved, dear, or
general term of endearment (referring to a person); Beloved (referring to God); soul, spirit, life,
energy, and sense of good feelings.
Let me provide a brief example from my fieldwork in Pamir. Oftentimes, while on a field excursion
among the mountains and valleys, a local member of our group would point out a particular moun-
tain peak, river, or stream and spontaneously recite or sing a poem that would evoke the feelings
embodied in the themes of the poem. These were usually themes of love, friendship, overcoming
obstacles and mystical sojourning, topics common in the poetry of the region. Such experiences
were virtually always accompanied by a physical and physiological response: for example, lifting
one’s gaze upward to the mountain peaks and simultaneously deeply inhaling.
This experience of inhaling is better viewed as inspiring for many reasons. Foremost, the
mountains are viewed locally as a gift from God, and expression of the majesty of the Divine, and
a conveyor of the spiritual energy of baraka, which pervades and sustains all creation and can heal
when engaged or imbibed. Hence, when one is in the mountainland (kuhestán), reciting or recalling
poetic verses that redound to the upliftment of one’s consciousness, spiritual sensibilities, and emo-
tions, and then inspires deeply the baraka-laden air surrounding the mountains while physically
stretching and elongating one’s body—back and neck especially—as the eyes are lifted upward to
the physical mountain peaks and emotional heart is turned upwards to the metaphoric land of the
Beloved (kuheján), a kind of whole being experience of flexibility and rejuvenation is experienced.

The Five Flowing Rivers

The other pre-eminent feature of the natural environment that is related to the poetics of the
region, local belief, and empowered symbolism are the five flowing rivers, or panj áb, that flow
into the legendary Oxus River, also known as the Amu Daryá, and River Panj (panj = “five”). The
five rivers are the Bartang, Ghond, Shakhdari, Vanch, and Yazgulâm rivers. The River Panj forms
a natural border with Afghanistan and is the most powerful river in the region. It is mentioned
throughout the literature, especially the poetry, and is seen as an attracting and entraining force,
drawing the five rivers to it. These rivers provide the physical water needed for the body and are a
symbol of the spiritual water of life, known as áb-e hayát, and viewed locally as essential for a life
of health and wellness.
The symbol of “five” plays an important role in the meaning assigned to the place of Pamir within
the natural and the built environment inasmuch it relates to local religious belief, identity, and
practices. That is, for the Isma‘ilis of Badakhshan, a Shi‘eh movement that developed alongside of
Sufism and shares many mystical tendencies, “five” refers to the Panjtan (five people)—the central
figures of Islam as well as the community of Isma‘ilis; and the five central practices or pillars of Islam.
In a dynamic similar to that between a person and the mountains described above, the rivers are
exemplars of flexibility, laden with meaning found in the poetics of the region, and are pervasive in
the lived experience within Pamiri culture. Moreover, referring to the concept of the water of life,
not only are multiple forms of water found in the poetics of the region (e.g. rain, rivers, streams,
seas, oceans, morning and evening dew, and tears), but in particular, living and flowing water like
that of healthy rivers, streams, and oceans, is perhaps the greatest exemplar of flexibility—evoking
fluidity, movement, freedom, change, and adaptability. Hence, the physical expression of flexibility
coupled with the symbolic meaning that is central to local conceptualizations of health naturally
118 • BENJAMIN D. KOEN

activate the desired state of flexibility. This dynamic is carried further into the context of music-
based healings through the symbolism of five that is central to the maddohkháne, which is sacred
space where maddoh is performed.

Maddohkháne
The maddohkháne is the main room of the Pamiri home, the construction of which is based
on the symbol of five. This room is where most major family life events happen for Pamiris
and it is the room, which during maddoh performance takes on a depth of sacred meaning.
Historically, the room functioned as an underground family mosque during the period of Soviet
control. The main feature that creates this institution of the mosque are the five structural pillars
that stand from floor to ceiling in specific positions and which symbolize the above meanings
of five (i.e. the five central figures in Islam known as the Panjtan, and the five central practices
or pillars of Islam).
During maddoh then, the prominence of “five” is pervasive and is physically interwoven within
the space and the built structure where devotional music is performed, thus further linking to and
evoking the networks of meaning and flexibility that create the potential for healing.

Musical-Prayer Instruments
The Pamiri rubáb is most important instrument of maddoh and is considered to be an inherently
sacred instrument and a gift from God. The dáyere (frame drum) is the other essential instrument
for maddoh. These and the other two instruments that can be found in maddoh, the tanbur (also
a long-necked lute), and the ghizhak or kamánche (spike fiddle), which is rarely found, all have a
special relationship to prayer. There can be more than one of all the above-mentioned instruments.
However, maddoh can also be performed solo by the maddohkhán (literally the singer/reciter of
maddoh), who both sings and plays the rubáb, or at times, the tanbur. Typical performance settings
include one or two rubáb(s) and one or two dáyere(s).
All these instruments embody and convey a complex of meanings linked to local cosmology,
mythology, religious belief, prayer, and meditation practices. Each instrument often has prayers
written on the skin that covers the sounding chamber of the instruments’ bodies, and/or carved
into the neck or other solid parts of the bodies. In this way, the instruments are seen to be “saying/
singing prayers” themselves, which, when used in maddoh, adds to expression of the spiritual and
healing energy of baraka. With these associations inherent in the instruments, they further orient
or shift the participants’ attention to that which is spiritual, and themselves serve as exemplars of
the a meditative and spiritual state of being.
Central to the local healing and illness etiology is that the spiritual factor of one’s being is the
principle factor for creating and maintaining complete health; and it is the essential factor to
bring about healing. Hence, in this local context, all the elements that orient attention toward the
spiritual factor can be seen as priming a flexibility network that encourages healing inasmuch as
the spiritual factor is the ultimate source of all healing in the local belief.

Prayer-Amulet—Tumár
As mentioned above, a specialized written prayer known as a tumár plays yet an additional role
in health and healing in Pamiri life and in the context of maddoh performance. Most often, the
tumár is written on paper, folded into a small rectangle, strung and worn around the part of the
body that is afflicted with any ailment. If the illness is psychological or spiritual in origin, it will
most likely be worn like a necklace close to the heart. In some cases, the tumár will be worn around
the head for severe psychological cases. A tumár can also be placed on the afflicted body part and
 MEDICAL ETHNOMUSICOLOGY • 119

subsequently eaten. In one case I observed, for severe pain and swelling around a tooth, a tumár
was placed at the site of the pain in the mouth and then ingested.
Within and without the context of maddoh, the tumár adds a distinctive dimension to the
dynamic of priming an adaptive flexibility network since it is believed to release baraka even when
the wearer is not consciously attending to it. From this perspective, there is a kind of underlying
belief in that the tumár will effect a change toward healing, which, while unique in its own right,
can be seen as related to the dynamic of priming—or predisposing one to the enaction of a quality
or consequence—in this case healing through engaging baraka.

Symbolism and Meaning

Some contexts discussed above where “five” is present make direct and obvious evocations of
specific networks. For example, elaborating on the “pillar” symbol, one of the five pillars in the
maddohkháne symbolizes the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, Fatima, who is viewed locally
as the essence of purity and can therefore be seen as the exemplar of the adaptive network related
to purity. While simultaneously, the River Panj (“five”) is viewed as conveying the baraka of the
water of life, which is a purifying, cleansing force. Additionally, requirements of prayer and giving
alms are practices that purify one’s being and possessions are two of the “pillars of Islam,” and their
meaning is evoked by the structural pillars of the maddohkháne, which function as exemplars of
the religious pillars, which activate this network.
All this is key with respect to healing, which is often viewed as a process of purification from the
contamination of an illness, which can have its root cause in a lack of purity in any or all of the five
factors. Additionally, the text of maddoh may also speak to this purity-contamination juxtaposition.
In one performance, the maddohkhán, Sohib Nazar, sang of the contamination and illness that
result from eating forbidden (harám) meat, which, like the diffusion of its ill effects in the physical
body through the process of digestion, would manifest corollary illnesses in other domains of the
five factors and ultimately in one’s behaviors, leading finally to one’s spiritual and physical demise.
To avoid this, he goes on to sing didactic verses oriented to living a pure life. If a listener has not
“eaten the forbidden meat” (i.e. broken certain religious laws or teachings), the maddoh becomes
a preventive; if one has eaten the forbidden food, then the maddoh can function as a curing agent
by activating the adaptive flexibility network of purity and bringing the listener back to balance
and health.

Musical Exemplars

There are many aspects of the sounds and music of maddoh that can be seen as exemplars of
psychological flexibility. Although a complete analysis of maddoh in this respect is beyond the
scope of this chapter, we have space to explore two aspects in the sound and music. First is the
movement across the three-part form of maddoh which engenders flexibility as each section
grows in musical and sonic complexity and the conveyance of baraka; and the second relates
to the central musical structure and symbol of “five,” which is an exemplar of multiple adaptive
flexibility networks locally.

Three Part Form

Participants enter the maddohkháne reverently and with their attention moving from a state
of reflection to one of expectation—reflection on the past and present and moving toward the
expectation of change. The maddohkhán takes his seat with one or two other musicians flanking
him on each side. His head is bowed as he whispers a soft prayer for assistance, or just closes his
120 • BENJAMIN D. KOEN

eyes and breathes deeply a few times to collect himself, perhaps saying a silent prayer in his mind
as he prepares to begin the maddoh.
The first sound that emerges in the performance is the plucking of the gut strings of the rubáb.
The motives played on the rubáb begin with a light and delicate melodic line descending and
ascending, followed by a stronger and louder strumming pattern as the maddohkhán’s inspiration
directs. A second or two of silence is followed by the voice, at times rough and raspy, at times gen-
tle, and at times strong and booming—we have now fully entered the first section—the munáját.
This section is only performed by the voice and the rubáb. As mentioned above, melodically and
rhythmically there is an overlapping call-and-response form in this section between the voice and
the rubáb, and there are no drums or overall regular pulse that is part of the munáját, although
there is rhythmic structure that is recurrent.
Shifts occur with a movement into the second section, the haidari, which recounts stories and
traditions to admonish participants to live according to local religious and cultural standards. The
melodic and rhythmic content support the shift—the voice virtually always climbs in pitch and
intensity while the doire frame drum enters with a powerful duple rhythm that often progressively
increases in tempo throughout.
Again, there is a shift with the beginning of the third and final section, the setáyesh. Between
the second and third sections, there is often an interlude of the voice growing in intensity in a free
rhythm along with the rubáb(s) creating a harmonic fabric supporting the voice. Once the frame
drum enters with a new propelling rhythm (analyzed below), a heightened level of attention ensues
and thoughts are progressively directed toward the ineffable.
The voice continues to weave poems together, each poem having a structured poetic meter or
rhythm that can be analyzed at the level of syllabic structure of word(s), hemistich, poetic line,
verse, and form, all of which adds to the rhythmic complex of the performance—patterns over-
laying and interweaving with each other creating multiple attentional setshifting potentials in the
context of the setáyesh. The presence of improvisation in maddoh further increases the diversity
of possibilities that is a function of the musicians’ inspiration during the time of performance,
especially in the setáyesh.
Local musicians typically describe the setáyesh as something erfáni (mystical or spiritual), baráye
shokr kardan (for giving thanks), beseyár ajáyeb (very unique and wonderful), and pore baraka
(full of baraka). When asked about the rhythm of the setáyesh, musicians would simply show the
rhythm, without the need of any term other than setáyesh. Musicians, the local khalifa, and other
participants would consistently describe the setáyesh section as a “feeling” or “atmosphere”—a
time during which regular consciousness would change into another consciousness and that
the potential to facilitate healing was attributed to the confluence of baraka, which intensifies as
maddoh moves from section to section, culminating in the setáyesh. Musicians further empha-
size the rhythmic shift between sections, especially from the second section (haidari) to the third
(setáyesh) and they always emphasized that the rhythm used throughout the setáyesh was critical
for a successful performance.
Whereas psychological flexibility during ritual performance might occur through diverse
means, and is not necessarily dependent on any one element, the rhythmic structure of the
setáyesh is a defining element and key component for creating the spiritual aesthetic of mad-
doh, and thereby is critical for effecting a change of consciousness. For instance, in my own
learning to play the doire frame drum for maddoh, while there was flexibility with respect
to secondary rhythmic aspects (e.g., using the fingers of one or both hands to create a rolling
sound in between the five accents) the essential and required aspect of the setáyesh was that
there were five strong accents, which are shown as five bursts of energy in the waveform of
Figure 7.1. Importantly, maddoh is taught as an oral/aural tradition, hence my teachers did
not say, “there are five essential accents you must play”; rather, they demonstrated this and
I followed.
 MEDICAL ETHNOMUSICOLOGY • 121

Rhythmic Flexibility and Symbolism in Maddoh

The central symbol of “five,” which itself is an exemplar of multiple adaptive flexibility networks is
also the foundational rhythmic structure of the setáyesh. In the recurring and driving, rhythmic
pattern found in the last and most intense section of a maddoh performance, five accents dominate
the rhythmic structure.
In Figure 7.1, a graphic of a waveform represents one complete cycle, or measure, that is repeated
throughout the setáyesh. Five prominent bursts of energy, marked 1–5, are shown as amplitude
peaks in the waveform. The setáyesh begins with this new rhythmic structure that is maintained
throughout the remainder of performance. Structurally, the poetic verses follow these cycles of
five recurrent pulses of energy or loosely structured musical beats.
Although the five accents do not indicate a strict 5/4 musical meter (i.e., musicians do not
conceptualize this section in any musical meter as such), the accents do occur in a distinctive and
fluid way that organizes the flow of the setáyesh in five unevenly spaced yet recurring and powerful
pulses, which are key in creating a sense of flow and forward motion. That is, the pulses follow the
uneven pattern of “short-long—short-long—short” as indicated under the numbers in Figure 7.1.
As this pattern recurs, the last short pulse (beat 5) of a cycle pushes to beat 1 of the next cycle,
which is also a short pulse. Hence, a feeling of flexibility and forward motion is created when these
two short pulses occur one after the other throughout the setáyesh. The pattern is established as
shown in Figure 7.2. Musically, the five-based rhythmic structure of the setáyesh gives a distinctive
feeling of forward motion, of a sense of being pushed or carried forward.

Figure 7.1 Waveform showing five recurring pulses that repeat throughout the setáyesh section

short-long—short-long—short-short-long—short-long—short
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5

Figure 7.2 Flexibility engendering rhythmic pattern

122 • BENJAMIN D. KOEN

In discussing the music of the setáyesh, maddoh participants often expressed their feeling as
being a kind of “non-stop forward motion,” “upward movement,” a “rising sensation,” “energy,”
or a movement from “heaviness to lightness” which, when coupled with the mystical poems of
maddoh, creates a shift in consciousness that was not only directed toward what is known locally
in Persian as the báten (spiritual or supernatural) but also created a physical shift in the body.
Participants experienced these feelings physically, emotionally, and spiritually. For instance, one
participant and maddoh musician stated that throughout maddoh, he experienced a progressive
sense of being physically lighter and that during the setáyesh, this feeling would further shift into
a floating feeling and he would have an ineffable experience of the báten. Afterwards, he stated,
“If the maddoh was good, I always have a happy feeling and am thankful.”
The purpose of this analysis is not to prove that the setáyesh is constructed and conceptualized in
a 5/4 musical meter. Rather, it is to show that a flexible and recurrent rhythmic structure based on
five strong, musical accents encourages a state of psychological flexibility and serves as an implicit
and inherent exemplar of “five,” which is viewed locally as central to conceptualizations of belief,
identity, health, and the healing energy of baraka. It is an implicit example because the music in
Pamir is not conceptualized in terms of a 5/4 musical meter. Indeed, it is not conceptualized with
respect to any musical meter—and yet the pre-eminent symbol of “five” is inherent in sonic struc-
ture of maddoh as shown in Figure 7.1.

Concluding Thoughts

In this chapter I have shown how maddoh and its multiple related cultural symbols are primers of
psychological flexibility. With respect to the music of maddoh, its laden five-based structure, in
hand with an intensification of sonic, symbolic, poetic, religious, and mystical meanings, serves
as a kind of multivalent primer of psychological flexibility with a special potential to push or draw
a participant away from a rigid or inflexible psychological state, where a new choice can be made,
a new action produced.
As already seen above, not only are there didactics involved in the words of maddoh that
encourage specific actions and choices, but the experience of the music is one that can create
a psychological, emotional, spiritual, or bodily shift for participants. Making such a shift must
emerge from the potential to do so; hence, the state of potentiality to move or shift from illness
towards health is key.
Certainly, the potential for music to effect health changes, either through the dynamic indi-
cated by psychological flexibility, or perhaps framed by other concepts or practices, is not limited
to one genre of music or one culture. Indeed, diverse musical forms and practices can promote
flexibility to engender a state from which health changes or healing can arise (Koen 2008, 7–14).
If culture-specific, music-based healing practices or rituals are considered as flexibility networks
that provide the psychological, somatic, emotional, and spiritual context wherein one can be fully
immersed in a state of flexibility, perhaps the researcher can better appreciate how such a state
can constitute fertile ground from which healing can emerge. This, I believe, is one key area where
a closer synthesis among shared interests across disciplines can lead to significant advances in
research and ultimately, a more profound and conscious engagement with music’s potential for
healing, health, and wellness.

Notes
1. Here Badakhshan and Pamir refer to the specific districts where field research was conducted, primarily Shugnon,
Roshon, Ishkishim, and the capital city of Khoroq. IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval was given at the Ohio
State University for research conducted in 2001 and 2003. Subsequent research was carried out with the approval and
support of Xiamen University, China and Chiang Mai University, Thailand in 2010 and 2015 respectively.
 MEDICAL ETHNOMUSICOLOGY • 123

2. When speaking or writing in English, “Persian” not “Farsi” is the correct term to refer to the mother tongue of Iran,
Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. “Farsi” is the English transliteration of the Arabic and Persian word used to refer to the
mother tongue of these three countries. In ancient Persia, the language was known as “Parsi,” indicating the language of
the land of Pars, but since Arabic has no letter P, Arabic speakers replaced it with the letter F, hence “Farsi,” referring to
the language of the land of Fars. In English, the national languages of Tajikistan and Afghanistan can also be referred to
as Tajiki and Afghani respectively. “Dari” is the transliteration of the Afghani word for the Persian spoken in Afghanistan.
3. Poetic analysis based on Persian language poetic meters, which must be considered for both the poems and the music,
has a long tradition in the literature (see for example Farzaad 1967). For the details of the physiological experiment,
see Koen 2008. Research for this project began in 1998, with initial field research being conducted in Tajikistan in 2001
and 2003, and has been ongoing since then within Persian-speaking cultures in the Diaspora.
4. This symposium, “Music, Medicine, & Culture: Medical Ethnomusicology and Global Perspectives on Health & Healing”
held in October 2003, was funded by a grant from the Florida State University Council on Research and Creativity,
jointly sponsored by the FSU College of Music and College of Medicine, and co-organized by Kenneth Brummel-Smith,
M.D. and Benjamin D. Koen, Ph.D.
5. Additionally, I should note that in my research with diverse groups of participants across several religious traditions,
atheists, and agnostics, the category “spiritual” can be substituted with “transcendent” or “metaphysical” if the former
term is problematic for any individual. While this is rarely the case, since the term “spiritual” is quite flexible and easily
adaptable to all religious beliefs as well as most personal beliefs, including atheism and agnosticism, the term “tran-
scendent” can be even more so for individuals that have reservations or discomfort with the term “spiritual.”
6. See Koen (2008, 2009) for several examples of culture-specific practices of flexibility as well as culture-transcendent
principles and processes that are exploited in hand with flexibility.

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 Part III
Knowledge and Agency
 8
Birdsong and a Song about a Bird
Popular Music and the Mediation
of Traditional Ecological Knowledge
in Northeastern Brazil
Michael B. Silvers

Between 2008 and 2012, I conducted field research on a range of regionalist musics in Ceará, a
state in Northeastern Brazil. Every orchestral concert I attended during that period included a
medley of classic tunes by Northeastern musical legend Luiz Gonzaga (1912–1989). I heard Ceará’s
early music ensemble, Grupo Syntagma, play complex contrapuntal arrangements of Gonzaga’s
songs alongside pieces by John Dowland and Giuseppe Sammartini. Several rock bands played
blues-influenced covers of his music. Even Ceará’s klezmer band, Banda LeChaim, played its own
version of Gonzaga’s best-known song, “Asa Branca,” as did an Andean pan-flute ensemble that
performed on street corners while wearing cartoonish Plains Indian headdresses.
The ubiquity of Gonzaga’s music is noteworthy but unsurprising. Gonzaga, a recording star of
the mid-twentieth century who made a career of singing nostalgic songs about the drought-plagued
Northeastern Brazilian countryside, continues to be seen in the Northeast as emblematic of the
region. His songs, which were recorded and nationally disseminated by a music industry based in
the country’s Southeast, are now considered a central part of the Northeastern “traditional” reper-
toire and a meaningful component of the region’s folklore. To perform his songs in the Northeast
is to perform music that is “traditional,” “authentic,” and autochthonous (indigenous).
Despite the popularity of Gonzaga’s music, it nevertheless came to me as a surprise to hear
people known as rain prophets, individuals in the backlands of the Northeast who forecast rain
and drought by observing nature, cite the lyrics of some of his songs when discussing the practice
of rain prophecy. A substantial portion of his songs describe the region’s landscapes and mimic its
soundscapes, many of his songs include lyrics about rain and drought, and a few have lyrics that
convey traditional ecological knowledge about the climate—that a certain bird’s call is a sign of
rain or drought, for example. Why might his music be significant to today’s rain prophets? What
does it mean that these individuals refer to the lyrics of his commercial, popular music, some of
which is from nearly seventy years ago, when talking about weather forecasting?

127
128 • MICHAEL B. SILVERS

Scholars of indigenous musics have taught us that musically transmitted knowledge about nature
can have practical applications. For example, invocations about animals and plants can be sung
to heal the sick or for prenatal care (Seeger 2004). Songs about the land can establish or reinforce
senses of place, community, identity, and time (e.g., Feld 2012 [1982]; Impey 2002; Solomon 2000).
They can also function as navigational tools, helping people locate natural resources and chart
pathways (Koch 2013). In some cases, such songs can and have served as evidence in land trials to
demonstrate the integral relationship between a people and the land (Koch 2013; Roseman 1998).
Can recorded popular music similarly become entwined with the knowledge and experience of the
natural world? Can commercial songs about rain affect the experience of drought?
Scholars who have explored connections between popular music and nature have demonstrated
how music about nature can reveal musicians’ attitudes and ideas about the environment. In her
landmark essay on lyrical references to the Tamsui River in Taiwan, Nancy Guy has shown that we
can track environmental degradation and changing attitudes toward natural features in popular
music (Guy 2009). Mark Pedelty has argued that songs about nature can tell us as much about
propaganda and patronage as they can about a songwriter’s convictions, as with Woody Guthrie’s
songs about the Columbia River (Pedelty 2008). I extend this conversation by asking not just what
musical or lyrical depictions of nature can teach us about those who write the songs and the worlds
they inhabit, but by asking how such songs can affect the experiences of listeners and those who
internalize the songs, even half a century after the initial recording of that music. In other words,
this study aims to understand the reception of songs about nature rather than the motivation
behind the composition of those songs.
Here, I argue that rain prophets cite the lyrics of Luiz Gonzaga’s commercially recorded songs
to give traditional ecological knowledge1 qualities of comprehensibility, authority, and autoch-
thony. Gonzaga’s songs are able to ascribe these qualities to the ecological knowledge in his lyrics
because of specific characteristics of popular music: mass dissemination, audio recording, fame,
and associations between popular music and place and between popular music and identity.
Because Gonzaga’s recordings were mass disseminated and commercially successful, his nostalgic
visions of the Northeast—its landscapes, soundscapes, and knowledge—reached the ears and
imaginations of those who lived in the region. Because his music was recorded, his voice and his
words have persisted through time. Because of his fame, his voice continues to possess an aura
of authenticity and authority. The lyrics of his songs, only some of which he wrote or co-wrote,
employed Northeastern traditional ecological knowledge and images of its natural environment
as metaphors that were intelligible to his audience. Yet because he and his songs are so profoundly
associated with the region and Northeastern regional identity, some Northeasterners see his music
not only as a semiotically rich part of the Northeastern musical repertoire but also as a meaningful
source of ecological knowledge about the region.
Luiz Gonzaga’s music is also meaningful for present-day rain prophets because of specific
characteristics of rain prophecy. Rain prophecy is a verbal performance as much as it is a form of
ecological knowledge, and it has its own history of mediation. It has long been associated with the
radio and is performed today in a public spectacle. Furthermore, rain prophets understand the
communication of knowledge about rain and drought as a meaningful local tradition that has much
in common with regional musics and poetry. Rain prophecy, like Gonzaga’s music, is a signifier
of regional place and identity and a useful source of information about the weather. The act of
listening to and interpreting birdsong, for example, is simultaneously a performance of regional
belonging and a practical method for predicting rainfall.
The broader implication of my argument is that commercial, popular music is not inherently
antithetical to traditional ecological knowledge. Many of my interlocutors in Brazil and a number
of ethnomusicologists, from Alan Lomax (1977) through Jeff Todd Titon (2009), have worried
that popular music—and capitalism more generally—threatens traditional music. Capitalism, it
has been argued, promotes the mass production of ephemeral music, monopolizing airwaves and
 BIRDSONG AND A SONG ABOUT A BIRD • 129

minds with popular music while pushing aside songs and sounds that are more entrenched in
our communities. Building off these ideas, other scholars have said that we should be especially
concerned about the survival of music that conveys traditional ecological knowledge (Marett
2010; Feld 1991). They suggest that capitalism and development, along with other factors that
have more tenuous connections to capitalism itself, such as assimilation and trans-generational
forgetting, lead to the endangerment of songs that help us comprehend the natural world, pro-
foundly damaging our relationship to the planet (Ibid.). The example of Luiz Gonzaga and the rain
prophets illustrates that music produced through a profit-driven industry has played a role in the
maintenance of traditional ecological knowledge. I have no intention to undermine the argument
that musically encoded knowledge about nature has been threatened by the effects of capitalism
in a great number of contexts, but merely to complicate and expand our understanding of music’s
relationship to traditional ecological knowledge.
Through a combination of cultural history, musical/lyrical analysis, and ethnography, I show
how Gonzaga’s voice has become a vehicle for the expression of knowledge about the Northeastern
environment. This article is organized in two major sections. In the first, I explore Gonzaga’s
musical transmission of the Northeastern imaginary, his depiction of Northeastern acoustemol-
ogies and traditional ecological knowledge about rain and drought, his enduring fame, and the
ways he has come to be associated with the Northeastern region and Northeastern identity. In
the second section, I turn to rain prophecy to examine its history of mediation and I assess the
rain prophets’ citation of the lyrics of Gonzaga’s songs, asking how and why these lyrics remain
relevant to them.

Luiz Gonzaga and the “Invention of the Northeast”

Brazilian historian Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Jr. has written that the notion of a Brazilian
“Northeast region” was a discursive “invention” (2009). Prior to the 1940s, Brazil was understood
as having two geographical regions: north and south. The south was home to the nation’s indus-
trial capitals, and the north was the nation’s backwater, home to the impenetrable Amazon and
the drought-ridden Northeastern hinterlands. The discourse of the “Northeast” emerged between
the 1920s and 1940s as a way of describing the segment of the nation affected by drought. The
Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística was responsible for officially establishing the regional
designation in 1942, but the broader discourse of the Northeast and Northeasternness had devel-
oped through regionalist literature and the arts, nation-building efforts, and waves of migrants
from the Northeast to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in search of work and income to send home.
Albuquerque and others (e.g., Vieira 2000; McCann 2004; Loveless 2012) argue that the music of
Luiz Gonzaga, whose voice could be heard throughout Brazil in the 1940s, played a vital role in
the construction of the Northeastern imaginary.
Gonzaga, who had his first hit song in 1941, was hardly the first musician to depict the region
in his music. In 1914, composers Catulu da Paixão Cearense and João Pernambuco, for exam-
ple, wrote the iconic ballad “Luar do Sertão” (“Moonlight of the Backlands”), which described
the beauty of the moonlight in the Northeastern countryside.2 But Gonzaga’s songs combined a
romantic nostalgia with descriptions of the hardscrabble realities of life in the region. His music
expressed a desire to return home to the Northeast, and spoke to the dreams and frustrations of
the displaced Northeastern workers who found themselves in Brazil’s alienating metropolises,
acknowledging the reasons for their migration—drought, poverty, and hunger—along with their
love of their distant homeland.
Additionally, unlike “Luar do Sertão,” which was based on a Northeastern melody, Gonzaga’s
music evoked the Northeastern countryside in multiple elements of its sound, leading to the
development of a new genre known as baião, which combined and updated the musical sounds
130 • MICHAEL B. SILVERS

he heard as a child. In his performances, Gonzaga’s nasal, oaken voice at times cracked and qua-
vered like the Northeastern cowboy singers of aboio, a kind of vocalization used by ranchers to
herd cattle. His accordion-playing style was unlike that of other musicians before him. He rapidly
opened and closed the bellows of his piano accordion as if he were playing the sort of diatonic
button accordion typically played in the Northeastern backlands. The baião rhythm was an adap-
tation of a rhythm played on the bass strings of a steel-string guitar that accompanied a type of
Northeastern improvised sung duel called cantoria, and the xote and pé-de-serra rhythms that he
often performed were derived from the fiddle-accompanied dance music of the region. His use of
the mixolydian, dorian, and lydian dominant modes as well as harmonies in parallel thirds came
from Northeastern fife-and-drum band music and from several rural Northeastern vocal practices.
Moreover, his music was only one part of his performance of Northeasternness, which included
his folksy charm and a leather costume styled after the clothes of Lampião, a well-known bandit
from the region. Written across the front of one of Gonzaga’s most recognizable accordions were
the words “É do Povo” (“It’s of the people”).
As a result of Gonzaga’s caricatured performance of Northeastern identity and music,
Northeastern migrants gained a genre of nostalgic commercial music they could call their own,
while the rest of Brazil developed a vision of what the Northeast looked, felt, and sounded like.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Northeastern Acoustemes,

and Birds in Gonzaga’s Music

Gonzaga’s music conveyed traditional ecological knowledge within a broad range of images and
stereotypes of the region. His lyrics, many of which were written by his primary collaborators
Humberto Teixeira (1915–1979) and Zé Dantas (1921–1962), described the region’s men as
strong, hardworking, and tenacious. The songs spoke of their labor: herding cattle, picking cotton,
and planting beans. They described the hardships of migration and of assimilation to city life in
the Southeast. They pleaded for rain. They described the pains and pleasures of courtship and
romance. They explained the dance moves and the celebrations associated with St. John’s Day,
the biggest holiday in the Northeast. And many of his songs described the soundscapes of the
countryside. Birdsong, in particular, appeared frequently in his songs, as did references to birds
in other metaphorical contexts, with descriptions of their migratory flights, their cages, and so
on.3 A bird can be seen on the covers of his 1957 album O Reino do Baião (Kingdom of Baião)
and his 1962 album Ô Véio Macho (Oh Old Guy), with a blue-fronted Amazon parrot perched
on his hat and on the bellows of his accordion, respectively. Some of his best known and most
beloved songs are named after birds, among them “Assum Preto” (“Smooth-billed Ani”), “Sabiá”
(“Rufous-bellied Thrush”), and “Asa Branca” (“Picazuro Pigeon”), which is often referred to as
the “anthem of the Northeast.”
Embedded into the lyrical depictions of labor, love, parties, and birds are bits of Northeastern
traditional ecological knowledge, sometimes included merely as passing allusions and sometimes
explained in detail. Gonzaga’s song “Marimbondo” (“Wasp”) (1964) co-written with José Marcolino,
suggests that a wasp will try to enter one’s house when the rain has arrived, ensuring a good rainy
season—and cotton harvest—to come. “São João do Carneirinho” (“St. John of the Lamb”) (1958),
by Gonzaga and Guio de Moraes, and Gonzaga’s famous “A Triste Partida” (“The Sad Departure”)
(1964), a setting of a poem by Patativa do Assaré, allude to a Northeastern belief that if there is no
rain by St. Joseph’s Day, on the nineteenth of March, a drought will follow.
A number of his songs that reference birdsong do so by describing the meaning of the bird’s
call in relation to the arrival of rain or drought. The lyrics of “Baião da Garoa” (“Baião of the Light
Rain”) (1952), written by Gonzaga and Herve Cordovil, say the rufous-bellied thrush will not sing
“in the land of drought/when the harvest is no good,” while it did sing that “one time it rained
 BIRDSONG AND A SONG ABOUT A BIRD • 131

in the dry land.” The song “Pássaro Carão” (“Limpkin”) (1962), by Gonzaga and José Marcolino,
describes the calls of the limpkin and the smooth-billed ani as signs that “rain will fall”:

The limpkin sang

The smooth-billed ani sang too
The rain will fall
In my backlands

Gonzaga was known for his stage banter, and in a filmed segment intended for television in the 1970s,
he introduces his performance of “Acauã” (“Laughing Falcon”) by talking about the significance
of the bird’s call in comparison to that of the purple-throated euphonia. The call of the laughing
falcon “augurs” drought, while the purple-throated euphonia’s call heralds rain.

There are also many songs about birds, like the story of assum preto [smooth-billed ani], asa
branca [picazuro pigeon], bem-te-vi [great kiskadee], the juriti [white-tipped dove]. And
there’s the story of the acauã. The acauã has a different story. It’s an auguring bird, a bird that
nobody wants to hear sing, because it calls the drought. It always brings bad news, which
isn’t what happens with the vem-vem [the purple-throated euphonia, literally “come-come”].
When the vem-vem starts to sing, the people say there is good news there, vem-vem, in the
road and the street, vem-vem, vem-vem. Everyone hopes to hear something good, good
news. . . . But the acauã, when it sings near a poor rural farmer’s house, he does everything
to send her away, to remove her . . . because she’s going to sing an inferno near his house,
because she’s bringing, she’s auguring something bad.4

Gonzaga’s monologue also mentions the emotional response elicited by the sounds of these
birds. The purple-throated euphonia brings happiness, whereas the laughing falcon brings fear
and sadness. Through text painting and emotive singing, he carries these sentiments into his per-
formance of “Acauã” in the clip cited above. Following his explanation of the bird’s call, he sings
a slow and mournful rendition of Zé Dantas’s song, accompanied only by his accordion. The first
few phrases of the refrain, which starts with the word acauã, begin on an accented, cried flat seven
of the mixolydian mode. The piercing timbre of his voice and the tension of the lowered leading
tone imply the bird’s ominous news.
The song’s lyrics clearly explain the meaning of the laughing falcon’s cry as it is understood by
those who live in the Northeastern backlands.5 The lyrics, following, tell that the bird’s call “augurs”
and “invites” drought:

The laughing falcon sings endlessly through summer,

Amid afternoon silence, auguring, inviting drought to the backlands . . .
In the joy of the rainy season sing the river frog, the tree frog, the toad,
But in the sorrow of drought you hear only the laughing falcon

In the song’s coda, he mimics the bird’s call, demonstrating for his audience the very sound that
arouses fear and sorrow and that warns of a coming drought. He sings the word acauã repeatedly
and quickly in a syncopated rhythm for nearly twenty seconds, transitioning from pitched singing
to cawing the word in a scratchy falsetto mimicking the raptor’s loud cry. The sound of the word
acauã itself is imitative of the sound of the bird’s most typical call, and the rhythm of the word
also aligns with the rhythm of the call. The laughing falcon sings one pitch and then repeats that
pitch and slurs down a whole step, singing a-cau-ã, long short-short, a distinct quarter note fol-
lowed by two slurred eighth notes. The bird repeats the call over and over, increasing in tempo and
syncopating its rhythm (see Hilty 2003; Barkley et al. 2012). Gonzaga mimics these vocalizations,
132 • MICHAEL B. SILVERS

sounding nearly identical to the bird as he voices its name while imitating its cry, although his
melodic contour is unlike that of the bird. “A-cau-ã, ’cau-ã, ’cau-ã, A-cau-ã,” he sings, alternating
between the syncopated cries and the bird’s rapid-fire laughs, between his unpitched, scratchy
falsetto and his singing voice.
In this recording of “Acauã,” Gonzaga captures the sound of the bird’s call, the emotion it provokes
in people from the Northeastern backlands, and its meaning in relation to traditional ecological
knowledge about rain and drought. For his audience of Northeastern migrants, his music would
have provided them with a nostalgic recollection of the sounds, feelings, and knowledge of the
region they left behind. But because of its national exposure, his interpretation of Northeastern
knowledge reached the ears of audiences that remained in the Northeast who could hear his music
in distinct, locally meaningful ways.

The Radio and Gonzaga’s Enduring Fame in Ceará

Over the mid-twentieth century, Gonzaga’s vision of the Northeast traveled across the nation
in large part due to the medium of the radio, making him an enduring index of the region for a
national audience. In his music and image, his Northeastern audiences heard and saw themselves,
while his fame valorized their region and regional identity on the national stage.
Brazil’s “golden age” of radio occurred between the mid-1930s and the mid-1950s (by one esti-
mate, 95 percent of households in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo owned radios by 1950 [see McCann
2004, 23]), and radios were a principle tool for the assimilation of Northeastern migrants in the
Southeastern cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. It allowed them to establish a connection with
national and urban life while still having access to sounds that reminded them of home, via shows
that specialized in rural musical traditions, including live, improvisatory cantoria duels.
Gonzaga, who first left his rural home in the Northeastern state of Pernambuco in 1930 to join
the army, moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1939 to pursue a career as a musician. In 1940, he started
appearing on “amateur hour” radio programs in which he performed popular music of the time,
including waltzes, fox trots, tangos, and choros. Although he initially achieved little success compet-
ing against better-skilled musicians who played similar styles, he ultimately realized he could take
advantage of the growing potential market for Northeastern music. His strategy to play music for
an audience of migrants from the Northeast followed a significant change in the Brazilian recording
industry of the 1930s, whereby the working class had acquired the ability (and desire) to consume
regional recordings and the industry responded by expanding, attracting American record labels,
and segmenting the market by region and genre (see Tinhorão 1998; Silva 2003).
By the late 1940s, his fame had spread nationally and his voice had become irrevocably associated
with the Northeastern backlands. He no longer made efforts to speak with a Rio de Janeiro accent, and
he fully adopted his Northeastern stage persona. He began touring, and he made radio and concert
appearances throughout the Northeast, also taking junkets to the region’s small towns. In November
1951, for example, he performed a series of live radio shows in Fortaleza, Ceará’s capital, making a
stop in the religious town of Canindé to make a vow to the local patron saint before returning home
to Rio de Janeiro.6 In April of 1953, he performed in a festival in the Cearense town of Iguatú around
the time local officials met to plan the construction of the town’s radio station.7 In May of that year, he
starred in a “radiophonic show” promoted by Fortaleza’s Rádio Iracema, and then appeared again in
June 1956 in Fortaleza in a radio special called the “Festa do Radialista.”8 Between 1946 and 1955 he
sold more records than any other Brazilian artist (Santos 2002, 54), and the baião—subsumed under
a broader genre called forró by the end of the 1950s and thereafter—was a national fad.
Gonzaga’s national popularity began to decline in the mid-1950s, precipitated by changes in
the nation’s political and cultural climates (Santos 2002, 62). In January 1956, Juscelino Kubitchek
assumed the presidency, and with him came plans to modernize and improve the Brazilian economy,
 BIRDSONG AND A SONG ABOUT A BIRD • 133

which included the expansion of the consumer economy. Sales of televisions soon eclipsed those
of radios, which were responsible for baião and forró’s success, and Elvis and rock and roll, as well
as samba and bossa nova, came to dominate the mediated soundscape (62–3). The front page of
Fortaleza’s newspaper, Jornal o Povo on December 29, 1956, featured an article that began, “Record
stores—where Bach mixes with Luiz Gonzaga—proliferate, national music loses ground, and a
tide of luck pushes the ship of adaptors of foreign music.” Northeastern regional music had lost its
national appeal to music from abroad.
Forró came to be seen as a folkloric Northeastern genre and Gonzaga’s career shifted primar-
ily to the Northeast, where he maintained only some of his fame. By 1960, when he returned to
Fortaleza to perform in a daylong celebration of the fifth anniversary of Rádio Iracema, he was
relegated to performing at 9:30 in the morning, finishing his brief thirty-minute set three hours
before João Gilberto “and his ‘bossa nova’” took the stage, and seven hours before the performance
of the headlining act, Carlos Nobre, a popular romantic balladeer of the time.9
Despite the decline in his popularity throughout the 1960s, Gonzaga had earned a lasting rep-
utation as an icon of the Northeast by the 1970s, and people in Ceará regarded him proudly. In
1975, he was made an honorary citizen of the Cearense town of Barbalha, and less than two months
later he was made an honorary citizen of the state of Ceará. One newspaper article that year said,
“The large amount that Luiz Gonzaga has done for Ceará and for the Northeast deserves to be
seen and highlighted, since he was always a defender of our music, of our tradition and customs,
publicizing Ceará and Cariri in all of his shows performed in Brazil.”10 Another article called him
“a true ambassador of Ceará.”11
Gonzaga died in 1989 at the age of seventy-six, but his reputation and his music remain legendary.
In September 2005, President Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva declared a “national day of forró.” The
decree, Law number 11.176, issued by President Lula and the Brazilian National Congress reads,
in part, “The thirteenth of December is hereby instituted as the ‘National Day of Forró,’ in homage
of the birthdate of musician Luiz Gonzaga do Nascimento, the ‘King of Baião.’” In Fortaleza in
December 2009, the city held a week of free concerts to celebrate the holiday. An article from Jornal
o Povo claimed the “national day of forró” was necessary to preserve forró, which it called a “perfect
amalgamation of the ethnic influences that compose the formation of our people,”12 a representation
of the Northeastern people themselves. Gonzaga’s songs were front and center in the concert series.

Rain Prophecy and the Performance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge

The Meeting of the Rain Prophets is held annually on the second Saturday of January in the city
of Quixadá in the interior of Ceará. At the event, rain prophecy is a performance of Northeastern
tradition and rural Northeasternness as much as it is an act of communicating practical knowl-
edge about rain and drought. “Rain prophet” is a social identity adopted by individuals who have
developed reputations for their mastery of traditional ecological knowledge and who perform their
predictions publicly, and thus it refers not to those who merely possess the appropriate knowledge
but to those who also have an aptitude for oration.
For many rain prophets, knowledge of weather and knowledge of sound are entwined. Birdsong,
as we have seen, is among the most common indicators of rain or drought. In addition to birdsong,
prophets observe the sounds of frogs, the direction in which birds construct their nests, the behavior
of ants, the time of year when flowers bloom, the arrangement of stars, and other natural patterns.
Rain prophet José Erismá listens to birdsong as one of his primary forecasting methods.13 He says:

On the first day of the year, at the passing of the thirty-first of December to the first of
January, the birds sing differently, like in a party, so they gather and make their show among
themselves since they are happy for the good year that will appear in the rainy season, in
134 • MICHAEL B. SILVERS

the wintry period in Ceará, and also because this is the Northeast. . . . They sing more. They
have a different song.
(Personal communication, José Erismá,
September 3, 2011, Quixadá, Ceará, Brazil)

When Erismá hears birds singing loudly in large flocks at the start of the year, he understands their
calls to be a sign of a good rainy season.
Like many rain prophets from Ceará, Erismá shares his predictions at the Meeting of the Rain
Prophets. Rain prophecy has involved the public performance of knowledge for at least two gen-
erations. Until the early twentieth century, predictions were often shared in markets; at religious,
athletic, and political meetings; and at other social gatherings (Taddei 2006). Rain prophet Erasmo
Barreira grew up watching his father predict to farmers in his home. The gatherings he attended
as a child were informal but nevertheless significant for local farmers as a source of information
and for establishing a sense of community. He says:

But I followed my father, my whole life at home. . . . They’d schedule a day in December, on
some Sunday or another Saturday in December, to talk about how it was going to be the next
year, the perspective for the next year, you know? And here it was as if it were a meeting of
any kind of official organization. And one person would argue, and another would say that
the rainy season wouldn’t be good because there wasn’t I-don’t-know-what, the prophecy
of whoever and such didn’t work . . . ninety percent [of the farmers] would go to hear my
father’s conversation, and I would go along.
(Ibid.)

Today’s rain-prophet identity resulted from the radio, where prophets could hone their skills in a
more formalized setting, making an art of public rain prognostication (Taddei 2006). Since 1997,
many prophets have performed their forecasts at the Meeting of the Rain Prophets, attended by
farmers, students, university professors, and the television and print news media that publicize the
findings. The event, which was founded and continues to be run by Hélder Cortez, is sponsored by
an organization called the Instituto de Pesquisa, Viola e Poesia do Sertão Central (The Institute of
Research, Viola, and Poetry of the Central Backlands), which also holds monthly cantoria concerts.
João Soares, who directs the organization, emphasized to me that he hosts the event not solely to
valorize rain prophecy over government weather forecasts but to celebrate the kinds of skills, talents,
and values that come from life in the Northeastern backlands (also see Pennesi 2007; Pennesi and
Souza 2012).14 He sees rain prophecy as a Northeastern tradition not unlike cantoria. Singer João
de Oliveira, who performed in a concert on the eve of the 2009 Meeting of the Rain Prophets, said,
referring to cantoria performers, “In some form, we are associated with those who have knowl-
edge of the weather. We certainly have importance for their [those who live in the Northeastern
backlands] daily lives (in Alex Pimentel, “Falsos profetas serão barrados em encontro,” Diário do
Nordeste [Fortaleza, CE], December 30, 2008). That same year, the Meeting of the Rain Prophets
opened with a song performed by Guilherme Calixto, who improvised a verse, excerpted below,
about the similarities between prophecy and poetry:

This great tradition affects even my spirit.

It seems as if the prophets follow the right path,
Because I wanted to give up my verse to become a prophet.
A prophet is almost a poet in the way he thinks and creates.
The poet thinks about verse and sacred poetry,
And the prophet acquires lessons about our daily lives.
(January 9, 2010, Quixadá, Ceará, Brazil)
 BIRDSONG AND A SONG ABOUT A BIRD • 135

Calixto, Soares, and Oliveira see rain prophecy as “traditional,” Northeastern, and poetic, even
likened to Northeastern music. It combines sensory knowledge of nature, including the perception
and interpretation of sound, with verbal performance to celebrate local senses of place and identity.

Rain Prophets and the Voice of Gonzaga

In 2009 and 2012, I attended the Meeting of the Rain Prophets in Quixadá, and I conducted inter-
views with rain prophets on a third occasion in 2011. Each time, rain prophets cited the lyrics of
songs by Gonzaga in their public speeches and private interviews. The citation of Gonzaga’s lyrics
by rain prophets when discussing rain prophecy can be explained by two similarities between rain
prophecy and Gonzaga’s music: (1) both are considered reliable sources of knowledge about the
Northeast, and 2) both are understood to be traditional and locally rooted forms of Northeastern
expression.15

Gonzaga as Recognizable and Authoritative Source

Because of Gonzaga’s national reputation and fame, his voice lends intelligibility and authority to
Northeastern knowledge. Rain prophet Erasmo Barreira referred to Luiz Gonzaga’s voice when
he explained to me that the call of the acauã is a common indicator of drought. I had asked him
if he knew of any examples of rain prophecy that involved sound and birdsong in particular. “The
’cauã,” he said, “is one of those occurrences that lots of times, that when she enters January singing
loudly in the bush, someone once said you call this an ‘augur’ [agouro], you know? Auguring [agou-
rando] that the rainy season won’t come. This is the ’cauã.”16 That “someone” who had described
the Laughing Falcon’s prophetic cry as “auguring,” he later clarified, was Luiz Gonzaga in his
recording of Zé Dantas’ song “Acauã.” (Personal communication, Erasmo Barreira, September 3,
2011, Quixadá, Ceará, Brazil.)
By explaining rain prophecy through the voice of Gonzaga, Barreira was able to frame his
knowledge in a context that most Brazilians, including those from outside the Northeast (and
perhaps even ethnomusicologists from abroad), could comprehend. I think it would be safe to say
that a majority of Brazilians today know of Gonzaga and his music; he is a cultural reference that
can help people make sense of the Northeast and its practices.
In addition, Barreira’s reference to Gonzaga’s voice added credibility to his knowledge. In our
conversation, it was not Barreira who said that when the laughing falcon sings loudly in January,
it is a sign that the rainy season won’t come. It was someone else—Gonzaga. I cite more senior
scholars to give my knowledge authority. Rain prophet Erasmo Barreira cited Gonzaga.

Gonzaga’s Songs as Local Expressive Tradition

Rain prophecy is more than a rural, hereditary form of weather forecasting. It is a form of local
knowledge that has been endorsed by Gonzaga as an index of the region and transmitted—through
his voice—in memories and on audio recordings. When I asked radio host and rain prophet Ribamar
Lima about the relationship between music and life in the rural Northeast, he incorporated the
lyrics of one of Gonzaga’s best-known songs in his response. For him, Gonzaga and rain prophecy
are both examples of traditions that are deeply rooted in the Northeastern experience. He said:

When you see an ant leaving a low place to find higher ground, it’s because it’s going to protect
itself. It knows. It has a God-given gift. When we see, for example, the mandacaru—which is
136 • MICHAEL B. SILVERS

a characteristic plant of the Northeast, a cactus—when it blooms during drought, it’s a sign
that rain has arrived in the backlands, which was said by Luiz Gonzaga. So these are small
things that we see, that we start to observe, that make sense, that work. Here we lack water
to drink, for home use, and for the animals to drink, which is the worst. Sometimes we have
to get water from far, from other states, because we have neither water nor pasture. So we
have eternal suffering. And from that comes the Northeastern lament.
(Personal communication, Ribamar Lima,
January 9, 2010, Quixadá, Ceará, Brazil.)

“When the mandacaru cactus blooms during drought, it is a sign the rain has arrived in the back-
lands,” Lima quotes. These words are the opening lyrics of the popular song, “Xote das Meninas”
(Girls’ Schottische) (1953), written by Luiz Gonzaga and Zé Dantas. The song, about the matu-
ration of an adolescent girl whose only interest is love, is now a standard part of the repertoire of
forró music. The flowering of the mandacaru cactus is, according to anthropologist Karen Pennesi,
among the most trusted forecasting methods among those she asked in Ceará (2007). To Lima,
these lyrics provided evidence for how Northeastern music and rain prophecy derive from the
needs and “eternal suffering” of the Northeasterner. For him, Gonzaga’s words were traditional,
local, and part of the experience of the region, rather than merely a reflection or representation
of it, underscoring the traditional and local nature of rain prophecy. That is, if Gonzaga said it is a
locally meaningful tradition, then it must be a locally meaningful tradition.
Rain prophecy is also a public performance with a Northeastern rhetorical aesthetic. Certain
metrical patterns of speech and internal rhymes, many of which derive from the poetic qualities of
cantoria and Northeastern cordel chapbook poetry, are present in both rain prophecy performances
and in Gonzaga’s music. Thus, Gonzaga’s songs and the discourse of rain prophecy are both rooted
in the expressive verbal traditions of the region. Both times I attended the Meeting of the Rain
Prophets, the performance of cantoria singing and the recitation of cordel poetry were integral to
event, and many of the rain prophets recited their forecasts in ways that were, themselves, poetic
and oratorical. At the Meeting of the Rain Prophets in 2012, a rain prophet held up a flower from
the mandacaru cactus and recited lyrics from “Xote das Meninas,” before announcing that a good
winter would come. His reference to Gonzaga heightened the expressive quality of his prediction
in a way that seemed quintessentially Northeastern. He said:

Last year I said the rainy season would begin in December, and that’s when it started. It
rained for eight months. This year it will already start to rain on the fifteenth of the month.
In January and February, however, it will rain only a little. Now, come March and April there
will be lots of rain, folks. It’s nature that’s telling us that. It’s the toad. It’s the spider. It’s the
crab. It’s the butterfly. It’s the birds. It’s the bee. And all of nature. . . .
Here’s the mandacaru flower. [He raised the flower with his right hand.] When Luiz Gonzaga
said in the song, “When the mandacaru flowers during drought, it’s a sign that rain will fall
in the backlands. And when the girl gets sick of her doll, it’s a sign that love has arrived in
her heart” . . . there will be rain. From the twentieth of January it will rain. In February, it
will only rain a little. And in March, April, and May, and June, everything will flood, and it
will be a great rainy season. It’s certain there will be rain.
(January 14, 2012, Quixadá, Ceará, Brazil. Name unknown.)

When he listed animals that indicate rain or drought, his voice alternated between two pitches,
more or less, intoning the name of the animal on the higher pitch. His words gradually fell into
a cadence and his voice grew in intensity. As he named each month it would rain, he shook the
cactus flower up and down, accentuating the stressed syllables in his speech, bringing the song’s
metaphorical lyrics into the present. The metrical and melodic quality of his speech, the physical
 BIRDSONG AND A SONG ABOUT A BIRD • 137

and visual performance with the flower, and his reference to Gonzaga made the presentation of his
prediction not only musical (not to mention local, traditional, illustrative, and authoritative), but
also emotional and convincing in a way that his local audience would comprehend.

On Mass-Mediated Acoustemologies and Ecological Knowledge

Luiz Gonzaga was not the only Brazilian musician to sing about the Northeast, nor even about
the region’s birds or its traditional ecological knowledge about rain and drought. But it was lyrics
to his songs that I heard uttered by rain prophets, and it was his music that I heard—and continue
to hear—in both expected and unexpected settings in Ceará. I have no reason to believe that rain
prophets learned their practice directly from Gonzaga’s songs, but I do believe that Gonzaga’s songs
help make rain prophecy meaningful for today’s rain prophets. His voice and his words still seem
authentically Northeastern, symbolizing tradition and local identity, because of his role in the
discursive construction of the Northeastern region, because of the semiotic density of his music,
layering musical sound with local knowledge, visual imagery, and linguistic and poetic tropes, and
because of his fame and legendary status.
When we study relationships between music and nature, there is much we can learn by studying
the ideologies, biographies, and practices of musicians. But we can also learn how music about the
environment affects listeners and their experience of the environment by studying such music’s
reception through historical and ethnographic research. Here, I have combined both approaches
by exploring Gonzaga, his music, and his reception in Ceará, as well as the music’s impact on pres-
ent-day rain prophets. I have shown that music that depicted a nostalgic (albeit harsh) vision of the
Northeastern Brazilian natural environment continues to have an influence on the transmission
of Northeastern traditional ecological knowledge.
Research on indigenous musics has shown how music can transmit applied knowledge about
nature. Yet the communication of traditional ecological knowledge through music is not merely the
domain of indigenous or traditional musics. It can also happen with commercial, popular music.
Acoustemologies must be learned, and are not acquired innately; the knowledge of place through
sound can be transmitted through mass mediation as much as it can through the oral tradition. In
this case, the commercial nature of Gonzaga’s music was central to its ability to reach Northeastern
audiences and affect individuals in the century long after the music was initially written and recorded.
This example, moreover, serves as a reminder that when we discuss music as a potentially
threatened element of our complex ecosystem, we must remember that, at least in some cases,
practices tied to the comprehension of nature or that are deeply rooted in local cultures can be
supported by—even created by—technology and commerce. Not only do rain prophets listen to
the radio, but the radio helped make today’s rain prophets, both in the sense that “rain prophet”
became a reified identity in part due to performing predictions on the radio, and also in the sense
that the radio helped transmit rain prophecy through Gonzaga’s music. Without overstating the
role of Gonzaga’s songs, I find the citation of his lyrics indicative of a relationship between local
acoustemologies, traditional ecological knowledge, and mainstream popular music, demonstrating a
process through which the transmission of knowledge about nature and sound came to be mediated
through popular music in ways that gave them an enduring aura of authenticity and embeddedness.

Notes
1. I use the term “traditional ecological knowledge” as it has been defined by Fikret Berkes, scholar of resource man-
agement, who describes it as “a cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive processes
and handed down . . . by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings . . . with one another and with
their environment” (2012, 7). Berkes writes, “Knowledge of the biophysical environment is embedded in the social
environment” (2012, 31). Indeed, it is even embedded in musical culture.
138 • MICHAEL B. SILVERS

2. The authorship of this song is disputed in the literature. Catulu da Paixão Cearense copyrighted the song, but it is
widely accepted now that it was written by João Pernambuco.
3. Both Vieira (2000, 45) and Loveless (2010, 223) mention the prevalence of birds in Gonzaga’s songs. Santos (2002,
122–126) describes the association between birds in his music and the Northeastern knowledge of drought, also briefly
mentioning birdsong in particular.
4. “Luiz Gonzaga Canta Acauã,” accessed October 17, 2010, www.luizluagonzaga.mus.br/ index.php?option=com_conten
t&task=view&id=648&Itemid=47.
5. Gonzaga is not the only Northeastern Brazilian musician to have sung about the laughing falcon. Dominguinhos,
often considered Gonzaga’s successor, praised the wisdom of the Northeastern people and their ability to recognize
drought from the laughing falcon’s call in his 1976 song, “O Canto de Acauã” (The Laughing Falcon’s Song). Clemilda,
a forró singer best known for her bawdy lyrics and double-entendres, attributes the opposite meaning to the bird’s
call in her 1977 song, “Canto do Acauã” (Song of the Laughing Falcon), in which she claims that the laughing falcon’s
song brings happiness and rain to the backlands. Relatedly, in his book Waiting for Rain, Nicholas Arons writes that
the laughing falcon’s call is a “symbol of hope and a harbinger of plentiful rain” in Ceará (2004, 5). In fact, according
to anthropologist Karen Pennesi, the laughing falcon’s call can have both meanings to present-day rain prophets in the
Northeast, depending on whether the bird sings while perched on a green branch or a dry branch (2007). Furthermore,
according to ornithologist Steven Hilty (2003), the laughing falcon’s vocalizations are most frequent during the rainy
season, and not periods of drought.
6. “Luiz Gonzaga vem novamente ao Ceará!” Jornal o Povo (Fortaleza, CE), November 5, 1951.
7. “Iguatú festejará o primeiro de maio,” Jornal o Povo (Fortaleza, CE), April 27, 1953.
8. “Hoje na festa do radialista estréia de Luiz Gonzaga o rei do baião,” Jornal o Povo (Fortaleza, CE), June 20, 1956.
9. Programa Irapuan Lima Rádio Iracema,” Jornal o Povo (Fortaleza, CE), July 2, 1960.
10. Luiz Gonzaga vai ser cidadão barbalhense.” Jornal o Povo (Fortaleza, CE), October 2, 1975.
11. “Luiz Gonzaga é afinal cearense.” Jornal o Povo (Fortaleza, CE), November 27, 1975.
12. “Sobre o forró.” Jornal o Povo” (Fortaleza, CE), December 12, 2009.
13. José Erismá (rain prophet and accountant), interview by the author, September 3, 2011.
14. The event was initially conceived to provide useful information for the management of local agribusiness and to send
a message to the government that local forecasts should be considered in decisions regarding the distribution of seeds
(Taddei 2006, 2012).
15. My experience with the rain prophets was not unique, and I can assume they did not mention Gonzaga in my presence
simply because they knew I was researching Northeastern music. Anthropologist Karen Pennesi, who has conducted
extensive ethnographic research with the rain prophets, writes that rain prophet Chico Leiteiro often sang for her the
songs of Gonzaga “inspired by the topic or lesson of the moment” (Pennesi 2007, 49).
16. Erasmo Barreira (rain prophet, radio announcer, retiree), interview by the author, September 3, 2011, Quixadá, Ceará.

References
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Editora Massangana.
Arons, Nicholas Gabriel. 2004. Waiting for Rain: The Politics and Poetry of Drought in Northeast Brazil. Tucson: University
of Arizona Press.
Barkley, Ben, C. Rodríguez-Flores, C. Soberanes-González, and M. C. Arizmendi. 2012. “Laughing Falcon (Herpetotheres
cachinnans).” Neotropical Birds Online, T. S. Schulenberg, ed. Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; retrieved from
Neotropical Birds Online. http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/portal/species/overview?p_p_spp=132596
Berkes, Fikret. 2012. Sacred Ecology. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge.
Feld, Steven. 1991. “Voices of the Rainforest.” Public Culture 4(1): 131–140.
Feld, Steven. 2012 [1982]. Sound and Sentiment Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression, 3rd ed. with a new
introduction by the author. Durham: Duke University Press.
Guy, Nancy. 2009. “Flowing Down Taiwan’s Tamsui River: Towards an Ecomusicology of the Environmental Imagination.”
Ethnomusicology 53(2): 218–248.
Hilty, Steven L. 2003. Birds of Venezuela. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Impey, Angela. 2002. “Culture, Conservation And Community Reconstruction: Explorations in Advocacy Ethnomusicology
and Participatory Action Research in Northern Kwazulu-Natal”. Yearbook for Traditional Music 34: 9–24.
Koch, Grace. 2013. We Have the Song, So We Have the Land: Song and Ceremony as Proof of Ownership in Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Land Claims. Research Discussion Paper No. 33. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Lomax, Alan. 1977. “Appeal for Cultural Equity.” Journal of Communication 27(2): 125–138.
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tation, Harvard University.
Loveless, Megwen. 2012. “Between the Folds of Luiz Gonzaga’s Sanfona: Forró Music in Brazil.” In The Accordion in the
Americas, Helena Simonett, ed., 268–294. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
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249–262.
McCann, Bryan. 2004. Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music and the Making of Modern Brazil. Durham: Duke University Press.
Pedelty, Mark. 2008. “Woody Guthrie and the Columbia River: Propaganda, Art, and Irony.” Popular Music and Society
31(3): 329–355.
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Pennesi, Karen. 2007. The Predicament of Prediction: Rain Prophets and Meteorologists in Northeast Brazil. Ph.D. disserta-
tion, University of Arizona.
Pennesi, Karen and Carla Renata Braga da Souza. 2012. “The Annual Meeting of Rain Prophets in Quixadá, Ceará: The
Circulation of Discourses in the Invention of a Tradition.” Horizontes Antropológicos 38: 159–186.
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sileira de Difusão Cultural Ltda.
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257–280.
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 9
Music, Environment, and
Place in Kam Big Song1
Catherine Ingram

In 2009, the most well-known musical tradition of China’s Kam (in Chinese, 侗 Dong) minority
group—the multi-part choral singing tradition usually referred to in English as “big song”—was
inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (see
Grand Song 2009). In the principal document provided for big song’s nomination, Chinese scholars
and officials state that:

The grand song [i.e. big song] is the Dong people’s “encyclopedia.” It narrates their history,
extols the belief in the “unity between humanity and nature,” disseminates scientific knowl-
edge, sings [sic] the honest love between men and women, and advocates social virtues like
respecting the elders and taking good care of one’s neighbor. . . .The performance shows also
the Dong’s search for the ideal of a “unity between humanity and nature.”
(UNESCO Nomination for inscription 2009, 2)

This chapter explores the idea that a unity or connection between people and their environment
(the latter here broadly interpreted to also include “place,” but in the statement above considered
more narrowly as “nature”) might be reflected in music, and investigates if and how these con-
nections occur in Kam big song singing from southwestern China. As detailed below, big song is
an important choral song genre that is sung mainly in Kam, a Tai-Kadai language with no widely
used written form. In Kam communities, singing has of necessity been a primary means by which
important information has been recorded and passed down, and for this reason could be likened
to both an encyclopedia and a way of disseminating scientific knowledge—while also having par-
ticular cultural and social significance.
The connections between the environment and the music of many of the world’s communities
constitute a relatively well-researched theme.2 Yet it is the specific ways in which songs might
connect people to their environment, or maintain or disseminate important knowledge (often
including knowledge about the environment), or, as it is claimed in this case, “demonstrate a
belief in unity between humanity and nature,” that are interesting, important, and worthy of

141
142 • CATHERINE INGRAM

attention. An exploration of these connections in relation to big song is instructive, as it illus-

trates a particular combination of ways in which music and the environment can be under-
stood to intersect and also includes almost all the connections found in the many different
Kam song genres. It shows that music-environment connections are interesting especially for
how they can help deepen understandings of not only musical traditions but also indigenous
conceptualizations of the environment and culturally specific worldviews. The connections
provide further evidence to demonstrate the complex significance of musical traditions and
promote understanding of the possible effects of recent major changes both to music and the
environment. In the Kam context, enhanced understanding of these connections offers a better
foundation for developing ways to promote big song singing amidst the many sociocultural
changes that characterize big song’s twenty-first century context (Ingram et al. 2011; Ingram
2012a, 2012b; Ingram and Wu 2017).
The connections between big song and the environment that are described and analyzed
in this chapter draw upon my extensive musical ethnographic research in Kam communi-
ties, and particularly in my main fieldsite of Sheeam (in Chinese, Sanlong 三龙) in Liping
黎平 County, southeastern Guizhou (see map, Figure 9.1, which also shows the main areas

Figure 9.1 Map of China, showing Guizhou and Hunan Provinces and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The main area
of Kam residence is shaded grey. Inset: Diagram showing the approximate distribution of the Kam population in 2010 (based
upon data from Guowuyuan renkou 2012).
Map and diagram by Wu Jiaping (used with permission)
 MUSIC, ENVIRONMENT, AND PLACE • 143

of Kam residence in eastern Guizhou, Hunan Province, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous
Region). Consequently, my use of the word Kam here pertains particularly to the people of
Sheeam and the surrounding big-song-singing region, and my transcriptions of Kam words
(which appear throughout in italics) are based upon the pronunciation of those words in
the Sheeam variant of the second lect of Southern Kam—a Tai-Kadai language completely
different from Chinese.3
My understanding of the Sheeam repertoire derives from more than twenty-four months’
musical ethnographic research I conducted in Sheeam (alongside short visits to many other Kam
areas) between 2004 and 2016.4 I participated in as many aspects of daily village life as possible—
including learning to speak the local variant of the Kam language, learning to sing Kam songs,
and being invited to sing with village singing groups in numerous performances.5 I also regularly
took part in most other daily tasks, including farming and foraging on the mountainsides. In using
this methodology, my research has drawn upon information derived from personal experience
and understanding of Kam village life, from personal study and performance of Kam songs, from
informal interviews and discussions with a large range of different villagers that took place within
the context of a shared daily lifestyle, and from the regular and lengthy discussions I held with
different village song experts concerning the appropriate rendition, understanding, and translation
of Kam songs and/or song lyrics. Additionally, my research also involved and was informed by my
collaboration with Kam villagers to create what is, to my knowledge, the first archive of recordings
of these Kam songs.6
Songs within the big song genre reveal connections with the environment and the broader
context of place in many different ways. In this chapter, following some background on Kam areas
and music, I consider the various different types of connections that are apparent within big song
lyrics. I then discuss three other important forms of connections: vocal imitation of the sounds
of features of the natural environment (exemplifying sonic connections between music and the
environment); the categorization of big song repertoires according to their place of origin (exem-
plifying important connections between big song and the humanly constructed environment); and
occasional performances of big song for unseen, non-human figures (exemplifying connections
between big song and Kam perceptions of the environment). The connections between the envi-
ronment, Kam cosmology, and Kam musical aesthetics are also significant and are pervasive in all
these areas, as detailed in the concluding discussion.

Rural Kam Areas: Natural Environment and Inhabited Place

The area of southeastern Guizhou within which big songs were created and are sung is classified
as subtropical. It is a mountainous region—apart from several broad river plains—and at an
elevation of between approximately 500 and 1,200 meters. The often mist-clad mountains are
threaded through with streams and small rivers, and at varying intervals compact villages consist-
ing of (mainly wooden) houses, tall pagoda-shaped dare low (sometimes referred to in English as
“drum towers”7), covered bridges, and village gates have been built, usually alongside waterways.
The mountainsides are covered in terraced rice-fields alternating with forest in which China fir
(Cunninghamia lanceolata) and pine (Pinus massoniana) predominate, and are dotted with natural
springs (see Figure 9.2).
Not only is there intensive rice-farming and other forms of agriculture on the plains and moun-
tain slopes, but the mountains and rivers also remain a source of many wild foods and medicines.
The animal life sought, primarily for food, variously includes mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, and
insects. A wide range of plant forms—from roots, bark, stems, and leaves to fruits (pictured in
144 • CATHERINE INGRAM

Figure 9.2 View of the landscape of the Sheeam region

Photograph by the author (December 2010)

Figure 9.3), nuts, fungi, and edible algae—are also collected for medicinal use or human consump-
tion.8 Many of the farming techniques mentioned in some big songs are, as discussed below, still
practiced by Kam villagers today. According to a government report from late 2009, the Sheeam
region (from which the repertoire I discuss here originates) is designated as a “Biologically Diverse
Nature Protection Area” by the Liping county government.9
The environment of Kam regions is not only a natural environment but also an inhabited place
wherein domestic agriculture and housing are the most obvious of signs of human habitation. Other
indications of the ways in which people actively interact with their “natural” environment include
tree planting (mainly through government-sponsored schemes designed to prevent erosion), tree
felling (for firewood collection, house building, and charcoal making), and water control (usually for
flooding fields or trapping fish or other water creatures). On the edges of some of the highest-placed
rice-fields are other signs: long branches of dead trees arranged at odd intervals pointing upwards.
The branches are painted with a sticky liquid and placed into position by some local men, who use
them to catch wild birds.10 The placement of the public village structures that are characteristic of
Kam residential communities, such as dare low, houses to the female deity Sa (nyan Sa), covered
bridges (jee hwa), and arch-like village gates (jai men), also create an environment that is humanly
constructed and shaped in specific ways (see Figure 9.4).
Kam people also consider their environment to include important forms of non-human habita-
tion that are variously connected to the natural and humanly inhabited environment. One aspect
of this is the requirement for human movement within the environment to be undertaken in ways
that do not impede the movement of a person’s spirit together with them (and thus do not cause
 MUSIC, ENVIRONMENT, AND PLACE • 145

Figure 9.3 Wild berries collected on a hillside in Sheeam

Photograph by the author (December 2010)

the person harm). For example, on each trip when my Sheeam friends and I returned to Sheeam
across the natural pass which forms a border between the Sheeam region and the neighboring
region of Keen and Go, my friends always needed to spit onto the ground and repeat certain lines11
to ensure that their spirit was not left on the pass and that it traveled home with them. Another
aspect of non-human habitation concerns the rituals performed and/or offerings placed at the
locations believed to house local deities or spirits—variously, covered bridges, small paths and
walkways, and particular natural locations.12 A further aspect relates to the Kam belief that some
146 • CATHERINE INGRAM

Figure 9.4 The humanly constructed Kam village environment: Jai Lao, the largest village in Sheeam
Photograph by the author (December 2014)

non-human figures are influenced by the occurrence of particular forms of singing in particular
locations, and the responses of those figures can affect the lives and environment of the singers.
For example, the response of non-human figures that “owned” the space in which the big songs
were sometimes sung, or were believed to be pleased when big song singing took place in a space
with which the figure was associated, were considered to have the ability to influence the future
and fortunes of the singers and/or their community.

Big Song and Other Kam Song Genres

Big song is the usual English name for a genre of choral songs originating within a small group
of Kam communities that are now home to about 4 percent of the whole Kam population.13 The
songs are also known by the Chinese name dage 大歌, which is one of many possible translations
of the Kam name for one of the many choral song categories (known in Kam as ga lao) and also
the source for the genre’s name in its English translation. Like most other Kam song genres, big
songs are mainly sung in the Kam dialect of the region.
The primary difference between big song and the many other Kam song genres lies in the songs’
musical structure. Big songs are the only Kam songs to consistently involve two simultaneous vocal
lines. The songs are performed by groups of singers: The lower vocal line (wair may) is sung by
most of the singers in the group, while the solo introductions to song sections (chee ga) and the
 MUSIC, ENVIRONMENT, AND PLACE • 147

upper vocal line (wair say) are sung by individual singers. Only men’s big songs from one small
big-song-singing region involve instrumental accompaniment, provided by one singer playing a
large beeba (a Kam four-stringed plucked lute; see Ingram and Wu 2014). Songs range in length
from two or three to fifteen or even twenty minutes, and each village or region has its own unique
big song repertoire that is divided into various categories that also differ between regions. In
the original village performance context, big songs were always sung by a group of people of the
same sex (usually between four and ten people), and were never conducted.
Big song is also distinctive amongst Kam song genres as it provides the most comprehensive
range of examples of the connections between Kam singing and the environment. Of the very few
aspects of these connections that are not found in big song, the three outlined briefly below are
perhaps most important. They concern the distinctive lyrical content of ga kwaow (“wine songs”);
the distinctive performance context for ga bai-jin (“going to the mountain songs”); and the dis-
tinctive genre names used for ga bai-jin and ga nya (“river songs”).

Ga Kwaow: The Enumeration of Edible Plants and Animals

While the lyrical content of big song includes the names of many local plants and animals, only in
the song genre called ga kwaow (“wine songs”) are edible local plants and animals extensively and
regularly enumerated in some detail. The performance context for this genre—a sung exchange
between guests and hosts during important meals—requires typically modest apologies sung by
hosts to their guests about the supposedly poor quality of the meal, and in this process the hosts
often list the local foods they have (usually, they claim, unsuccessfully) attempted to gather from
the nearby hillsides and rivers:

Visitors come to our house, and eat wild fern14

We have little to offer, and nothing we can do about it
The meat is completely finished, so we can only serve vegetables
There is no jay [a type of edible insect] in the river, and we looked and found no fish
The hillsides are rocky so no mushrooms will grow
Only one bamboo shoot, and no eggplants in the vegetable patch
We have no songs, and nothing to offer you
So we made this song, especially to offer respectfully to you

The musical aspects of these songs seem relatively subservient to this lyrical focus. Compared to
other Kam song genres, these songs tend to have a regular rhythm, limited vocal range, and rela-
tively minimal melodic and rhythmic complexity. The lyrics are sometimes humorous and always
intended to convey either modest apologies or praise for members of the other party. They are
sung either individually or in small, impromptu groups, and Kam social pressures often dictate
that all members of the host and guest parties will sing at least one song during the song exchange
in order to properly express their feelings towards either their visitors or hosts.

Ga Bai-Jin: A “Natural” Performance Context

Almost all genres of Kam songs, including big songs, are sung indoors or within the village area
(as marked by physical structures such as village gates and bridges). The one exception is the genre
called ga bai-jin (literally, “going to the mountain songs”): solo songs that are sung when working
or walking on the mountains. These songs have a relatively free manner of delivery, with the use of
high and rising pitches at occasional junctures likely to help facilitate the melody carrying across a
narrow valley to those working on the mountainsides opposite. Not only are these songs the only
Kam songs designed and intended for singing while the singer is actually located in the natural
148 • CATHERINE INGRAM

environment, but the intended physical location of the singer of these songs is further emphasized
by the fact that the playing of a tree leaf (chooee ba may; see Ingram 2014), can occur when these
songs are sung. Sometimes, the tree leaf player may also be the singer of the song, who alternates
between singing and playing. At other times, the leaf player could be someone responding to the
singing.15

Ga Bai-Jin and Ga Nya: Genre Names Referencing the Natural Environment

Kam song genres and categories within song genres are named in a range of different ways, but only
two genres have names that directly reference the environment—the abovementioned “going to the
mountain songs” (ga bai-jin), and “river songs” (in Kam, ga nya). River songs probably originated
in the Kam villages of the Fulu river area of Sanjiang county, Guangxi, hence their name. They are
solo songs and featured in young people’s private evening singing and courting (com), as sometimes
also did “going to the mountain songs.”16

Big Song: Environment, Place, and Lyrical Content

Songs within the big song genre reveal connections with the environment and place in many
different ways; here I begin by exploring the various different types of connections that are
apparent within big song lyrics. Big song lyrics involve words, topics, and ideas with a variety of
different associations with the environment or place. Some lyrics provide instruction in under-
standing, managing, and caring for the natural environment, while some concern the “place” of
the singers by positioning them in relation to key features of the social and built environment.
In other instances, various uses of metaphors in the song lyrics draw upon aspects of the natural
environment and place, and allow insights into how people’s place within their surrounding
environment is felt and experienced.

Big Song Lyrics: Informational and Instructional Content

On many occasions, Sheeam singers explained that one of the most important tasks of big song is
to educate the community—and, in fact, the most important category of big songs in Sheeam is
considered to be the category of instructional songs, known in the Sheeam repertoire as ga shee-
ang or ga lao.17 The lyrics to the songs in this category sometimes include instruction regarding
environmental management and agricultural practices and often, as in this example, also describe
the intensive labor of rice farming and other local agricultural tasks:

We must work, but we don’t know how to work hard

When it comes to the time to buy a mattock in the second month
[i.e. to start work again after the winter rest period]
We quickly get a sore arm
And how could anyone have known that that year the wind pushes
all the rice down and it doesn’t ripen
Carry a little fresh manure to give the rice seedlings in the field
People with dry fields: keep them wet during winter
People with fields near the stream: don’t be lazy
Fields with fish, or algae [for feeding pigs] must have all the cold water let out
People who work fields in hollows in the mountain
We must also carry lots of manure [to the fields]
We must not like “hanging around” [doing nothing], but must work hard18
 MUSIC, ENVIRONMENT, AND PLACE • 149

Many of the farming tasks mentioned in this song continue to be performed by Kam villagers.
Besides the continued use of manure for fertilizer and the ongoing importance of water control
and irrigation, Kam people still collect algae from rice-fields to feed the domestic pigs, and
continue to raise fish in rice-fields using time-honored methods. This and similar songs with
instructive content not only complement and assist in retaining such long-standing farming
techniques, but also illustrate and instruct in the human effort required in these environmental
management tasks.
In songs, instruction in agricultural tasks is combined with the transmission of specific under-
standings of the natural environment (including, here, the classification system underlying Kam
conceptions of the environment, wherein the “singing birds and insects” are collectively referred
to as nyang lak):

The first month comes around, springtime returns

The almanac19 tells us to prepare the fields to plant
Plants and nyang lak [singing birds and insects] tell us to dig the fields
From our gains, in the future we will have rice-stores full of rice20

Some big song lyrics interweave ideas and information about social and physical location with
other topics, including environmental knowledge. In the song below, the singers refer to the typical
distance in residence between prospective marriage partners, as well as farming tasks for the year.
The category name for this big song, ga Gao-sn (“Gao-sn song”), also references place by indicating
the song originates from the village called Gao-sn and has somehow made its way into the Sheeam
repertoire (an issue further discussed below):

I am in my village, [I] hear friends

Talk about people in faraway places. You are in your village
[I] hear friends talk about people in faraway places
[And] say you are already married
[We are] each in our own villages, [we] don’t know if you boys are already married or old
[We are] too busy working and have no time to come and see you
The third month is about to arrive and there is still more work
The fifth month is about to begin and there is still rice to be planted
For twelve months of the year I always feel tired
[If I] marry you, [you] must always be honest. . .21

Big Song Lyrics: Metaphor

Kam songs in all genres are replete with lyrical metaphor and, according to Kam song experts,
metaphor has a central role in giving “depth” to Kam songs. Metaphor involving the natural envi-
ronment is particularly common, and in all song genres operates in both relatively obvious and
more oblique ways. Within the instructionally oriented ga sheeang big song category, environment-
related lyrical metaphor may occur at any point in the song lyrics and is frequently used to represent
philosophical concepts. The following example uses trees to represent the passage of life and is a
theme that recurs quite frequently in various Kam song contexts. In this song, the branches of the
tree are used to represent human life:

In our lifetime, we don’t know how the future will be

We only know each day as it finishes
The day we know is only the present day
We see trees on the high mountain
150 • CATHERINE INGRAM

The central shoot or the branches break off

Many, many break
Our lifetime is not long, and we see others die one by one22

The use of plant life such as trees as a metaphor for understanding human life emphasizes the depth
of Kam familiarity with features of the surrounding environment, as well as suggesting that Kam
people consider life and the environment to be comparable entities. The mention of trees in this
regard is particularly notable, as the centuries-old Kam perception of certain trees as sacred is well
known (see, for example, Eisenberg et al. 2009, 98). The example below gives an indication of how
trees are also mentioned in a metaphorical sense in other song genres—here, in ga kwao. In this
song, the descriptions of the movement of the leaves of local plants blowing in the wind are used
as an analogy for the singer’s experiences in present and future lifetimes:

Along the top of the path

The leaves of the gwee-oo [tree]23 blow [in the wind]
Along the bottom of the path
The leaves of the wild fern blow [in the wind]
See the wind blow that way, [you] are husband to another
See the wind blow back around [i.e. next lifetime], [you] are husband to me

While trees are an aspect of the environment that has particular significance to Kam people and
feature regularly in song lyrics, other important natural features such as mountains and water—
which, like trees, are of great importance in rural Kam life—feature frequently as well. In the
following example, another big song from the ga sheeang category, the changes in mountains and
water are used to represent and understand the life and death of people of different generations.
The limits in the comparability of the two is also addressed, as the ongoing existence of the natural
environment is used to contrast with the limited lifetimes of people:

If the mountain-top does not fall, the valley between the peaks will fall
If the mountain-top falls and covers the valley, the water cannot flow
If the mountain-top falls and covers the field, one is very sad
If the mountain falls and blocks the stream it can flow around
There is really no path but towards death24

In other songs in this big song category, observations of the natural environment and ideas of com-
parability of living forms are quite commonly used as a metaphor for human rebirth. In the song
below, humans and other features within the environment—varieties of fish, a cow, fertilizer—are
described as interchangeable forms, also suggesting that within Kam cosmology people do not see
themselves as having a superior or controlling role in relation to nature:

Heavy rain and waters rush out of the hole in the field
Lots of baby fish are lifted out of the water
After this life we are lifted on to the next
I am like a ba beng [fish] that cannot bear to leave the weng [fish]
We see our friends go to bak shoy-ee [in-between world]
And don’t know which place they are taken to [for the next life]
When friends die first, we feel unsettled and troubled
[Knowing] later it will be our turn
And perhaps we will find ourselves in a filthy, manure-filled cow pen
We have food to eat and clothes to wear
 MUSIC, ENVIRONMENT, AND PLACE • 151

So we shouldn’t be stingy
We see the Emperor in the Imperial Court
Later he too will provide fertiliser for the grass
The life of a person is not long
If you don’t sing, it is a real pity25

As well as metaphor functioning in the ways discussed so far, it also features in big song in a struc-
tured manner that is comparable to the “metaphorical opening” (in Chinese, bixing比兴) literary
technique26 widely employed in other Chinese poetic forms. The environmental feature appears
as a metaphor in the initial section of the song lyrics, and only in subsequent verses or sections is
the implication of the metaphor revealed. For example:

You good and respected men,27 like a flower about to open

Take your time to look at this flower like a lotus
If the lotus is in the center of the pool then I/we cannot reach it
Now you have become husbands to others, and you just give me some [empty] words28

The big song category known as ga ma makes extensive use of a technique comparable to this
“metaphorical opening” model, and sometimes in ways only possible for Kam song experts to
interpret. In the following big song from the ga ma category, the metaphor used in the first verse
mentions two different local plants as well as the topographical features of mountains and valleys.
According to Kam song experts, this verse emphasizes timeliness—through the timeliness of
collecting stalks of mulberry so that the leaves can be utilized at the right time to feed female silk-
worm caterpillars—and that one must find a partner when one is young, at the appropriate time.
The second verse, while explaining the first, also makes much mention of environmental features
including imitation of the sound of water flowing down the stream. In a manner typical of songs
in this category, it obliquely praises the group to whom it is sung by suggesting that the singers of
the song could never be good enough to impress those to whom they are singing:

[Verse 1]
Ramie29 dies once reaching a certain height, but the mountains never become old
Go to collect mulberry stalks in the second month in the valley
[2] Why do you trick me and tell me that you do not have a wife?
One day you and your wife went to work together in the fields on the high mountain
The water goes down the gully in the rice-fields and down the stream
The water flows woy-ii woy-ii down the stream
The two different cicadas are calling out to each other happily
And you will forget me30

Big Song: Vocal Imitation of Environmental Sounds

Some big songs, primarily those classified within the category known as ga sor (“sor songs”),31 often
involve melodic lines imitating the sounds of birds or insects. This mimetic connection between
singing and natural sounds parallels the many other singing traditions found in vastly disparate
regions worldwide that also feature sounds imitative of those of the natural environment. These
traditions include the singing of Kaluli people in Papua New Guinea (Feld 2012[1990]), certain
song genres of the Navajo and other American Indian groups (Frisbie 1980), some indigenous
Australian song genres such as the manikay of Yolngu people in northeastern Arnhem Land
(Knopoff 1992), and the forms of katajjaq (usually involving so-called throat-singing) performed
152 • CATHERINE INGRAM

Figure 9.5 The Cicada referred to in Kam as numleng or leng-lee (Probably Pomponia linearis [Walker]),
Photographed in Sheeam
Photograph by the author (October 2009)

by various groups around the Arctic Circle—such as Canadian Inuit, and Chukchi and other
Siberian peoples (Nattiez 1999).
Within the Sheeam repertoire, three of the songs in the ga sor category closely imitate the sounds
of the three different cicadas known in Kam as neng, jee-yot and numleng (pictured in Figure 9.5).32
In the following lyrics to these three cicada songs, the vocables (meaningless song syllables) imi-
tating the sound of each cicada are given in bold. In the first two songs, in particular, the sound
imitation is used for emotional effect—especially in ga neng, where the sound neng made by the
cicada is likened to a child calling nay (“mother”).
Ga neng:
[Verse 1]
Today I went to the mountain
[I] did not hear any baby birds call
[Only] heard a neng [cicada] crying nay [mother]
Neng a neng, nnnnnnneng. . . .
[repeated many times, followed by concluding vocables]
 MUSIC, ENVIRONMENT, AND PLACE • 153

[2] Crying nay

On a branch at the top of the liquidambar tree33
Neng a neng, nnnnnnneng. . . .
[repeated many times, followed by concluding vocables]
[3] [The cicada] crying nay at the top of the liquidambar is not as old as me
No one comes to ask me to marry them, and it makes my heart sad

Ga jee-yot:

[Verse 1]
Pressing down to become ee34
The water goes down the River Jee in Yondong
Pushing the limestone rocks
Yot-jee-ma yot-jee-ma jee-yot, jee-yot . . .
[repeated many times, followed by concluding vocables]
[2] Every day I miss you and think of you
Like a jee-yot [cicada] calling from the wor tree on the mountain pass
Yot-jee-ma yot-jee-ma jee-yot, jee-yot . . .
[repeated many times, followed by concluding vocables]
[3] Like the way the two parts of the door lock miss each other
I miss you all the time and never smile

Ga numleng:
[Verse 1]
Listen, I sing the numleng [cicada] song for you to hear
Sing the numleng song for you to hear, listen
Leng lair-lair-lair-lee, Leng lair-lair-lair-lee. . .
[repeated many times, followed by concluding vocables]
[2] When the third month arrives, the numleng calls
By the middle of the ninth month the numleng worries that it will die
Leng lair-lair-lair-lee, Leng lair-lair-lair-lee . . .
[repeated many times, followed by concluding vocables]
[3] Where is the numleng? We cannot see it
We sing the numleng song
But our sound is not coordinated

Not only do these songs involve obvious imitation of the sounds of the Kam environment, but
they also describe many aspects of that environment—including types of trees, their location,
and the typical life-cycle of insects. The lyrics to Ga baet nu-wet (“Song of the eighth month”),
another song in this category that is quoted below, use several of the above-mentioned features.
These lyrics imitate the sound of a bird (dugu, dugu), use a technique similar to the “metaphorical
opening” to introduce the main topic of the song, link the actions of insects to a particular time
of year and use this to emotive effect, and also describe the birds and insects (and their sounds)
within the natural environment:

[Verse 1]
In the eighth month, the weather is fine
A pair of crickets jumping high
Dugu dugu, call a friend . . . (vocables)
154 • CATHERINE INGRAM

[2] People who know, know what to call it

People who really do not know, do not know what to call it
Dugu dugu, call a friend . . . (vocables)
[3] Why don’t you give me the pair of grass sandals that you bring with you?
Others are friends with you
Tonight you are whispering together like worms35 [i.e. I am left out]

The imitation of sounds of the environment is not confined to songs, but also appears in some of
the deeuu, the lines that the groups singing big song in the dare low chant to praise each other’s
singing at particular points during a song exchange:

Your songs are good, really good,

Like a cicada calling from the top of the dare low
Ngor-ngwet, ngor-ngwet
Quick, sing more, husbands of others!

Big Song: Singing and the Inhabited Environment

Big song is also explicitly connected to concepts of humanly inhabited place through the forma-
tion and naming of the various big song categories. Big song repertoires of different regions—and
different villages—contain different songs and different song categories. During the traditional big
song singing in Kam villages at lunar new year, when big song groups from two or more different
regions meet and take turns to sing big songs, regionally-based musical and linguistic differences
between the groups are invariably quite evident, and thus the importance of place to these reper-
toires is clear. However, the importance of place is explicitly referenced when songs are shared from
one region to another, as the shared big song (or even shared big song category) retains the name
of its place of origin in the name by which the song or category is known within the community.
Thus, the big song known as Ban bao juuee (“Friends say you are proud”), the most well-known ga
sheeang category big song from the Sheeam region, is placed in the category known as ga Sheeam
(“Sheeam song”) when it is sung within other regional repertoires (albeit, often sung with a very
different melody and rhythm).
A particularly interesting feature of this music and place connection is the way in which it
intersects with cultural and symbolic capital, and is thus a music-place connection that can be
used for gain. Evidence for this intersection became clear when I visited the village of See Wang
(in Chinese, Xiao Huang小黄), more than a day’s walk from Sheeam, and learned how the above-
mentioned Sheeam song Ban bao juuee came to be part of the See Wang repertoire. According to
both See Wang and Sheeam singers, more than twenty-five years ago some Sheeam people went
to See Wang after many of the houses and rice stores in Sheeam burned down during a huge fire.
The Sheeam singers were able to teach this big song in exchange for receiving rice from the See
Wang villagers, and the song subsequently entered the See Wang repertoire.
The abovementioned Sheeam song classified as ga Gao-sn exemplifies the entry of big song from
other regional repertoires into the repertoire of Sheeam. While no one I consulted in Sheeam could
conclusively state how songs from the relatively distant village of Gao-sn (in Chinese, Gaozeng 高
增) might have become known in Sheeam, some speculated that they might have been brought to
Sheeam by a few Gao-sn villagers who are believed to have relocated to Sheeam many generations
ago following difficulties in their home village.36 While the songs that move into other repertoires
may now not be identical—or even very similar—to those in their village of origination, the fact
that the name of the village of origin is retained as a marker for songs which are from outside the
village serves to underline the persistence of important connections between big song and place.
 MUSIC, ENVIRONMENT, AND PLACE • 155

Big Song: Singing and the Non-Human Inhabited Environment

The occasional performances of big song that are intended primarily for unseen, non-human
figures indicate the existence of connections between music and the non-humanly inhabited
environment. The non-human figures involved in such situations comprise a group of big song
listeners who do not appear to actually be present at the singing, but who are nevertheless under-
stood by villagers to be participating in listening to the musical activity (see Ingram 2013). The
singing for/to them takes place at a location with which they are associated—either by the figure
being considered to “own” the space in which the big songs are sung (such as the female deity
Sa owning “Sa’s house”), or by being considered to be pleased when big song singing takes place
in a space with which the figure is associated (such as particular spirits associated with smaller
dare low or covered bridges). Only very rarely in more private situations did I hear comments
articulated about these “listening” participants. For example: “We haven’t sung for/to Sa, we
must get our group to go to sing at Sa’s house one night. . . .We used to sing on the bridge, for/
to the Gong Bu (ancestral father) of the bridge . . .”37
Singing directed towards figures in the non-human inhabited environment is also evident in
other instances of Kam music-making, especially in the massed circle-singing for Sa which is the
key Kam event for welcoming the new lunar year. The non-human figure is not expected to deliver
any obvious response to the singing, but by the singing being carried out appropriately and without
hindrances it is considered to have a general, auspicious effect on the singers and their community.

Concluding Discussion

Pervasive through these various connections between big song singing, place, and the environment
are aspects of Kam worldview that demonstrate the interdependency of music, place, and features
of the natural world38 in less obvious but equally important ways. In other cultures, such relation-
ships may be expressed quite explicitly. For example, Steven Feld has explained how birds—and
hence their calls—are perceived by Kaluli people to “become a metaphoric human society, and
their sounds come to stand for particular forms of sentiment and ethos” ([1990] 2012, p. 31). In
the Kaluli context, the metaphorical society exists because of:

the Kaluli notion that two coextensive realities, one visible, one a reflection, make up the
world. . . . Upon death, a person’s wild pig or cassowary mama “reflection” disappears from
the mountain mama world. An ane mama, literally “gone reflection,” that is, a spirit reflection,
appears in the visible world in the form of some animal; very frequently the form is that
of a bird. Thus to each other birds appear as people, and to the Kaluli their calls are vocal
communications from ane mama.
(Feld [1990] 2012, p. 30)

Although the Kam relationship does not appear to be as specific as that described by Feld for the
Kaluli, Kam song lyrics illustrate that there is a similar sense of comparability between people and
the sonic, visual, and experiential or lived environments that they reside within. As a result, sounds
of birds and insects can be felt as emotions of people, and people can think of themselves as being
in some ways akin to features of the natural environment—either through lyrics that explicitly
state the resemblance or through the common emotional link that is implicit in various contexts.
The interrelation felt between Kam song (especially big song) and the environment, which
is demonstrated through the many examples quoted in this chapter, also extends into the very
concepts that Kam people use to talk about song. For example, mun is the word used to describe
the ideal vocal quality: strong, plump, and full. However, mun is usually used to describe the full
156 • CATHERINE INGRAM

plumpness of a grain of rice before it is harvested, and is extended to apply to the voice. Similarly,
the expression used to refer to song lyrics—the aspect of Kam songs considered by most older
singers to be one of their most important features—links the songs to the physical environment in
a compelling and fundamental way. Lyrics to all categories of songs are known in Kam as lak ga,
literally translating as “bones of songs.” This expression indicates that the concept of the skeleton,
one of the basic physical components of most animal life, can legitimately be expanded within
Kam ways of knowing to be used in reference to one of the basic components of song, further
interrelating the two.
At the beginning of this chapter, I quoted official documents submitted to UNESCO that describe
Kam big song as enthusiastically praising, and seeking the ideal of, a “unity between humanity and
nature.” The central idea of this statement is almost certainly an English translation of the well-
known Chinese idiom tian ren he yi (天人合一).39 Like many Chinese idioms, this one has a long
history: It is believed to have existed in its current wording since the Song dynasty (960–1279), and
to draw on conceptual ideas that are at least 2,000 years old (Hou 1997, 483). The contemporary
understanding of the idiom focuses on the idea of harmony (Li et al. 2015, p. 6), perhaps implying
that people should harmonize themselves with nature (Hou 1997, p. 486).
The connections between Kam music, the environment, and place outlined in this chapter
might be said to embody subtle reflections of certain elements of such a Han Chinese idea of
harmony.40 However, my study of big song in Sheeam gives no indication that music and musical
ideas are used to explicitly instruct people to harmonize themselves with nature. Rather, Kam
ideas are expressed through words, musical sounds, and concepts in ways that demonstrate a lived
interdependence between people and their surrounding environment (broadly conceived), and
the knowledge recorded and transmitted through song is expressed in terms of Kam knowledge
of life in all its human and non-human forms. While these connections could be understood as a
type of harmony between people and the natural world, I suggest that they also invite two other
slightly different interpretations.
First, these connections demonstrate a way of being in which Kam lives are intimately
enmeshed with all that is around them, yet simultaneously separate from it. The sense of sepa-
ration informs the way in which the role of people in agricultural work is articulated, and the
distinctions that are made between people and other forms of plant and animal life. Without
such distinctions, the lyrical and musical comparisons made between these different life-forms
would be far less meaningful. Second, the pervasiveness of different modes of connection between
Kam music and the environment might be understood as indicative of a culturally specific
worldview that is based upon knowledge and detailed observation of the natural world. Instead
of considering those observations about the environment that are revealed through music to
purely be a form of cultural creation, they might be considered as exemplifying types of careful
(“scientific”) analysis that demonstrate the use of available methods of logical deduction in the
process of understanding life.41
The investigation of Kam connections between music, environment, and place enhances knowl-
edge of musical traditions and shows how these traditions simultaneously have cultural, historical,
and “scientific” significance. For Kam and many other cultures, music is a key method by which
important knowledge is transmitted and recorded, and its records of environmental knowledge
provide invaluable insight into ways of thinking that have been employed by this and other com-
munities. Many of these insights are otherwise absent from the historical record. Without these
musical records, contemporary understandings of how generations of Kam people have operated
in relation to their place and their environment would be far less comprehensive.
Today, the effects of recent major changes to both music and the environment in Kam areas
would no longer seem to influence Kam creation of historical and “scientific” knowledge and
their expression through song. However, the changes seem likely to impact upon the ability of
younger Kam people to interpret the meaning behind the records and concepts that continue
 MUSIC, ENVIRONMENT, AND PLACE • 157

to exist through song. Few Kam song repertoires have been documented in any comprehensive
manner, and the rapid changes to the natural environment in Kam areas are restricting the lived
understandings of place and the environment that are being experienced by (and passed down to)
younger generations. Concurrent rapid social changes also mean that the transmission of Kam
song repertoires is increasingly limited, and it is already clear that fewer songs are being learned
by each successive generation.
At the same time, other aspects of the connections between Kam music, environment, and
place are developing and growing in importance, particularly under the influence of the increasing
interest in cultural tourism (strongly associated with projects on intangible cultural heritage) in
Kam areas. As the UNESCO nomination document indicates, the connection between Kam music
and the environment (regardless of how accurately that connection might be represented) is an
aspect of big song that is considered important in wider promotion of the genre (see, for example,
the CD Dong Folksongs: People and Nature in Harmony 2002). Furthermore, the ga sor category
of big song, which frequently involves singing that is imitative of the sounds of birds, insects, and
other natural features of the environment, is the genre that is performed most frequently in staged
big song performances—despite its having relatively little importance within the village big song
singing context (see Ingram 2012a; McLaren et al. 2013). The importance of place through the
regional character of big song repertoires also represents an increasingly important aspect in Kam
cultural tourism, as different Kam regions vie for state attention, tourist investment, and potential
financial gain. How all these developments might impact upon the deeply felt connections between
Kam music and non-human figures in the environment remains to be seen. Consequently, the
relationship between music, place, and environment has an enduring strength in big song singing
of the early twenty-first century, but the degree of recent changes in its form and function seem
likely to have a long-lasting impact.

Notes
1. I gratefully acknowledge the many Kam singers and song experts without whose assistance this research could not
have been conducted. In particular, I thank once again Wu Meifang, Wu Pinxian, Wu Xuegui, and Wu Zhicheng (who
guided most of the song translations quoted here), and the many Sheeam women who also taught and sang with me.
This chapter draws upon and extends some sections of my sole-authored section within an earlier publication (McLaren
et al. 2013: 59–76).
2. The breadth of the range of writings in this area includes: Feld (2012[1990]), Seeger (2004[1987]), Roseman (1998),
Levin and Süzükei (2006), Whidden (2007), and Koch and Turpin (2008), amongst many others.
3. I transcribe Kam words using my own practical phonemic orthography that is based upon standard (Australian) English
pronunciation, and which I have described elsewhere (see Ingram 2010). All song lyrics are translations from Kam.
See Long and Zheng (1998) and Yang and Edmondson (2008) for a detailed discussion of the Kam language, and Pan
(2005) for an overview of the Kam variant spoken in Sheeam.
4. After an initial brief visit in late 2004, I was based in Sheeam for most of January 2005 to March 2006, and from February
to July 2008. Subsequently, in 2009, 2010–2011, 2012, 2014, and 2016, I returned to Sheeam for periods ranging from
a few weeks to more than four months.
5. For example, I participated in big song singing within Kam villages and also in numerous staged performances such
as the 2005 performance in Liping county center of “Ten Thousand People Singing Big Song.”
6. Currently being archived with the Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures
(PARADISEC); see www.paradisec.org.au.
7. According to Kam people, the name dare low is only used to refer to these tall, wooden, pagoda-like buildings and
has no other meaning; it does not translate as gulou 鼓楼 (“drum tower/building”), as is usually used in Chinese
and sometimes thence translated into English. To my knowledge, Kam conceptualizations of these buildings are not
focused on the notion of them holding a drum, and the destruction of most drums (and many towers) during the
Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) may have further reinforced such Kam conceptualizations. Ruan (2006) describes
these buildings in further detail.
8. See Eisenberg et al. (2009) for an overview of many of the plants found in the region today; see Zhu and Yang (1956),
Yang Quan (1961) and Mao Jiale (2003) for descriptions of the environment during earlier times.
9. According to this government report, “Sanlong Nature Protection Area . . . [comprises land that] is all managed by the
community. Within its borders, the vegetation has already undergone a certain degree of destruction. However, as the
mountains are high and the transportation is poor, fortunately some old-growth forests still remain. The vegetation
is relatively diverse and includes a relatively large proportion of rare and precious plants. The total area is 11,505 mu,
158 • CATHERINE INGRAM

of which 8,340 mu is forested and 3,165 mu is covered with scattered forest. . . . The animal life of the area includes
animals [mammals], birds, snakes and amphibians” (Liping ziran, 2009).
10. To catch the birds, the men go up to their chosen locations before dawn each morning, hiding in a rough shelter
constructed nearby. They play cassettes of birdsong or hang birds in cages to call to the wild birds, enticing them in
to land on the barren, sticky branches where they are caught. The birds were cooked and eaten, or sold. In 2004–2008
some men were earning ¥30—¥40 (A$6—$8) a day in this way, and that the birds that were sold finally ended up on
restaurant menus in the major southern city of Guangzhou (Canton).
11. In Kam, “Pyor hor, bai ngan dao belo, boy shyuu ga-nai, nyin gare nyin nyuu!” (Pyor-hor, Go to our home, do not stay
in this place, people who shit and people who piss!).
12. These rituals and offerings might be made as a request or thanks for the birth of a child (especially the birth of a son),
ensuring good health for particular family members, obtaining blessings for the oncoming year, or other personal
reasons.
13. Luo and Wang (2002) quote figures provided by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences giving the population in Kam
big-song-singing areas as 100,000. These areas include many parts of southern Liping county, as well as some adjacent
areas of Congjiang and Rongjiang counties, and comprise approximately 4 percent of the total Kam population.
14. Probably the young shoots of the wild fern Pteridium aquilinum.
15. During my fieldwork, I heard many stories about these songs being sung between groups of young men and women,
but I only occasionally heard these songs spontaneously performed. Since many middle-aged and older villages were
able to sing the songs, it seems likely that they were widely sung until the time of major Kam social changes in the
1990s.
16. Com, also known as nyao woong, mainly involves groups of young men visiting groups of young women in private
homes late in the evening. In Sheeam and nearby regions it still occurs at certain times of the year, but now rarely
involves singing.
17. Ga = song; sheeang was explained to me in a number of different ways (here it functions as an adjective to ga, and as is
typical for adjectives in Kam appears after the noun. Sheeang may reference wak sheeang (“community, everyone”) and
suggest songs that are suitable for everyone in the community to listen to. Lao translates as big, old, main, or important.
In the Sheeam repertoire, the lyrical content of this category of songs was wide-ranging and included almost every
topic except love.
18. From Ga sheeang-wak (“Song about the community”), a ga sheeang category big song.
19. Referring to the Chinese-language lishu.
20. From Ga wang (“Song about the Emperor”), a ga sheeang category big song.
21. From Yao nyao sn yao (“I am in my village”), a ga Gao-sn category big song.
22. From Kong mang ban mang (“Nothing for fun”), a ga sheeang category big song.
23. This tree produces a fruit known in Chinese as longzhao guo (“dragon’s claw fruit”).
24. From Ban bao juuee (“Friends say [you are] proud”), a ga sheeang category big song.
25. From Bu naow ban mang (“In this time, friends are happy”), a ga sheeang category big song.
26. Bi derives from biyu比喻 (“metaphor”); xing 兴 can be translated here as “to begin the topic.”
27. A formulaic phrase often used in song.
28. One of the two ga nyin-jing category big songs in the Sheeam repertoire.
29. Ramie (Boehmeria nivea [L.] Gaud.), known in Chinese as zhuma gen (see Liu et al., 2002, p. 32), is probably the plant
referred to here in Kam as gan.
30. Gong gan gao (“The tall gan”), a ga ma category big song.
31. Ga translates as song; sor is a polysemous word translating variously as sound, melody, voice, breath, or life-force. Here,
the name might be glossed as “songs that emphasize sound or melody,” a contrast to most other big songs which
emphasize the lak (“bones”) or song lyrics, as discussed in the conclusion to this paper (while “sound imitation songs,” a
translation sometimes given for ga sor, is appropriate to the content of many of these songs, it is not a direct translation
of the Kam name). Although Kam song experts and experienced singers do not consider the songs classified as ga
sor to be among the most important big songs, these are the songs that feature most prominently in staged Kam song
performances such as those for tourists, competitions, or broadcasts.
32. Jee-yot is probably Macrosemia kareisana (Matsumura), known in Chinese as damachan (see Chou and Lei, 1997,
p. 320, plate 137); numleng (or leng-lee) is probably Pomponia linearis (Walker), known in Chinese as langchan (Chou
and Lei, 1997, p. 314, plate 91). I was unable to formally identify the cicada known as neng.
33. Probably Liquidambar formosana Hance.
34. Some Sheeam song experts understood ee to be used here as a pun: It translates both as “fine pieces/particles” (implying
the wearing away of rock) and “youth.” According to one song expert, the meaning of the verse is that “when you are
young you can’t help thinking of your sweetheart, just like the water can’t help flowing down the river.” Although in
several sources the line is translated into Chinese as chang jieban 常结伴 (“often being friends”), no song experts in
Sheeam offered such a translation.
35. In Kam areas, worms occasionally make quiet, high-pitched sounds.
36. Interestingly, alliances of one of the clans in Sheeam continue to involve people in Gao-sn.
37. However, I did experience one instance considered to result from improperly carrying out the singing in such locations.
38. Unfortunately, space prevents a discussion of how the nature/“nature” complication that Titon (2013, p. 15) outlines
is relevant to interpretations of Kam big song.
39. Although these documents are only provided in English and French on the UNESCO website (see www.unesco.org/
culture/ich/en/RL/grand-song-of-the-dong-ethnic-group-00202; accessed 2 May 2016), the expression tian ren he yi
is so common in Chinese that it is almost certainly used in the original Chinese.
 MUSIC, ENVIRONMENT, AND PLACE • 159

40. Chinese scholars and elites are often criticized for the use of particular idioms to exoticize minority culture (see, for
example, Schein 2000, 2006; Oakes 1998, 1999). The utilization of a Chinese idiom that is very deeply entrenched in
Han Chinese culture to describe minority culture is therefore particularly interesting, and invites questions that are
beyond the scope of this paper. For instance, does its use here suggest a romanticized notion of rural Kam life that the
“developed” Han have now left behind? Or might it indicate that environmental perceptions could offer an alternative
perspective within the study of Chinese ethnic relations?
41. I suggest here that the forms of logical deduction appearing in Kam lyrics through the application of environmental
understandings to other human problems is a form of relational thinking that might be described as “scientific.”

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 10
Ecological Knowledge, Collaborative
Management, and Musical Production
in Western Mongolia
Jennifer C. Post

Characterizing ecosystems, assessing environmental impact, making land-use planning decisions,

and developing sustainable future options are activities often conducted by researchers with aca-
demic training in specialized fields in the sciences. As some scholars have demonstrated, though,
locally derived and maintained information on biological systems and events in collaboration with
indigenous and other local residents can play a significant role in addressing effective resource
management to contribute to an ecologically sustainable future for both humans and non-humans
(Berkes and Folke 1998; Martín-López and Montes 2015). Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK)
utilized in this kind of collaborative work cumulates information from a variety of sources within
each society over time. Its focus is on the ever-evolving “body of knowledge, practice, and belief ”
transmitted from generation to generation about biophysical and social interactions between
humans and the environments they live in (Berkes 2012, 7; Menzies and Butler 2006). Scholars who
embrace traditional ecological knowledge recognize it as a key information source for understanding
indigenous and local ecologies, economies and values, as well as managing current environmental
issues. A full ecosystem approach to understanding environments and implementing plans to
address problems that explicitly incorporate TEK contrasts with species-specific resource manage-
ment that sometimes fails to recognize or acknowledge the complex nature of the interconnections
among non-human and human residents in any given biological system.
Ecological knowledge is embedded in actions and values and, as Lejano, Tavares-Reager, and
Berkes argue, is preserved in community narratives that can be employed strategically (2013).1
In their research, they identify performed narratives located in discussions about climate change
that hold some of the most valued information on this subject in a community. They posit that
in the process of constructing and sharing traditional knowledge, people identify with, and are
more willing to engage directly in, activities in connection with environmental change (Lejano
et al. 2013). The stories are in many ways like expression in music in which socio-cultural norms
impact expectations to articulate ideas in a standardized (social and culturally structured) for-
mat or style. Musical expression as a locally maintained knowledge system can be connected

161
162 • JENNIFER C. POST

to projects in which researchers or other practitioners seek to better understand relationships

between locality, ecological events and resulting issues, and to engage collaboratively with local
communities to effect change.
This article considers the scientific and cultural value of locally constructed and maintained
ecological knowledge drawn from narrative expression in songs and tunes created and main-
tained by Kazakh residents in western Mongolia. Using research conducted during fieldwork
in the province of Bayan Ölgii in Mongolia between 2004 and 2015, key data for this study are
drawn from interviews with mobile pastoralists, their songs and instrumental tunes, and from
research reports produced by scientists who have studied pastoralism in these steppe regions.
The research, while drawing on scientific information, is theoretically grounded in ethnomu-
sicology and the developing subject area that focuses on ecology and music. One of its goals
is to demonstrate the importance of integrating scientific with social and cultural elements
in ethnomusicological and ecological research, in this case through a study about the lives of
pastoralists who engage with and communicate about ecological systems as part of their daily
lives. Focus on vocal and instrumental music as local narrative highlights the significance of
expressions of knowledge about natural resources. Performances of this kind contribute to shared
understanding of landscape and climate change events. Thus mobile pastoral herders in Mongolia
use songs and their lyrics, instrumental tunes and sounds to articulate not only their aesthetic
and spiritual relationships to lands and landscapes but to share their valued practical knowledge
about natural resources. Their performances provide evidence of social and economic practices
and strategies for maintaining ways of life in the ever-changing environment. These themes,
with key references to family, history, and the land itself, are found in musical repertoires and
styles shared locally and regionally.
This research builds on other ethnomusicological studies focused on indigenous and other
local communities who maintain musical practices closely tied to the natural world. This
music-focused data and analysis published since the early 1980s reveals a great deal about
local ecologies, economies, and cultures. Some of the most influential work that connects these
relationships to values, rituals, and daily life is offered by Steven Feld in research on sound aes-
thetics of the Kaluli rainforest dwellers in Papua New Guinea (1982, 1996); Marina Roseman in
studies of performance, ritual, and healing among the Temiar people in the Malaysian rainforest
(1991); Anthony Seeger in his constantly expanding and developing views of music and social
and physical environment among the Suyá peoples in the tropical forests of Brazil (2004, 2013);
Henry Stobart in research on agricultural production among Quechua-speaking peoples in the
Bolivian Andes (2006); Carole Pegg’s studies on musical and spirituality in Western Mongolia
(2001); and Theodore Levin and Valentina Süzükei in their work on music and spirituality with
urban residents and rural pastoralists of Tuva, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia (2007). Even more
direct consideration of conservation issues in conjunction with musical production have been
explored by Nancy Guy in research on environmental degradation and song in Taiwan (2009);
Tina Ramnarine on activism and acoustemology in connection with Sámi music in Nordic
Europe (2009); Angela Impey on environmental conservation and stewardship among Zulu-
speaking peoples in a South African territory bordering Mozambique and Swaziland (2002);
Chie Sakakibara on the direct impact of environmental change on everyday life cultural activities
among Iñupiat peoples in Alaska (2009); and Helena Simonett on human-animal-environment
relationships of the Yoreme people in northwestern Mexico (2014). Among these in-depth
studies, few inform us about how the indigenous and local knowledge connects directly to bio-
logical sustainability or to natural resource management. Offering direct relationships between
cultural expression and ecological knowledge, and connecting ecological and ethnographic
understanding of music-making, contributes to the current discourse on the value of humanly
maintained practices in response to the natural world as well as the importance of supporting
 ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND MUSICAL PRODUCTION • 163

indigenous and other local ways of life, especially during this period of climate change and
environmental degradation (Guyette and Post 2015).
In Mongolia, ecological knowledge is embedded in the everyday lives of herders. Herders in this
vast country (a steadily decreasing 40 percent of the population) represent many different ethnic
groups and languages, and they collectively reside in a land that offers one of the most biologically
diverse regions in the northern hemisphere. Deserts, steppe lands, forests, mountains, rare animals,
and plants have been sustained with the careful support of mobile pastoralists for generations (Finch
1996). The Mongolian steppes provide sites for pastoral stewardship that has formed a backbone
for sustainability of ecosystems. As conservators they rely on commonly shared knowledge of
ecological communities and recognize the importance of maintaining balance between humans
and other entities in the natural world that will contribute to a sustainable future. During the last
few decades, mobile pastoralists have exhibited great economic, ecological, and social vulnerabil-
ity, and their ability to successfully look after and protect the land has been deeply impacted by a
number of environmental issues. Some of the significant ecological events in Mongolia are caused
by desertification, diminishing grass species and vegetation density, and reduced sources for water.
One of the most devastating effects emerges in crippling weather events such as the winter zhut,2
an extended period of bitter cold and wind that typically kills thousands of livestock (Dorj et al.
2013; Lkhagvadorj et al. 2013).
Studies on mobile pastoralism as a biological, social, and economic system in Mongolia and
throughout Inner Asia reveal the importance of key elements that have enabled the practice to be
maintained for so many generations. Often defined as an economic strategy, Finke (2005, 397) says
about the pastoralists, “people do not move because they like to, but because to them it seems the
best alternative for making a living.” Many scholars also identify mobile pastoralism as an ecological
strategy in response to harsh environmental conditions, and pastoralists have been identified as
custodians of the lands they frequent. Thus Humphrey and Sneath note that Mongolian mobile
pastoralists’ “economic activities are sustainable only if the ecological resource-bases on which
they rely are resilient” (1999, 48).
Evidence of ecological knowledge shared by herders is found in pastoralists’ use of pasture
resources, in their social organization around work both in pastures and at home (in their camps
and permanent homes), and their narrative information about the land they work with. Fernandez-
Gimenez notes that “a good herder is said to constantly monitor both his herds and his pastures,
seeking to ‘harmonize’ the needs of his stock with daily, seasonal and interannual changes in plants,
weather and water availability” (2000, 1322). The seasonal use of specific plant communities, the
best conditions and environment for their growth, and their suitability for each of the five kinds
of livestock are examples of knowledge that is key to successful maintenance of a mobile way of
life.3 Pastoralists also recognize the need for adequate space in conjunction with the size of their
herds (to increase access to healthy grazing land for their animals and to adapt to seasonal changes
in the nutritional value of the grasses) and they are aware of the essential need for availability of
adequate and good quality water for their livestock and family use.4
Spatial-temporal awareness of land, climate, and the behaviors of humans and non-humans
are drawn from personal experience as well as knowledge passed from generation to genera-
tion, and their actions demonstrate the importance of collaboration in social groups to meet
the needs of their livestock and families. The body of knowledge about their environment that
herders carry with them in their daily lives, share in conversation, and express in activities and
narratives such as musical performance supports land management and provides their com-
munity important ecological information. These expressions are also used to reinforce social
bonds, as people are mutually dependent upon one another in residential family-based groups
that provide collaborative communities for sharing the difficult work they must do in order for
their livestock to survive.
164 • JENNIFER C. POST

Kazakh Music in Bayan Ölgii

In Bayan Ölgii province, active musical traditions are maintained in the small city of Ölgii
(population 29,500), in villages, and in rural communities (see Figure 10.1). In the city, the
local theater, in place since the Soviet era, contributes russified performances with now
well-established folkloric repertoires played on modernized Kazakh instruments and orga-
nized in ensembles to play European orchestral works. Increasingly, popular music recordings
influenced by global media industries from China, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia’s capital city
of Ulaanbaatar are also shared through various media outlets, including CDs, DVDs, and
the Internet. In the rural regions, mobile pastoralists who move seasonally from site to site

Figure 10.1 Bayan Ölgii Province: Population centers and selected regions referenced in the text
 ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND MUSICAL PRODUCTION • 165

in the vast steppes and mountain steppes engage with some of the more modern repertoires,
but they also maintain interest in older musical styles as well. Vocal and instrumental music
traditions tie them to the Mongolian landscape and to their history in this location. While a
rapidly changing social and ecological environment in the countryside has encouraged some
herders to leave their lands and lifestyles to settle in Ölgii city (or other locations),5 those
who remain continue to perform didactic and reflective vocal forms terme and tolghau and
semi-improvisatory qara öleng. The songs are newly created by local herders, handed down
in families and among friends, heard on the radio,6 or (more rarely) are learned from locally
printed song or poetry collections. Songs created by aqyns (respected poets and singers) and
other local residents are performed in family and neighborhood groups at tois (celebrations)
that provide intergenerational opportunities for sharing information and stories, recounting
personal and family histories, and expressing and reinforcing values. In a narrative solo instru-
mental genre (küi), performers describe locations, events, or individuals in melodies played
on the two-stringed long-necked lute dombyra or the end-blown flute sybyzghy.7 In earlier
times the musical performance of küi were preceded by related stories told by the performer,
but these are rarely heard today (Muhambetova 1995, 68).
The music embraced by Kazakh herders expresses both spiritual and practical relationships to
the natural resources that they rely on in their daily lives. Levin and Süzükei suggest associations
between spirituality and sound/music among Tuvan and Urianghai pastoralists, represented in a
statement by Urianghai end-blown flute (tsuur) player Narantsogt who said that playing tsuur was
“not so much a means of representing nature but as a way of praising it and conversing with the
spirit-masters” (2007, 82). For Kazakh herders, their music celebrates the land and its inhabitants,
but rather than expressing an interactive relationship with spirits, their narratives tend more to
demonstrate knowledge and characteristics of valued places and note social practices that support
their daily needs, thus reinforcing their roles as stewards of the land.
Music maintained by Kazakh herders in rural Mongolia shows evidence of key behaviors
identified with mobile pastoralism, including a dependence on five kinds of livestock (horses,
camels, sheep, goats and yaks, or cows), the need for mobility and space to sustain them, kinship
and cooperation to support daily and seasonal responsibilities, self-sufficiency and independence
from some of the larger economic structures identified with urban and settled populations,
and resilience, often expressed by people in vulnerable economic and ecological positions. 8
Performances of terme, tolghau, qara öleng, and küi demonstrate direct connections between
musical expression and some of the rangeland scientists’ frameworks for understanding ecolog-
ical knowledge and local values related to the land and its inhabitants. Identified with the use
of plant communities and seasonal movement, and accommodating the needs of humans and
non-humans in a sustainable environment, the Kazakh songs and tunes maintained in the Bayan
Ölgii countryside reference and draw attention to (1) local knowledge about lands and landforms,
their character and characteristics; (2) information on status of grazing sites and express views
about suitability of place; (3) the valuing of collaborative management as a herding strategy; (4)
relationships with animals, both domestic and wild; and (5) concern about changes in the land
that currently impact communities and lifestyles.

Local Knowledge about Lands and Landforms

Kazakh songs and tunes contain embedded information on mobile pastoral behaviors and
reveal shared knowledge about lands and resources used by herding families and communities.
Singers and instrumentalists identify significant landforms and praise the beauty of specific
places. Sharing knowledge in this way frames geographic territories that Kazakh people have
tended for generations. Many song lyrics for terme and some stories connected to instrumental
166 • JENNIFER C. POST

Figure 10.2 Zhangabyl’s terme “Burghysty”

küi reference specific places of ecological value such as mountain steppe land on which live-
stock graze; cite rivers and streams as sources of water for humans and livestock; and name
trees used for fuel and as material for their tools and housing. Songs that name places within a
region, and the social process of sharing songs and knowledge about places, play an important
role in identifying land for herders’ use and reinforcing its memory of place as part of their
shared history. In addition to characterizing the land, the information recorded in their songs
can contribute to decisions about grazing sites and even influence seasonal movement of their
livestock to spring, summer, and fall sites.9
Zhangabyl Doldash in Deluun district offers a terme about his autumn and winter pastureland
he calls Burghysty, providing information on the geophysical elements that make it valuable for
seasonal use. He accompanies his song with the two-string dombyra that is used to accompany
many songs offered in the countryside. His melody, identified with his local community, is
expressed with short notes, a steady tempo, and limited dynamic change (see Figure 10.2). These
characteristics, along with his choice to use the same melody for all his songs, indicate the melo-
dy’s primary role as a vehicle for his lyrics. Zhangabyl’s narrative also demonstrates that the land
is tied to his—and his relatives’—heritage; it is sheltered, has high grasses for animals to eat, and
wormwood as well.10 The land is open (or wide) to accommodate large herds, there is wildlife that
is healthy and abundant, and wild grown food (berries), and while there is no lake, there is water
and salt for the animals. He sings:11

Armysyn atameken, zher zännaty, Greetings my atameken, a paradise on earth,

Arnaya Byrghysty dep koyghan aty.
Arnap bir tughan zherge än zhazbasam,
Qaida qaldy zhigitting qazaq zaty.
Burghysty atameken, tughan zherim.
Anashym belbeu tartyp bughan belin;
Mekendep sol bir zherdi ata-babam,
Urpaqtyng kindik qanyn zhyghan zherim.
Aq zharqyn ashyq aspan meken dalam.
Otyrsam özim zhalghyz bolar panam.
Tasyngda oynap zördim öleng zhazyp
Sayanda sauyq qurghan men bir balang.
This place is specially named Burghysty.
If I don’t create a song for my homeland,
How can this zhigit12 be Kazakh?
Burghysty is my atameken, my tughan zher.
It is where my mother tied her waist with a belt;
It is where my ancestors lived,
Where they washed their generation’s blood from their navels.
It is my radiant land where the sky is bright.
If I lived alone, it would be my shelter.
I was one of your children who used to play
On your rocks, creating songs and having fun.
 ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND MUSICAL PRODUCTION • 167

Tarikiya atamzaman ornasy bar; It has a long history in this location;

Zhalghys say, eki ashaly formasy bar
Basy emes Burghysynyng zhazyghynan,
At bolsa tambay basar zhorghasynan.
Burghysty Eki ashasy qyzqa taldy.
Ortasy Qangdyghatay uzyn zhaldy.
Angqyghan qongyr küzde zhusan ici
Möldirer qyzylqatpen toshalasy.
Aqunty, Bulghystymen Arshatysy.
Körinbes söp törinen at shashasy.
Taueshki, bughy maral zhüredi oynap.
Arqardyng mangyraydy qozyqasy.
Kölderi zhoq demese min tappaydy.
Basy shym, ayaq zhaqy qumdaqtaydy.
Bar eken ashy suy zhaghasynda.
Bul zherdi men maqtamay kim maqtaydy?
It is shaped with one valley and two asha.13
In the steppe of Burghysty, not at the top,
A horse can amble smoothly.
Eki asha of Burghysty is a place with small willows.
In the middle, Qandyghatai wears a long mane.
It smells of wormwood in the (brown) autumn
The red currant and gooseberry are mature by then.
Aqunty, Burghysty and Arshaty.
The grasses hide the hair on the horses’ [fetlock] ankles;
The ibexes, deer and antelope are playing.
Argyle’s lambs bleat here.
There is no weakness except there is no lake.
The top is covered with grass; the bottom is sandy.
It has salty water on the edge.
If I don’t pay tribute, who will praise this land?

The process of naming landforms is also connected to claiming land for families, regional com-
munities, and for Kazakh people in Mongolia. It is not unusual to hear a singer mapping the lands
on which he, his family, and community have herded their livestock, sometimes for generations.14
In his song, Erbolat Köshegen draws geographical boundaries around areas where he has often
herded in the Daiyn köl region where people from Tsengel and Ulaankhus district settle seasonally
with their livestock, referencing elements that make it ideal for spring and summer pasturing.15

Bir sheti Altay taudyng Tsengel zheri,
Barady adamzattyng zher bilgeni.
Bar Aqsu arasany aydyn köli;
Bauyrynda zaylap otyr qazaq eli.
Syrghaly Eki Dürgin aralary
Saylary kök ormangha oranady.
Sumdy ayryq, Süyinbaydyng daralary,
Sayymen sansyz bulaq taralady.
Qiya shyng, Qasqyr dara, Ydyq oiyq
Qyrany samghap ushqan qanat zhayyp,
Quz qiya, Tastybulaq ony koyyp
Qaraymyn kelbetinge köngil qoyyp.
One corner of Altai mountain is Tsengel land,
People who know the land travel there.
There is Aqsu mineral spring and a sparkling lake;
At your base Kazakh people pass the summer.
Between Syrghaly and Eki Dürgin
The valleys are wrapped in green forests.
Oh Sumdy airyq, Süyinbay’s wide valleys,
From your gullies spread so many springs.
Kiy shyng, Qasqyr dara and Ydyq oiyq
Its qyran16 soar spreading their wings.
Oh Quz qiya and Tastybulaq
I look so carefully at your beauty.

Instrumental tunes (küi) with related stories also describe—and demonstrate respect for—land-
forms, local inhabitants, and the landscape in general. Melodies reference places, rivers, birds, and
other elements experienced in the everyday lives of herders, and they offer evidence of their ecologi-
cal values. Some melodic ideas in küi directly reference the way birds move their wings or the sound
of their call, the movement of waves or the wind, in addition to providing emotional responses to
events expressed in the küi story. End-blown flute (sybyzghy) player Enbek Abdollauly, originally
from a rural region in Ulaankhus, now living in Ölgii city, created “Besbogda” to describe the land
around this group of five high peaks referred to in Mongolian as Tavan Bogd, not far from the place
where he grew up. In his tune, he characterizes the imagescapes and sounds that many herders in
that region know, especially the water, wind, and birds. In the first part of “Besbogda” played on his
bamboo sybyzghy (using vocal drone), Enbek noted that he represents the movement of the wind
in the ornamented quarter note melody (seen in measures six through fourteen of Figure 10.3).17
168 • JENNIFER C. POST

Figure 10.3 Excerpt from Enbek’s küi “Besbogda” for sybyzghy

Figure 10.4 Brief passage from Alen’s performance of “Ertis Tolkyny” on sybyzghy

The following passage from a popular tune among Kazakh sybyzghy players in Mongolia, “Ertis
tolkyny” (“Waves of Ertis”), references the Irtysh River of central and western Asia that flows from
the Altai mountains in Xinjiang Autonomous region in China to Kazakhstan.18 Both Enbek and
Alen Sametuly, his relative in the Oighyr region where both grew up, played this tune. Alen noted
that he was describing the waves of a river in the sixteenth-note passages in the following excerpt
(see Figures 10.4 and 10.5):19
In his version of the same küi, Enbek notes that he represents the waves and “the overflowing
river” with a combination of slurred and staccato notes, ultimately painting a picture of the whole
scene, “sometimes there are two or three different kinds of birds singing, and there is the wind,
water, and things in nature; all sounds sing to me at once.”20 Such küi, whether locally and newly
created or adopted from historical Kazakh repertoire, represent collective knowledge and can be
linked to key ecological elements that are essential to herders, especially abundant water, but also
the presence of wind that—among other things—signals a change in weather. The emplacement
that descriptive tunes offer for musicians and their listeners plays a significant role in maintaining
connections to place.
 ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND MUSICAL PRODUCTION • 169

Figure 10.5 Alen playing sybyzghy at his summer settlement in the Oighyr region in 2011
Photo by the author

Information on Status of Grazing Sites

When songs about the land are sung at social gatherings they can also communicate about
the status of specific grazing sites and express views on the suitability of a place for temporary
settlement. Herders’ constant concerns about the condition of grasses and access to water are
expressed in their references to how “comfortable” (or “suitable”) the land is for both livestock
and human populations in a particular season. This is often found in references to grazing land
for livestock in summer, autumn, or spring places. For example, Aqerke Gagarinqyzy sings,
“The steppe is suitable for livestock” in a popular local song about the Daiyn Lake region where
many herders graze their livestock in summer and Zhapar Qapish sings, “My land is suitable
170 • JENNIFER C. POST

for livestock” at his summer place in Shigertei in his own song “Tughan zher didary” (The
beauty of homeland).21 Leskhan Altaikhan sings, “My zhailau is comfortable and green” in his
song “Tughan zher” (“Homeland”) in reference to his summer place in Tolbo district where for
generations he and his ancestors have taken their herds to graze in the spring. Leskhan further
defines its status when he sings:

Qos Qatu ata-babam qonys etken;
Babadan qalghan urpaq osynda ösken
Maqtayyn Madaqtayyn zher uyyghyn,
Tughan zher, atameken kindik kesken,
Teriskey, uly küngey aynalasy;
Aghynsu tasqyn bylaq, say salasy.
Qos Qatu is where my ancestors lived;
Their children have grown up here.
I praise the beauty of this land,
My homeland, my ancestors’ land where my navel was cut.
It is surrounded by shady and sunny slopes;
Its ravines have flowing waters and rocky streams.

He also sings, interspersed in his verses:

• The land is full of newly grown grass.

• The newly grown grasses are fertile and moist.
• The soil is fertile and the water is like honey.

Similarly, at his spring home in Saghsai, singer Altai Tügelbai shares a terme to describe their
zhailau and provide commentary on the quality of the land in the Daiyn/Örmegeit region. His
melody with limping (or asymmetrical) rhythm comes from his grandfather (see Figure 10.7). He
accompanies his song with a dombyra. It begins,22

Figure 10.6 Altai at his zhailau (Summer Place), in Örmegeit accompanies his terme with his dombyra (2015)
 ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND MUSICAL PRODUCTION • 171

Figure 10.7 Excerpt from “Zhalau Sany” sung by Altai Tügelbai in 2014

Auylym altai taudyng bökterinde My auyl is on the edge of the Altai mountain
Qaraghai ösken äsem betterinde. On a beautiful slope covered with pine trees.
Daiyn köl zhatyr shalqyp eteginde, Daiyn Lake is at its base,
Aqqu qaz meken eter shetterinde. Swans and geese live on the shore.

He conveys the following information about weather, safety of their herds, and resources inter-
spersed in other verses of his song:

• The summer stays cool; the winter is warm.

• There are abundant resources for the livestock.
• They [herders] graze their five kinds of livestock safely.
• Rich in asha (salty places for the animals) and water, the grass is moist and fertile.
• Red currant, black currant and gooseberry are on the shores [of Tumbaӧtkel and Tasӧtkel].

Zhangabyl Doldash’s “Burghysty” terme referenced earlier defines the suitability of place in connection
with Deluun district resources, local wildlife, and landforms. Among other resources, he references
wild berries. In their research with herders in a nearby region, Lkhagvadorj et al. (2013, 86) iden-
tified specific forest-grown products that are consistently used to supplement the diets of Kazakh
herders, including several types of berries—blackcurrant, gooseberry, and strawberry—as well as
wild onions and garlic.23 Songs reinforce scientific data and offer additional information, including
local sites and names of additional berries valued. In his song “To Deluun” Zhangabyl celebrates
the abundant water, the willow trees used for their summer yurts, the healthy animals signaling the
condition of the land, and the fish that can provide an important dietary supplement for families.

Tolqyp aqqan aryndy özen shatqaldan;
Qorshalyp tur zhaghalauy aq taldan.
Kökserkemen Bürkit shyngnyng bastary
Aq seldemen oranghanday aq qardan.
. . . . . . .
Kökserke tauyng turmas munarlanbay;
Örbigen basyng tola qongyr anggha-ay.
Örmelep tau eshking zhür shyngdaryngda;
Qanday zhan shyday almas tumarlanbay.
. . . . . . .
The river flows in a rush from the high peaks;
Its shore is surrounded by white willows.
The tops of Kökserke and Bürkit peaks
Look like they are covered with a white scarf of snow.
. . . . . . .
Kökserke, your peaks are always in the clouds;
Your valleys are rich with animals.
There are ibexes climbing up to your peaks;
No one can stay here without being affected by you.
. . . . . . .
172 • JENNIFER C. POST

Sholpyldap özeningde balyqtaryng, The fish in the river are jumping,

Qarmaq salsang iliner shubaryng-ay. You can catch all kinds with a hook.
Zhyr qylyp maqtap seni tauyspaspyn. I can’t stop praising you with my zhyr.24
Zhayqalyp güldene ber qula dala ay. Keep thriving my steppe lands.

Valuing Collaborative Management

Songs show evidence of collaborative management of resources in the context of pastoralism,

especially in frequent references to family, auyl (residential unit), and respect for heritage—all
essential ingredients for successful herding. During the Soviet era herding collectives were
established in Mongolia to structure work around caring for livestock. The (pre-Soviet) his-
torical family-based unit auyl was not entirely abandoned though, and traditional pasture
distribution systems were maintained among Kazakh rural families (Ykhanbai 2011, 25).
Dissolution of the socialist infrastructure and the establishment of privatization after 1991,
along with the division of land into sums (districts) and bags (subdistrict) by the Mongolian
government, affected organizational structures, but Kazakh social groups also returned to
traditional family structures that provided mutual support for pastoralists for generations.
One popular Kazakh song, “My auyl” depicts families moving together as a social unit across
the hills to settle seasonally and care for livestock, and for visiting family and neighboring
auyls. It also connects family homecoming with herding, for example welcoming a father
when he comes back safely with his livestock.25 Zhangabyl also expressed a similar sentiment
as he described his summer place in Bessala region, demonstrating how the settlements are
defined not as simply human communities, but exist in a physical and social relationship with
the livestock they care for. He sings:

Shyqqanda qyratyna Zhalghyz Zhaldyng I walk up to the small hill of Zhalgiz Zhal
Köngilim bir zheldinip salqyndadym And I am both moved and refreshed
Köz salsam shaghaladay auyldargha When I view auyls as white seagulls
Tolqidy ortasynda qalyng maldyng. They move in waves among many animals.

When herders sing about family and auyl, and reference social and work-related activities,
they also represent everyday social and spatial strategies for caretaking livestock that occur in
extended family groups. Men and boys often tend livestock as they graze in the steppe, while
men, women, and children engage in handling livestock near their temporary or permanent
structures. Women, young and old, often manage milking and processing milk products, and
men engage in other tasks ranging from branding animals to managing animal health issues.
Expressions of the social and geographical boundaries that structure their work and, especially,
the long-term relationships families have had with domestic and wild animals and with the land
are repeated frequently in songs. In Tolbo, Zampai Altaikhan sings a family song about their
summer place at Dala köl, a lake region in Tolbo district, referring to the space that defines his
residential community. He sings, “The end of the lake is the beginning of my zhailau/Khorymdy
is the end of my auyl.” Similarly, Oktyabr references places named Qarasu and Uirt in Deluun
district in his tolghau, then sings, “This is the land with a wide pasture and fertile grasses/My
grandfather Khonshai, the best herder, raised sheep here/He tied his frisky colts, filling his
zheli.”26 Zhapar Qapish’s song about the Shigertei region tells his listeners “I herded livestock
at grandfather Eleubai’s auyl” and “My great grandfather Muqamedali spent the winter there”
[at Qongirzhal, Tishke sai, and Qyzyl tas]. Finally, in Deluun, Merei Ospankhan references
ancestral ties and implies that the land has been worked collaboratively, and successfully, for
several generations when he sings, “My ancestors have lived here for seventy years/They have
not had any difficulties in this place.”27
 ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND MUSICAL PRODUCTION • 173

Relationships with Animals

Sounds, song lyrics, and instrumental tunes show close relationships with the domestic and wild
animals that herders rely on or encounter in daily life in the steppes. Levin and Süzükei (2007, 157)
describe this as “an animist view of the world in which the power of nature—landscape, animals
and the spirits of natural places and beings—serves as a vital life force” throughout Inner Asia.
Human to animal connections are found in reliance on domestic animals for survival, but also
species of wild animals play significant roles in decisions about herders’ seasonal moves and their
comfort in and appreciation for specific locations.
Some herders note the presence of birds and bird song as indicators of the status of sites, to
gauge weather patterns, seasonal changes, and identify the existence of predators. Herders note
that the appearance and sounds of geese, ducks, and swans, daily visitors to many locations, signal
change in spring and fall, and the songs of birds such as the sparrow and nightingale provide an
indication of warmer weather to come in the spring. They also note that birds’ songs change in a
new season. Qaban Qazanbaiuly expresses this information briefly in a terme about Bayan Ölgii
written by Aqyt Qazhy:28

Zhazdy küni bolghanda, When summer comes,

Qazben üyrek qarlyghash, Goose, duck and swallow.
Neshe aluan küy salar, They sing different songs,
Bulbul torghay sandughash. Bulbul, sparrow and nightingale.

The swan (aqqu) is most highly respected among urban and rural Kazakhs; its movements and
sounds are described artistically in dance and music. In the countryside, the popular ruddy duck,
locally called sary ala qaz, plays a key role as indicator of seasonal change, and has inspired a
widely known local küi named “Sary ala qaz.”29 Even the küi story that sometimes accompanies a
performance references seasonal movement. In a 2005 interview, Ölgii city dombyra player Aighan
Bedel told his version of the story:30

A goose was left behind from its flock in the Deluun district lake because it couldn’t fly.
Its leg was broken and all winter it swam in the middle of the lake where the water wasn’t
frozen. Then in the spring it met with its healthy goslings. “Sary ala qaz” describes how the
goose wasn’t able to raise its wings, how it was walking and limping, and how it was sad that
it couldn’t fly.

Among domestic animals, the horse is the most revered of the five kinds of livestock that sustain
the Kazakh way of life in Mongolia. Herders travel by horse over the mountain steppes as they
care for their livestock and rely on their horses to carry them as they maintain social relationships
within their auyl and clan. A horse is a herder’s companion during many hours on the steppe.
Herders also sing while riding, and the horse’s gait dictates the rhythm and tempo of their songs.
At Zhalghyz aghash in 2014, Esilbek, whose family’s spring and summer places are tucked up near
a small mountain where his goats and sheep graze daily, climbs the slope on his horse each evening
to gather their herds for milking. Moving in zigzag lines along the steep slope, he accompanies
the entire process with song, the musical phrases well integrated into the movement of his horse
and the distances he needs to travel across each slope. The music undoubtedly also has an effect
on the horse as he labors.
Throughout Mongolia, mares provide milk for a fermented drink (called qymyz by Kazakhs) pre-
pared seasonally and served to family members and guests. The preparation of mare’s milk engages
herders acoustically with the mares and their young. The stylized sounds made by a member of
the family are said to calm the animals and to help the milk flow.31 This traditional sound-related
174 • JENNIFER C. POST

Figure 10.8 Snowy Kökserke peaks in Deluun district, Mongolia, May 2007

process is also connected to the social sharing of knowledge. Once the milking and fermenting are
completed, the availability of qymyz encourages neighborly social gatherings during which herders
discuss current issues, including those related to the weather, animals, and the land.
Music and sounds are part of the narrative that describes herders’ spatial and temporal expe-
riences. In Bessala, Oktyabr expresses his identity metaphorically in connection with the bürkit
(eagle). Captured and trained for hunting by Kazakh herders, animals killed by their eagles, such
as fox, are displayed in their homes, and fur is also used for clothing. Calling himself a child of
the region, Oktyabr sings:

Dombyra alyp ortangyzgha tolghanaiyn. I take my dombyra and offer my thoughts to you.
Zhasymnan önep qughan balang edim. I am your child; since my youth I have been chasing after art.
Bürkit tau tülep ösip asqar zhingdy. I was raised, then molted on high peaked Bürkit Mountain.
Qiyngha qanat qaghy arman etip. I have stretched my wings to meet difficulties.

Landforms are also described with human or animal form in songs, as in Merei Ospankhan’s terme
“Tughan zherge” when he sings about a revered mountain that is home for valued resources (See
Figure 10.8), “My K kserke!/You are like the wing of the golden eagle.” This relationship binds the
residents to the land and maintains the blurred boundaries between human and non-human that
help to shape the herders’ values.

Concern about Changes in the Land

Herders sometimes express responses to changes in the land in their songs. They reference both
seasonal changes, including impending periods of cold that can be devastating to their livestock,
as well as other climate change events. In fact, songs are seldom solely about change. Instead, some
 ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND MUSICAL PRODUCTION • 175

Kazakh singers in Mongolia embed references to their concerns in songs that otherwise celebrate the
landscape. Zhangabyl noted in a discussion that he wrote one terme “to describe the nature which
surrounds the places I live, and its changes, such as how well the grasses are growing, [and] whether
they are turning green or not.”32 Performing at a toi, Zhangabyl sang lines expressing his concern about
the status of the land. His song was accompanied by applause and discussion among the gathered
community members, especially when he sang about nearby ravines (sai) where their livestock grazed.

Örteng sai, Qurghaq saymen Suly sayym My Örteng sai, Qurghaq sai and Suly sai
Etegi bökterinde qozy zhaydym. I heard lambs on your skirt and hollow.
Zhayqalyp burynghyday köktey almay You don’t turn green and sway like before
Arshyndap bara zhatsyng zhyl zhyl sayyn. You are getting worse year by year.

In a settlement nearby, Oktyabr echoed his concern in a song that referenced the loss of resources
due to changing grazing patterns and herd composition, asking listeners in his song, “Oh what will
happen over time?” Many of the herders now recognize that swelling herds with goats to improve
a family’s economic status, and support the Mongolian (and Chinese) cashmere industry, is one
of the major causes of desertification in Mongolia.33
Longer spring seasons, more frequent droughts, and other volatile weather events impact key
activities connected to seasonal movement, the gathering of valued resources and the survival of
livestock. Weather events have kept herders from stockpiling grasses for the winter according to tradi-
tional schedules. This has made it difficult for them to plan for the ritual grass cutting for their winter
forage. The increasing appearance of the zhut, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
livestock in Mongolia during the winter months, is also the subject of songs. Aqylbek Zavchan sang
about the zhut in Bulghyn, referencing Mongolia’s nine times nine, or eighty-one days of winter cold.
He sang, “Mongolia’s nine times nine is difficult; Even the bulls were frozen.”34
Altai Tügelbai’s family song, “Zhutta ketken zhylqylarym” (About the horses that died in the
zhut), references an earlier period of hardship in both lyrics and melody. The lyrics date to the 1930s
and the pentatonic melody uses an asymmetrical rhythm that Altai and others described as “an
old-style” heard in early social gatherings (see Figure 10.9). Altai sang the song unaccompanied,

Figure 10.9 “Zhutta Ketken Zhylqylarym” (About the horses that died in the zhut)
176 • JENNIFER C. POST

as he heard his grandfather sing it.35 Discussing the subject of the song Altai acknowledged great
difficulty during the last series of zhut events as well. An excerpt:

Ishinde köp zhylqynyng bielerim, My poor mares among my many horses,

Bosaydy ony oylasam zhüyelerim. I become sad when I think about them,
Bar malym zher qayysqan zhutqa ketip All my animals died in the zhut
Artynda kedey boldy au ielering. And their owner became a poor man.

Singers who reference the effects of climate change and other sources of degradation on their
environment express concerns and even offer warnings, yet suggest no clear way forward. It is in
these songs that the vulnerability of Kazakh herders in Mongolia is most apparent. When thirty-
three-year-old Zhangabyl sang, “Nature is provided by Allah . . . yet the people waste what he
has given,” and twenty-five-year-old Oktyabr sang, “I carry my people’s heavy load/I’ll draw my
fellow citizens to my side,” both were aware of their role to contribute to local knowledge and that
their songs might encourage discussion about change. Yet these two young herders abandoned
the Mongolian countryside in 2011 to resettle in the city, leaving their livestock and the troubled
landscape behind them.

Conclusion

The music of Kazakh residents in Bayan Ölgii, Mongolia ranges from productions in Ölgii city
to events in the rural steppes that are home to a large number of mobile pastoral herders. Music
maintained in the urban communities still draws from cultural practices established during the
Soviet period. Musicians and listeners also tune radios, televisions, and computers to hear modern
productions from Kazakhstan, Western China, Russia, and Ulaanbaatar. Songs and tunes in these
contexts often focus on themes of love and sometimes offer a nostalgic look at the past. In contrast,
many of the compositions preserved and performed in the countryside offer stories of relationships
that mobile pastoralists have with the local landscape. Some lyrics in their most widely sung forms,
terme, tolghau and qara öleng, document historical and contemporary herding practices and social
relationships, and their instrumental tunes, küi, provide evidence of the traditional ecological
knowledge that has offered each generation methods for sustainable stewardship of the land. This
music created and performed in rural Mongolia provides information on how herders view their
current cultural, economic, and ecological environment.
Mobile pastoralists are experienced ecologists whose families engage daily with local ecosystems,
and whose lifestyles show the use of biologically sustainable practices that have been maintained for
generations. The narrative information embedded in their music demonstrates herders’ awareness
of climate change and other ecological events that impact biodiversity, and also remind us how
fully sounds and soundscapes are integrated in their lives, lifestyles, and daily work. Unfortunately,
systems and patterns that dictate their engagement with natural resources, transmitted from
earlier generations, are not as effective today. Pastoralists no longer have predictable sources for
water nor consistently healthy plants on a yearly cycle, and the wild and domestic animals they
have relied on for food and clothing, and for communicating about dangers and seasonal changes
in the environment with specific sounds and behaviors, are not as reliably available or healthy as
they once were. While many herders have worked hard to adapt to changes, for some the losses are
too great and they have chosen to leave the herding life behind. What they take with them when
they depart is collectively developed traditional knowledge about ecological practices, some of it
preserved in songs and tunes.
Mobile pastoralists as musicians and ecologists also have the potential to offer other listeners
opportunities to address some of the issues expressed in their narrative practices. We have clear
 ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND MUSICAL PRODUCTION • 177

evidence that herders work collaboratively within their communities, and research in other indige-
nous and local communities indicates that effective strategies have been developed to work collab-
oratively with members of the scientific community to address resource management (Berkes et al.
2000; 2006; Berkes 2009; Fernández-Giménez 2000). Models for using a form of cultural expression
have already been established in the research of Lejano and others. Baival and Fernandez-Gimenez
in Mongolia (2012), have focused on “meaningful learning for resilience-building,” especially
in conjunction with community-based natural resource management that has been studied by
applied ecologists in recent years. Fernández-Giménez (2012) continues her work to understand
how traditional ecological knowledge is expressed and understood, and how it can be used more
effectively, not only in Mongolia but in other regions as well.
Finally, this article also urges ethnomusicologists and other music scholars concerned with
sustainability to consider the significance of the biological components in ecological knowledge
represented in the music and sound of pastoralists and other musicians who live close to the land.
This approach will provide a view of ecosystems and sustainability that can be shared among local
musicians and other residents, music and sound scholars, and members of the scientific community.
When ethnomusicologists studying ecology and music limit their work on sustainable systems to
cultural sustainability, they lose sight of the importance of ecosystem health and diversity (and
related economic stability) in processes that not only support musical performance but demonstrate
through music the significance of resources in the lives of rural musicians and their communities.
Furthermore, disciplinary work in music will grow and benefit as scholars address cultural, social,
and physical resources not only in crisis but also to understand how human and non-human sys-
tems interact in the communities they study.

Acknowledgments

Research for this study was completed with the support of the US-Mongolia Field Research
Fellowship Program, sponsored by the American Center for Mongolian Studies (ACMS), the
Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC), and the US Department of Education,
by the University of Western Australia, and by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Translation of
song lyrics was completed in Mongolia with the help of Janbolat Khumarkhan.

Notes
1. Lejano’s team introduces two types of narratives their study: everyday narratives and official public discourse, noting
that the narratives that occur in daily life offer more effective opportunities for addressing climate issues (Lejano et al.
2013).
2. Referred to as dzud or zud in Mongolian.
3. As Fernandez-Gimenez notes (2000, 1320–1321), their knowledge of plants is demonstrated in their ability to iden-
tify specific species, their awareness of their locations and growing conditions, companion plants, its palatability for
livestock and resistance to grazing, as well as its value for other human uses such as fuel, medicine, or food.
4. Herders also demonstrate knowledge of ecological changes, including changes in pasture conditions in different places
and times, the state of the local water table and note the disappearance of streams and lakes (and spring snows) due
to declining precipitation, and the impact of the deterioration in soil fertility. And they also express knowledge that
activities by humans can be detrimental to the environment, such as widespread fuel wood harvesting, the presence
of vehicle tracks that crisscross grazing lands, as well as conditions resulting from environmental degradation such as
the appearance of multiyear droughts and frequent zhuts (Fernandez-Gimenez 2000, 1320).
5. Kazakh residents in Mongolia have also moved in response to the repatriation program established by the government
of Kazakhstan after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan has been particularly interested in Kazakh-speaking
residents of Mongolia due to their maintenance of social and cultural practices even during the Soviet era.
6. Radio broadcasts include programs from Kazakhstan, China, Russia, and Ulaanbaatar.
7. In Kazakhstan, the solo küi are also played on the bowed two-string qyl qobyz, but this instrument in not found in
rural Bayan Ölgii today,
8. See Humphrey and Sneath (1999), Fernandez-Gimenez (2000), Reading et al. (2006), Laurie et al. (2010), and Upton
(2012) for discussions of these issues among Mongolian herders.
178 • JENNIFER C. POST

9. In recent years, many herders note that the changing climate has altered their seasonal moving schedule.
10. Wormwood (Artemisia frigida), also known as sagebrush, is basic nutritious fodder for animals in the autumn-winter
pastures of Mongolia.
11. Recordings of Zhangabyl Doldash referenced in this essay were made on 30–31 July 2006 in Bulghyn and 19 June 2007
at Tövshin köl, Deluun sum.
12. Zhigit is a youth; the singer is referring to himself as a young man.
13. Asha means branch or fork.
14. See Post (forthcoming) on this topic.
15. Recorded at Ormegeit settlement near Daiyn Lake on 9 June 2006 and 13 June 2007.
16. Qyran is an eagle, this reference often refers to the golden eagle.
17. Recorded at Enbek’s home in Ölgii city, 21 June 2011.
18. “Waves of Ertis” is a Kazakhstan composition that is widely played in Mongolia. Some performers identify it with a
local river, such as the Khovd River. Most connect it to the Irtysh River, which flows through both Kazakhstan and
China.
19. Recorded at Alen’s summer place in Oighyr, 24 June 2011.
20. Interview with Enbek at his home in Ölgii city on 3 June 2015.
21. Aqerke was recorded at Daiyn Lake on 9 July 2006; Zhapar was recorded at Shigertei on 1 August 2006; Leskhan was
recorded at Qos Qatu on 1 August 2013.
22. Recorded at Altai’s winter home in Ulaankhus on 3 June 2014.
23. Lkhagvadorj notes that “Non-wood products . . . from the forest include 10 kg of berries per year and household, 10
to 20 kg of wild onions (Allium altaicum Pall.), and 2 to 3 kg of wild garlic (Allium obliquum L.)” (Lkhagvadorj et al.
2013, 86).
24. A zhyr historically refers to a heroic epic (epic singers were called zhyrau). In rural Bayan Ölgii singers sometimes use
zhyr simply to refer to their song.
25. Tilekbergen [Tileubek] Musa sang “Auylym” (“My auyl”) in 2005 and 2007. He said he had sung it many times at
local toi.
26. A zheli is a tethering place for livestock.
27. Zampai was recorded at Dala köl on 29 June 2005; Oktyabr was recorded near Tövshin köl on 23 June 2007; Zhapar
was recorded at Shigertei on 1 August 2006; Merei was recorded in Deluun sum center on 2 August 2013.
28. Recorded at Zhalghyz aghash on 18 June 2007.
29. The küi is attributed to Bayan Ölgii’s Qabykei Aqmeruly.
30. Recorded at Aighan’s home in Ölgii city on 6 July 2005.
31. See Levin and Suzukei (134–139) who also describes signals, chants and melodies used by herders in Tuva and Mongolia.
32. Interview with Zhangabyl Doldash, Zhalghyz aghash on 19 June 2007.
33. Addressing the problem throughout Mongolia, Dorj et al. noted in 2013, “Over the decade ending 2010, the number
of goats has increased significantly by ten million. In 2010 goats made up 47 percent of the total number of livestock
in Mongolia” (Dorj et al. 2013, 222).
34. Recorded in Bulghyn in July 2008.
35. Recorded at Altai’s winter home in Ulaankhus on 3 June 2014.

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 11
Music and Non-Human Agency
Bernd Brabec de Mori

A well-known definition of music states that what we understand with this term may be subsumed
under “humanly organized sound.” This was formulated by John Blacking (1973, 3) in his cele-
brated book How Musical is Man? His proposal, however, was not uncontested, and many authors
have tried to complement, contradict, or reaffirm this idea of how the phenomenon music could
be framed. What is of interest here is the adverb humanly, because it limits musical action and
appreciation of processes that are essentially human, thereby excluding non-human agency. In this
chapter, I will explore how far “the human” can be essentialized in relation to music and in which
sense agency beyond the human could be, or even has to be, acknowledged within this context.1
One restraint, however, must be made explicit up front: In order to judge if, for example, a mock-
ingbird or machines with artificial intelligence are able to create or understand “music,” we would
need a valid definition of what “music” is. As long as this is not defined—if it can be defined at all,
which I doubt—it is only possible to describe if non-human entities are able to produce and/or
recognize sonic patterns that possess characteristics of what is generally subsumed under “musical”
in a (Western!) human sense.2
In artistic contexts, the involvement of such sources from beyond the human realm is common.
For example, Blackfoot people may tell the researcher that their songs come from the guardian
spirits (Nettl 2010, 221), or it is a deity who sings through a Warao healer’s mouth (Olsen 1996,
169). Also in Western art music, divine (or other) inspiration is often mentioned as the ultimate
source of a work of music. For example, in an interview with Johannes Brahms conducted by Abell
(1981[1955]), Brahms tells the author about establishing a direct connection to God during a medi-
tative state he achieved while composing. Hence it would be God who was actually composing while
the composer would retreat to the rather simple duty of notating what he received through this
inspiration. Or, for a newer case, in his film 20,000 Days on Earth, Nick Cave (Forsyth et al. 2014)
says that his music depends on his mood and his mood depends on the weather, and, conversely,
the weather depends on his mood (however, Cave humorously explains that he cannot control
the weather because he cannot control his moods). Consequently, the weather would—in direct
interaction—be responsible for Nick Cave’s music, or at least for the moods communicated in his
songs. Although indigenous people seem to often abandon their traditional religions, the veridity
of Abell’s conversation with Brahms is doubted, and Nick Cave’s remark bears the characteristics
of a moody provocation by a rock musician, these examples show that inspiration is a topic open

181
182 • BERND BRABEC DE MORI

for vast speculation and artistic play, and is still far from being easily explained by scientific means
(see e.g. Drago and Finney 2013).
As the term indicates, inspiration refers to something from the outside going inside; an external
source that causes creative attitude inside a human mind:

Superficially, inspiration implies something outside the person, whether it is projected or

not. My view of my inspiration is external; my view of my creativity is internal. We imply
this in calling creativity an “innate gift.” So the difference between the two ideas, inspira-
tion and creativity, is that on the surface at least inspiration is objective and creativity is a
subjective matter. I am inspired by this, that or the other. Of course on close inspection the
external inspiration is usually revealed as a projected inner energy. But broadly speaking
and as a starting point we could say that inspiration comes from outside in, and creativity
comes from inside out.
(Deliège and Harvey 2006)

Usually, today, this is considered as a unidirectional flow of information, and agency is

understood to reside with the creating individual. For example, if a composer is inspired by
an impressive landscape or by the cruelty of some specific battle, the composer is still the
creative agent who actively perceives the landscape or acts of cruelty and transforms these
impressions into musical expressions. Therefore, in current public discourse, a human author
or composer can be (and has to be for copyright laws) attributed to any musical piece, despite
some difficulties with “traditionals.” However, the separation of an “outside inspiration” and
an “interior creativity” is ultimately connected to what Descola (2005) calls the naturalistic
ontology, to a conceptual bifurcation3 between the outside, unintentional nature, and the inte-
rior, intentional, and human culture. Among many indigenous or traditional, as well as some
New Age communities, this bifurcation is not made. Descola calls such ontologies “animic,”
“analogic,” and “totemic,” where physicality and interiority are conceptualized differently
from modern scientific thought, which is grounded in naturalistic ontology. This means that
among many communities on Earth, a totally different approach to creativity and invention
has to be envisioned, an approach that is ethnographically grounded. By taking the position
of our research associates seriously, this approach acknowledges non-human actors as part
of, or even the source of, creativity in general and creating music in particular (see Brabec
de Mori 2016). I will expound on this subject in later sections of this chapter. Before that, I
wish to draw your attention to more tangible non-humans like animals and plants, but also
planets, artifacts and software.

“Musicologies” Beyond the Human

For animals, a considerable amount of research has already been undertaken.4 Evidence is fairly
clear that certain animals, especially humpback whales and certain songbirds, are able to produce
and perceive sonic patterns that may carry meaning; and what is remarkable, meaning beyond
obvious signal or pseudo-linguistic character. This meaning can also be perceived, recognized,
and reproduced by animals of the same species. Differences in sound structures can be observed
between populations of these animals within a certain habitat compared to animals of the same
species who dwell elsewhere. This phenomenon strongly suggests something “cultural” occurring
within these species. Whether such utterances can be termed “music” is still open to debate. Sorce
Keller stresses that “Ethnomusicologists do not need to be reminded that the point is not to main-
tain that non-human animals make ‘music’ in the same sense that Homo sapiens does. There are
 MUSIC AND NON-HUMAN AGENCY • 183

things that non-human animals apparently never do. [. . . T]he embedding of words in a melody,
following a metrical pattern, appears to be uniquely human” (2012, 176).
Going further, let us consider that many plants are also able to produce sounds. Evidence of this,
for example, is found in acoustic emissions that can be recorded in order to diagnose dehydration
distress in certain plants (Nolf et al. 2015). This ability to emit sounds extends to sonic phenom-
ena beyond creaking in the wind: by manipulating cell membranes, or water containment in cells,
vibrations can be generated that transmit energy waves to the adjacent medium, that is, into air, or
soil. Usually these sounds are located beyond human hearing range, between 20 and 300 kHz, as
well as between 10 and 240 Hz, but at very low intensity, still inaudible for human ears (Gagliano
2013). Following this thread of research in plant behavior sciences, it is considered possible that
plants also perceive sonic events within a certain frequency range. Gagliano also suggests that
plants are able to communicate by the means of sonic interaction and dispose of cognitive facilities
to act and react within a surrounding soundscape. The sonic phenomena applied by plants could
have a certain signal character; but likewise one could interpret this communication channel as
musical, because plants seem to transmit information about their “mood” through nonverbal sonic
patterns. This area, however, is totally speculative still, and despite recent advances, little reliable
research is available.
Finally, some neo-platonic ideas of sphere harmonies, earth tones, and planet oscillations are
regarded musical among certain communities. Such ideas are present in somewhat esoteric appli-
cations of music, namely in what I call “informal music therapy” and related areas, as well as in
contemporary art music.5 Within these groups of people, powerful agencies are often attributed to
earth tones or planet sounds. Such musical practices often yield powerful results for practitioners
and participants. Although explications sometimes contrast with scientific findings—Cousto
(1984), for example, renders planets’ tones and related sonic derivations of astronomical number
ratios executable through brilliant intellectual analogisms—an ethnomusicology of New Age
musical practices has to acknowledge its research associates’ ontological concepts and the validity
of their practice.
It may, in the preceding examples, remain unclear whether one is listening to a soundscape
present in a certain environment, or one is actually confronted with something “musical”
emerging from a potentially non-human source. To conclude this section, it is not so relevant
if animals, plants, or planets understand the sounds they produce as musical. They are evidently
able to emit something that, in the end can be interpreted as, or translated into, music. Various
definitions of music allow listeners to judge whether certain sonic phenomena are musical or
not. Soundscape art plays extensively with this possibility: Traffic sounds are commonly regarded
non-musical noise, disturbing, and probably unhealthy in everyday life. However, if the same
noise is recorded and played back in an artistic context, it may suddenly acquire characteristics
of music. This is undoubtedly the case for animal sounds, even plant sounds,6 and the emissions
of astronomical objects received with radio telescopes and transposed into audible frequency
range, when they are used in compositions and renderings that target a “music-expecting”
audience. R. Murray Schafer, with his influential Tuning of the World (1977), invited artists to
explore environmental sounds as something one may actively listen to and work with in order
to produce artwork that can definitely be regarded music. Long before that, recordings—and
before recordings became available, instrumental or vocal imitations—of bird song and other
non-human sounds were extensively used and implemented in musical compositions and
improvisations alike.
It is clear however, that in these cases, the “music” is made by human soundscapers, composers,
or musicians who make use of sound sources originating (in part) from the realm of the non-human.
Back to the beginning: That many non-human entities are apt to emit sounds is obvious. Whether
they are apt to produce (or in turn perceive) music is still open to debate.
184 • BERND BRABEC DE MORI

Technology

If animal, plant, traffic, and planet sounds are made into music by human actors or mediators,
much music that is understood as created by humans is actually mediated by musical instruments.
This leads us to the problem of technological actors, of possibly creative “beings of technology”
(Latour 2013). In classic actor-network theory (ANT),7 any musical instrument could obtain the
role of a non-human actor or mediator. In ethnomusicology, some attempts have been under-
taken in order to gain insights into the active role of musical instruments. Jan Mrázek (2008), for
example, presents an analysis of the Thai xylophone ranaat eek and compares it with the Javanese
gambang, a xylophone very similar in construction. Mrázek’s goal is to provide a comparative
phenomenology of the instruments in order to dethrone Hornbostel and Sachs’s (1914) omni-
present classification system of musical instruments.8 By describing the construction of the ranaat
eek, how to learn to play it, the attitudes required from a successful player, as well as its ritual and
supernatural functions, he suggests treating instruments as individuals, or at least as things with a
certain “personality.” His work is not explicitly presented as an actor-network analysis but it uses
some of ANT’s approaches and thus deserves mention. Eliot Bates finally makes his intention clear
when describing “The Social Life of Musical Instruments” (2012a). He however only scratches the
surface of ANT’s possibilities when summarizing some important steps in constructing, selling
or giving, playing, and exhibiting long-necked lutes in the Middle East, especially the saz.9 The
paper is a groundbreaking step, albeit lacking the arduous in-depth empirical dimension of classic
ANT in science and technology studies. In his paper “What Studios Do,” the same author (Bates
2012b) likewise flirts with ANT, highlighting the active roles recording studios play in Istanbul
and elsewhere. Bates intends to explain that music recorded in a given studio is marked by the
studio, because musicians have to implement what the studio provides or requires in order to
be “played.” P. Allen Roda (2014) uses ANT in his in-depth study of the Indian drum set tabla,
focusing on the process of customized tuning of the instrument in the workshop during the
process of selling, thus highlighting the influence that changes on an instrument influences the
music that is played on it.
Other kinds of musical instruments have appeared since the mid-twentieth century, when electron-
ically created sequences of sounds were initially applied in music composition. This resulted in newly
developed instruments whose properties (or agencies) shaped entire styles and musical cultures—for
example, the electric guitar or the Moog synthesizer. Consequently, electronic devices today facilitate
truly non-human generation of music. With rapid advances in computer sciences and applications,
it became possible to further develop the initially used random number series into series that follow
given sets of rules that can also be learned by machines. Neural networks are not only able to generate
data series for sonification, but rather to interpret random inspiration through a learned set of rules in
order to create melodic-rhythmic structures that are undoubtedly recognized as musical by the vast
majority of human listeners (see for example the “chaotic inspiration algorithm” developed by Coca
et al. 2013). If the process of musical composition is mainly performed through a transformation
of inspiration (data obtained through input, e.g. of a certain landscape or war-time acts of cruelty)
into melodic-rhythmic structures following a certain set of rules, non-human machines are today
able to compose music. Visual information, like the colors or outlines of a mountain, or numerics
like the estimated ratio of deaths per time unit occurring during the battles of Verdun, may serve as
inspiration for human composers or machines alike.
Again, it is popular to play with such topics in artistic approaches. I only have to listen to
the left and the right of my office to notice that contemporary composers are creating musical
projects around computer aided and computer created music. For example, a recent performance
at the institute of electronic music and acoustics at the University of Music and Performing
Arts Graz presented L’Hypothèse de l’Atome Primitif Sonore for digital feedback with live elec-
tronics by Stelios Gagliardi, with computer generated sounds based on cosmological data (the
 MUSIC AND NON-HUMAN AGENCY • 185

“Big Bang”) in interaction with a human life performer. At the same time, Viennese composer
Johannes Kretz developed his Turing Test for Dancers—the essential part of the performance
was the task given to human dancers, to convince the audience that they are interacting with
an avatar projection of another human dancer instead of a machine generated avatar. These
are just two random examples from my own close vicinity that underline that the ambiguity
of human and machine capabilities in creating contemporary music is at the core of today’s
musical creativity in post-modern societies.
Furthermore, the music and sound effects a computer game player hears are in some cases
mediated by another kind of interface: In many contemporary games, sound is created when the
player interacts with the gameworld environment in certain ways (Grimshaw et al. 2013). Hence
what the player hears is not pre-composed but “improvised,” namely by an algorithm that displays
other-than-human properties. Although the algorithm was probably designed and coded by a
human game sound programmer, it is not the programmer who mediates between the “environ-
ment” (the gameworld) and the listening player, but instead the algorithm itself.
In ethnomusicology we often describe or faithfully reproduce what people tell us about more
traditional instruments. Lutes that are persons, flutes that embody deities or spirits, drums that
wield powers of dead ancestors or predator animals can be found among a variety of communities.
To give just one example, the complex of sacred wind instruments in Lowland South America is tied
to the indigenous conception that the instruments are parts of the body of a divine being (Wright
2015), are worldly manifestations (“bodies”) of otherworldly powers (“spirits”), or are imbued with
the power of spiritual or divine entities that manifest when the instruments are blown. These wind
instruments are subjected to a rigid and gendered set of taboos, in order to protect their special
status, and likewise to protect humans, especially the uninitiated, from the powers of the forces
associated with them.10
With such cases, we encounter the methodological divide between indigenous or “traditional”
epistemologies (Simpson 2001; Brabec de Mori 2016) that contrast with a contemporary, disen-
chanted (like diagnosed by Max Weber), scientific approach to organology. On the one hand,
instruments are considered “enchanted” entities in Gell’s (1992) sense among non-modern
communities. On the other hand, in naturalistic ontology, instruments are understood as mate-
rial tools for enhancing humans’ capabilities of sound production. This identifies a bifurcation
that is significant to the aims of this chapter and extends to all areas mentioned above. When
considered from a naturalistic, scientific point of view, music (or other) agency of animals,
plants, planets, algorithms, and instruments appears to be far-fetched. The “disenchantment”
of the modern world created animals, plants, and instruments that are merely automatons
reacting to stimuli and being devoid of intentionality and creativity. Contemporary advances
in treating this problem, like zoomusicology, animal and plant cognition studies, as well as
phenomenological or actor-network related analyses of musical instruments do not intend to
“reenchant” these entities. Instead, they aim to show on empirical grounds that large networks of
interrelatedness between these entities, historical and social environments, and human agency
provide possibilities for these beings and objects to exert certain influence on what humans
understand as musical creativity.
Contrastingly, in non-naturalistic ontologies, active contribution to musical (or other) pro-
cesses from such non-human entities goes largely unquestioned. The animic, analogic, or totemic
ontologies (Descola 2005) conceptualized in many non-modern or non-Western societies enable
non-human entities to have agency, even intentionality, and allow socializing with them from
human side. Especially in animic ontology, in Descola’s words, physicalities (i.e. bodies) are dis-
continuous, while interiorities (soul, mind) are continuous among beings. This means that animals,
plants, instruments, or stars have a body different from the human but a soul, mind, or culture
that is similar to the human. Therefore, these “human” interiorities in non-human entities enable
the latter to be creative, intentional, and musical in the way humans are. Of course, such beings
186 • BERND BRABEC DE MORI

are incompatible with a scientific conceptualization of the world. Their existence and agency has
to be grounded in (religious) “systems of belief ” or indigenous constructions of knowledge (see
e.g. Simpson 2001) that ontologically contrast with scientific thought.

Agency within Music

Gell, in his groundbreaking though difficult work Art and Agency (1998), defines agency as a
point where the possibly infinite chain of causality is broken, and a “beginning” is attributed to a
certain entity. This is a very common procedure in human cognition, because it is impossible for
a human mind to trace every causality back to a prior action; therefore this chain is broken at a
point convenient to understanding a specific process in specific circumstances. To give a simple
example: A human driver tries to start a car engine, but the engine does not respond to the driver’s
attempts because a connection in the car’s electric system is corroded due to lack of maintenance.
The driver will arrive late in her office, so she calls her boss, saying “my car doesn’t want to start.”
She does not have to explain the whole causal chain of events that led to the situation. Here, the
circumstances suggest to attribute agency (or delegate the guilt for being late) to “the car.” Similarly,
a concert visitor may tell her friend that “the Beethoven concerto moved me deeply” instead of,
for example “the way the musicians interpreted the score written by Beethoven triggered memo-
ries about important emotional situations in my own past” or the like. In the western Amazonian
Lowlands, indigenous people say that they feel “pierced by a song” when it is well performed in
a ritual setting (Brabec de Mori 2015, 27), whereas the chain of causality might be traced back
through the singing style of the ritual specialist, his personal history, and his reputation that was
acquired through a series of successful rituals, and so on. It is possible to attribute agency—the
potential to “move” the listener “deeply” or to even “pierce” somebody—to the performance, and
consequently to the music itself.
Besides “moving” or “piercing,” a given melody can also obtain a state, it can be “happy,” “solemn,”
or “sad,” for example. This does not mean, however, that the musicians interpreting the melody are
sad themselves while performing the melody. This was shown by Stoichiţă (2008) in his work with
Romani musicians. Neither the performers on stage are sad, nor was the bandleader sad when he
conceived the tune. Also in the case of written works, the composer was not necessarily sad while
writing down the score. Even the listener can be happy during the piece being performed and still
perceive the melody as “sad.” Therefore, the question arises, who or what is actually “sad,” who or
what is in the emotional state of “sadness”? One possibility is to trace the chain of causality back
to the performer or composer who has probably learned to use certain socially and historically
constructed musical “tricks” (Stoichiţă 2008, 24) that convey the impression of sadness, and fur-
ther to how these “tricks” have been developed in a certain historical and local tradition, and so
on. Another possibility, and probably the more common one, is to break the chain and attribute
“sadness” to the melody. This process corresponds to what Gell would call “enchantment.” The
emotion of sadness is not a property of the sonic pressure waves perceived by the listener’s ear.
Within a given social and cultural context, the listener adds the notion of “sadness” to the perceived
sound sequence, therefore “enchanting” it with a quality that is not a property of the object by
itself (as for example “amplitude” or “pitch” would be). If the melody by itself is sad in the mind of
a listener, the listener attributes the agency of conveying the feeling of sadness to the melody. This
does not, in Gell’s words, “impl[y a] particular kind of agency, [but] only the polarity of agent/
patient relations” (1998, 66). A unique relation between one melody and one listener is constructed
that identifies the melody as agent and the listener as patient in the course of the transmission of
“sadness” in a specific context.
In aesthetic theorizing, the problem of emotions conveyed to a listener by (or through) a certain
piece of music has received much attention, including the “persona theory” of musical emotion, as
 MUSIC AND NON-HUMAN AGENCY • 187

initially put forward by Levinson (1990). While prior scholars usually tended to correlate a musical
persona with the composer or musician, Levinson argues that this has not been the case. He sug-
gests that the persona can also be virtual, a non-physically-existing protagonist whose emotional
trajectory is described by the musical work.11 Despite much criticism, this theory has gathered
considerable support by other scholars; for example, by Robinson and Hatten, who conclude that
“if listeners hear music as expressing emotion, it is often because they are able to infer one or more
implied, virtual agents who can genuinely feel and express the trajectory of emotional states the
music is heard as expressing” (2012, 104). Following their argument, it becomes convincing that
a listener has at least the option to infer such an agent, a virtual persona, that exists “within” the
music, in cases even independent from a composer’s or interpreters’ intentions.
In 2012, Stoichiţă and Brabec de Mori introduced “sonic beings” into musical research. Stoichiţă
(2011) suggests that Levinson’s persona can be understood as an “enchantment” of a musical piece.
In any context besides the Western classical “work,” it may be difficult or meaningless to anthro-
pomorphize one persona’s trajectory within one “work.” Attribution of agency or even personality
may occur in certain forms of enactment during performance. For example, certain tunes or specific
rhythms may “fill” a human person with non-human interiority like in Caribbean or Afro-Brazilian
“possession trance” events.12 Furthermore, applications of specific musical techniques like “voice
masking” indicate that in a given performance style, in this case vocal timbre, a non-human force
makes its appearance in the way music sounds.13 Finally, through the interaction of specific motives,
timbres, or parts of a musical piece, a series of different beings can be addressed, so that a sequence
of musical items reproduces a chain of entities, a procession of “sonic beings.”14 The musical realm
contains a virtual causality of its own, which animates the elements that are joined by it (Scruton
1997). That said, within music it is possible that causal relations are built between its elements (e.g.
between specific pitches, like the leading-tone in major-minor tonality and the “tension resolving”
tonic), relations that only exist as additions to the sonic events perceived. Thus, such relations
can be understood again as an “enchantment” of the perceived stimuli. “Enchanted listening”
(Stoichiţă and Brabec de Mori, in press) endows the listener (as Gell’s “patient”) with the faculty
of experiencing the effects of interactions, summons, transformations, etc. of those elements that
are (as Gell’s “agents”) present within, and only within, the hearing space construed by the music.
It is important to note that these agents are, like Levinson’s persona, neither physically present in
the sonic event, nor necessarily intended by the composer or musician, but instead added by the
listener. Therefore, the sonic event becomes “enchanted.”
The common Western way of locating such experiences and attributions of agency is however to
situate the whole process within the listener’s mind. If we employ a scientific perspective, the virtual
persona does not physically exist in the musical work and the sonic being is by no means more
material, so they have to be located in the mind, if they exist at all.15 Conversely, in non-naturalistic
ontologies, such entities are often externalized and situated in the environment. In the following,
I will present two examples that illustrate the ways non-human entities can be coded in musical
motives or even cause music to sound in certain ways. One is from Papua New Guinea, and the
second from the South American Lowlands. Similar concepts, however, can be found elsewhere, too.
The first example treats the muni bird and waterfalls and their interactions with the Kaluli’s
vocal performances. The Kaluli are an indigenous people living in Papua New Guinea, and the
description of their musical relations with their environment by Feld (2012 [1982]) is now consid-
ered a milestone in the history of ethnomusicology. For certain song genres, namely in the gisalo
ceremony, the language employed by the Kaluli when speaking about their “music theory” uses
repeated references to waterfalls. There are different kinds of waterfalls (high and low ones, carry-
ing much water, or little) that therefore “generate” different vocal performances. Feld writes that:

At the level of conceptualization, there is a theoretical frame of reference organizing patterns

of sound in intervals, contours, and phrases that descend and balance like waterfalls, rush
188 • BERND BRABEC DE MORI

forth like white water over rocks, or gently surge gulu like even creek falls. More importantly,
these notions about sonic structure, coded in metaphors of water, are explicitly linked to
notions about textual structure in a concept of composition “like water falling down and
mixing in a waterpool.” The creative moment of text coming to mind and flowing into the
pool of swirling melody is the act of musical composition.
(Feld 2012[1982], 214)

Feld, in 1982, called the relations between melodic and textual structure and waterfalls “meta-
phors.” The notion of metaphor, however, is not as simple as often taken for granted, as shown
by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), and is deeply rooted in experience. It is the distributed experience
of seeing and hearing a waterfall and seeing and hearing a gisalo performance within the Kaluli
framework of cosmology that makes a waterfall not merely like the song and therefore good for
describing the singing verbally. It is rather a source that engenders the structure used for Kaluli
vocal art. One may see this relation as a form of inspiration, like the bad English weather that
is allegedly responsible for the dire moods in Nick Cave’s songs. However, the waterfall (sa in
Kaluli language) is not only used as a metaphor in the discourse about singing. It is an integral
part of language, as it is also constituent of the terms for “speaking with an inner meaning,” and
for any utterances that convey text, or are performed with an association of text, like “whistling
with a text in mind” (Feld 2012 [1982], 133). It denotes performance of speaking, salan, and
thus acquires a status much more rooted in experience and behavior than a mere likeness. In the
light of contemporary animism, the agency and animic personhood of waterfalls can account
for the Kaluli’s fondness of waterfalls as a source for such pre-eminently human capabilities like
speaking and singing.16 It is the waterfall that makes the landscape speak, and the voice of Kaluli
people seems to be their “waterfall.”
The agency of the muni bird in Kaluli poetics and singing is more explicitly person-centered.
Kaluli people hear drumming (especially by the ilib drum) as an utterance of the muni bird.
The muni bird, furthermore, is heard as the crying of a child, based on the narrative “the boy who
became a muni bird.” When the ilib is beaten in ceremony, Kaluli listeners are so deeply touched by
the call of the bird-child that they start weeping, may collapse on the floor, or even burn dancers or
the drum itself with a torch. It should be clear by now that this goes beyond a game of words: The
experience of hearing the drum is so profoundly rooted in the conviction that the spirits of lost
children call through the muni bird so that Kaluli listeners actually break into tears and collapse
and retribute their grief to the musicians.
Gisalo is also performed by spirit mediums in what Feld calls “séances.” The medium performs
songs that likewise move people to tears, but the collapsing and burning does not take place.
The medium sings similar songs in ceremonies, but Feld makes clear that “Theoretically the
songs are not pre-composed or rehearsed but rather represent compositions by various spirits
of the dead and local spirits of lands that are manifest through the mouth of the medium”
(2012[1982], 179–180). Of course, Feld is skeptical here, and he says, “theoretically.” This is
due to the abovementioned bifurcation between culture and nature, between mind and envi-
ronment, which is strictly upheld in Western naturalism but less pronounced or even absent
in many indigenous societies. In naturalism, the agent is the singing person who intentionally
changes his vocal timbre in order to make the “worshippers” “believe” that spirits are present.
Among people who hold a conceptualisation of the world structured in what Descola (2005)
calls animism, non-human beings like birds, waterfalls, other animals, plants, or mountains,
are understood as irreducible persons who have human-like culture, and minds, too. Therefore,
processes like musical creation can be externalized and attributed to “spirits,” or to personifi ed
animals, plants, and so on. One main task of specialists (like “mediums,” “priests,” “healers,”
“shamans”) is to gain access to socialize with such non-human entities in order to instruct
them, learn from them, to drive them off, to seduce them; in short, to use these relations in
 MUSIC AND NON-HUMAN AGENCY • 189

order to obtain favorable results for their peers. Feld mentions that also among the Kaluli, the
medium’s singing allows listeners to hear which spirit or entity is singing “through the mouth
of the medium” (2012, 180).

Agency outside Music

It is exactly this problem of mediumship that poses a methodological challenge of how to treat such
performances (see also Jankowsky 2007). As scholars trained in Western academic institutions, or
institutions that adhere to a naturalistic distinction between culture and nature, we are supposed
to follow the principle of Ockam’s razor, that is to prefer the explanation that requires fewer enti-
ties to explanations that require many entities. A sociological interpretation of such mediumship
would explain the people’s “belief system” based on the Durkheimian separation of the sacred
and the profane: The sacred is located in a universe of symbols that stand for processes within the
profane. With that, Kaluli mediumship can be understood as a belief system using certain songs
and singing styles in order to symbolize and indicate certain actions and processes that should
then be executed by the believers. Taking, however, our research associates seriously, we have to
apply an ontological pluralism: Although we “know” that spirits do not exist outside of the human
mind, people in the community in question may likewise “know” that they do exist, and that it is
possible, and in certain circumstances perfectly reasonable, to socialize with a tree. Many indige-
nous or traditional communities, and with them a number of post-modern New Agers, and even
concert audiences who “believe” in Beethoven do not employ Ockam’s razor. A reality with many
entities is perfectly feasible.17
In the western Amazon, musical healing is widespread and frequently applied. The importance of
sound for indigenous conceptions of the world is so high that Lewy (2015) terms this way of inter-
acting with the environment “amerindian sonorism.” Sessions for curing (and likewise for sorcery)
are conducted by specialists that excel in singing specific songs they claim that they have learned
from spirits. As the Kaluli example demonstrates, this is not a local phenomenon. The Taiwanese
Tao, for example, likewise tell that they have learned the mikarayag polyphonic singing from the
anito, spirits of the dead (Lin 2013, 236). Among Peruvian lowland people, including indigenous
and mestizo populations, knowledge in general, and with that the ability of singing magical songs for
healing or witchcraft, is obtained through what is locally called “diet”: a person ingests a substance,
for example a decoction of a tree bark, usually repeatedly every day for a certain span of time (e.g.
one week). Meanwhile, and during a decided time that follows (e.g. some weeks or months), strict
alimentary and social taboos have to be followed. This procedure leads the practitioner to dreams or
wake-time visions of the spirits of the plant ingested; within these dreams or visions the apprentice
can obtain power, most often in the form of songs, from the spirits. When later conducting healing
sessions, the healer can use the songs or the singing styles he or she has obtained from the spirits in
order to apply them in specific situations. Within the healing session, the song itself is not thought
to affect the patient directly—the song serves for instructing allied beings or repelling malevolent
forces (e.g. a spirit that caused an illness). Circumstances are manipulated, resulting in healing if
the songs are applied correctly (see Brabec de Mori 2009, 2012, 2015).
It is however not exactly the rhythmic-melodic structure of the songs that is obtained from
the plant spirits. The melodies are most often learned through oral transmission from teachers.
The diet instead imbues the healer with the power of socializing with the spirits. During the
actual healing session, the healer “hears” or “feels” the songs performed by the spirits in the
spirit world, inaudible for lay people, and sings a human song in human language in the singing
style of the spirit the healer is in contact with. This contact, that is the actual presence of spirits
in the healing ritual, can be heard by listeners in changes of tempo, timbre, or register. Th is
was called “voice masking” by Dale Olsen, who remarked for the Venezulean Warao, that the
190 • BERND BRABEC DE MORI

spirits “and the wisiratu [healer] are one entity during spiritual affairs such as curing; and the
wisiratu’s masked voice is the hebu’s [spirit’s] voice” (1996, 162). Likewise among the Peruvian
Shipibo-Konibo, the patients or audience present during a curing session can judge if spirits are
present in the singer’s voice, and even define the category of spiritual being (e.g. a water spirit, a
celestial entity) that sings through the healer’s mouth. The healer is not possessed by the entity;
he or she is still consciously active as a translator: The spirits’ inaudible song is performed in a
way that human audience can hear and understand it. The singing style, that is the voice mask,
indicates that the performed song is actually a powerful spiritual entity’s song (cf. Brabec de
Mori 2015). Here, the voice mask indexes the powerful beings at work. The difference between
the Kaluli hearing and imitating the muni bird, and for example the Shipibo-Konibo hearing
and imitating the matataon bird, was formulated by Brabec de Mori and Seeger (2013, 272).
One can imitate the acoustic shape of a bird call, but on the other hand, it makes sense in an
animist world to translate a bird’s calling or singing into a human song with human lyrics. In
both cases, however, the source for the song itself, for its lyrics, or its sound (the voice mask)
is definitely regarded non-human and exteriorized. It is either the bird (embodying a child
spirit) calling, the waterfall “speaking,” or the spirit person of a plant, animal, or another entity
that is the “composer” or source of the music finally heard by the audience or recorded on
tape or flashcard: “Although in general it is rather assumed that the bobinsana-person or the
kawoká-spirit do not exist in a literal, ‘physical’ sense, they are evident as musical motifs or
music-inspiring agents. They manifest themselves in sound transmission and execute agency
via music performance” (Brabec de Mori and Seeger 2013, 282).

Conclusion: Musical Agency Correlated

It is rather difficult to judge if non-human entities, ranging from animals, plants, mountains, or
waterfalls to planets, computers, or spirits and divine forces, are able to produce music. In some
cases it is even difficult to define their ontological status (whether spirits exist) or their capability
to initiate action (do mountains want to sound in the wind?). Finally it is impossible to deter-
mine if what they produce is music. It may be in good time to reiterate here that agency should
not be confused with intentionality. For the New Age people listening to planet sounds on the
Klangwirkstoff label, Jupiter has power (Cousto 1984), and maybe is conceptualized in a person-like
way. Among the indigenous Venezulean Hohodene, wind instruments are the body of the divine
Kuwai (Wright 2015). For the Kaluli people, the muni bird embodies the spirit of a lost child, and
even songs or drum sounds that sound alike to the bird’s call transport the grief for the loss (Feld
2012 [1982]). A Shipibo-Konibo healer performs the song of the bobinsana-plant spirit he hears
sounding “from the spirit world” (Brabec de Mori 2015). In any case, the translation of sound
emitted by non-humans, regardless if they are conceptualized as physical or ethereal, into patterns
recognized as music or music’s corresponding local terms, is mediated by humans. Artists, guides,
and specialists, like healers, apply techniques and methods of translation and transmutation (Severi
2014) of non-human agency into what human audiences understand as music. Agency can be
attributed, in Gell’s sense, to any entity in the chain of causality. The planet emits electromagnetic
waves that can be transposed to sounds, and if these sounds have meaning to a certain audience,
this audience can legitimately attribute musical agency to the planet. If for a specific audience, a
musical instrument “speaks,” it has agency.
But attributing intentionality is different. If the entity in question shall have the intention to
produce music, song, or power and meaningful sound, it needs human or human-like qualities,
human-like “cultural” understanding, and a human-like mind. Therefore, human-like qualities
are attributed to entities in an animist ontology, in order to understand their intentionality. It is
counterintuitive for a naturalist to assume that birds, plants, or computers have the intention to
 MUSIC AND NON-HUMAN AGENCY • 191

make music. But if the birds, plants, and computers are conceptualized as persons, it becomes
perfectly possible.
Finally, there are some specific characteristics of sonic occurrences on the one hand, and musical
phenomena on the other, that seem meaningful for the question of non-human agency. This is
mainly the property that sounds can be heard in a way we termed “enchanted.” Musical motives
or passages can be sensed either as expressions of a virtual persona or as elements that relate to
each other, “sonic beings” that can be endowed with an agency of their own. Consequently, such
“musical entities” can easily be correlated with extra-musical entities. This is what Lowland South
Americans do: They hear the voice mask of a singing healer, a specific quality of timbre, for exam-
ple. The healer sings in a harsh voice, summoning, identifying, and repelling the spiritual cause
of the illness, before calling upon his or her benevolent allied beings, thereby changing the tone
of voice. Towards the end of the ritual singing, when the patient is going to be cured, the song has
another quality, perfectly observable in sound recordings. The entities correlated with the sonic
phenomenon are distinct: First, the illness, the malevolent spirits, are made present within the
audio space and in the end the celestial allies are heard by the patient and audience.
Such processes, however, are not confined to societies with an animist ontology. Agency can
be attributed to exteriorized malevolent and benevolent spirits, but likewise to other entities. For
example, in Western music entrainment therapy—lacking any traceable connections to indigenous
animism—something very similar occurs: First, therapist and patient together identify musical
sounds that “sound like the pain.” Then, a sonic quality is again agreed upon that “sounds like
painless wellbeing.” After these definitions are done, the therapist (or the patient, or both, depend-
ing on the situation) improvises a piece of music, starting by emphasizing the “pain sound” and
transforming the piece to finish by exclusively using the “wellbeing sound.” This method is evidently
effective (Bradt 2010). The principle in these two examples is the same: A specific quality of sound
is correlated to a specific extra-sonic quality; in the beginning with the illness-causing spirit or the
perception of pain, and towards the end with the allied benevolent spirit or the feeling of wellbeing.
From one perspective, the music is created by non-musical agents (spirits and pain); from another
perspective, the music itself exerts agency on non-musical entities (again, spirits and pain). And
in both cases, intentionality is located with the human healer or therapist, but agency is attributed
to the spirits, or the musical sounds respectively.
One way to approach non-human agency in musical processes is therefore to look at and listen
to non-human beings and try to determine their role in musical processes, as I demonstrated
in the first part of this chapter. Another way is to listen to music or other vocal or instrumental
expression in order to correlate properties of the sound, or properties of the sound’s enchantments
with non-human agents, as was exemplified in the subsequent sections.
It was demonstrated in this chapter that non-human agency in music production and percep-
tion is a complex issue, especially for the ethnomusicologist who is not only indebted to scholarly
scrutiny but also to her or his research associates and their respective ontological positioning.
Ethnomusicological research can contribute to social and cosmological understanding by analyzing
how music is brought into the world and how it is perceived, received, and made effective by the
respective audience.
When treating issues of agency, the question of whether sounds produced or mediated by
non-humans “are” music cannot be answered, because a valid definition of what music “is” among
humans is still lacking. Maybe future research will show, or refute, that a lark hears bird song in a
way similar to humans who listen to music, or even that one tree perceives the vibrations caused by
another “as music.” Anyway, intentionality, that is to purposefully make music, at this point cannot
be attributed to most non-human agents. It seems that in order to be able to speak of music, sound
must either be made into music by human mediators, for example by inspired composers, sound-
scape artists, New Age performers, or Amazonian indigenous healers; or human intentionality and
therefore human interiority has to be attributed to non-humans, as it is done in animist societies.
192 • BERND BRABEC DE MORI

Maybe music is a phenomenon tied to humanity, although its distribution among a multitude of
non-human agents is evident, too.

Notes
1. Agency beyond the human is not by any means a new topic to the study of music. Long before the era of enlighten-
ment and the birth of what we know today as musicology, divine intervention and inspiration were often taken for
granted or were subjected to more or less speculative musings about meaning, origin, or teleology of music. Likewise,
thinking about the possible musicality of animals, especially birds, has been common among specialists and lay people
respectively since immemorial times. However, during the history of academic musicology, the serious consideration
of other-than-human musical sources is rather new.
2. For discussions on how music can be defined see e.g. Nettl (2010, 216–227).
3. This distinction of nature from culture was initially criticized by Alfred Whitehead who defined it as the “great
Bifurcation.” For contemporary treatment of the topic see e.g., Descola and Pálsson (1996), Descola (2005), and Latour
(2013); in connection with music, see Lewy (2015) and Brabec de Mori and Seeger (2013), among others.
4. For examples and overviews see Mâche (1997), Martinelli (2009), and Sorce Keller (2012).
5. See e.g. Laack (2012) for the Glastonbury neo-pagan communities, or check the German music label Klangwirkstoff
that focuses on astronomical analogisms. Also the work by Stelios Gagliardi presented in the next section makes use
of data gathered from calculating the universe.
6. For example, consider the current project A Stage for a Tree Audience by German artistic researcher Lucie Strecker to
be realized at Wharepuke Sculpture Trail in New Zealand in 2017.
7. For introductions to and the applicability of ANT see, for example, Callon and Latour (1981), Latour (2005), and
Bueger and Stockbruegger (2016).
8. Mrázek argues that thinking in Hornbostel-Sachs (HS) categories directs one’s understanding towards materialism,
suppressing any phenomena more meaningful to players, builders, audience, and scholars, especially “all ambiguities
and shades of meaning” (Mrázek 2008, 96). He thereby compares the HS system with George Orwell’s “Newspeak.”
Taking into account the power of the HS system, the system by itself has to be acknowledged as an influential actor in
the past century of organology.
9. Note that contrarily to Mrázek, Bates does make use of the category “long-necked lute” from the HS system without
criticism.
10. For details see the volume Burst of Breath, edited by Hill and Chaumeil (2011).
11. Note that the persona theory is centered on Western “classical” art music in Levinson’s analysis.
12. See Schaffler and Brabec de Mori (2015), or more generally Rouget (1985), Gell (1998, 70), and Jankowsky (2007).
13. See Olsen (1996, 169), for further examples see also Brabec de Mori (2012, 2015).
14. See also Brabec de Mori and Seeger (2013) for a more detailed account, and Severi (2014) for some very good examples
from South America.
15. The mentioned “Western” point of view relies much on the psychoanalytic idea that the human mind is able to create
many entities within. However, more recent psychological and anthropological approaches propose a more externalized
interpretation, too, see for example the concepts of “distributed cognition” (Salomon 1997), or the “distributed person”
and “the extended mind” proposed by Gell (1998).
16. Among the Ecuadorian Achuar (Mader 1999), waterfalls are the home of Arutam, the primordial power of being
likewise responsible for many forms of music (cf. Bammer de Rodriguez 2015).
17. One main point in the discussion about the “ontological turn” in anthropology is the effect that ontological pluralism
creates “realities” that are inflated with beings and contradictions that can often easily be refuted from a strong natu-
ralistic position.

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trinity.edu/tipiti/vol13/iss1/8
 Part IV
Community and Social Space
 12
Rethinking the Urban Community
(Re)Mapping Musical Processes and Places
Kay Kaufman Shelemay

If studies of urban musical phenomena have come to dominate ethnomusicological research since
the 1970s, there remain both theoretical and methodological issues surrounding this complex area
of inquiry. While approaches to urban musical life had their roots in the study of ethnic commu-
nities (Reyes 1979) and often continue to focus on collectivities united by descent, our changing
world has reshaped the processes through which urban communities are formed, encouraged their
increasingly porous boundaries, and transformed the networks and media through which they are
sustained. Indeed, the very notion of musical community itself merits considerable rethinking and
expansion, a discussion I have initiated in a recent publication (Shelemay 2011a). In this chapter I
will take a close look at ways in which musical processes have been instrumental in shaping urban
musical communities through music’s role in establishing the ethnic places that unite a collectivity
from within and represent it to the outside world.1
Here I am interested in approaching musical transmission and performance not as static sym-
bols of established social groupings, but rather as dynamic processes that can generate, shape, and
sustain new communities. In urban settings, these musical processes operate in distinctive ways.
My comments here derive from observing the formation of Ethiopian diaspora communities
since their beginnings in the second half of the 1970s, most particularly in heavily urban North
American locales, and from tracking music’s pivotal role in generating differentiated social group-
ings. An unusually large number of Ethiopian musicians have migrated abroad since the advent
of the Ethiopian revolution in 1974, providing a unique opportunity to document their roles in
both sustaining existing social ties and galvanizing new collectivities during the processes of reset-
tlement. Ethiopia is an intensely multi-ethnic country with many different musical traditions; a
signal challenge in the diaspora is to discern how multiple musical styles figure into a complicated
process of community formation. During 2007–2008, I tracked individual immigrant musicians
who performed the widest range of Ethiopian musics in various settings, seeking to understand
their musical lives in their new urban environments.2 The theoretical proposals in this chapter
emerge both from this recent round of ethnographic research and from my longer-term studies
of the Ethiopian homeland and subsequent diaspora formation.

197
198 • KAY KAUFMAN SHELEMAY

In bringing the urban area into clearer dialogue with the role of music making in generating
new Ethiopian communities, I will draw on an article by cultural geographer Elizabeth Chacko,
who studied the growing numbers of African immigrants, with special attention to Ethiopians
among them, in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area (Chacko 2003). Ethiopians are the second
largest of the new African immigrant groups who have arrived in North America since the period
of African independence post 1965 and who are today widely dispersed across the United States
and Canada.3 There are estimated to be approximately 250,000 Ethiopian immigrants living in
the Washington, DC, metropolitan area alone. Chacko has noted that Ethiopians (and other new
African communities) are not concentrated in a single residential area, but rather are widely dis-
persed across a number of neighborhoods in the District of Columbia and nearby municipalities
in Maryland and Virginia.
The shaded areas on Chacko’s map reproduced in Figure 12.1 identify residential concentrations
of Ethiopians, although it should be noted that Ethiopians constitute only 18 percent of new African

Woodmore
Maryland

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City of No. of Immigrants

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Figure 12.1 Map of Ethiopian community in Washington, DC, metropolitan area

Source: Elizabeth Chacko, “Ethiopian Ethos and the Making of Ethnic Places in the Washington Metropolitan
Area,” Cultural Geography 2003 (20/2): 23. Used by permission.
 RETHINKING THE URBAN COMMUNITY • 199

arrivals even in those areas where they have the greatest concentrations, a “palpable,” but by no means
dominant presence (Chacko 2003, 29). We should also take into account that there have surely been
some subtle changes in residence patterns and place-making since Chacko’s map was published in
2003, notably a shift of commercial institutions from the Adams Morgan neighborhood north of
Dupont Circle, to areas a short distance east on the U Street corridor.4 The residential neighborhoods
highlighted on Chacko’s map and the relative numbers of Ethiopians in each area, with the largest
number of Ethiopians dwelling in Virginia, followed by Maryland, with the District in third place,
are quite congruent with the more limited residential data I gathered from thirty-one Ethiopian
musicians active in the DC metropolitan area during 2007–2008. Among my research associates, the
largest number (thirteen) lived in Virginia (primarily in Arlington and Alexandria); ten resided in
Maryland, spread mainly across the Takoma Park/Silver Spring area; and eight dwelled within or near
to the District of Columbia’s Columbia Heights area. Thus Ethiopians are dispersed across multiple
neighborhoods, although they undoubtedly will encounter other immigrants from their homeland in
each. At least four of the thirty-one musicians I interviewed moved within the metropolitan area or
away from it during or shortly after the interview period in 2007–2008, a familiar profile in which new
immigrants are quite mobile as they search for employment and economical housing in a new locale.
The black dots on Chacko’s map mark the locations of Ethiopian grocery stores and restaurants,
while the crosses provide locations of Ethiopian churches. These are the physical sites that serve, to
use Chacko’s term, as “ethnic place makers” and that hold both real and symbolic meaning in the
construction of the Ethiopian diaspora community (Ibid.). Most strikingly, the map shows that loca-
tions of many of the most prominent Ethiopian institutions and commercial establishments, which
are the most important ethnic place-makers, are found outside the boundaries of major Ethiopian
residential areas. Building on Zelinsky and Lee’s (1998) notion of heterolocalism,5 and Wood’s
(1997) concept of ethnic place-making,6 Elizabeth Chacko suggests “that ethnic place-making in
metropolitan areas has been loosened from its traditional centrality moorings,” and differs from
one immigrant community to another (Chacko 2003, 24). She suggests that urban ethnic identities
are not to be sought or displayed in the residential centers, but are vested in specific places where
community is forged and embodied (Ibid., 25). Chacko further suggests that Ethiopians’ efforts in
urban ethnic place-making can serve as a model for understanding the creation and maintenance
of ethnic community by other new immigrant groups (Ibid., 28).
Chacko goes on to provide a taxonomy of places that serve to generate a sense of community
among ethnic communities in urban settings characterized by residential scattering. She proposes
that these types of places include ethnic institutions, ethnic sociocommerscapes, ethnic arenas,
and intangible ethnic places, as Figure 12.2 summarizes and defines in detail.

Figure 12.2 Ethnic place-making in heterolocal urban settings

Source: Based on Elizabeth Chacko. 2003. “Ethiopian Ethos and the Making of Ethnic Places in the Wash-
ington Metropolitan Area,” Journal of Cultural Geography 29/2: 29–39.
200 • KAY KAUFMAN SHELEMAY

I would like to draw on Chacko’s taxonomy of ethnic place-making, but wish to complicate it in
two ways. First, I would like to heighten our awareness of the processes through which these types
of ethnic places arise as venues of community activity and affiliation. And, second, I would like to
suggest that musical performance and the agency of musicians play critical roles in the processes
that give rise to ethnic place-making as well as their social outcomes.
With this in the way of introduction and theoretical framework, I will briefly sketch the history
of the Ethiopian diaspora in order to provide an overview of issues related to the community’s
migration that frame the processes of place-making through musical activity. Following this over-
view, I will briefly track aspects of musical transmission and performance that have helped generate,
shape, and sustain new urban sites in diaspora. I will then connect place-making with cross-cutting
Ethiopian taxonomies of music in order to clarify the dimensions of musical heterogeneity at work
as well as the social outcomes. The conclusion will offer a brief summary of ways in which musical
processes shape the collective in the urban environment.

I. A Brief History of the Ethiopian Diaspora

The Ethiopian diaspora was sparked by the inception of the Ethiopian revolution in 1974, a con-
flict that commenced with urban protests and soon led to widespread conflict, forcing hundreds
of thousands to flee across Ethiopia’s borders, some south to Kenya, some east to Djibouti, others
west to the Sudan.7 In addition to the strong push factors stemming from revolutionary violence
and related hardships, musicians experienced additional pressures to emigrate. The imposition
of stringent curfews extending from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. for months at a time effectively shut down
all performance venues, rendering musical performance impossible in restaurants, clubs, and
churches.8 Additionally, secular musicians were historically viewed as agents of political commentary
in Ethiopia. During the Italian occupation of the country from 1936–1941, traditional minstrels
(azmari) were systematically taken into custody and murdered by the Italians lest they give voice to
patriotism and inspire resistance. Stringent censorship measures put in place by the revolutionary
government also rendered creative activity problematic or even dangerous. Many musicians were
harassed and even imprisoned for periods of time, and thus an especially large number of them
fled the country and sought asylum abroad.
The revolution ended the long reign of Emperor Haile Selassie I and also overturned the hege-
mony of the Christian Amhara ethnic/religious group that had for centuries dominated Ethiopian
political, religious, and economic life. The revolutionary government by 1975 was headed by
Mengistu Haile Mariam, a military officer who ruthlessly executed his opponents, jailed former
leaders, and nationalized all urban and rural land and buildings. In 1991, Mengistu9 was overthrown
by northerners from Tigray Province who still head the Ethiopian government today, more than
twenty years after the revolution’s end. Building on long-standing ethnic differences that had been
accentuated during the revolutionary period, the post-1991 government re-divided the country
according to ethnic boundaries and introduced a multi-ethnic policy that pitted one community
against another as a means to retain their own power.
As one of the oldest Christian countries in the world, with an Orthodox church founded in the
early fourth century, Ethiopia’s Christian Amharas, numbering around 35 percent of the popula-
tion, fell on particularly hard times during the revolution. The revolution ended in 1991, but the
subsequent twenty years saw a second wave of Christian Amhara emigration as a response to the
establishment of the Tigrayan government. One new factor, however, was that, although travel to
and from Ethiopia was severely limited during the revolutionary years 1975–1991, after the change
of government in 1991, many were able to depart legally and others living abroad were able to return
to Ethiopia for visits or to repatriate. This change increased diaspora mobility and allowed some
musicians to maintain careers both in the diaspora and in the Ethiopian homeland.
 RETHINKING THE URBAN COMMUNITY • 201

As I have noted above, the largest number of those leaving Ethiopia for the diaspora were
Christians whose historic church had lost its land and economic foundation through the
1975 nationalizations, and who, by 1991, were chafing under increasing ethnic pressure.
But a number of Ethiopian Muslims and evangelical Christians also departed the country,
as did virtually the entire community of Beta Israel/Falasha, known since the 1980s as the
Ethiopian Jews.10 My larger research project includes attention to processes and events cross-
ing religious boundaries as well as extending to Eritrean and Oromo peoples. Since 1991 as
well, some part of the emigration from Ethiopia has been voluntary, with pull factors such
as family reunions and economic opportunities abroad sparking departures now that bor-
ders are no longer closed; many Ethiopians have also won the lottery for US diversity visas.
As a result, the largest Ethiopian diaspora community of the early twenty-first century is found
in North America, with the majority being Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. Many, especially those
who left the country surreptitiously, spent time in transit in refugee camps in the Sudan or in other
countries along the way to final resettlement. Most arrived without much in the way of material
resources and in need of supportive networks.
Thus Ethiopians who arrived in North America had a number of shared concerns as they
began to build their new lives abroad. They needed a variety of goods ranging from materials for
traditional dress to special ingredients that would enable them to prepare Ethiopian food and
drink; they required venues in which they could celebrate their distinctive Orthodox Christian
religious heritage;11 and perhaps most keenly, immigrants longed for social networks with others
who shared aspects of their background, language, culture, and experience as well as those who
could help them negotiate unfamiliar demands of life in a new place. All of these needs required
the establishment of places where these desires could be fulfilled.

II. Ethnic Place-Making and Musical Activity

At this point we can turn our attention to Ethiopian communities dispersed across major North
American cities, with the largest concentrations in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. There
are also substantial Ethiopian populations in Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis, Boston, Atlanta,
and Toronto. Ethiopian immigrants are almost invariably heterolocal in their residential patterns
and do not for the most part tend to cluster together residentially. Therefore, in each city one finds
what may be termed Ethiopian places that can be discussed with reference to the four categories
of ethnic places set forth by Chacko, detailed in Figure 12.2.
Some of these ethnic places may in fact be unmarked and known only to insiders, such as a
Starbucks in downtown Minneapolis that was packed to over capacity with Ethiopian, Oromo, and
Somali men on one Saturday afternoon when I visited there in March 2011. But the vast majority
of Ethiopian ethnic places are marked in order to garner attention when they are encountered in
an unexpected locale.

Institutional Places
Institutional places in the Ethiopian diaspora are dominated by churches.12 That the Ethiopian
Orthodox church features a liturgy that is almost entirely musical, with highly trained musicians
necessary for its mounting, provides a clear indication of the important role of musicians in this
type of diasporic institution building. Generally, a musician will be one of the founders of a local
church since, without a musician, the liturgy cannot be performed.13 A good example would be
the distinguished L.M. Moges Seyoum, trained as both a priest and a musician, who was one of
the founders of an Ethiopian church in Dallas, Texas, in the 1980s, and in the 1990s, of St. Mary’s
Church in Washington, DC, one of the largest Ethiopian churches in the diaspora (Shelemay 2011b,
202 • KAY KAUFMAN SHELEMAY

Figure 12.3 Musicians performing the Cathedral office at St. Mary’s Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Washington, DC
Photograph by author

309–311).14 Only at large churches such as St. Mary’s Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Washington,
DC, do you find a full cohort of musicians performing the liturgy, as seen in Figure 12.3.
Churches in diasporic locales with fewer Ethiopians may be staffed by a single clergyman
who both chants the liturgy and performs sacraments; on occasions, recordings may be used.
Maintaining these religious institutions is a high priority and in the last decade a few churches
have initiated classes instructing their congregants in the musical liturgy. At St. Mary’s church in
Washington, DC, L.M. Moges Seyoum teaches liturgy for approaching holidays to members of the
congregation. The members of the class record the chants and commit them to memory before the
liturgical occasion in question. Thus the very existence of Ethiopian Orthodox churches as well as
the performance of its rituals in the diaspora are heavily dependent on the presence of musicians,
from the moment of their founding forward.15

Ethnic Sociocommerscapes
The various small shops of the ethnic sociocommerscape category provide goods and foodstuffs oth-
erwise unavailable outside Ethiopia as well as a place where community members can congregate.
Most shops also sell sound recordings and provide a venue for distributing posters and postcards
announcing upcoming community social and musical events. See Figure 12.4 for a representative
small shop, Maru Grocery on Bissonet Street in Houston, Texas, the only Ethiopian enterprise in
a diverse immigrant shopping center.
Beyond the markets and shops, the most prominent Ethiopian sociocommerscapes worldwide
are surely restaurants found in virtually every city with an Ethiopian resident who has resources
to establish and run it. These restaurants are always well-marked and well-advertised within their
 RETHINKING THE URBAN COMMUNITY • 203

Figure 12.4 Maru grocery, Houston, Texas

Photograph by author

respective urban areas for obvious commercial reasons: They serve simultaneously as gateways for
the broader population in search of exotic food experiences as well as magnets at which Ethiopians
gather.16 One North American Ethiopian restaurant, Dukem Restaurant of Washington, DC, and
Baltimore, is so famous that it has been advertised on billboards in Addis Ababa, the capital of
Ethiopia (see Fig. 12.5) .
However, a closer look at restaurants also makes it clear that Ethiopian place-making in socio-
commercial domains is closely tied to musical life: Ethiopian restaurants are at the same time
musical venues, with music and its performance integral to their missions and success. For instance,
almost all Ethiopian restaurants play recordings of Ethiopian music, with live performances if
any Ethiopian musician is available in the area. At large restaurants in major urban centers, such
as Washington, DC’s Dukem, the musical offerings receive nearly as much publicity as the food.
Immediately following its “Welcome to Dukem Restaurant” heading, the restaurant’s website
proclaims: “Dukem Ethiopian Restaurant is the most enduring Ethiopian music entertainment
landmark in the district” (http://dukemrestaurant.com/, accessed August 30, 2011).
It is important to emphasize the diversity of Ethiopian musical offerings that span an array of
musical styles from the most traditional to jazz. Dukem offers live music four nights a week, with a
“cultural show” of Ethiopian traditional music and dance center stage from 7–10 p.m. on Wednesday
evenings and Ethiopian popular music performed from 11 p.m. until the wee hours of the morning
on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings.17 On both Ethiopian and American holidays, as well as
other special occasions, Dukem mounts an expanded menu of musical offerings. For instance, when
the annual Ethiopian soccer tournament sponsored by ESFNA (Ethiopian Soccer Federation of
204 • KAY KAUFMAN SHELEMAY

Figure 12.5 Dukem Restaurant billboard, Bole Road, Addis Ababa, 2006
Photograph by author

North America) was held in Washington, DC, in July 2008, Dukem stayed open twenty-four hours
a day and had live entertainment seven days that week. As seen in Figure 12.6, the banner displayed
outside the restaurant during that event pictured the musicians performing there, including both
immigrants living in the metropolitan area and an artist brought from Addis Ababa.
Ethiopian sociocommerscapes such as restaurants or other shops can, but do not necessarily,
occur in clusters. The Washington, DC, U Street corridor has for the last decade been the site of
several Ethiopian restaurants and clubs. Other similar sociocommercial clusters exist in locales
ranging from downtown Silver Springs, Maryland to Arlington, Virginia.

Ethnic Arenas or Transient Ethnic Places

“Ethnic arenas” are spaces that provide “a temporary location for the convergence of the ethnic
community” (Chacko 2003, 35) and are an important part of Ethiopian urban life. Like institutions
and sociocommerscapes, their use is heavily associated with musical performance and most of the
events held are generated at least in part by musicians.
For Ethiopian Christian holidays traditionally celebrated outdoors, such as Masqal, the festival of
the True Cross observed annually in late September, many Ethiopian churches mount ceremonies
in local parks, where they temporarily demark and decorate the space. River Park, bordering on
Memorial Drive in Cambridge, MA, has become a regular site for the annual Masqal ceremony
mounted by several Ethiopian Orthodox Churches located in different areas of Boston and its
suburbs. The park is temporarily rendered a sacred space, with a tent mounted to shield the clergy,
 RETHINKING THE URBAN COMMUNITY • 205

Figure 12.6 Dukem Restaurant in Washington, DC, 2007

Photograph by Itsushi Kawase, used by permission

their ritual objects and instruments, and prominent church leaders from the elements. A sound
system is set up to render the ritual audible in the outdoor soundscape that abuts busy Memorial
Drive and a shopping center. Diasporic creativity is also on clear display when the Masqal bonfire
(dämära), traditionally lit at sunset as the climax of the ritual in Ethiopia, is replaced in deference
to local fire laws by a fake bonfire made of gold-bordered cloth that reflects the rays of the setting
sun (see Figure 12.7). Instead of lighting the bonfire, the congregants light tapers and sparklers as
they festively circle the “bonfire.”
Many other ethnic arenas can be identified, including, most prominently, the stadiums that host
regular Ethiopian athletic tournaments. Annual Ethiopian national soccer competitions attract
thousands from all over North America and beyond. Large gatherings, such as these tournaments
at ethnic arenas, always feature a wide range of musical performances, some within the stadium
itself, every evening, as seen in Figure 12.8.18 Invariably, booths are mounted to constitute a tem-
porary sociocommerscape on the stadium grounds, marketing traditional food, musical recordings
and videos, and many other souvenirs. Many Ethiopian-American philanthropic and community
organizations also set up displays, reaching out to the large number of Ethiopian expatriates in
attendance.
On other occasions, including both American and Ethiopian holidays, other local venues—from
hotels to social halls—become temporary ethnic arenas for concerts and festive celebrations. Most
of these events are spearheaded by musicians who tour and depend on local representatives for
arrangements and ticket sales.
Figure 12.7 Sunset at Masqal celebration, River Park, Cambridge, MA, 2009
Photograph by David Kaminsky, used by permission

Figure 12.8 Musical performance, Ethiopian soccer tournament, Washington, DC. Robert F. Kennedy Stadium (2008)
Photograph by author
 RETHINKING THE URBAN COMMUNITY • 207

Intangible Ethnic Places

Finally, one finds intangible ethnic places in most major diasporic urban centers, including local
Ethiopian radio and television stations. There is an overwhelming presence in the diaspora of
Internet networks to “reflect on identity, to forge new communities, and to promote cultural inno-
vation” (Hafkin 2011, 221). Music is, of course, ubiquitous on many of the websites as Ethiopians
attempt to overcome distances from the homeland and to forge new, virtual social networks (Ibid.,
224). There is widespread circulation of video footage and recordings both in intangible ethnic
places on the Web and in all of the other physical places I’ve mentioned. Most musicians advertise
and distribute their own CDs and DVDs to Ethiopian shops internationally, circulating clips on
the Web for advertisements. This quick overview of ethnic place-making in the Ethiopian urban
scene should make clear the point that each category of place (institutions, sociocommerscapes,
ethnic arenas, and virtual arenas) owes its existence at least in part to musical activity, with which
it is prominently associated. To quote one of the musicians with whom I’ve worked:

Music has a strong role within the Ethiopian youth community, or in the general commu-
nity. Ethiopians have always explained their anger, pride, problems, and love of country
through music. . . . At the same time, music in Ethiopia, as anywhere else, is very special. It
brings people together for common purpose, for national purpose, for religious purpose,
for anything you like.
(Interview with Getahun Atlaw Garede, 3 August 2008)

III. Musical Heterogeneity, Processes, and Places

If music plays an important role in shaping ethnic urban spaces, it is important to discuss briefly
the heterogeneous musical styles that help construct communities in these locations. It is quite clear
from my research to date that no single musical style correlates exclusively to a particular ethnic
place nor is its music directed only at a single social grouping. For instance, as we have seen above
in the example of Dukem, music at Ethiopian restaurants spans traditional and popular styles. One
may often encounter traditional musicians performing secular songs following the church rituals
held in urban parks. And finally, public concerts may juxtapose a full range of musical styles from
liturgical chant, to traditional music, to popular music. At the concert held in Washington, DC,
to celebrate the Ethiopian Millennium in September 2007,19 the performance divided into three
sections separated by intermissions.
A bit more detail is useful in this case. The first section featured church musicians performing
a sequence of ritual chants and sacred dance in full liturgical regalia. The second section consisted
of an ensemble of secular musicians playing traditional instruments, accompanying singers and
dancers who did a series of fast costume changes as they performed a medley of songs and dances
associated with a cross-section of Ethiopian ethnic groups and regions. The final portion of the
concert, for which a Western-style bandstand was quickly put in place, featured popular singers
accompanied by a modern jazz band.
The three divisions of this iconic concert correspond to a taxonomy of music long established
in highland Ethiopia and actively maintained in the diaspora. Distinctions are first made between
sacred music (zema), notably Ethiopian Christian chant, and secular music (zäfän), with secular
styles breaking down into two broad subdivisions, each with its own internal complexities. The
first secular category is cultural music (bah∂lawi), referring to traditional musical styles associated
with ethnic or regional communities, accompanied by traditional instruments. The second broad
secular category is named zämänawi (literally “timely” or “modern” music), referring to popular
music, including international styles such as jazz and hip-hop long ago introduced from abroad
208 • KAY KAUFMAN SHELEMAY

into the Ethiopian homeland experience. However, the boundaries between cultural and popular
music prove to be permeable in practice, and there exists an ambiguous middle zone known as
bah∂l zämänawi, literally “cultural popular music.”20
All of the Ethiopian ethnic places discussed above accommodate a substantial range of musical
styles. The one exception may appear at first glance to be the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, where
traditional chant (zema) occupies center stage. However, even in the church, another musical
style, that of vernacular (Amharic) hymns performed by choirs of young people and women,
has since the revolution introduced a new set of musical traditions. Thus a concert with multiple
styles, as in the case of the Millennium Concert, in fact incorporates musical heterogeneity in
order to signal inclusivity to the diverse Ethiopian audience numbering in the thousands. At
the same time, music within one category can have extremely porous boundaries with that of
another, as we have seen in the case of bah∂l zämänawi. No one musical style correlates abso-
lutely to a single place or collectivity, although there are moments at which a given musical
style is preferred in order to attract or reinforce a particular social grouping. For instance, the
cultural music performances at restaurants like Dukem are intended to attract individuals
from outside the Ethiopian community and to enhance the appeal of Ethiopian food for those
unfamiliar with the culture. Here traditional music is used largely to attract a community of
affinity, outsiders attracted by new sights and sounds (Shelemay 2011a). In contrast, Ethiopian
popular music (almost entirely with Ethiopian language texts) mainly appeals to an audience
of Ethiopian immigrants, most particularly of a younger generation; scheduling these popular
music performances very late in the evening hours further insures that a primarily Ethiopian
audience will attend.21
Thus a very heterogeneous array of musical traditions, all of which may be glossed as “Ethiopian,”
give rise to an array of different collectivities. They provide moments in which aspects of the
Ethiopian experience past and present can be shared, and the diaspora environment rendered
familiar. Music, then, defines a given space at a particular moment as “Ethiopian.”

Conclusion

In this chapter, I’ve wedded theoretical ideas about place-making drawn from cultural geography
to consideration of musical practices that shape in important ways to the character of these “ethnic
places.” That immigrant urban residential patterns are often heterolocal is surely well known to
scholars of urban musical communities, as is the dispersal of ethnic places outside the boundaries
of even modest residential clustering. However, the typology of heterolocal ethnic places opens
up a rich area of exploration, one that reveals the surprising role of music in place-making across
the board.
Music plays a decisive role in shaping each of the four types of ethnic places discussed above
and helps catalyze new collectivities associated with each place. Thus we have seen that musicians
are vital to the founding and perpetuation of institutions such as Ethiopian Orthodox churches
in the diaspora, performing both liturgical form and content that defines and unites an otherwise
dispersed religious community. In ethnic arenas and sociocommerscapes, music generates and
sustains new social groupings linked by shared culture and language; they mount musical events
that run the gamut of musical styles, ranging from the celebration and commemoration of com-
munity occasions such as the Ethiopian new year, to attempts to attract new audiences beyond
the boundaries of the ethnic community. Some major concerts held in various arenas serve to
underscore diaspora dissent from homeland politics; a notable example was a 2009 concert in
Washington, DC, following the release of singer Teddy Afro from an Ethiopian prison on what
were widely perceived to be false charges lodged by the current government. Finally, Ethiopian
diaspora musical initiatives seek to attract and build new affinity communities, whether through
 RETHINKING THE URBAN COMMUNITY • 209

performances of traditional music and dance, or through new hybrid styles on the jazz and pop-
ular music scene. In all cases, music-making imprints the various spaces with a full panoply of
ethnic sounds. The range of musical styles invites multiple modalities of ethnic identity. Through
(re) mapping musical processes and places, we can clarify ways in which the immigrant community
both reinforces ties within the social group and, at some moments, invites others to cross those
boundaries and join with them.

Notes
1. In this discussion, I will use the terms community, collectivity, and social grouping interchangeably.
2. I am grateful to the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, where I spent two summers as the Chair for
Modern Culture during 2007–2008, carrying out fieldwork with Ethiopian musicians in the Washington, DC, met-
ropolitan area. I acknowledge the many musicians who participated in the project and shared their experiences and
music with me. More than sixty oral histories, sound recordings, and related ephemera gathered during this residency
have been deposited in the archives of the American Folklife Center. Fellowships from Harvard University’s Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for
the Humanities made possible release time from teaching for the 2007–2008 academic year.
3. See Shelemay and Kaplan, “Introduction,” 2006 (2011) for a fuller account of Ethiopian migration, past and present,
and the challenges of providing data such as firm population figures. In some sources and population surveys, the
designation “Ethiopian” may include Eritreans, people from the former Ethiopian province along the Red Sea coast
that has been an independent country since 1991, as well as a large number of Ethiopian communities collectively
known as the Oromo.
4. The U Street Corridor in Northwest Washington has since the early twentieth century been closely associated with the
African American community. It is within walking distance of Howard University and home to the Lincoln Theatre and
many African American music clubs. The African American Civil War Memorial is located on U Street adjacent to the
Cardoza Washington Metro Station. A large mural of Duke Ellington decorates a wall of the U Street True Reformer
Building, itself across the street from the legendary Ben’s Chili Bowl Restaurant.
5. Heterolocalism “refers to recent populations of shared ethnic identity that enter an area from distant sources, then
quickly adopt a dispersed pattern of residential location, all the while managing to remain cohesive through a variety
of means” (Zelinsky and Lee 1998, 281).
6. In Wood’s study of Vietnamese Americans in Northern Virginia, he suggests that the community does not construct
residential clusters, but invests with “novel meanings” specific sites for economic or other community activity (p. 58).
7. The long civil war with Eritrea that resulted in Eritrean independence in 1991 rendered escape to the north and east
quite dangerous.
8. The most substantial portion of the Ethiopian Orthodox liturgy in terms of its musical content occurs during the
performance of the Cathedral Office, which extends on holidays throughout most of the evening and early morning
hours.
9. Ethiopians are traditionally called by their first names.
10. Ethiopians are today dispersed world wide, with certain locales becoming international centers for subsets of the pop-
ulation. For instance, virtually the entire Ethiopian Jewish community migrated to Israel. North America, including
both the United States and Canada, attracted the majority of Ethiopian Christians and Muslims.
11. Ethiopian Muslim immigrants tended to join already established local mosques. In only a couple of places of resettle-
ment did they found their own houses of worship.
12. Quite common also are community centers organized by different ethnic groups within the greater Ethiopian com-
munity, such as Oromo community centers in locales ranging from Toronto to St. Paul.
13. The Ethiopian liturgy is quite esoteric, set in the ancient Semitic language, Ge‘ez, and possessing an indigenous system of
musical notation dating to the sixteenth century. Thus performance of the liturgy depends on musicians possessing a high
level of training acquired within traditional church schools. For further details, see Shelemay and Jeffery (1993–1997).
14. Moges Seyoum carries the title “Liqä Mezämm∂ran,” which means “head of the cantors [of the church choir]”
(Sokolinskaia 2007, 577).
15. An additional musical component that has become an integral part of Ethiopian diaspora churches since the 1990s is
the youth and women’s choirs performing hymns in the Ethiopian vernacular, Amharic.
16. James McCann (2006, 385) argues that cooking and cuisine are more fundamental than any of the aesthetic arts to
Ethiopian cultural identity in the diaspora, serving as both an “economic engine and identity marker” of the diasporic
community. However, he does not consider the role of music in these establishments.
17. Before the 2008 economic downturn, Dukem offered two cultural shows weekly, mounting a show during early dinner
hours on Sunday evenings as well as on Wednesdays. The cultural show attracts mainly non-Ethiopians and tourists,
while the late night performances featuring popular Ethiopian singers accompanied by synthesizer and traditional
Ethiopian instruments such as the six-stringed lyre (krar) attract a primarily Ethiopian audience.
18. These concerts often feature several prominent musicians as well as traditional music ensembles; many venues have
large open spaces in front of the musicians to accommodate social dancing.
19. The Ethiopian calendar is seven and one-half years behind the Western calendar, hence the dating of their Millennium
celebration to September 2007. See Shelemay (2009) for more details.
210 • KAY KAUFMAN SHELEMAY

20. Bah∂l zämänawi music is generally a popular song with a text in an Ethiopian language that is accompanied by one
of the traditional instruments, such as the lyre (krar) or one-string bowed lute (masenqo). Some traditional songs
accompanied by synthesizer also fall into this category.
21. Ethiopian popular music concerts will often be announced for a conventional hour—beginning at 8 or 9 p.m.—but in
practice almost always start at least several hours later. This reflects a longstanding tradition from Ethiopian culture,
where promptness is understood to connote a state of anxiousness. This practice of arriving late at most events has been
maintained in the diaspora, no doubt exacerbated by distance, complex work schedules, and transportation challenges
in large urban areas.

References
Chacko, Elizabeth. 2003. “Ethiopian Ethos and the Making of Ethnic Places in the Washington Metropolitan Area.” Journal
of Cultural Geography 20(2): 21–42.
Dukem Restaurant Website. Washington D. C. & Baltimore. http://dukemrestaurant.com/ (accessed August 30, 2011).
Garede, Getahun Atlaw. 2008. Interview, Washington, DC, 3 August.
Hafkin, Nancy. 2011. “‘Whatsupoch’ on the Net: The Role of Information and Communication Technology in the Shaping
of Transnational Ethiopian Identity.” In “Special Issue: Creating the Ethiopian Diaspora: Perspectives from Across the
Disciplines.” Kay Kaufman Shelemay and Steven Kaplan, eds. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 15(2–3):
2201–2245.
Leslau, Wolf. 1973. English-Amharic Context Dictionary. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
McCann, James. 2006. “A Response: Doro Fäntä: Creativity vs. Adaptation in the Ethiopian Diaspora.” In “Special Issue:
Creating the Ethiopian Diaspora: Perspectives from Across the Disciplines.” Kay Kaufman Shelemay and Steven
Kaplan, eds., Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 15(2–3): 381–388.
Reyes, Adelaida. 1979. “Ethnic Groups, the Urban Area and Ethnomusicology.” Sociologus (Berlin) 29(1): 1–21.
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. 2009. “Performing the Humanities at the Ethiopian Millennium.” Daedalus: Journal of the American
Academy of Arts & Sciences Winter: 105–109.
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. 2011a. “Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music.” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 64(2): 349–390.
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. (2011b). “Ethiopian Musical Invention in Diaspora: A Tale of Three Musicians.” In “Special Issue:
Creating the Ethiopian Diaspora: Perspectives from Across the Disciplines.” Kay Kaufman Shelemay and Steven
Kaplan, eds. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 15(2–3): 303–320.
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman and Peter Jeffery, eds. 1993–1997. Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant: An Anthology. 3 vols, with
CD. Madison, Wisconsin: A-R Editions, Inc.
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman and Steven Kaplan. 2006 (2011). “Introduction.” In “Special Issue: Creating the Ethiopian Diaspora:
Perspectives from Across the Disciplines,” Kay Kaufman Shelemay and Steven Kaplan, eds. Diaspora: A Journal of
Transnational Studies15(2–3): 191–213.
Sokolinskaia, Evgenia, 2007. “Liq.” In Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, vol. 3, Siegbert Uhlig, ed., 576–578. Wiesbaden: Harras-
sowtiz, Verlag.
Wood, Joseph. 1997. “Vietnamese American Place Making in Northern Virginia.” Geographical Review 87(1): 58–72.
Zelinsky, Wilbur and Barrett A. Lee. 1998. “Heterolocalism: An Alternative Model of the Sociospatial Behaviour of Immi-
grant Ethnic Communities.” International Journal of Population Geography 4: 281–298.
 13
Mixed Modes and Performance
Codes of Political Demonstrations
and Carnival in Haiti
Rebecca Dirksen

Gage Averill has considered music and carnival in Haiti, detailing how “carnival becomes a
lesson in popular power” (1994, 244). He frames his argument between the Kreyòl terms anraje
(“a charged or exuberant emotional state, used to describe people caught up in carnival ambience”)
and angaje (“politically committed”) (Ibid., 218). In this space, I reassess the use of anraje and
angaje as descriptions/prescriptions for musical (and civic) behavior in contemporary Haiti. In
doing so, I aim to demonstrate how the seemingly unrelated phenomena of kanaval and political
demonstrations, called manifestasyon, are in fact intricately intertwined.

Eleksyon Madigra (Mardi Gras Election): 2010–2011 and 2015–2016

On December 8th and 9th, 2010, after a period of unrest resulting from perceived irregularities
of the first round of presidential elections held on November 28th, many streets in the Port-au-
Prince metro area were barricaded with road blocks of burning tires, felled trees and power lines,
and burned-out cars (Figure 13.1). Half a kilometer from where we live, a rusted metal storage
bin, quite possibly torn from the back of a pick-up truck—a dismembered remnant of its vehicle—
had been dragged to the middle of Rue Panamericaine and painted with the words “Matelly ou
lamò 2004” (“Martelly or death 2004”) (Figure 13.2). This inscription referred to the presidential
candidate Michel Joseph Martelly and perhaps hinted at the coup d’état of February 2004, which
had resulted in President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s removal from office.1 Political billboards and
posters had been torn down and trampled under crowds of passing feet, in some places so thickly
distributed along the pavement that it seemed almost as though a ticker tape parade had just gone
by. One billboard that remained untouched by protestors’ hands caught my eye: an image of pop-
ular vocalist Mikaben towered over viewers with a suave smirk and a hip, two-fingered play on the
“Uncle Sam wants you” gesture, urging peers to support the electoral process (Figure 13.3). “An
al vote [sic]—Se dwa’m, se devwa’m” (“Let’s go vote—It’s my right, it’s my duty”), the sign’s slogan

211
Figure 13.1 Protestors in Delmas, Haiti, December 9, 2010
Skeptical of the announced results of the presidential election’s first round of voting, protesters set up numerous
roadblocks throughout the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in retaliation. These burning tires along the central
Autoroute de Delmas were among many flaming barricades throughout the capital on 8–9 December.
Photo by Kendy Vérilus (2010)

Figure 13.2 Political protests, Pétionville, Haiti, December 8, 2010

In the midst of political protests that brought the capital to a halt and kept most civilians at home and away
from the streets, a metal bin scrapped along Rue Panamericaine was marked “Matelly ou lamò 2004” (“Mar-
telly or death 2004”), referring to the popular presidential candidate and music celebrity Michel Martelly. In
the background, an SMCRS (Service Métropolitain de Collecte des Résidus Solides) dumpster was dragged into
the street to obstruct passage of vehicles.
Photo by Rebecca Dirksen (2010)
Figure 13.3 Billboard above protesting crowds, Pétionville, Haiti, December 8, 2010
Conspicuously hanging above crowds protesting the presidential elections, a billboard featured the image of
popular vocalist Mikaben to urge citizens to head to the polls. The slogan reads, “Let’s go vote—It’s my right,
it’s my duty.”
Photo by Rebecca Dirksen (2010)
214 • REBECCA DIRKSEN

read, below which was situated a cartoonishly drawn ballot box labeled “Eleksyon 2010” and an
anonymous, bodiless hand that extended to deposit a ballot marked, “M ap vote” (“I’m voting”). On
these two days during the second week of December, circulation in the usually gridlocked capital
had mostly stopped, except for foot traffic. Thousands of Haitian citizens largely associated with
the popular classes had taken to the streets apparently to protest that their preferred presidential
candidate, beloved konpa singer Sweet Micky (Martelly), had not been announced as advancing
to the second round of elections.
The election cycle of 2010–2011 unleashed a torrent of criticism in local and international
spaces. The elections were dismissed by some analysts as biased or illegal for excluding the
popular political party Fanmi Lavalas2 among a dozen other parties and deemed a gross mis-
use of scant human and monetary resources by others due to the post-quake weakness of the
Haitian state.3 Many critics called out fraudulent practices at the polls and corruption within
the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), which was—at least in terms of what the local and
global publics were supposed to understand—charged with overseeing the electoral process.
Moreover, commentators called attention to the heavy-handed oversight exercised by interna-
tional governing bodies, including the US State Department and the Organization of American
States (OAS). Twelve of the nineteen presidential candidates, including all of the most prominent
figures except for President René Préval’s protégé and endorsed candidate Jude Célestin, held
a press conference on the first-round polling day to declare the process rigged and call for the
elections to be annulled.
When preliminary results from November 28th were announced on December 7th that put
constitutional law scholar and former First Lady Mirlande Manigat and Célestin advancing to
the next round, demonstrations erupted in the streets as the population voiced its discontent
and incredulity: Musician Michel Martelly had been hyped as the anti-establishment “people’s
choice” but fell in third place, according to the CEP. Five weeks later, in an unanticipated twist, the
first-round election results were altered under pressure from the OAS to permit a second-round
vote between Manigat and Martelly. Célestin was dumped from the race and effectively forgotten
about by the public and intervening powers (at least until the presidential race of 2015), while
Manigat and Martelly promptly retracted their criticisms of the electoral process. Murmurs
buzzed that Hillary Clinton had something to do with the change in course: The Secretary of
State expressed her frustrations over the Haitian government’s handling of the elections and
made a surprise visit to Haiti to meet with Préval. Subsequently, both she and US Ambassador
Kenneth Merten suddenly seemed to buddy up to Martelly (see Johnston and Weisbrot 2011;
Seitenfus 2015). (These suspicions were later confirmed in communications released both by
WikiLeaks and through the ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to make public the
Secretary of State’s private server emails. The exposed communications revealed that Clinton,
under pressure from US-based human rights, religious, and solidarity organizations, effectively
held President Préval hostage with threats to withhold US and international aid in the aftermath
of the 2010 earthquake if he did not comply with OAS recommendations. Martelly went on to
win the presidency.)
The word on the street suggested something equally murky: The catchy song refrain circulating
during the December 2010 demonstrations that I recorded went, “Jud ba nou lajan, pou nou ka vòt
Mikey” (“Jude [Célestin] gave us money, so that we can vote for Micky”) (Figure 13.4). In February
2016, with the perspective of having just witnessed the closure of Martelly’s administration, friend
and neighbor Jean Daniel “Penpen” Guillaume, a former factory worker and avid soccer player,
put it this way when I reminded him of those lyrics we had heard six years prior (interview, 20
February 2016, Pétionville, Haiti):

“Jud bay lajan yo vote Mikey” a, se twa fwa Mikey bay tou li menm. Pou yo chante sa a, wi.
Ou konprann? Sa vle di moun nan gen dwa bay 100 dola—500 goud—pou yon manifestasyon.
 MIXED MODES AND PERFORMANCE CODES • 215

Figure 13.4 Protestors supporting Michel Martelly, Pétionville, Haiti, December 8, 2010
Protesters supporting Michel Martelly flooded the streets following the official announcement of the first round
of voting: The popular konpa singer had reportedly come in third place in the vote and thus would not advance
to the second round. Carrying a Martelly campaign poster, this young man and others around him smeared their
faces with yellow paint—a color representing Martelly’s opponent Jude Célestin, who had officially advanced to
the final round. Célestin would later be removed from the electoral race under largely unexplained circumstanc-
es involving the international community, only to be replaced with Martelly.
Photo by Kendy Vérilus (2010)

Epi mwen, m bay 400. Men ou p ap jamn konn sa a. . . . E menm jan tankou tout ‘Aba Matelly’
sa yo. Se kout kòb. Men pinga w panse se yon bagay volonte vrèman vre. Moun yo gen yon
bagay y ap jwenn.
[That phrase about] “Jude gave money, we’ll vote Micky”—Micky gave three times that
amount himself. So that they’d sing that. You understand? That’s to say, someone might give
100 [Haitian] dollars—500 gourdes—[to an individual] for [participating in] a demonstra-
tion.4 And then I’d give 400 [Haitian dollars]. But you’d never know that. . . . It’s the same way
with all of that “Down with Martelly” [a counter-protest slogan]. It’s bribe money. Definitely
don’t think that this is about real will. These people are receiving something in return [for
their troubles of showing up in the streets].

Penpen’s assessment is by no means uncommon. The notion that groups are paid to hold protests
or riots—manufactured manifestasyon, one might quip—is prevalent in many circles in Haiti and
has been remarked on before. An Al-Jazeera reporter, for instance, interviewed deportee Carlos
Jean-Charles in July 2010, who explained, “Nobody protests without money in this country”
(Walker 2010). Carlos Regulus, a mechanic and friend who picked me up from the airport on
one of my recent trips, added to this logic when he noted that “moun sèlman fè manifestasyon pou
prezidan. Yo pa fè l pou lòt pwoblèm” (“People only do protests for president[ial politics]. They
216 • REBECCA DIRKSEN

don’t do manifestations for other problems”) (conversation, 19 February 2016, Port-au-Prince).

While both quotes may be overstatements, as demonstrations do occur outside the strict setting of
presidential elections and protesters do not always receive compensation, they hint at a prevalent
understanding that partisan machinations are driving such activity in the streets. Certainly, these
politicized street processions are often done “for the sake of (pitifully small) financial reward,” have
something to do with “opportunistic manipulation” (Hallward 2010, 344), and are brandished across
the political spectrum. It might even be argued that manifestasyon have become an anticipated part
of campaign process in contemporary Haiti, every bit as integral and intentional as the posters and
TV commercials and radio spots. In this setting, manifestasyon emerge as dramatic performances,
almost as though the (usually concealed) sponsors (= producers, underwriters) are playing the
crowd, by choosing their bit part actors from the vast ranks of the unemployed or underemployed
(who are currently paid 250 gourdes or more, or about $4, for an appearance—about the minimum
daily wage) and commanding an act that captures media attention and will be “reviewed” in the
press. (These press reviews are particularly good for political leverage when the international media
picks up on them: Global coverage of real or perceived violence in the streets surely demonstrates
the people’s political will [volonte]!)
But the crowd plays back, at least in terms of jocular discourse. And political protests are
increasingly and inextricably related to the complex jocularity of carnival. The reverse equation—of
carnival taking on work distinctly geared toward shaping opinions of the electorate—makes sense
as well, given that presidential elections are a dominating theme for kanaval and other music sin-
gles released adjacent to major elections. On point: The most recent election cycle of 2015–2016,
a much delayed and again a highly contested process,5 was called out as a carnivalesque farce by
a number of musicians. One of the most direct statements was made by Triple-J, whose July 2015
music video “Eleksyon Mantal” decries an “eleksyon madigra” (“Mardi Gras election”) and pres-
ents fictitious presidential candidates dressed as clowns and buffoons competing in an absurdly
bad foot race.6 Triple-J beseeches his compatriots to change their “mentality” about such serious
matters as national governance and the country’s future, and closes the video with an appeal: “Pa
vann vòt ou, vote ak kè w, vote ak konsyans ou” (“Don’t sell your vote. Vote with your heart, vote
with your conscience”).
The single phrase that stands out most, however, is “Eleksyon ‘S ak pa kontan, anbake’”
(“Election [of] ‘Those who aren’t happy, get out of the way’”), which, in its simplest reading,
is a sardonic repetition of a phrase that Sweet Micky popularized during the height of his
performance career in countering those who were less than impressed by his stage antics, to
the delight of his fanatik (fans). Specifically, the line was used in a 1994 song called “I Don’t
Care,” of which the central lyrics are “‘S ak pa kontan, anbake’. . . If you try to blow my mind, I
don’t care . . . I don’t care, I don’t give a damn . . . I don’t give a shitta [sic]. Mwen s’on bèl gason,
yon milti milyonè” (“I’m a handsome man, a multimillionaire”).7 Yet this is a deeply layered
reference that becomes more troubling when one learns that Martelly resurrected the phrase
during his presidency to dismiss critics, again to the glee of many bystanders. The phrase
began circulating anew in everyday discourse among the population during the latter half
of the Martelly administration. Indeed, the I Don’t Care album was digitally remastered and
rereleased in November 2014, available for purchase on Amazon and iTunes but also widely
circulated through Haitian media.8
That sort of complex, highly referential verbal exchange and boasting is a practiced and relished
part of daily communications including in these highly politicized contexts, but it comes to a peak
during kanaval season. Haitian carnival, which Gage Averill has called “the most important annual
musical event in urban Haiti” (1994, 217), is street drama characterized in a Bahktian sense by
exuberance, obscenities, satire, inverted expressions, and suspension of hierarchies (Figure 13.5).
Stereotypically, it’s a time when things can be said outright that otherwise would not be declared
in public spaces; it’s a time when vagabondaj (roguery) becomes appropriate and when dezòd
 MIXED MODES AND PERFORMANCE CODES • 217

Figure 13.5 Carnaval des Fleurs, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, July 28, 2013
A representative scene from the Carnaval des Fleurs, as a bann a pye (foot band) enveloped by a throng of
enthusiastic supporters moves down Rue Capois at the Champ de Mars, the downtown plaza where the National
Palace stood prior to the 2010 earthquake. While the Carnaval des Fleurs (Carnival of Flowers) in recent years
has taken place in late July, months after the traditional pre-Lenten carnival, it follows a similar format and
holds a similar function, musically and politically speaking. As president, Michel Martelly reinstated the dis-
continued practice of Carnaval des Fleurs (a second opportunity for carnivalesque party during the year) that
had been associated with the Duvalier dictatorships.
Frame from video by Rebecca Dirksen (2013)

(unruly conduct) becomes stylish. Paraphrasing Averill, classic evaluations have positioned
carnival (as though it were a generalizable genre of public performance within the Western and
Western-colonized world spanning from the medieval era to the present) as a distraction from
politics, a mechanism of social control, and a possibility for temporary “release” before returning
to the daily grind of the status quo (Gross 2016[1980]; Eagleton [2009]1981). On the other side
of the spectrum, some theorists have accorded carnival (and carnivalesque) with revolutionary
potential and the capacity to bring together grassroots collectivity against structures of power
(Kenney 2002; Kertzer 1988).
Perspectives including those with origins in the Caribbean have claimed ground somewhere
in the middle of this continuum of theories: Namely, Trinidad-born literary theorist Gerard
Aching has observed that masquing and mimicry behaviors performed in the carnival context
often constitute “instances of lower-frequency politics that do not always aim to achieve social
upheaval but seek to gain and maintain visible representation within the region’s democracies”
(2002, 21). In a compatible argument, performance studies theorist Richard Schechner has
identified “tensions between top-down and bottom-up playing” at carnival’s core (2004, 10). In
Haiti, kanaval’s indispensability to the human existence has even been articulated: Specifically,
Prince Guetjens, musician and commissioner for the 2009 carnival in Port-au-Prince, pro-
nounced that people by nature are “homo festivus,” so governed by psychological imperatives to
leave work behind sometimes in order to dream, sing, dance, and play, that when the period of
festival and fantasy is diminished, “quelque chose d’humain est menacé [sic]” (“something human
is threatened”) (2009, 12).
218 • REBECCA DIRKSEN

At least in the particular case of Haiti, however, many of these evaluations lose sight of the fact
that the carnivalesque is not tidily confined to a three-day pre-Lenten period. It is not set apart
from the everyday grind of contemporary society, as is evident through year-round carnivalesque
articulations in the media, literature, art, comedy, and public discourse—including political dis-
course. And while carnival is portrayed as an upending of normal social order and socio-economic
hierarchies, Haiti is frequently already described as “tèt anba,” referring to an apparent “upside
down” (lack of) logic and order that can frustrate and perplex when one is trying to go about
accomplishing their daily business but also to the unpredictability and precarity that typifies the
daily experiences of the vulnerable many.
With theories across the spectrum ascribing carnival with political function—and with the
thematic cross-referencing between political campaigns and carnival songs as cited above—it is
tempting to observe further connectedness between political manifestasyon and kanaval. Both
modes of public performance, powered by musical bands on foot or on floats, rely on the swift
establishment of a collective group that sweeps down the street in procession, building frenetic
energy as it progresses. In this collective motion, reveling bodies may “lese frape,” or push and shove,
what Averill compares to “slam dancing” (1994, 223). Participants are encouraged to “lage kò yo,”
or release their bodies to the beat of the music—and, presumably, metaphorically let themselves
succumb to a politicized refrain. During carnival defile (parades), success is determined by which
band can get dancing audiences most excited and worked up over their catchy beat, melodi, and pawòl
(lyrics) (Figure 13.6). Likewise, a governing principal of manifestation is to chofe, or “heat up,” crowds
with energy to the point of anraje, propelling them forward with a political jingle that is eminently
repeatable. During carnival, selected bands are supported with sponsorships from the government

Figure 13.6 The Miami-based konpa Band T-Vice, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, July 28, 2013,
A perpetual carnival favorite, the Miami-based konpa band T-Vice got fans screaming along to their song “Lage
bonm nan” (“Throw the Bomb”) from atop their carnival float. In contemporary practice, carnival floats for the
biggest acts typically consist of semi trucks loaded with dozens of musicians, dancers, and fans on top, with
high-powered sound systems and numerous speakers piled up on all sides. Floats often pull along their own
commercial-grade generator behind them, in an effort to ensure that the speakers can drown out competing
bands in the parade.
Frame from video by Rebecca Dirksen (2013)
 MIXED MODES AND PERFORMANCE CODES • 219

(channeled through the Ministry of Culture and Communications, or the Ministry of Tourism) and
from local businesses (especially from beverage companies such as Rhum Barbancourt, Prestige,
and Ragaman) eager to capitalize on lucrative advertising opportunities. Though usually hidden
from direct view, financial arrangements between politicians and civic participants that support
manifestation cannot be disregarded, particularly when many “protesters” see marching for any
cause that pays a viable way to make equal to or more than the daily minimum wage in an economy
of crushing unemployment. During carnival, even as socio-economic boundaries are in some ways
temporarily relaxed leading to somewhat greater mixing across the population,9 the presence of
largely popular-class crowds in public spaces inspires fear and condemnation within many social
circles, including among certain conservative religious groups and among some members of the
middle and upper classes who dismiss the festivities as being related to “devil worship” or simply
in poor taste. Manifestasyon prompt a similar execratory reaction from those who express strong
discomfort with carnival, as demonstrations have come to symbolize an unruly and potentially
dangerous mass culture that underlines the highly polarized class divide. In truth, both carnival
audiences and political crowds are mostly peaceable, but with an anraje atmosphere underscored
by politically charged angaje sentiment, there is a clear risk of the situation flipping out of control
into violence. The goal is to reach that peak boiling point of exuberance, with the hope that the
pot will not spill over (Figure 13.7).

Figure 13.7 Protestors, Pétionville, Haiti, December 8, 2010

While these protestors were relatively peaceable at the time I witnessed their presence, out of caution I stood
some distance away from the crowd as it was sweeping down the street away from me. Though hard to determine
from the photo due to my position at the very back of the pack, this crowd matched the density and excitability
seen during a typical carnival procession. This is one of several locations where I recorded the refrain, “Jud ba
nou lajan, pou nou ka vòt Mikey” (“Jude [Célestin] gave us money, so that we can vote for Micky”).
Photo by Rebecca Dirksen (2010)
220 • REBECCA DIRKSEN

It is admittedly perilous to equate political protest with carnival, in large part because of the nasty
insinuation that the Haitian democratic process has been hijacked as sideshow entertainment. But
when democratic striving for many citizens has meant being turned away at the polls for illegiti-
mate reasons, ballot box stuffing and other polling station irregularities, and deferral, regardless
of voting outcomes, to the dictates of the ruling class elite and the international community, are
we left with many other ways to think about this?

The Struggle for Self-Determination, or Something Else?

Much has been made of popular power in Haiti (e.g., Averill 1997; Dirksen 2012; Dubois 2004;
James 1989[1963]; Kivland 2012; McAlister 2002). Arguably, the nation was born of the most
impactful revolution (1791–1804) in modern history, on the backs of slaves who claimed their
emancipation, disrupted the most lucrative colony in the New World, and cracked the foundation
of the global economy. The first US Occupation (1915–1934), allegedly about assuring political
stability but more accurately an attack on the sovereignty of the Haitian State and an attempt to
circumvent German control of commerce and infrastructure on Hispañola during World War
I, was challenged by the Cacos, a rebel guerrilla army based in the Haitian countryside that
led the best known of several indigenous resistance movements of the era.10 Deeper and more
prolonged opposition to foreign invasion, however, was located in the ideological movements
that focused on revaluation of Haitian culture and African “legacies”: the mouvement indigène
(so-called “indigenous” movement), and later noirisme, which emphasized political leadership
by black representatives of the popular classes (see Dash 2011). Following the occupation, a
period of heady Marxism, Communism, and Socialism gave way to Liberation Theology—all
emphasizing, in various ways, the value of Haiti’s dark-skinned masses (see Smith 2004). After
the twenty-nine-year Duvalier regime was toppled in 1986 and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier
fled into exile on 7 February, a popular movement arose to “uproot” the long-standing dicta-
torship’s systems of oppression and violence through dechoukaj. A term traditionally associated
with agriculture and smallholding land ownership, this “uprooting” consisted of extracting the
perceived roots of corruption, for example by looting, destroying, and burning houses of the
Duvalier paramilitary force, the Tontons Macoutes. The objective was to ensure that the dictator-
ship would not sprout up again in a different form (Bell 2001, 99). In the early 1990s, the leftist
Lavalas (“flood”) political movement cleared the way for Jean-Bertrand Aristide to assume the
presidency through the nation’s first free and democratic elections. Aristide, one of the most
influential proponents of Liberation Theology in the Americas, ran on a platform of elevating
those suffering from poverty to dignity, while checking the economic and political power of the
nation’s lelit (elite). Accordingly, portrayals of Haiti that do not default to customary tones of
“Haiti’s bad press” often feature venerating images of lepèp (the proletariat) persistently protesting
and valiantly fighting for their rights.11 For better or worse, this results in valorization of the
political will of Haiti’s ordinary citizens.
Yet when it comes to self-determination and demonstration of political will through the electoral
process, there has been consistently low voter turnout at the polls over the past decade. This does not
necessarily indicate that Haitian citizens are not interested in voting: More than 1.6 million voters,
or 53.82 percent of the total voting age population, reported to the polls for the first democratic
general elections in December 1990 (IDEA 2011a). For perspective, that turnout rate is on par
with US voter turnout in most presidential elections since the 1920s (e.g., the 2012 US presidential
elections saw 53.58 percent of eligible voters participate) (IDEA 2011b).12 However, those figures are
dramatically different from the 18.93 percent of the Haitian voting age population who reportedly
voted in second-round presidential elections in January 2011, and the 17.29 percent who voted in
the first round of the 2015–2016 presidential elections that were ultimately cancelled in the second
 MIXED MODES AND PERFORMANCE CODES • 221

round (IDEA 2011a). Any number of complexities could help to explain this steep decline in voter
participation, including a lower median age—official estimates from 2015 found that 54.92 percent
of the population is twenty-four years of age and younger (CIA 2016)—and increasing and often
insurmountable obstacles to gain access to the polls—notably, there have been countless challenges
in administering and obtaining voter identification cards.
Speaking with eligible Haitian voters has suggested that something else is going on as well: an
intentional opting-out of the electoral process across generations and across social classes. The
decision to not vote frequently comes down to fear of unpredictability and violence in the streets
due to activities associated with voting, such as manifestasyon, which are sometimes marked by
individuals throwing rocks, smashing car windows and committing other acts of vandalism,
burning tires in the streets, and brandishing machetes or guns (e.g., RNDDH 2015). Protests,
peaceable or violent, are sometimes met by MINUSTAH (the United Nations Stabilisation Mission
in Haiti) with tear gas or rubber bullets intended to disperse crowds (e.g., Bell 2010). Such risks
lead many civilians to stay home on Election Day, a caution that I have witnessed during two
major election cycles. Namely, I was living in Port-au-Prince during the election season of 2010
and 2011, which was widely thought to be more raucous and tension-filled than usual, in large
part due to the exaggerated stresses of choosing a new president in the immediate aftermath
of the disastrous January 2010 earthquake and during the height of the cholera epidemic, first
discovered in late October of that same year. Friends, neighbors, and acquaintances from diverse
socio-economic positions stayed home for several weeks during November and December, going
out only for provisions or when absolutely necessary. Years later, a research trip coincided with
the long overdue parliamentary vote on August 9, 2015. My friends were somewhat irked by
my insistence on seeing how things were unfolding in the capital, but acquiesced to my request
that they accompany me. At around four in the afternoon, we drove through drizzly rain with
remarkable ease down the Autoroute de Delmas and into Champ de Mars, the central plaza where
the Palais National once stood. We did not see any unsavory activity, but the emptiness that we
encountered in the streets was a sharp contrast to the enervating blokis (traffic jam) that is typical
of the overcrowded city every day of the week.
Others boycott elections to protest the exclusion of certain political parties and their candi-
dates or to condemn the “moral violence”—a phrase used by Oxygène David of the organization
Movement for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity Among Haitians—being committed against the
populace through the “rigged” set-up (Ives and Pierre-Louis 2015). The weekly newspaper Haiti
Liberté quoted the late pro-democracy activist Patrick Elie in declaring the elections “a comedy.”
In explaining his reason for not voting, Elie said, “The elections in Haiti are becoming just like
those in the US. It is money that decides the election, not the people” (Ibid., 2015). It is widely
understood, after all, that a few ultra-rich families and the business elite have controlled the
nation from its first days of independence, irrespective of actually holding political office. This
understanding is epitomized by the politique de doublure—the phenomenon of political fronting,
when an individual is made the face of the empire while being controlled from backstage—that
has characterized much of Haiti’s history. Historically, this has involved the light-skinned mulatto
elite choosing a dark-skinned “puppet” military leader to placate the dark-skinned majority.
Even though the Constitution adopted in 1987 established a representative government with
an elected bicameral parliament and an elected president (plus a prime minister, cabinet, min-
isters, and supreme court), the shadow puppetry is presumed to continue. Frustrating to many
Haitian citizens, too, is the degree to which the international community has inserted itself into
local governance that is constitutionally premised on democracy. A preponderance of evidence
supports assertions that the United States, the Organization of American States, and the United
Nations make many high-level political decisions (e.g., Maxime 2015; Péan 2010), directed by Bill
and Hillary Clinton, to such an extent that the presidential power couple has been reproached
as the “King and Queen of Haiti” (Katz 2015). Indeed, US taxpayers bankrolled the most recent
222 • REBECCA DIRKSEN

failed presidential elections of 2015–2016 to a tune of between $30 and $50 million US (Maxime
2015). More simply, many people do not vote because of the perceived futility and farcicality
of the situation.
Despite pervasive disenfranchisement with the voting process, the numerous patriotic tracks
(a kanaval staple) released during the 2015–2016 electoral season indicate that citizens are
engaged and concerned about democracy in their country. In direct illustration, Ivan Jay calls
out, “Kanaval 2016, Ivan Jay—Watzup! Dwa de vòt n ap mande tout moun tanpri leve bonè al
vote pou n kapab mennen demokrasi, libète, ak sekirite tounen lakay. Merci beaucoup” (“Carnival
2016, Ivan Jay—What’s up! Right to vote. We’re asking everyone please get up early and go
vote so that we can bring democracy, liberty, and security back home. Thanks very much”).13
He continues: “Vote se yon devwa sivik, se yon gwo responsablite” (“Voting is a civic right, a big
responsibility”). Employing a favorite carnival trope—the Haitian Revolution and independence
as a free republic—14konpa band K-Zino uses their 2016 song to motivate audiences to fight for
sovereignty, just as the founders of the nation did:15

Alleluia pou Ayiti kouche sou do k ap soufri

Se nou k pou sove l, nou pa gen dwa kite l peri
Ayibobo pou eritaj sa zansèt nou fè n kado
Ann leve byen wo koulè drapo, montre sa l vo . . .

Nou di nou renmen Ayiti, nou se Pitit Dessalin, nou pa vle fè lapè (Lapè n ap mande)
Bon jan konsyans patriyotik yon konbit sitwayen ka fè sa chanje (L’union fait la force)
Yon lavalas pèp k ap lite, ak konviksyon tèt kale nou ka vanse (Tèt ansanm, peyi a ka
chanje)
An verite nou fè l deja, moman rive pou nou revòlte, revòlte, revòlte

Alleluia for Haiti, laying on her back in suffering

We’re the ones to save her, we must not let her perish
Ayibobo [a Vodou “Amen”] for the legacy our ancestors gave us
Let’s raise the colors of our flag high, show what it’s worth . . .

We say that we love Haiti, that we’re Dessalines’s children [a founding father who declared
Haiti’s independence], [but] we don’t want to “make peace” (We’re demanding peace)
A strong patriotic consciousness, a cooperative of citizens working together can make
this change (Strength in unity)
A lavalas [political movement associated with Aristide] population is fighting, with the
conviction of tèt kale [Martelly’s political platform] we can advance (Together, the
country can change)
Truly, we’ve done this already, the moment has come for us to revolt.

A clip in the music video corresponding with the verse “We’re Dessalines’s children . . . revolt” shows
a suited man with a briefcase carrying a sign that reads “Vote m pou chanjman” (“Vote for me for
change”) as he walks down the street (Figure 13.8). A second man confronts the first, apparently
(following the lyrics) emphasizing the importance of “a strong patriotic consciousness” and cooper-
ation among citizens for change. One primary message conveyed here is the potential power of group
participation through konbit (simplistically, a work collective),16 something that both Jean-Bertrand
Aristide (platform: lavalas)17 and Michel Martelly (platform: tèt kale)18 engaged in their political
movements touting change. Although Aristide and Martelly are usually considered polar opposites on
the political spectrum, both have capitalized on populist energy and mobilized crowds to great effect.
In their 2016 carnival song “Kite Peyi’m Mache” (“Let my country function”), Youv-keyz and
KING T.I.G. declare, “Jenès peyi a mande lapè pou n met tèt ansanm pou fè peyi n mache”
 MIXED MODES AND PERFORMANCE CODES • 223

Figure 13.8 A screenshot from the music video “Mandebat (Rale kòd la)”
K-Zino released this music video for carnival 2016, and it has racked up more than 51,000 views on YouTube
as of early 2017. A clip in the music video corresponding with the verse “We’re Dessalines’s children . . . revolt”
shows a suited man with a briefcase carrying a sign that reads “Vote for me for change” as he walks down the
street. A second man confronts the first, apparently to engage in a discussion on the importance of “a strong
patriotic consciousness.”

(“The youth of this country are begging for peace, for us to put our heads together so that the
country can function”).19 They express their concern that Haiti’s younger generations are facing:

Yon peyi mal striktire, jenerasyon mal debite

Lè yo rive pou gaspiye lavi jenès la mal pase
Ou fini lekòl ou chomè, dapre konstate [sic], jenès la yo manke ankadre
Nou chaje òfelen nan lari, kòm yo di lari a se salon pèp la
E kite y ap meprize n—yo meprize n, pandan y ap panse money, money
Tout moun ap batay pou tèt pa yo, pou sa ki yon joujou.

A poorly structured country, a generation that hasn’t started out well

[Wasting all this time, youth don’t have a future]:
You finish school [to be] unemployed, while observing that youth lack training/support
The streets are packed with orphans—as they say, the street is the people’s living room
And let them put us down, while they think only of money
Everyone is fighting for themselves, for what is [nothing more than] a joke.

The pair follows up with a plea to politicians to let the country function, to let it move along, to
let it advance: “Politisyen, kite peyi n mache, kite l woule, kite l avanse.” For Haitian music fans, this
is a striking reference to J. Perry’s 2011 megahit “Dekole,” which featured the lyrics “M ta wè peyi
224 • REBECCA DIRKSEN

m dekole . . . kite l avanse, kite l dekole” (“I’d like to see my country ‘take off ’ . . . let it advance, let
it take flight).20 These examples, a minute sampling of Kanaval 2016, demonstrate that complex
dialogues drawing deeply on history and politics are pervasively woven into carnival repertoire
each year. Such embedded dialogues are read with great fluency by audiences: Carnival favorites
routinely lead to extended and energetic debates of the songs and issues among friends, colleagues,
and neighbors, who repeat lyrics with tremendous facility and find glee in pulling relevant lines
from songs into otherwise unrelated conversation. In short, this situation cannot be interpreted as
indifference or apathy about the way the country is governed; it indicates civic engagement, even
as confidence in the democratic process is low.
This leads us back to expressions of power in the streets, where we observe tensions in the ways
in which manifestasyon are often portrayed. In some circles, political demonstrations are often
synonymous with dangerous and uncontrollable mobs; for others, such crowds represent vital
declarations of protest and reclamation of popular sovereignty by the subjugated masses. Yet these
polarized characterizations—which, respectively, delimit the range of anraje to angaje—are seldom
fully reflective of how contemporary manifestasyon work, even as they may offer truthful, if often
partial, representations. When protesters are openly paid to be there (recall: “Jude [Célestin] gave
us money, so that we can vote for Micky”), the relationship between the high unemployment rate
(estimates lie between 40 percent and 70 percent)21 and the disproportionate participation of youth
(mostly men) between the ages of roughly sixteen and thirty-five seems less a coincidence than a
measure of the current political economy. Manifestasyon can become disconcertingly like day jobs
when a stipend is offered that rivals the daily minimum wage, decreed in May 2016 to range from
175 to 300 gourdes ($2.80 to $4.80 US)22 per eight-hour day depending on the sector of activity
(Privert et al. 2016). In this analysis, one might even note parallels with the cash-for-work pro-
grams employed in Haiti as a central strategy of multi-lateral development agencies: Cash-for-work
programs provide nominal daily pay for unskilled labor (see Ayiti Kale Je 2010).23 Paid-to-play
participants have admitted their (forced) complicity with this system, including one resident of a
marginalized neighborhood who offers a haunting explanation of the position many urban youth
find themselves in today (Anonymous 2015):

Patisipe nan manifestasyon se yon travay pou mwen. Mwen pèdi travay mwen an 2005 aprè
leta ayisyen privatize teleko. Depi aprè sa mwen pa janm jwenn anyen pou’m fè. Andedan katye
defavorize, nou fatige ak politisyen ki pran nou pou enbesil . . .
Mwen se yon viktim. Mwen konn pase plizyè jou mwen pa manje, e sa se sitiyasyon majorite
jèn andedan geto yo ann Ayiti. Reyalite sosyal ak politik nan peyi’m kondane’m pou’m pa pwog-
wese. Andedan geto yo, moun sèvi ak nou kòm zouti pou regle bagay politik. Akòz de sitiyasyon
ekonomik mwen, mwen patisipe nan manifestasyon pou lajan. Tout Ayisyen konnen sa m’ap di
a : se pa tout mouvman ou wè nan lari a ki se volontè, anpil ladan yo se moun yo peye.
Moman tankou sèjousi, nan epòk eleksyon sa, se moman kote anpil kòb ap brase. Tout
kandida bezwen òganize manifestasyon ak reyinyon pou montre yo gen moun. Mwen pap fè
yon pa san mwen pa touche yon ti lajan, paske se sèl epòk lè yo bezwen nou yo vin chache nou.
Participating in demonstrations is work for me. I lost my job in 2005 after the Haitian State
privatized Teleco [a major telecommunications company]. After that, I never found anything else
to do. In the “defavorized” neighborhoods, we’re tired of politicians who think we’re imbeciles . . .
I’m a victim. I often go several days without eating, and that’s a situation most youth in
the ghettos of Haiti face. The social and political reality of Haiti has condemned me so that
I don’t progress. In the ghettos, people use us as tools to achieve political things. Because of
my economic situation, I participate in manifestasyon for money. All Haitians know what
I’m saying: not all demonstrations you see in the streets are voluntary; many of them are
comprised of people who are paid.
Moments like now, during election season, there’s a lot of money circulating. All candidates
need to organize manifestasyon and meetings to demonstrate that they’ve got support. I won’t
 MIXED MODES AND PERFORMANCE CODES • 225

take a single step unless I receive a bit of money, because it’s only during these moments
when they need us that they come to find us.

Further supporting the case that this situation has emerged out of the majority’s economic duress
and certain politicians’ desperation for control, demonstrations may be organized by a recruiter,
who “casts” individuals willing to march. Penpen, my insightful neighbor introduced earlier in the
chapter, pointed out that this, like the position of paid protestor, is also an actual job (interview,
20 February 2016):

Penpen: Chèf manifestasyon an li menm s’ on Penpen: The demonstration leader is a professional

pwofesyonèl li ye . . . Yo gen dwa rele mesye epi yo
di l, ‘M bezwen 5,000 moun nan lari a.’ Epi mesye
ap reponn l ap di w, ba l 100,000 dola.
RD: Tout lajan sa a? Tout gwo kòb sa a? O o! En
ben, n ap mennen!
Penpen: Ahhhhh—[vwazen yo ri]
. . . Fò yo peye mizisyen yo, mizisyen yo pa pral bat
yon tanbou sòt depi Bèlè, vire Delma, desann fè
Chanmas, bagay, pou nèg la bat tanbou, nèg la w
konnen fò yo peye l . . .
. . . Li gen dwa al di w ba l 100,000 dola, li
depanse ladan, ou konnen, s’on travay li ye pou
li . . . Menm jan avèk gen moun ki kontab, gen
moun ki jounalis, gen moun se dòktè, gen moun se
agwonòm . . . Sa vle di moun sa a li menm, si l ap
met moun deyò fò l ret yon ti kòb pou li tou.
. . . Someone might call him up and say, “I need
5,000 people in the streets.” And he’ll respond, give
him 100,000 [Haitian] dollars [nearly $8,000 US].
RD: That much money? Oh oh! Well then, we’re
doing pretty well! [Note: Haiti’s GNI per capita is
calculated at $820 US as of 2014.]24
Penpen: Ahhhhh—
[Several neighbors chuckle at my incredulity.]
. . . They must pay the musicians, who aren’t just
going to carry around drums starting out in Bèl
Air, taking a spin through Delmas, heading down
to Champ de Mars, etc. The [chèf manifestasyon]
knows you gotta pay the guy playing the drums.
. . . So if [the chèf manifestasyon] says, give him
100,000 [Haitian] dollars, he deducts expenses from
that sum, you know. It’s a job for him . . . Just like there
are accountants, journalists, doctors, agronomists . . .
That’s to say, if he’s putting people in the streets, there’s
got to be a small sum left over for him.

Hence, manifestasyon can be more about pragmatic management of daily financial needs than any-
thing else. It is therefore inappropriate to attribute all participation in demonstrations as intentional
statements of political position, or as rallying behind certain politicians or causes.
Penpen articulated another situation in which straight-up politics may have little to do with
crowd participation:

Penpen: Yon ti lajan moun nan jwenn li sòti ke se
swa, epi—ayisyen renmen mizik, renmen tanbou.
Ayisyen renmen tanbou l anpil, anpil, anpil!
Gen de rara sou Bèlè ki konn sòti lè gen manifestasyon.
Premye a se Shabba, dezyèm nan se Raram. Gen moun
ki sòti nan manifestasyon an, ou konn kouman yo sòti?
Depi yo wè drapo a deyò, moun yo pa di manifestasyon
non—men yo pa konn kisa yo pral chante. Yo di, woy!
Bann nan ap sòti. Sa vle di depi bann nan ap sòti,
moun nan, gen moun ki pa teni yo kont de ki pakou y
ap fè, moun nan pran lari . . .
Penpen: Someone receives a bit of money and
goes out, but also—Haitians love music, they love
drums. Haitians love their drums a lot!
There are two rara (foot bands) in Bèl Air
[neighborhood near downtown Port-au-
Prince] that typically go out whenever there’s
a manifestasyon. The first is Shabba, the
second is Raram. There are people who attend
demonstrations—you know how they go out? Once
they see [the band’s] flag raised outside, people
don’t say “manifestasyon,” no. They don’t even know
what they’ll be singing. [Instead] they say, hey! The
band is going out! That means, as soon as the band
is going out, there are people who don’t even know
the route the band will take, but people take to the
streets anyway . . .
226 • REBECCA DIRKSEN

RD: Eh ben, èske Shabba avèk Raram, èske yo sòti
pou yon gwoup an patikilye, oubyen se pou nenpòt ki
moun ki ba yo lajan?
Penpen: Pou mwen menm, nenpòt ki moun ki gen
kòb ap mete moun sa yo deyò . . .Men rara sa yo,
yo la pou nenpòt moun ki gen kòb; yo pa gen yon
patikilarite yo menm. Yo pa gen patizan yo menm.
Ou ba yo kòb, yo sòti. Ou pa ba yo tou, yo pa sòti . . .
Men bann nan nan lari a. L ap fè l danse. Moun
nan pa gen pwogram. Moun nan pa gen manje. Pitit
ap ba l pwoblem. Epi drapo bann nan deyò, moun
nan nan bann. Gen moun ki konn kisa y ap defann,
men gen moun se nan bann nan yo ye, moun nan pa
konn anyen . . .
RD: Ah well, do Shabba and Raram, do they go
out for a particular group, or for anyone who gives
them money?
Penpen: According to me, anyone who has a bit of
cash can put these bands in the streets . . . These
rara bands, they’re there for anyone who has
money; [as an organization] they don’t have any
particular [political affiliation]. They aren’t partisan.
If you give them money, they go out. If you don’t
give them any, they don’t go out . . .
So the band is in the street. It will make a person
dance. The person doesn’t have anything else to
do. He doesn’t have anything to eat. His children
are giving him problems. And the flag is raised;
the guy’s a member of the band [implied: not a
(paid) musician]. Some people know what they’re
defending, but there are others in the band who
don’t know anything [about the political agenda of
the outing] . . .

That is, while a manifestasyon might be a paid gig for the musicians of the bann a pye (foot band)
charged with energizing (or chofe, heating up) the crowd, or for the individuals solicited as bodies
to fill up that crowd, or for the chèf manifestasyon responsible for getting everyone together, some
participants find their social ties to the band or their love of music a motivating factor to join in.
Others may be “chèche pwogram” or “chèche distraksyon” (looking for something to do, or seeking
distraction), when there is otherwise limited entertainment available.
Accordingly, while the motor driving a manifesting crowd down the street may be political in
nature for some participants, for others it is about something much more mundane, such as meet-
ing immediate financial needs or even finding diversion from daily stresses. In such contexts, the
“collective enthusiasm” we observe (Averill 1994, 219) may be less about collective experience than a
idealized, oversimplified perception about bodies in motion that are generally moving in a common
direction, but that, on an individual level, have different purposes or are sustained by different forces.

Conclusion

Frequently, processes of musical construction involve complex play with intertextuality and inter-
sectionality that is intentional, cultivated, and valued by both players and patrons. In the context
of Haitian politics and kanaval, this play is often seen as frenzy-making or enraging (anraje) and
concurrently or alternately as directed political action (angaje), making the distinction between
anraje and angaje actions sometimes difficult to discern. Such linguistic playfulness and hazy
oscillation between the states of being anraje and angaje equally define the musically charged
behavior of political demonstrations. Accordingly, as mixed modes of civic participation, kanaval
and manifestasyon share deeply embedded performance codes—corroborating Triple J’s diagnosis
of “Eleksyon Madigra” as an apt characterization of certain expressions of Haitian politics today.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on long-term fieldwork in Haiti focused on the presidential election cycles
of 2010–2011 and 2015–2016, supported by the Inter-American Foundation, UCLA, and Indiana
University. I thank CedarBough Saeji, Elizabeth Clendenning, Jennifer Post, and the reviewers of
 MIXED MODES AND PERFORMANCE CODES • 227

this volume for their valuable feedback. I also thank Penpen Guillaume, Kendy Vérilus, Carlos
Regulus, Dominique Batraville, Mitzy-Lynn Hyacinthe, Daniel Baptiste, Phen Clersaint, Fred
Adolphe, Kindly Pierre, and numerous others for sharing their insights on kanaval practices and
electoral politics in Haiti.
All translations from Kreyòl or French to English are my own. My sincere appreciation to David
Tezil, Haitian linguist and PhD candidate at Indiana University, for verifying the accuracy of all
transcriptions and translations. Any errors are mine.

Notes
1. The phrase “Matelly ou lamò 2004” (“Martelly or death 2004”) was not entirely decipherable to the Haitian colleagues I
consulted. Several people suggested that, in addition to referring to the coup d’etat that deposed Aristide, “2004” may be
a complex and critical reminder of the international community’s frequent overstepping in Haitian politics—notably, in
the forced removal of a democratically elected president that meant intensified chaos and instability for the population
and which in turn led to the establishment of the United Nations peacekeeping mission MINUSTAH.
2. Fanmi Lavalas is a powerful leftist political party headed by Jean-Bertrand Aristide; it is widely viewed as the party of
the majority. The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) stated that Fanmi Lavalas did not meet legal requirements to
participate in the 2010–2011 elections.
3. To meet the space constraints of this volume, citations for popular media sources used in the preparation of this essay
have been limited. Interested readers may confirm news-related details in the online archives of the following news-
papers, news agencies, think-tanks, and research institutions: Le Nouvelliste, AlterPress, Ayiti Kale Je, Haïti Liberté, La
Tribune, The Guardian, AlJazeera, The New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, National Public Radio, The
World Post, Democracy Now!, Upside Down World, Caribbean News Now, Reuters, The Associated Press, the Institute
for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and the Réseau National de Défense
des Droits Humains.
4. On 20 February 2016 (the date of the interview with Penpen), 500 gourdes, or 100 Haitian dollars, was the equivalent
of $8.28 USD. Four hundred gourdes was the equivalent of $6.62 USD. The gourde has markedly declined in value
since July 2015.
5. Parliamentary elections were due in 2011 but repeatedly delayed, due to the failure of President Michel Martelly and oppo-
sition parties to agree on the terms and timing of the electoral process. When mandates for the majority of the Chamber
of Deputies and Senate seats constitutionally expired in January 2015, Parliament was rendered effectively nonfunctional.
The country fell to governance by decree of the president and prime minister until elections were held in mid-2015.
6. Triple-J’s 2015 music video “Eleksyon Mantal” may be viewed here: https://youtu.be/oDdW28AcXBg (last accessed
14 May 2016).
7. Audio for “I Don’t Care” may be heard at https://youtu.be/NVozftjkIic (last accessed 14 May 2016). The refrain “Sa k
pa kontan, anbake” is heard from the beginning of the track, but the lyrics cited in the text of this article are found at
5:34–6:20.
8. The 1994 I Don’t Care album was remastered and rereleased in October 2014 and is available on Amazon and iTunes
at https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/i-dont-care-remastered/id924456186 (last accessed 14 May 2016).
9. While the temporary breakdown of social barriers and suspension of social hierarchies is a defining characteristic of
Bakhtin’s carnival (1984[1968]), in practice this is likely more an intellection than a distinct reality. As Averill has aptly
observed, “Although it is often said that Haitian carnival is a time when all classes mix freely and in mutual tolerance,
there are powerful limits on the extent of interaction” (1994, 221).
10. The US Occupation was also about acquiring command of the Banque Nationale d’Haïti, which served as the Haitian
government’s treasury, to protect American interests and to ensure repayment of the country’s debts to American and
French banks.
11. Increasingly, concern has been expressed over negative representations (“bad press”) of Haiti and its people that per-
petuate inaccurate, dismissive, and reductive stereotypes. Calls have been made for creating new narratives to portray
Haiti in a more balanced and positive light (see Lawless 1992; Ulysse 2015).
12. Although the webpage for this source indicates October 2011 as last update, data from more recent years have clearly
been added.
13. Ivan Jay’s 2016 carnival song “Dwa de vote” may be heard here: https://youtu.be/j_TSA73s_GQ (last accessed 14 May
2016). Lyrics quoted are located at 0:29 to 0:45.
14. For a particularly powerful example of the use of this trope in Haitian carnival, see RAM’s 2008 song “Defile,” available
at https://youtu.be/w6PFMTSFseo (last accessed 14 May 2016).
15. K-Zino’s 2016 carnival song “Mandebat (Rale kòd la)” is available on WikiMizik.com: http://wikimizik.com/lyr-
ics?song=1415&title=Madebat%20%28Rale%20Ko%CC%80d%20La%29%20[Kanaval%202016]&artist=K-Zino (last
accessed 14 May 2016). Lyrics quoted are located between 0:15 to 0:36 and 1:10 to 1:32.
16. Konbit describes a work team, or the act of working together as part of such a team.
Konbit extends back to the custom of agricultural work parties, wherein neighbors would be called together to plant
and harvest each plot of land in succession. The term has been coopted into both political and cultural spheres.
17. Lavalas is a deluge, downpour, or flood. The movement surrounding Aristide’s election to the presidency in 1990 was
termed lavalas, which was intended to signal the cleansing of corruption within politics and society.
228 • REBECCA DIRKSEN

18. Tèt kale translates as “bald head,” whimsically referring to Martelly’s shaved head, a signature look that has come to
represent a broader political statement. Martelly has described “tèt kale” as “yon mouvman ki vle pote sèvis bay popi-
lasyon an” (“movement to bring services to the population”), which focuses on providing free education for primary
and secondary students (as mandated by the Haitian Constitution) besides reinforcing transportation, hospitals and
medical services, and other basic infrastructure (Martelly 2014).
19. The 2016 carnival song “Kite Peyi’m Mache” by Youv-Keyz and KING T.I.G. may be heard at https://soundcloud.com/
konpaevents-music/youvkeys-king-tig-carnaval-2016kite-peyim-mache?in=konpaevents-music%2Fsets%2F2016-k-
naval-playlist-mizik-k (last accessed 14 May 2016). Lyrics quoted are located at 0:32 to 0:38 and 1:13 to 1:48.
20. J. Perry’s “Dekole” was selected as the theme song for Kanaval 2012, and became so popular that it was recognized
as the “hit of the decade.” Complete lyrics and a video are available at www.wikimizik.com/lyrics?song=338&ti-
tle=Dekole&artist=J.%20Perry (last accessed 30 June 2016).
21. The CIA World Factbook estimates the unemployment rate at 40.6 percent, while NPR and other mainstream news
sources have pegged the rate as high as 70 percent. In reality, employment statistics are poorly measured, inconsistently
assessed, and incompletely reported; published figures often conflate formal and informal economies into a single
measurement with little understanding of how activity in these sectors impact ordinary citizens.
22. One hundred and seventy-five gourdes was the equivalent of $2.79 US, while 300 gourdes is the equivalent of $4.79
US as of 25 May 2016. The gourde has rapidly decreased in value since July 2015.
23. Much within Haitian society is modeled after practices of the international aid apparatus and development sector. As
one example, many Haitian-initiated activities have explicitly adopted a project-based mindset that echoes methodology
typically followed by international non-governmental organizations (INGOs).
24. Data for GNI per capita, Atlas method (current US$) furnished by the World Bank (2015). For sake of comparison,
the US GNI per capita for the same period is indicated at $55,230.

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 14
Soundscapes of Pilgrimage
European and American Christians
in Jerusalem’s Old City
Abigail Wood

“I mean, you don’t come to Jerusalem, like, to pray. You sort of come to . . . be here—if
I may use an analogy, rather like a rock concert. Some rock concerts are so loud, and so
much work to go to, you know what I mean, you have to spend all night up waiting [. . .]
so I don’t know what kind of enjoyment . . . I didn’t go to many of them but I didn’t enjoy
them, really I didn’t enjoy, the music was too loud—but it’s one of those events that you
want to go to, to say you went to it. And that’s important, that’s also valid as an experience.”
(Father Ignatius, senior Franciscan officer, Custodial Status
Quo Commission, Holy Sepulchre Church
Interview, 14 September 2009)

Friday 2 April 2010: “Good Friday”

I rise at 5 a.m., and it’s still dark when I enter the Old City. At the steps of the Omariya school, at
the beginning of the Via Dolorosa, I find the group that I am looking for: a large crowd from the
Anglican, Lutheran, and Scottish churches. Later today, the Way of the Cross will host a continuing
stream of processions of increasing intensity, culminating with the procession of the Greek Patriarch
whose many thousands of faithful, many of them Serbian pilgrims, will fill the street as far as the eye
can see. For now, relatively few, smaller groups are using the path. One of the Protestant clergy gives
a brief introduction and the ceremony begins with a Bible reading in Arabic. After the liturgy for the
first two stations of the cross, the group moves onto the Via Dolorosa: a large wooden cross held aloft
at the head of the procession, followed by the clergy in formation, singing a hymn. At first, the singing
of the group is tentative, but by the time they round the second corner they confidently sing “O Haupt
voll Blut und Wunden,” a chorale well known from Bach’s arrangement in the St. Matthew Passion,
whose text describes the crucified body of Jesus.
At the fifth station of the cross, a group of French Catholics waits patiently behind the Protestants—
and in the meantime an Asian group has vanished ahead. The street is a hub of activity. Traders

231
232 • ABIGAIL WOOD

pushing carts pass the group; a group of Muslims, presumably leaving morning prayers, pass by, as do
a pair of Hasidic Jews, the man’s silver robe marking the intermediate days of the Passover holiday. The
Protestant group turns right, up the street that will eventually lead them to the Holy Sepulchre Church.
In this field account, a group of Protestants negotiates the physical and auditory space of
Jerusalem’s Old City. People are moving, groups are moving, sound events are colliding. The neat
order of service printed in the pilgrims’ booklets jostles with the physical reality of being in this
crowded, shared space. The composition and comportment of the group performs togetherness and
an ethical framework of tolerant listening: This is one of the few events of the year during which
the German and Arabic congregations of the Old City’s Lutheran Church of the Redeemer and
their clergy come together; more often slotted into power struggles embedded in a framework of
postcolonial politics, relations between the communities are often strained.
Yet as the group moves on, the coherence of the procession is chafed by the sensory footprint
of the streets. The everyday speech of El Wad Street, a busy commercial thoroughfare, crosses the
ritual space of the Way of the Cross. The co-presence of members of other religions hurrying via
different paths through the city, responding to different patterns of prayer and observance, gives
rise to a disjunct sacred timeframe. While polite turn-taking prevails among the Christian groups
on the Via Dolorosa, the acoustic space confounds separation. As the Protestants sing Bach’s cho-
rale, citing one of the most canonic European musical settings of the Passion narrative, the singing
of the waiting Catholics overlaps with them, as do the everyday sounds of the street, an acoustic
mirror of perforated space and doctrinal difference.

Sound, Music, and Pilgrimage: Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa

In this article, I explore the sonic and musical experiences of European and American Latin Christian
(Catholic and Protestant) pilgrims following the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. As illustrated by the
scene with which I began, the acoustic experiences of these pilgrims are frequently multilayered:
singing devotional music brought from home, hearing the music of others, and a wider encounter
with the layered soundscapes of Jerusalem’s Old City.1
Scholarly accounts of music in Western European and American pilgrimage have generally
focused on the musical object itself, or on the functional roles played by music in building the form
or achieving the goals of pilgrimage, such as performing narrative or mediating the experience
of miracle and healing (Bohlman 1996, 430, 439). While music and sound are indeed implicated
in the core work of pilgrimage—achieving liminal or ascetic spaces such as those described by
Victor and Edith Tuner (1978) or in sacralizing the movement of people in spaces, as discussed
by Simon Coleman (2004, 53)—they are also more widely involved in articulating the processes
of pilgrimage, contributing to the sense of intense experience cited by Fr. Ignatius in my opening
quotation. Among all the elements of the sensorium, sound is a powerful mediator, forcing pilgrims
to share acoustic space and creating bridges—intentionally or otherwise—between sacred and
secular realms of human activity. Sound likewise bridges public and private spaces. If pilgrimage
rehearses intimate, local religious knowledge, the performance of hymnody, prayer, and processions
is hardly intimate: Pilgrims are a highly visible and audible presence in Jerusalem’s public spaces.
Both sonically and theologically, the Via Dolorosa is a particularly resonant place of Christian
pilgrimage. When the group of Protestants described above sang about Jesus’s broken body, they
did so while ritually and spatially re-enacting Jesus’s journey to crucifixion on the original Good
Friday. The history of Western Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land is centuries old, more
recently documented in over a century of published travelogues written by pilgrims and in the
scholarly literature (see, for example, Belhassen and Ebel 2009; Bowman 1991; 1992; Coleman
2004). The practice of following the Via Dolorosa, the route taken by Jesus to the Cross, dates from
the Byzantine period when such processions began from the Mount of Olives. The current route
 SOUNDSCAPES OF PILGRIMAGE • 233

beginning from the Ecce Homo arch within the Old City, marking Jesus’s encounter with Pontius
Pilate, was formalized during the sixteenth century by Franciscan friars, who until today lead a
liturgical procession on this route every Friday afternoon. Whether participating in a formal lit-
urgy of the Stations of the Cross, or a more informal devotional structure, most Christian pilgrim
groups visiting Jerusalem today follow this route.
In their musical practices, Latin Christians from Western Europe and North America form a
distinct subgroup of Christian visitors to Jerusalem. While Catholic and Protestant theologies of
pilgrimage do differ, sometimes substantially, these groups share a similar spectrum of devotional
musical practices and sound ideals, which sets them significantly apart from Orthodox Christian
pilgrims and from the musical practices of local Palestinian Christians, even fellow Catholics and
Protestants.2
Further, the soundscape of Western pilgrimage to the Holy Land is embedded in a specific, sub-
stantial history of theological and colonial encounter which colors both practices and encounters
today. Jerusalem has provided a constant aesthetic trope in the European literary imagination,
reflecting a long history of power relations between West and East. Norms of pious practice in the
Old City cemented by European Christian travelers, visitors, and crusaders over hundreds of years
shape the comportment of today’s pilgrims, and the narratives through which Western pilgrims
parse the Jerusalem soundscape are embedded—often unconsciously—in entrenched European
discourses concerning the roles of harmony, silence, beauty, and brotherhood in correct Christian
comportment.3 Nineteenth-century European Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land expressed horror
at the apparent noisy chaos of local practices, both Christian and non-Christian, seeing them as
evidence of the “ungodliness” of the local populations. In his travelogue of a trip to the Holy Land
that took place in 1901, American Protestant minister Henry Fosdick describes a “mad tumult of
song, shout, and violence” (1927, 262) in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during the Sacred Fire
ceremony on Holy Saturday, one of a string of experiences that lead him to conclude that “[t]he
same land, however, which deepens faith in Christ, awakens shame for Christianity” (Ibid.: 247).
By contrast, for Fosdick, counterposed with the noisy tumult of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
familiar Christian music served an instrumental process of remedy and catharsis: His group left
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and went to a private room to sing familiar hymns and worship
together:

How glad we were in the evening to forget the church full of rival sects, the Moslem guards
smoking and gossiping in its entrance, the scores of pedlars in its front court selling palms
to the Greek pilgrims, whose Easter is a week later, selling everything to eat and drink,
and filling the place with their cries. At eight o’clock we all went into the city through the
Damascus gate and threaded our way through the vaulted passage-ways that pass for streets
in this city (this city, “which is compact together”), till we entered a low door, and went up
a flight of stone steps to an open court and into a large upper room, furnished, where the
Lord’s Passover had been made ready for us. We sang “Just as I am,” “There is a green hill
far away,” “Rock of Ages,” “My faith looks up to Thee.” Dr. Thurber, of the American Chapel
in Paris, led the service.
(Fosdick 1927, 84–5)

As illustrated by Fosdick’s words, European ideals of harmony formed an implicit ethical and
theological point of contrast with the sound-worlds of Others.4 While not explicitly recognized
or acknowledged by most European and American Christian pilgrims today, similar sentiments
about the redemptive character of familiar harmonious music (or prayerful silence), and the
aesthetic-theological shock at confrontation with prayer norms which do not conform to these
ideals, continue to underpin the sonic practices and experiences of these Christians—pilgrims,
monks, or ministers—in Jerusalem’s Old City.
234 • ABIGAIL WOOD

Beyond enabling the embodiment of religious texts through song, then, musical and sonic
practices also serve as a wider arena of experiential self-making during pilgrimage, contextualized
within the long history of European Christian encounter with the Holy Land. Through song—and
through listening—pilgrims express community, respond to spontaneous or unexpected encounters,
and work on the ethical desire to shape the body and mind to be receptive to the religious work of
the pilgrimage journey. The acoustic environment is also frequently a site of challenge, in which
the Other is encountered even in seemingly private places and practices; thus the interplay and
juxtaposition of sounds also expose the work—and sometimes explicit antagonism—required to
perform European and American Christian pieties in Jerusalem.
In the remainder of this article, I examine these themes more closely via three case studies.
The Christians that I discuss here encompass tourists and temporary residents; lay people, friars,
and clergy, based on extensive fieldwork in 2009–2010, during which I observed and recorded the
acoustic practices of pilgrims at key sites in Jerusalem and walked with several groups along the
Via Dolorosa. I turn first to St. Anne’s Basilica, an unusually resonant acoustic space that is often
visited by European and American Catholic and Protestant pilgrim groups before they begin to
walk the Via Dolorosa. The experience of singing in the resonant basilica directs pilgrims’ attention
to their embodied presence in physical space, often generating spontaneous responses that move
beyond the highly scripted pilgrim narrative. Second, I consider the engagement of monks and
nuns resident in the Old City with the wider soundscape of the streets of the Via Dolorosa that,
in addition to their significance for Christian pilgrims, are also busy everyday spaces in which
members of different religions live and pray in close proximity. Finally, I turn to the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre. While the Holy Sepulchre is the culminating point of the pilgrimage narrative
mapped onto the Via Dolorosa, for Western Christians, as a space antagonistically shared by five
Christian denominations, it is also often the most sonically jarring, immersing pilgrims into a vocal
“conflict” between Christian denominations that challenges easy narratives of “arrival” at the core
shrine marking Jesus’s resurrection.

Acoustic Imaginaries: St. Anne’s Basilica

St. Anne’s Basilica is the first destination inside the Old City for many European and American
Christian pilgrims preparing to walk the Via Dolorosa. Built in 1138 by the Crusaders, the basilica
is located just inside the Lions Gate, at the foot of the Mount of Olives. The site of the church claims
scriptural significance as the site of the Bethesda pools, associated by the gospel writer John with
miraculous healing. Yet a different kind of marvelous experience is sought by most of today’s tourists
and pilgrims: St. Anne’s is famed as a spectacularly reverberant acoustic space and, on any given day,
tens of pilgrim groups enter the chapel to sing a hymn or spiritual song from their home repertory.
The unusual acoustic properties of the church enable the experience of pilgrimage as a “mode of
liminality for the laity” (Turner and Turner 1978, 4); familiar musical material is transformed by the
unfamiliar sonic experience, cueing nonverbal modes of interaction and spontaneous responses.
For many Latin Christian groups this is the only place they will formally sing inside the Old City:
Other pilgrimage sites within the Old City walls are too busy and crowded.
The architectural properties of St. Anne’s provide the opportunity to retreat from the loud street
outside into a quiet space in which aesthetic and theological ideals of harmony can be enacted at
the outset of the formal pilgrimage journey. From a physical perspective, the interior of St. Anne’s
Basilica is the central point of a layered acoustic space, characterized by progressive removal from
the everyday soundscape outside. One enters the complex through a small door set immediately on
the street, a busy and noisy thoroughfare dividing the residential Muslim Quarter from the Haram
as-Sharif/Temple Mount. Entering the walled area inside, one moves from a noisy-cosmopolitan-
worldly-Muslim space to a quiet-European-Christian-monastic one. A courtyard and tended
 SOUNDSCAPES OF PILGRIMAGE • 235

Figure 14.1 St. Anne’s Basilica, interior, November 2009

Photo by Abigail Wood

garden lead to the church building, beyond which lies the archaeological ruins of Bethesda and a
Byzantine church that previously occupied this site. The sounds of the street grow less distinct as
one approaches the church; groups of visitors, now free to walk undisturbed in a transitory space
leading to the church building, talk in groups or sit on benches opposite the church.
Visually, for most Western Catholic and Protestant visitors, the church is a familiar space. The
European Romanesque architecture, and the plain interior—stone pillars, wooden pews, an altar
236 • ABIGAIL WOOD

of carved stone, and a plain metal cross at the front—provide a spatial environment that conveys
little imprint of sectarian identity. Groups walk in and adopt familiar postures: sitting in pews,
standing to sing, arranging themselves in front of the altar like a choir, conducting, leading, or
ducking behind a pillar. Shared codes of turn-taking allow easy negotiation when another group
comes in; well-worn roles of choir, congregation, and audience are fluidly reassigned. These prac-
tices are fully consonant with Simon Coleman’s suggestion, in his analysis of British and Swedish
Christian pilgrimage practices, that “we are witnessing forms of action that are as much about
reinvoking behavior taken from ‘home’ as they are about engaging in the ‘exceptional’” (2004, 46).
Yet acoustically, entering the church marks a point of transformation. As one crosses the thresh-
old, outside sounds again fall away, this time more dramatically. Whether or not they heed the
signs calling for silence, most visitors instinctively hush their voices and step carefully as they enter
and sense the resonant echoes that promote a hyper-awareness of the surrounding soundscape.
Singing in a seven-second reverberation is a physical experience, and the mass of sound created
in the resonant acoustic space is intense enough that pilgrims frequently look upwards, perhaps
expecting to see some physical manifestation of their own sound.
While they are invited to fill the church with the wall-to-wall harmony that comes easily from
singing in this resonant space, singers must negotiate their own engagement with an unfamiliar
acoustic environment that prolongs every sound, demanding attention and self-awareness. Each
note or chord resonates in the air for several seconds, prompting many groups instinctively to slow
their singing and to break between lines to avoid a mushy blurring of sound. Though this physical
acoustic experience is common to all, the musical behavior of each group is unique, evidencing
an array of acoustic imaginaries in which musical practices brought from home are transformed
by the sound space of St. Anne’s. During a few days in September, one of the busiest periods for
pilgrimage, I sit in the back of the church and watch a number of groups, each of who reshapes
the soundscape of St. Anne’s with their own voices and repertory. A group of Croatians led by a
friar in brown robes sing, followed by a woman who sings on her own, under her breath, moving
around the church. A British group sings in an undertone; a noisy group of college-aged students
from Alabama enters the church, and as they enter, they test the acoustics. Father Jean, who is
standing nearby, admonishes them: “OK, in the church, only singing and prayer, and nothing else.”
The group sits down to sing three arrangements of popular evangelical songs in four-part harmony
interspersed with prayers from their leader; they end on an ecstatic note.
The potential of such sonic experiences to color and mediate the wider pilgrimage experience
is illustrated by the following more detailed account of the experiences of one pilgrimage group.
During February 2010, I accompanied a group of fourteen American Protestant evangelical “mega-
church” pastors on the final leg of a study tour/pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Their group leader
had meticulously planned the group’s journey along the Via Dolorosa, articulating the narrative of
Jesus’s journey to the cross through spoken reflections. Within this format, however, singing acted
as a creative space, both reinforcing the group’s experience of the key narrative of the pilgrimage
and allowing pilgrims to assume unscripted roles that considerably expanded the narrative. I met
up with the group as they entered the Lions Gate to walk the Via Dolorosa:

2nd February 2010. The group begins at Lithostratos, a religious and archaeological site and
descends to the underground stone chapel. As they enter, group members chat informally. The
group sits, and leader Paul leads them singing “Amazing Grace” in the resonant space. Following
a quiet rendition of the first verse, Paul moves to the final verse with a vigorous upward key
change. The energy of the singing steps up with him, then falls back as the melody descends and
he directs the singers to a soft, focused close. As the song ends, in an undertone, he says: “And so
Jesus has chosen to take up his cross. In the Bible, when somebody takes up the cross, that’s the
end of life as they know it. . . . And so Jesus now is at that moment.” After a few more words, the
group leaves the chapel. Now attuned to the acoustic space around them, a few members start
 SOUNDSCAPES OF PILGRIMAGE • 237

to sing as they leave, a playful re-creation of the “serious” singing in the chapel. They sing the
first lines of “Amazing Grace,” with emphatic vibrato and harmony, until, reaching the climax
of the verse, one participant far overshoots the harmony, and the singers and those around them
burst out laughing at the discordant chord.
After Lithostratos, the group walks to St. Anne’s. Here, Paul gives instructions before the
group enters the basilica: “We’re going to go up front, and here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to
sing ‘How Great Thou Art.’ I’d like to sing the verse, all of us singing the melody. When we get
to the chorus, just go ahead into harmonies. We’re going to have Ray sing the second verse, and
then we’re going to sing the chorus again, and we’ll kind of see how it goes from there.” The group
enters the basilica; as its members arrange themselves on the steps, one of them tests out a few
phrases of the song and another claps, testing the acoustic properties of the space. Ray begins,
singing the opening of the hymn at a quick pace. He stops, sensing that the reverberation is
blurring his singing, and starts again at well under half the speed. As he sings his opening solo
verse, he pauses between the lines, allowing the sound of his voice to resonate. The group joins
in with the chorus, pausing at a pleasing dominant seventh chord in the penultimate line. Ray
continues with the second verse. This time he is bolder, exploring a wide range of tempos and a
huge dynamic range, dropping to almost nothing before a crescendo to the end of the verse. The
group joins with gusto; several look up towards the high domed ceiling; one holds up a camera.
As the group end the song, they burst into spontaneous applause. This time, one member of
the group responds in words, with a brief reflection on the acoustics of religious expression:
“Worship should be as loud as praise. . . .”
As the group leaves the church, I hear singing coming once again from the interior and turn
back. Three of the group are once again singing “Amazing Grace,” this time an informal rendition
in front of a Korean group who entered after them. As they finish, the Koreans respond, singing
the same song in their own language. Friendly greetings are exchanged and the American group
once again leaves. Outside, another group member gives a prepared sermon, before the group
continues on the Via Dolorosa.

On this short stretch of street, the group engaged in a number of singing practices, planned and
spontaneous, ecstatic and quiet. The spoken narrative of the pilgrimage remained in a tightly
constructed discursive space: explanation of the sites they were to see; the use of the historical
present to encouraging the identification of trajectory of the group’s itinerary with the trajectory
of Jesus’s last days; and pre-prepared sermons which developed theological issues related to the
sites. Nevertheless, at the same time singing allowed the group to step beyond the confines of
pre-rehearsed roles and texts, accessing instead a spectrum of nonverbal sensory experiences. This,
in turn, stimulated members of the group to take unscripted roles: leading two informal renditions
of “Amazing Grace”; playing with dynamics, tempo, and harmony in response to awareness of one’s
own bodily presence in acoustic space; interacting among themselves and with those they met by
a shared enjoyment of acoustic space; being open to spontaneous theological connections, as in
the short reflection on praise and worship.
These unscripted responses to acoustic stimuli are often mimetic: Here, “serious” singing in
Lithostratos is followed by a ludic imitation of singing; the first echoes in the church are prodded
by singing musical lines; the loudest experience of resonance is followed by applause (in Western
culture, probably one of the few regular practices in which one is surrounded by loud sound
produced by the bodies of oneself and others); singing by one group is echoed by the same song
sung by the other group. Further, almost every group of pilgrims I saw in St. Anne’s used a video
camera to record their singing. While, following Sontag, it would be easy to dismiss the camera as
a shield protecting the singers from the experience of their own unexpected sound, the camera is
also an instrument of mimesis and responds to an urge to capture the “thereness” of the moment
in which they feel at one with the sensory environment.5
238 • ABIGAIL WOOD

Ethical Listening: The Streets of the Via Dolorosa

If St. Anne’s Basilica primarily serves pilgrims as a site of self-making, where re-hearing familiar
musical material in an “otherworldly” acoustic promotes self-awareness and reflection, the streets of
the Via Dolorosa, by contrast, are site of intense encounter with the Other. From St. Anne’s Basilica
to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the ritual path of the Via Dolorosa runs along everyday streets,
along the side of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount and through busy markets whose vendors
alternately try to attract pilgrims’ attention and cater to local populations.
A more focused register of listening, however, emerged in my conversations with those Western
Protestants and Catholics whose religious lives occupy the streets of the city on a more extended
basis, as resident religious figures. Personal practices of ethical listening stood out in several of our
discussions about sound, within which the listener recoded his or her relationship with a “noisy
environment”; active listening emerged as an act of piety re-shaping the encounter between self and
other, transforming negative sensations of dislike or distance into tolerant, even positive responses,
resonating with the “cultivation of the sensitive heart” (2006, 9) discussed by Charles Hirshkind in
his exploration of Egyptian Muslim listening practices. This process of training the ears and mind
to respond differently to acoustic stimuli is illustrated in the following extract from an interview
with Father Jean of St. Anne’s:

At the beginning I didn’t like to be woken up at 4–4:30 in the morning by the muezzin. I went
to Tanzania in 1970, so I have heard the muezzin since 1970, but here it’s so loud because we
are just next door. But I have decided instead of being grumpy and things like that, I get up with
the call to prayer, you know . . . It’s amazing what you can do in the morning, answering your
correspondence, the email, you can read, you can do a lot of work before the Mass of 6:30 . . .
Now it becomes a routine; even if there would be no call to prayer I’m sure I would wake up,
because I usually wake up two or three minutes before [laughs]. So I don’t find it disturbing at all.
(Interview, 14 September 2009)

In this account, Father Jean reshapes an involuntary awakening, a brute effect of proximity with
negative emotional consequences (“being grumpy”) as an early awakening accepted and internalized
by his own body (“I usually wake up two or three minutes before”). This embodied reshaping of
physical desires, shaped by the monastic tradition within which Father Jean lives, is an example of
ascetic practice as identified by Gavin Flood: “the ascetic submits her life to a form that transforms
it, to a training that changes a person’s orientation from the fulfilment of desire to a narrative greater
than the self ” (Flood 2004, 2).
A similar effort to recode the sensory environment is apparent in the collective efforts of those
who attended an evening “Taizé” prayer service in December 2009, continuing with a quiet, reflec-
tive prayer service notwithstanding the considerable incursion of disruptive sounds. The service
took place in the Church of the Holy Face and Saint Veronica, a crypt chapel at the sixth station
of the Via Dolorosa that forms part of the convent of the Little Sisters of Jesus, a Roman Catholic
community of religious sisters:6

It is evening and dark when I enter the Old City. I head down the Via Dolorosa, walking past
kids playing football on the street, and descend to a small, semi-underground chapel with
stained glass windows. Inside, twelve chairs are arranged around a bowl of sand, from which
tapered candles protrude. A few more people arrive—some Germans, a Dutch woman, and
two elderly nuns, dressed in habits and house shoes; I later hear that one of the nuns attend-
ing tonight has lived in this convent for sixty years, the other for forty. Before the service,
one of the nuns rises, lights the candles, and goes outside to shoo away the children playing
football outside—with limited success: Whenever the ball falls, its bounce booms loudly in
 SOUNDSCAPES OF PILGRIMAGE • 239

the chapel. The service, which lasts for around an hour, consists of simple, repeated songs
interspersed with biblical readings and periods of silence, overlaid with the constant sound
of the footballers outside.
Although the four Germans are visitors, they are familiar with the songs and sing confidently.
When the singing winds to a close, I walk back to the Jaffa Gate with the Dutch woman, who
talks politics. She has been in Jerusalem for two years, working for her church, but she says that
the Israelis don’t like what she is doing and thinks that she will eventually get kicked out. She
tells me that this prayer group was started a few years ago by some Germans. They left, but the
prayer continued to be advertised in a couple of German-speaking places, so it continues—they
can’t stop it. Sometimes a German tour group turns up—twenty, forty people—but some months
it is just her and the nuns.

Here, stoicism as a form of ascetic devotion is embodied by the nuns who have lived for decades
in a complex neighborhood, and mirrored by the young Dutch woman who perceives her chosen
path as encountering resistance.7 More immediately in this account, a pious resilience characterizes
the soundscape of the service. Outnumbered by loud children and passers-by, sometimes outdone
in sound, and certainly unable to recreate the silence that lies at the heart of their chosen liturgy,8
the participants nonetheless continue.
These two examples suggest a different mode in which ethical listening—the re-hearing of the
acoustic environment—might be understood an act of piety. This piety is private and personal,
concerned with the (re)making of the religious self. Sometimes, however, those employed in reli-
gious establishments do actively intervene in acoustically mediated conflict. When I mentioned
that I had heard loud pop music playing in the courtyard of St. Anne’s following Palm Sunday
processions from the Mount of Olives, Father Jean grimaced and recalled:

The music [loud pop music played in the courtyard as the end of the procession turned into
a social event] was so loud that you couldn’t hear yourself speak! That was the visiting young
Palestinian Christians. Two weeks later, some Muslim neighbors were holding a wedding party.
It was so loud that the tour guides couldn’t speak to their groups, so they sent someone to ask
them to turn it down. OK, they said, we will turn it down a bit—but now you will understand
what it was like for us [on Palm Sunday]. “They think we have control over it but we don’t,”
reflects Father Jean. Regarding neighbours and sound matters: “We don’t have to bow down to
them but we should be considerate.”
(Fieldnotes, 13 July 2010)

Here, sound-induced conflict is clearly a source of discomfort, as is the lack of control over the
circumstances by which one might be painted as a bad neighbor. Being a bad neighbor contravenes
desired ethical Christian behavior, but this is a matter of politics as well as piety. Not immediately
implicated by ethnicity in the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict yet easily subject to claims of
partisanship, most of the long-term European/American Christian clergy to whom I spoke took
active steps to preserve a reasonably “neutral” position in the conflict, seeking good relations with
members of other communities and religions. Noise threatens not only personal piety but also
already fragile intercommunal relations.

Encounter and Acoustic Warfare: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The church itself is bedlam to the eye and ear. The garish, gaudy decorations, the competing
din of five simultaneous services, the hideous, dissonant gongs, the very lamps which hang
in multitudes from the roof, their differences advertising their fivefold sectarianism—all this
240 • ABIGAIL WOOD

represents a type of religion that Jesus disliked most and represents nothing that he pleaded
for and for which he died . .  . the ears are filled with the hideous dissonance of five kinds of
Christians venerating their sacred sites.
(Travelogue of Harry Emerson Fosdick, American
Protestant minister [1927: 244–245])

If the neighborly relations between different religious groups are a point of tension in Jerusalem,
the coexistence of different Christian denominations is sometimes equally fraught. The symbolic
sites towards which pilgrims move are often a meeting point of very different pilgrimage practices
that jostle to coexist in the same space (Coleman 2004; Eade 1991). Victor and Edith Turner opti-
mistically characterized this kind of diversity as a potential source of religious strength, “At major
pilgrim centers, the quality and degree of the emotional impact of the devotions (which are often
continuously performed, night and day) derive from the union of the separate but similar emotional
dispositions of the pilgrims converging from all parts of a huge socio-geographical catchment
area” (1978: 13). In reality, as John Eade has noted, this communitas is more readily characterised
as “the co-existence of numerous oppositions,” in which a tension between individual expression
and collective order is played out (1991, 52).
For most Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem, the point towards which pilgrimages converge
is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Believed by Catholic and Eastern Christians to mark the
site of Jesus’s crucifixion, this church is at once the most significant Christian religious shrine
in the Holy Land and perhaps the most intense site of acoustic confrontation between Western

Figure 14.2 Pilgrims in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, April 2010
Photo by Abigail Wood
 SOUNDSCAPES OF PILGRIMAGE • 241

Christians and their sonic Others.9 The church is small, crowded, and complex. Five Christian
denominations lay claim to the interior space of the church: Greek Orthodox; Roman Catholics
represented by Franciscans; and Armenians are three major stakeholders, joined by a smaller
presence of Coptic and Syrian Christians. An Ethiopian monastery occupies a side chapel and
the roof of the church; members of other denominations including Protestants visit the church
on a daily basis. The rights of each denomination within the church, including precise alloca-
tions of time and space, are codified in the Status Quo agreement of 1853.10 While the Status
Quo codifies and co-ordinates the formal religious observances of the communities using the
shared space of the church, these regular rituals have also to share the interior of the church
with a constant stream of pilgrims and tourists who move freely around much of the church’s
space, queuing to venerate shrines, holding pre-arranged services in side chapels, and partic-
ipating in larger rituals.
This complexity is reflected in the soundscape of the Holy Sepulchre Church. Pilgrims queue
for access to the main shrines as ceremonial kawass thump the ground with metal-tipped staffs to
announce a procession of a local community, church bells ring, or groups of monks chant liturgies.
Regardless of whether European Catholics and Protestants arrive as members of the permanent
religious orders stationed in the church or as pilgrims, their first encounters with the overloaded
sensory environment and diverse religious practices of the Holy Sepulchre can be challenging;
regardless of denomination, not many of the European or American pilgrims I spoke to found it
an easy space in which to feel a religious connection. I interviewed two members of the Franciscan
community at length about their own experiences and those of visiting European and American
pilgrims in the church.11 Brother Jozef, a young Polish Franciscan friar who came to Jerusalem in
2004, recalled:

For me, the first experience of the holy places [in Jerusalem], especially the Holy Sepulchre, was
a little disgusting. Because from my imaginations about the Holy Sepulchre, I expected some
very quiet, very amazing church. But the church was crowded. There were many people yelling in
different languages, the liturgies are very fast inside the church, you don’t have time to meditate
about what’s going on. You have to go because there is another procession going after you. And
there is no time to be. You are just going from place to place. And the first experience wasn’t so
nice for me, especially at the Holy Sepulchre.
(Interview, 30 April 2010)

A number of factors seem to contribute to Brother Jozef ’s initial negative reaction—which, his
words suggest, was primarily instinctive and experiential (disgust, “not nice” experience) rather
than reasoned. Acoustic factors are prominent: The Holy Sepulchre church was not quiet, and
people were “yelling”—a loud vocal expression with negative connotations, implying pain or anger
rather than prayer—in different languages. Coupled with this were physical factors: crowding and
pressure of time and imposed movement.
A senior Franciscan officer with years of experience welcoming pilgrims to the city, Father
Ignatius reflected on the effects of sensory overload on pilgrims who may be unprepared for the
experience. Nevertheless, sensory disorientation need not only be a negative experience. Later in
the interview, Father Ignatius identified the experience of difference in Jerusalem, manifested in
sensory intensity, as a catalyst for a cathartic “time out” from regular life—or in Turner’s words,
the experience of liminality:

My experience of Jerusalem through pilgrims’ eyes, is that . . . people come here with the idea
that it’s just a projection of their little church back in Idaho or something. It’s not. They get
here, and they are sometimes really disorientated by everything. . . . I had the experience two
years ago for Palm Sunday where people were just shocked by the level of noise, and because
242 • ABIGAIL WOOD

the cops were there . . . it’s not like the quiet church back at home.12. . . Some people come and
they really get hit, bowled over by the sounds. Like, if I may use the term, they’re coming from
a very suburban, flat experience . . . and they’ve got a lot of problems in their life. And this is
totally different, and in a way, it takes them out of it: the sounds, the sights, the colors.
(Interview, 30 September 2009)

The immediate shock of disorientation and sensory saturation can wear off quickly as visiting
pilgrims become habituated to the sensory character of the space and find new ways to parse
their experiences. For Father Ignatius, after two decades in Jerusalem, the noise simply becomes
a disruption to his preferred sonic aesthetic of devotion:

During Lent you have sometimes five communities in the church at one time. And it’s . . . some-
thing that some people find very unusual and fascinating, . . . certainly, in terms of the ability
to pray—it’s a fascinating thing to do it once, but those of us who have to do it all the time, it
can be a jarring experience. [AW: Because you’re distracted?] Well, you know, you hear other
people . . . you know they’re disturbing you, and you know you’re disturbing them. . . . And if
you have . . . our idea of liturgy being quiet, silent—silence is an important component of lit-
urgy, you know, it’s silence and music and the word—all of that is harder to do. . . . Now, I had
this conversation with the Greek bishop, and he was telling me that I was thinking too much
of this as a Westerner, like in the chaos of the Middle East, the chaos of the Mediterranean:
Compared to the nice, refined, delicate categories of northern Europe, there’s a lot of chaos, and
this church is part of that.
(Interview, 30 September 2009)

While Father Ignatius’s account of his current experience of prayer in the church continues to
be negative (“jarring”), a small but crucial difference in his characterization of experience is his
identification with the Other. Whereas the accounts of initial encounters in the church described
a noisy morass, where the voices filling the sound space were sharply distinguished from the
norms of Western European prayer (yelling, shouting), here he frames the disruptive experience
as a clash of aesthetic ideals between the Franciscans and the Greek Orthodox church, their major
neighbors in the church. The value judgements cited by Father Ignatius echo the Western European
conceptions of silence and harmony outlined in the introduction to this article yet recognize their
cultural relativity. The aesthetic debate is played out, of course, in a competitive environment of
mutual antagonism, where any seeming overstepping of rights is ferociously opposed. Ultimately,
the strict power-sharing framework of the Status Quo allows the groups to get along from day to
day, but impedes substantial change.
In the meantime, the Franciscans must use other means to shape their acoustic environment.
A couple of friars or nuns move through the church ahead of their daily procession, carving out a
sectorial sacred acoustic space within the general sacred space of the church by moving tourists out
of the way and separating pilgrims following the procession from the core group of Franciscans.
These interventions preserve a bubble of quiet around the procession of monks and nuns carrying
candles and singing plainchant, though an imperfect one: In the middle of the ceremony, a Greek
bell sounds loudly overhead, temporarily drowning out the Franciscans. Once again, two aesthetics
of Christian sacred sound are pitted against each other, exposing the work involved and social price
paid for maintaining in-group acoustic practices.
Neither are the Franciscans passive recipients of the sounds of others. At the busiest times of
the year, they are forced further into a structure of physical coercion and acoustic violence to cre-
ate space for their liturgy, as in my fieldnotes below from the night before Easter Sunday. This is
a competitive and hectic sound environment, where the observances of different participants are
forced into acoustic antagonism, whether in a symbolic battle for order and propriety, or through
 SOUNDSCAPES OF PILGRIMAGE • 243

the sheer weight of sound. Physical boundaries may more or less be reinforced, but sound obeys
no such barriers, and the Franciscans’ organ is left to enunciate a loud demarcation of space:

At 10:45 p.m. a policeman starts to clear the crowded rotunda for the procession of Franciscan
monks who are about to enter the church. “Please, move back!” “We have a procession coming
through!” he pleads—to little effect. Meanwhile, the other side of the rotunda, a Copt is intoning
a text from a large open book; pilgrims freely pass in front of him on their way to the Franciscan
chapel. Suddenly, loud organ music blares from the gallery above, blotting out the sound of the
monk intoning the text. A crush of people gathers at the Franciscan chapel space to the north
of the rotunda as the friars arrive in procession. The service is firmly choreographed; the organ
continues to play, supporting the plainchant which otherwise would barely be heard. The smell
of incense is overpowering.
(Fieldnotes, 3 April 2010)

Given the inevitability of such acoustic conflict, perhaps the only strategy to subvert this seemingly
inevitable sonic confrontation is to opt out of participation.13
When I first met Brother Jozef, he was sitting on the steps in the courtyard outside the Holy
Sepulchre church, chatting to some pilgrims, while other members of his order attended services
inside. Choosing not to listen and chant is equally an ethical practice, but one that points to a
difficult disjuncture and compromise between Jozef ’s communal responsibilities as a friar and his
personal desire to avoid conflict:

I think that I was a little blind in the beginning. Because I didn’t see many people and what
was going on around. But the places—it’s maybe not so nice to say it—the places are dead by
themselves. They become living by people who are changing in this place, changing their lives.
This is more important. But sometimes we think only about touching the place, and even fight
with others, even do some crazy things.
(Interview, 30 April 2010)

Words and Sounds: Some Notes in Conclusion

In the discussion above, I have explored how the soundscapes and vocal practices of European
and American Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem’s Old City—making sounds, listening, talking
about sounds, avoiding sounds—shape the practices and experiences of pilgrimage. Sounds color
the ethical comportment of pilgrims and intervene both voluntarily and involuntarily in their
interactions with others in the pilgrimage environment, provoking a range of public and private
responses. Building on the “auditory turn” in ethnomusicology (Porcello et al. 2010, 55) and on
recent anthropological approaches to pilgrimage, I suggest that close attention to the soundscapes of
pilgrimage allows us to examine the frayed edges of religious experiences in the city which coexist
with the neater, familiar narratives of pilgrimage, experienced not through textual exegesis but rather
through embodied experiences of disgust, focus, or wonder, and reconfigured through unspoken
practices of piety or through the heavy hand of acoustic force. Even the best-planned pilgrimage is
reconfigured spontaneously; even those most embedded in ritual play down its spiritual potential.
This is not to undermine the explicitly narrative planning of pilgrimages, nor the later parsing of
experiences, but rather to let the grounding of these experiences in the specifics of the sensory
environment to emerge, embedded in their complex connections to the wider urban soundscape,
where the political, the religious, the everyday collide and are entangled.
Focusing on the contested aesthetic parsing of the sounded environment also provides a useful
counter to unrecognised Eurocentric discourses. A lack of recognition of the ingrained cultural
244 • ABIGAIL WOOD

specificity of Western, primarily Christian, aesthetic tastes pervades too much scholarly writing.
Even Murray Schafer, in his trailblazing study of the soundscape, seems to ascribe general validity
to principles, such as the role of silence, that reflect just one kind of ear (Schafer 1977). Nevertheless,
the wider soundscape of Jerusalem reminds us that heterophony and overlapping sounds are not
instinctively heard by all as invasive. Rather, the awareness of creative use of sensory space by those
who those who use it begs fine-grained interpretation.

Father Jean, the priest of St. Anne’s, turns to me with a smile: “Of course for me, I make no
sounds with my shoes—I have Crocs!”

Acknowledgements

I undertook the fieldwork on which this paper is based during a SOAS research sabbatical in
2009–2010; additional funding from the British Academy and SOAS Faculty of Arts and Humanities
helped to make this research possible. Many thanks to all of the pilgrims and worshippers who
allowed me to accompany their journeys and gave me insights leading to the material presented here.
Names of all local respondents have been changed. I would also like to thank those colleagues whose
insightful readings of related materials have fed into my thought processes, especially Johannes
Becker, Ruth HaCohen, Trevor Marchand, Dina Matar, and Caroline Osella. All responsibility for
the material I cite above, however, and all errors of citation or interpretation, are my own.

Notes
1. In Wood (2013) I describe the wider sonic landscape of religious communities in Jerusalem’s Old City.
2. Bowman (1991) discusses the practices of different denominational groups of Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem at length,
suggesting fundamental differences in approach and experience between Eastern and Western Christians.
3. See MacCulloch (2013) for an extensive survey of theologies and meanings of silence in Christianity.
4. See HaCohen 2011, 2 for discussion.
5. Sontag 1977, 10; see also Eade 1991, 60 for an opposition of photo-taking to “real” religious experience.
6. Details of this liturgical model can be found here: www.taize.fr/en_rubrique12.html, accessed 4 September 2014.
7. The description of this convent on the official website of the Little Sisters of Jesus emphasises the qualities of steadfast-
ness despite difficult conditions: www.jesuscaritas.info/jcd/en/4620/jerusalem-v1-station, accessed 4 September 2014.
8. Taizé, “The value of silence” www.taize.fr/en_article12.html, accessed 4 September 2014.
9. This is not the only site venerated as the place of Jesus’s crucifixion: many Western Protestants favor the site of the
Garden Tomb, a shrine outside the walls of the Old City.
10. The sharing and contestation of space in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is extensively discussed by Glenn Bowman
(2011).
11. The Franciscan community is particularly involved in welcoming and guiding Western Christian pilgrims (primarily
but not exclusively Catholic) in Jerusalem.
12. Israeli police are responsible for maintaining order in and around the church; their presence is particularly visible on
festivals.
13. Several of my interview respondents expressed their belief that the different religious elements of the Old City sound-
scape were growing louder as an effect of competition for sonic superiority.

References
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Bowman, Glenn. 1991. “Christian Ideology and the Image of a Holy Land: The Place of Jerusalem Pilgrimage in the various
Christianities.” In Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage, Michael Sallnow and John Eade,
eds., 98–121. London: Routledge.
Bowman, Glenn. 1992. “Pilgrim Narratives of Jerusalem and the Holy Land: A study in Ideological Distortion.” In Sacred
Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage, Alan Morinis, ed., 149–168. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Bowman, Glenn. 2011. ‘“In dubious Battle on the Plains of Heav’n’: The Politics of Possession in Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre.”
History and Anthropology 12(3): 371–99.
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Coleman, Simon. 2004. “From England’s Nazareth to Sweden’s Jerusalem: Movement, (Virtual) Landscapes and Pilgrim-
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Eade, John. 1991. “Order and Power at Lourdes: Lay Helpers and the Organization of a Pilgrimage Shrine.” In Contesting
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MacCulloch, Diarmaid. 2013. Silence: A Christian History. London: Penguin.
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Schafer, Murray. 1977. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment/the Tuning of the World. New York: Knopf.
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and Religious Identity in the Modern Metropolis, Jane Garnett and Alana Harris, eds., 51–61. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
 Part V
Embodiment and Cognition
 15
Time, Gesture, and Attention
in a Khyāl Performance
Martin Clayton

Introduction

North Indian rāg performance, especially as practiced in intimate and informal settings, is often
distinguished by a lively interaction involving both musicians and listeners, mediated by gestures
and vocal interjections. Performers gesture to each other, to the audience, and expressively with
the music, and audiences become part of that process. The premise of this study is that observing
the behavior of audience members, as well as that of performers, should provide a valuable win-
dow onto the ways in which rāg performance is experienced by all of its participants. The main
questions I aim to elucidate are: What does observable behavior tell us about the way performers
and listeners experience the metrical and formal structures of a rāg performance? When and
how do listeners become involved in the performance gesturally and/or verbally? I address these
and related questions through an analysis of a khyāl performance by Vijay Koparkar recorded in
Mumbai in 2005. Detailed analysis of this performance indicates that these questions can indeed
be answered using observational methods, and also suggests other important issues that may not
have been raised had this approach not been adopted.
Observing the behavior of listeners alongside that of performers can yield vital clues about
the relationships between all participants in a performance event. This behavior—including
hand and head movements—informs us only about certain aspects of the participants’ expe-
riences, of course. It would be incorrect to assume that the extent of the audience’s verbal and
gestural involvement indicates directly the strength of their emotional response, or that such
involvement is a straightforward response to the music unaffected by other aspects of social
relationships. Audiences respond, to some extent, because they perceive it be expected of
them: As Goffman would have it, they perform their role as audience members in this partic-
ular form of social encounter (Goffman 1969[1959]). Nonetheless the evidence of audience
behavior remains a vital source of information that has been often remarked upon but rarely
investigated: It can elucidate listeners’ roles in the performance, and—complementing the study
of performers’ behavior—help us to draw a more complete picture of performance dynamics.
This study describes aspects of gesture, interaction, attention, and temporal structure in a

249
250 • MARTIN CLAYTON

khyāl performance, taking into account both musicians and audience, in order to explore
the musical structures at play and the ways in which they are experienced by participants in
the event. The methods employed here draw both on ethnomusicological precedents and on
work in gesture studies, cognitive psychology, and elsewhere, and the results are relevant to
each of these disciplines.

The Study in Context

Despite the existence of a sophisticated theory of tāl (meter), research on the rhythmic
organization of rāg music remains weak in several areas; for example, in the interpretation
of the temporal organization of ālāp or of the perceptual significance of the long tāl cycles in
vilambit khyāl—both instances where, in the absence of detailed theories elsewhere, theories
of time organization and experience have to be developed from a very low base in the con-
text of Indian music studies (see Clayton 2000).1 This study locates these issues within the
broader context of performance interactions and embodiment.2 It also presents a view of tāl
as a means to structure the interactions between different participants—both musicians and
listeners—in a performance situation, and takes into account the actions of everyone involved
in maintaining that structure.
It is striking that detailed study of the behavior of audiences has not been carried out in the
sphere of rāg performance. Racy has gone somewhat further in his study of Arabic tarab per-
formance (2003), which seems to have some features in common with my topic here: Many of
his comments on audience involvement, like mine below, stress the importance of the timing
of audience contributions). My study draws methodologically on Qureshi’s study of qawwali
in India and Pakistan (1995[1986]), which highlights listeners’ responses to the music, their
influence on the subsequent performance, and above all their participation in the performance.
This participation is felt by many to be a significant part of intimate rāg performance, similarly
to the tarab performance described by Racy: “practitioners tend to view direct and continued
interaction between performer and listener as a prime condition for good entertaining” (2003,
65). Many Indian performers will insist that since the audience cannot affect what they sing (the
rāg, compositions, and so forth), the quality of their music is not dependent on the audience:
Nonetheless they will acknowledge, somewhat like the tarab performers, that an attentive and
knowledgeable audience can significantly enhance a performance event. Enhancement or oth-
erwise, audience participation of the kind described below certainly forms a significant part of
the performance as experienced by all present.
In studying the behavior of participants in performance I also draw on the insights of gesture
studies—an interdisciplinary field allied to linguistics in which researchers have interpreted
the relationship between verbal utterances and physical gesture in conversation (e.g. McNeill
1992, 2005, Kendon 2004). In this tradition gestures are categorized according to their function
in relation to speech (the way in which they illustrate or otherwise complement the linguistic
meaning), and the flow of movement can be parsed into “Gesture Units” (the longest meaning-
ful units of gesture, between which hands will occupy a rest position), and “Gesture Phrases”
(subdivisions of the Gesture Unit) (see McNeill 1992, 83f). Gesture Phrases can be broken down
temporally into three main phases: preparation, stroke, and retraction. In this chapter, analysis
of the gestural phrase structure—units, phrases, and their constituent parts—can be juxtaposed
with that of the musical (melodic) phrase structure so that their relationship is determined: This
could also be glossed as a study of the relationship between “intensity contours” in different
modalities (see Eitan and Granot 2006 for a summary of interdisciplinary work on this idea and
its application to music analysis).
 TIME, GESTURE, AND ATTENTION • 251

The three categories of gesture most relevant to the particular performance discussed below
can be described briefly as follows (terms in square brackets are from Rimé and Schiaratura 1991,
cf. Clayton 2005).

• Markers [nondepictive gestures] of musical process or structure, include marking focal

moments such as the mukhrā in ālāp, or beating out a regular pulse, or the tāl structure.
• Illustrators [depictive gestures] are tied to the content of the singing, appearing analogous
to the melodic flow or “motion.”
• Emblems [symbolic gestures] have verbal equivalents: “Well done,” “Take a solo,” and so on.
This type of gesture is often used by musicians to instruct subordinate musicians (e.g. telling
tānpūrā players to play louder or tablā players to play faster), to offer approval, or to invite
the audience or fellow musicians to share appreciation of the music.

In my gestural analysis I have followed an analogous procedure to McNeill and Kendon’s ges-
ture studies: Parse both the music and gesture into units and then see how the two relate to each
other. I find detailed analysis of this kind most economical using multitrack recordings and Praat
software.3 The vocal track can be analyzed to produce both a pitch plot and an intensity plot, and
the tablā track can be used to mark up the tāl or metrical structure: This is fairly straightforward
in khyāl where for the most part tablā players repeat a thekā (a more or less standard drum pattern
identifying the tāl). Pitch and intensity plots of the voice form the basis of an analysis of phrase
structure and can be presented in parallel with the mark up of the tāl cycles. Where appropriate,
transcriptions of text and/or pitch (in sargam or solfège) can be appended to each phrase (see
Figure 15.2).
Gestures are studied with the help of video recordings and observational analysis software.4 This
involves the coding of specific aspects of behavior (such as changes of hand position, direction of
gaze, or the striking of instruments) in relation to the video time code (see Clayton 2007).
Gestures are commonly described by Indian musicians as “natural,” “unconscious,” or “auto-
matic.” In the words of the singer considered in this article, Vijay Koparkar:

Whenever we are performing, whatever the body language is, it is very natural, there is no
artificial thing. Because whenever the sam [beat one] is coming we have some body language,
whenever we are extending the sur [pitch] [. . .] there is some expression. It is different for
everyone. It is not one and the same, [like] this one [gesture] is this one note. So that is a
very natural process and it should be giving pleasure to the audience.
(Interview with Vijay Koparkar, 20 May 2005)

This chapter analyzes a khyāl performance by Vijay Koparkar, focusing on metrical structure and
audience involvement. In presenting a detailed account of performance interactions, I also present
evidence supporting the singer’s own contention that his use of gesture is largely “natural” and
not codified.

The Performance

The khyāl performance analyzed here, in which Vijay Koparkar presents Rāg Multānī, was recorded
on 20 May 2005 at IIT Powai, Mumbai.5 This performance was part of a baithak-style event: That
is, audience as well as performers sat on rugs on the floor in close proximity to each other (the
performers were only slightly raised). This type of setting is a common one for the performance of
Hindustani music, one that is appreciated by many listeners as well as performers for its intimacy
252 • MARTIN CLAYTON

Figure 15.1 Picture-in-picture video image of Vijay Koparkar (VK, center) with tānpūrā players Surashree Ulhas Joshi
and Bageshree Vaze, Viswanath Shirodkar (VS, tablā), Seema Shirodkar (SS, harmonium), audience, and author (back of
center top image)
Main image Camera 4, small images from left to right Cameras 1, 2, and 3.

and informality. (Notwithstanding this intimacy the event was amplified, as is the case even in most
such events). Vijay Koparkar’s performances of Rāgs Multānī and Swānandī comprised the first part
of the performance, beginning at around 5:40 p.m.; he was followed by Veena Sahasrabuddhe, and
both singers were accompanied by Viswanath Shirodkar (tablā) and Seema Shirodkar (harmonium).
Veena Sahasrabuddhe’s students provided tānpūrā support—in Vijay Koparkar’s case, Surashree
Ulhas Joshi (left of Figure 15.1) and Bageshree Vaze (right of Figure 15.1). The description and
analysis below concentrates on Vijay Koparkar’s performance of Rāg Multānī.

Method

Vijay Koparkar’s performance was recorded using four video cameras. The four cameras on tripods
took static shots, since zooming and panning can complicate the movement analysis. The four
shots can be briefly described as:

Camera 1: Wide frontal master shot of all performers

Camera 2: Vijay Koparkar and Seema Shirodkar (harmonium) from stage left
 TIME, GESTURE, AND ATTENTION • 253

Camera 3: Audience from stage left

Camera 4: Closer frontal shot of performers (Vijay Koparkar and the two tānpūrā players)

A separate multitrack audio recording was made using balanced feeds from the live mixer. The
preparatory stage of analysis involved synchronizing the four camera views, and creating a com-
posite video image (the view of Camera 4 with the other three shots placed as “picture in picture”
windows in the upper part of the screen—see Figure 15.1), using a stereo audio mix as the sound
track. Using this file on DVD, I made outline notes of the contents of Vijay Koparkar’s performance
of Rāg Multānī.6
Vijay Koparkar’s (hereafter VK) performance of Rāg Multānī lasted a little over forty-nine min-
utes and comprised a short ālāp (c. five mins) followed by a vilambit khyāl (a slow vocal composition
lasting c. thirty-five mins) and a drut khyāl (a faster vocal composition lasting c. nine mins). The
bandiśes performed by VK were the following.7

1. Rāg Multānī, vilambit ektāl

Sthāyī
Gokula gāva kā chora re The boy from Gokul village,
Barasāne kī nār re the girl from Barasānā
[Krishna and Radha]
Antarā
Uno dou man mohaliyo man These two have enchanted my
kahe Sadārang bāta re mind, so Sadārang says
2. Rāg Multānī, drut ektāl
Sthāyī
Nainana men āna bāna kauna What has fallen into my eyes?
sī parī
Antarā
Bāra bāra jovata palakana Time and again I try but cannot
lāgata jita dekho uta Shyāme fall asleep—I see Shyām [Krishna]
sī parī wherever I look

I selected three clips for detailed analysis, all from the slow section (vilambit)—I concentrated
on this section because of my interest in studying the temporal structures in this slow section and
their physical expression. For these clips I prepared individual video files for each camera view,
as well as individual audio files for the singer, tablā, and harmonium tracks. Praat was used to
generate pitch and intensity tracks of voice and harmonium, and a wave form display and inten-
sity plot of the tablā track. The Observer (observational analysis software) was used to log details
of hand and eye movements of the participants, by watching each camera view in turn and then
combining the results.8

Results

1. Summary Description of Performance

Vijay Koparkar’s performance is a good example of a full-length khyāl presentation, including a
vilambit (slow tempo) portion in ektāl followed by a drut (fast) section also in ektāl. In the vilambit
VK starts by presenting the sthāyī (first section of the composition), “Gokula gāva kā chora.” The
tāl is ektāl, comprising twelve mātrās or time units. (Each mātrā is subdivided into four pulses
that determine the tempo: In the following analysis therefore I will stick to the term mātrā for the
longer time units and use beat only for the subdivisions.) VK then elaborates with bol ālāp (melodic
development similar to ālāp in style, but using the text and accompanied by tablā) interspersed
with episodes of sargam (solmization) before switching to tāns (more rapid vocalization either to
254 • MARTIN CLAYTON

the text, the vowel “aah”—ākār—or sargam). The antarā (second section of the composition) is
introduced around 29’. At 32’ the musicians accelerate, from what has been a very steady tempo
just over fifteen mātrās per minute (cycle = forty-eight secs) to just over twenty mātrās per minute
(cycle = thirty-five secs),9 the density of the tablā accompaniment increases and VK sings with
the text in a more rhythmically defined, syllabic style (bol bānt), later switching back to tans until
the end of the vilambit section at c. 40’.
He then introduces the drut khyāl, “Nainana men āna bāna,” in fast ektāl: first presenting the
sthāyī and then inviting Viswanath Shirodkar [VS] to play his opening tablā solo before resuming
with further tāns. The antarā of the drut khyāl (the second of the two sections, focusing on the
upper tonic or Sa) is heard from c. 42’30”, and the remainder of the presentation features more
tāns, a couple of accelerations, and another tablā solo. The global tendency to increase tempo and
rhythmic definition, and the episodic improvisation punctuated by the mukhrā (opening phrase) of
each composition, are standard features of khyāl presentation. VS maintains his thekā for the most
part, while harmonium player Seema Shirodkar [SS] shadows the singer’s melodic line, filling in
the many gaps while VK rests: In the vilambit khyāl presentation he typically rests for ten to fifteen
secs at the start of each cycle before beginning a new episode of improvisation.
VK’s gestural style is consistent with a generally sober demeanor. In the ālāp he rests his right
hand on his knee while gesturing gently with his left, maintaining an open hand position. As the
vilambit khyāl picks up he starts to use both hands, sometimes resting his right hand on his left
in front of his chest, sometimes moving his two hands in and out together (as in a mirror image),
and sometimes moving his hands in parallel from side to side in a kind of swaying motion. Almost
every sam (beat one) in the vilambit section is indicated gesturally by an upward, rhythmically
marked movement of his left hand, and a simultaneous tap of his right hand on his thigh. As the
speed of his singing increases so, on the whole, do his gestures: An interesting feature, however,
is that he sometimes begins tāns with his hands completely still in his lap, starting to move them
only after a few seconds—and sometimes marking the end of a particularly vivid tān with a sharp
upward motion of both hands. He occasionally makes a lateral shaking motion with both hands
while singing gamak (a rapid oscillation), but this is quite restrained: Likewise, his adoption of a
more closed hand position is not dramatic—he does not use pinching or grasping hand shapes.
Most of VK’s movements can be categorized as Illustrators—apparently moving “along with”
the melody—but with short rhythmic movements (Markers) included in them. More definite
Markers can be observed in the counting of the tāl on his knee or in front of his chest, which
he does occasionally. Most instructions to his accompanists are achieved simply by making eye
contact and making subtle head movements—only once does he make a definite instructional
movement, beating the time of a new tempo when asking VS to speed up (Emblem). He makes
no obviously depictive gestures—he hints at “stretching” occasionally as he pulls his two hands
apart, or “shaping” a spherical body in front of his chest, but in neither case unambiguously—and
it is very difficult to read his gestures as obviously “expressive” in any direct way—of the words,
or of the mood of the rāg.
VK keeps his eyes closed, or looks down, in the opening stages: He makes little or no direct
eye contact with anybody. (This is consistent with his and other performers’ descriptions of
ālāp as the most introverted portion of a performance.) As the vilambit khyāl progresses he
makes eye contact principally with his two accompanists—first with VS just before beginning
the vilambit khyāl, then usually with both in turn, before and after the sam (the precise pattern
varies, but he usually looks at SS first, then swivels his head to look at VS). He makes very
little eye contact with audience members, principally at sam towards the end of the vilambit
and during the drut.
As for the other musicians, their gestural communication can be distinguished. Harmonium
player SS concentrates most of her attention on VK, occasionally glancing briefly at the audience or
 TIME, GESTURE, AND ATTENTION • 255

tablā player VS. She makes few overt gestures, occasionally making short head or hand movements
either in time with the beat (especially the sam) or in response to a vocal phrase: Apart from the
need to concentrate on what the soloist is doing, she is of course restricted physically by the need
to keep her hands on her instrument. Tablā player VS, in contrast, is considerably more mobile,
frequently shifting his visual attention between his fellow musicians and audience members,
showing his approval, making eye contact, and smiling sympathetically, and emphatically marking
certain beats with extended arm movements or by swaying his body forward and/or to the right.
This difference in manner was described by the two accompanists in an interview carried out the
day before this performance:

SS [on harmonium accompaniment] My attention is [on the singer]—I can’t look here and there.
I should give my full attention; without that it doesn’t work.
VS [on tablā accompaniment] But my role [is that] whenever I’m playing the thekā, it is also my
duty to help [the singer] convey [his] message to the audience. So whenever it is rhythmic I
always interact with the audience . . . and show them that “this is the sam, and this is the way
she is going to come.” So I also interact with the audience. [. . .]
SS But I can’t. I can’t look like that, because [. . .] I have to support [the singer] for each note.
Whichever note [he] sings I have to reach there: I should not be behind. If I am stuck in Sa
[when the singer is on Ga], then she will think “What’s wrong with you? Come with me!” . . .
That is why I can’t look here and there while playing. My full attention should be with the
main artist.
(Interview with Seema and Viswanath Shirodkar,
Mumbai, 19 May 2005 [SS mostly translated from Hindi])

Besides confirming their understanding of their different roles in the group’s interaction—har-
monium player fixed on the singer, tablā player interacting more widely—this also confirms that
the time for such interaction is in the “rhythmic” part (i.e. not in the ālāp), and that its focus is
on the āmad, the approach to sam. Both of these tendencies can be observed in this performance.
The soloist’s intention may be displayed by subtle movements, and accompanists have to remain
aware in order to pick up subtle hints, as Sadanand Naimpalli suggests to students in his manual
of tablā playing: “Be very alert and observe every movement or nuance of the main artist. Many
times instructions are conveyed to the accompanist by small gestures of the hands, head or eyes”
(Naimpalli 2005, 69).
The two tānpūrā players, Bageshree Vaze and Surashree Ulhas Joshi, mostly fix their gaze either
straight ahead or downwards: They occasionally make eye contact with VS or with an audience
member, or show their enjoyment of the music with restrained head movements, but not in a
conspicuous way. This is consistent with their supporting role in the performance, in which they
are required to provide a consistent drone (and, perhaps just as importantly in these days of the
electronic tānpūrā, its visual analogue), without assuming a more proactive role in the musical
performance. (Had they been performing with their own teacher, Veena Sahasrabuddhe, they
may well have been asked to sing occasional phrases, but they would not expect to do so for
another singer.)
The audience appears to be disposed in two groups, with two rows at the front of the auditorium
(roughly six to eight feet away) and another group at the back. This may well have been partly
the result of our presence, those at the back indicating an unwillingness to sit within range of our
cameras. All audience members, in both groups, display a highly concentrated attention to the
performance over the fifty-minute duration: There is very little coming and going or individual
communication between audience members, as is sometimes quite prevalent: It is impossible to
judge to what extent this is due to the quality of the performance, to what extent to our presence.
256 • MARTIN CLAYTON

At the start of the performance audience members are very static, showing very little physical
movement (mostly shifting position as if to achieve more comfortable sitting positions, rather
than obviously responding to the music). Once the tablā begins, a significant proportion of
the audience marks each sam (and occasionally other stressed beats), with head and/or hand
movements. This begins as a single “beat”—typically a downward stroke of palm on thigh, or a
sharp sideways movement of the head—but within a few minutes it takes on a more elaborate
character, with a marked “upbeat” (typically an upward hand or head movement) preceding
the beat. In terms of gestural analysis, this can be described as an extended preparation phase
before the “stroke.” Apart from marking the time structure, audience members occasionally make
responsive gestures of approval, for instance immediately after an impressive tān, sometimes
accompanied by vocal interjections. The energy level of the audience noticeably builds following
the acceleration in the slow section (32’) through to the early stages of the fast khyāl, where many
count out the full cycle of drut ektāl with hand gestures. This activity soon subsides however,
so although the energy expended by the musicians increases more or less linearly through the
performance, that of the audience peaks between thirty-six and forty-two minutes and then
subsides in the latter stages of the drut khyāl.
The singer himself states that he is well aware of the degree of attention and appreciation the
audience is showing:

VK One of my concerts was at Sawantwari [near] Goa. It is just like a village, not a city, and the
audience is the layman audience. Ninety percent of the people, they don’t know the theory of
the classical [music]. [. . .] I have started with Shree [rāg] and jhūmrā [tāl]. Both of the things
were difficult to understand, but from that day I never underestimate the audience, because
they were enjoying every beat and every sam and every sur [note]. [. . .] So they are coming
with me to the sam in jhūmrā tāl. It is very difficult, jhūmrā. [. . .]
MC When you say the audience is feeling the sam [. . .] how do you know that?
VK From their expression: and if we are coming [to sam] with some design, and aesthetically,
there is “Vāh.” That is the expression to encourage, and that is the appreciation: “Vāh, kyā bāt
hai.”10 Or [. . .] with their heads, [through] their body language we come to know that they’re
understanding all the things. Every sam, they are coming with me.
(Interview with Vijay Koparkar, 20 May 2005)

2. Detailed Transcription of Clips

The clips chosen for more detailed analysis are as follows.
TABLE 15.1
No Timing Duration (secs) Content
1 04.39–06.04 85 Transition from ālāp to vilambit khyāl, including one cycle of the latter.
This clip was chosen in order to cover the moment of transition from
unmetered to metered rhythm. It also provides footage of VK’s gestures,
and of the behavior of accompanists and audience, in the ālāp phase.
2 18.34–19.36 62 Full cycle of vilambit ektāl featuring sargam. This clip was chosen as
a sample of the middle portion of the vilambit, and as a section with
prominent interaction between VK and his accompanists.
3 36.01–36.49 48 Full cycle of vilambit ektāl featuring ākār tāns, at faster tempo. The clip
was selected as a sample of the latter stages of the vilambit, and because it
contains the most emphatic (and audible) audience response.
 TIME, GESTURE, AND ATTENTION • 257

In each case, four separate video clips were prepared for observational analysis, and five different
audio clips (Camera 1 sound, a stereo mix, and the separate tracks for voice, harmonium, and tablā).
An outline gestural transcription was prepared from the four video files, using the Observer. The
three individual audio tracks were analyzed in Praat, producing pitch tracks for voice and harmo-
nium and intensity tracks for all three. An example of the result can be seen in Figures 15.2a and
15.2b, a summary of the first forty seconds of Clip 1.

Clip 1: Transition From ālāp to vilambit khyāl (04:39–06:04)

This clip was edited to include the final phrase of ālāp and the first cycle of vilambit ektāl, in which
VK presents the sthāyī of the bandiś (composition) “Gokula gāva kā chora.” An obvious point of
interest is how this transition is effected and how the tempo of the composition is agreed between
VK and his tablā accompanist.
VK begins the clip with eyes half-closed, making no eye contact; he gestures with left hand
only, resting his right on his thigh. As he reaches the end of his final ālāp phrase, a descent from
Pa to Sa (^5 to ^1), he turns to VS with eyes open: This clearly indicates that he is about to begin
his composition. VS actually turns to look at VK around 26” into the clip, two seconds before the
latter turns to him to give his signal. This suggests that VS is anticipating the very signal he then
receives, and indeed the two musicians acknowledge each other in synchrony: The mutual gesture
is a confirmation that they both understand what is to come next, rather than a signal from one to
the other. VK immediately starts to use his right hand: Following a dramatic rise the downward
sweep of this hand on “go-” can be seen, retrospectively at least, to mark the twelfth mātrā of ektāl,
and is followed by two finger taps (marking the third and fourth quarters of the twelfth mātrā)
before a full palm stroke on sam (33.56”). For the next two mātrās he taps out each quarter-mātrā
with his right palm, in time with the tablā strokes.
As he continues the bandiś, VK’s first gestures involve both hands moving in contrary motion
(as in a mirror); he then reverts to tapping with his right index finger, continuing the Illustrator
gestures with left hand only. He then curls his fingers in slightly and moves his hand diagonally,
almost as if imitating a sitarist (although moving his hand in the opposite direction—upwards as
his melody ascends to the upper tonic and beyond, whereas a sitarist would move his hand towards
the bridge of his instrument). Overall his gestures include Markers, Illustrators, and Emblems,
shifting between and sometimes combining these functions. A good example of this is at the start
of the bandiś as noted above—where having glanced at VS (Emblem) he moves his right hand up
and then sharply down, both accompanying the melodic movement (Illustrator) and then marking
a beat (Marker); he then continues to count time with his right hand (Marker) while raising his
left hand, palm upwards (Illustrator).
VS begins the clip looking mainly ahead, with a quick glance at the audience. The timing of his
glance towards the singer clearly suggests that he expects the bandiś to begin, which is predictable
from the development of the melody in the ālāp—which, having focused on Ma and Pa (^4<sharp>
and ^5) now descends in a relaxed manner towards the Sa (^1). He acknowledges VK’s look as
noted above (28.20”), moves his hands to his drums to signal that he is ready to play (29.48”), and
then marks sam emphatically—right on the beat. His eyes are more mobile than VK’s—he alternates
looking down, looking at VK, and looking at the audience.
SS has two glances at the audience (36.64–38.04”/57.52–59.04”), but otherwise focuses on VK.
She marks the second sam with a sharp movement of her left hand (33.84”, a fraction of a second
after VK), which she follows with a sequence of taps with her left index finger on the mātrā sub-
divisions (beats). The audience is not at all animated: We can observe a few approving shakes of
the head in the ālāp and nods on each sam (more noticeable on the second than on the first), but
the bigger movements seem to be positional adjustments.
258 • MARTIN CLAYTON

Figure 15.2a Vijay Koparkar, Rāg Multani

Clip 1, 0–20 sec

Some of these features can be seen in more detail in Figures 15.2a and 15.2b. The figures include,
from top to bottom: (a) a pitch plot, calibrated in semitones relative to the Sa at 138.8 Hz, roughly
C<sharp>;11 (b) an intensity plot, which clearly shows the alternation between his sung portions and
his pauses or breaths; and (c) a text grid. The text grid is based on one prepared within Praat, which
includes an outline sargam transcription,12 transcription of the text or other syllables articulated
by VK, and the main tablā beats (indicating both the time of the intensity peak of the tablā, and
the beat to which it refers—X for sam, 2 for the second mātrā, + for the subdivisions of the mātrā).
Into this I have interpolated a schematic representation of VK’s hand movements (“Gesture”), with
the vertical axis representing relative effort (i.e. the higher the line, the higher or further from his
body are his hands); periods of rest—when both hands are in resting positions—are shaded. I have
also interpolated a transcription of his eye movements, from which it can be seen that VK’s eyes are
either closed or looking down for the greater part of the clip, the exception being when he looks
at VS at the start of the composition (shaded).
It can be seen from the gestural transcription that the only times when VK rests his hands are at
either end of this extract: The Gesture Unit can be said to run from 1.6 to 38.9 secs (a duration of
37.3 secs). This unit can be broken down into two main Gesture Phrases, with the boundary falling
at the transition from ālāp to composition. It is noteworthy here that, as VK’s left hand assumes a
 TIME, GESTURE, AND ATTENTION • 259

Figure 15.2b(ctd) Vijay Koparkar, Rāg Multani

Clip 1, 20–40 sec
Clip 1 (0–40 secs). From top to bottom: pitch plot (Praat); intensity plot (Praat), schematic transcription of
manual gesture (vertical scale representing effort/ distance from rest position); sargam transcription; text; tāl
(beats determined from tablā strokes); and gaze.

resting position, his right hand immediately picks up in a dramatic gesture marking the start of the
mukhrā—thus, his hands mark both the transition and the continuity of the musical flow across
this boundary. There is quite a close correlation at times between the raising of his hands and of
the pitch of a melodic phrase, especially at the start of each Gesture Phrase: In the case of the start
of the composition (28.9”), the rapid rise and fall of the melody is matched almost exactly by the
contour of his right hand movement.
Within each Gesture Phrase there are periods (the horizontal lines) where he is moving his hands
little or not at all, punctuated by more obvious movements: These periods when his movement
pauses do not always correlate with either pauses or held notes in the sung line, although they
can do so. Most significantly, he does not return to his rest position when he momentarily takes a
breath (e.g. around eleven secs and around twenty secs): It seems that his gestures are indicating
the continuity of melodic flow across the inevitable boundaries that occur when he has to take a
breath (cf. Clayton 2008). This interpretation could also be glossed in terms of the relationship
between two different intensity contours—of voice and hands—showing the former to be effectively
nested within the latter.
260 • MARTIN CLAYTON

In conclusion, there are two main points to be observed in this clip. First, there is very little visual
interaction at this stage: The singer is introverted, accompanists largely concentrated on the singer,
and the audience likewise—and although they recognise the sam, they are not yet ready to move
with it. Secondly, VK’s gestures mostly illustrate the melodic phrases—with left hand leading—and
indeed clarify the grouping or phrase structure of the music. These Illustrators are accompanied
by Markers, which have an instructional intent (guiding the tablā player and audience), and refer
to the music’s metrical structure.
In terms of gestural analysis, this exemplifies a somewhat different temporal patterning of gesture
to that found in most speech. In speech, the normal pattern is described as preparation-stroke-re-
traction: Positions can be held momentarily to extend a phase, or a Gesture Phrase may contain
more than one stroke, but the basic pattern seems to be consistent. In VK’s first Gesture Phrase
here we see a short preparation (moving his hands away from their rest position), after which he
holds his hands steady (pause), moves them sharply a short distance further out (stroke, marking
the Ma-Pa move), pauses again, strokes again, and so on . . . followed by a fairly quick retraction
as he returns his hands to the rest position. In other words, the Gesture Phrase is much longer
than those usually encountered in speech, and marked by multiple strokes and significant pauses
or prolongations.
The laterality or asymmetry in VK’s gestures is also of interest: He appears to lead with his
left hand most often when making Illustrator gestures, and with his right hand when performing
Markers. While this one performance would be too little evidence on which to make sweeping
generalisations, other factors suggest that this asymmetry is in fact highly significant. Trevarthen
reports that in proto-conversations between infants and their carers, the infants display such an
asymmetry from birth:

The evidence favors the conclusion that assertive or demonstrative activity concentrates in the
left side of the brain, moving the right arm and hand, often at the same time as apprehensive
self-regulatory withdrawal is more active on the right side of the brain, moving the left limb.
(Trevarthen 1996)

McNeill and Pedelty argue along similar lines—on the basis of studies of speech-accompanying
gesture in subjects with damage to the right brain hemisphere—that the left brain alone, working
with the right hand, “produces a type of narrative in which there is linear form, but form deficient in
imagistic content”; they continue, “When visuo-spatial input from the right hemisphere is lacking,
narrative is incomplete: [displaying] lack of coherence, inability to match physical and abstract
content, and inconsistent treatment of structural boundaries.” (1995, 83–84).
Interestingly, Rowell also notes a marked asymmetry in the early codified systems of mudrās
in Indian performance traditions, although the relationship to asymmetries discussed up to this
point is not obvious: “the function of the right hand is primarily tonal, and the function of the left
hand, temporal, in that the left hand is used more for counting and indicating special durations”
(1992, 66). VK’s use of gesture seems to show a greater coherence with the distinctions displayed by
neonates, or by adults in normal conversation, than it does with early Indian codifi ed systems: In
other words, the asymmetry supports his (and other khyāl singers’) contention that their gestures
in performance are largely spontaneous and are not codified.

Clip 2: Sargam tāns (18:34–19:36)

This clip was selected as an example of visible interaction between singer and tablā player: Of
several instances in which the two exchange glances and gestures of approval this was one of
the more dramatic. It is also an episode in which VK’s attention is focused to a great extent on
 TIME, GESTURE, AND ATTENTION • 261

his harmonium accompanist SS: Since he is also singing sargam syllables (the second such epi-
sode), we might deduce that he is focusing on SS’s imitation of his melody more explicitly than
elsewhere. The clip begins with the mukhrā of the vilambit composition, “Gokula gā(va)”: His
attention is on SS, then he swings round slightly to face the audience as he marks sam with an
upward flick of his left hand (3”). He rests for about ten secs, hands in lap, while SS plays a few
phrases: When she reaches a sustained Ni (^7), he begins again (14”)—this move on her part feels
like a clear (aural) invitation to him to recommence. He gestures with both hands in a balancing
motion (one moves up as the other moves down), moving without a pause into the mukhrā and
marking sam (50”) with a downward slap of his right hand and a sharp upward movement of his
left hand. His head has been turned towards SS for most of this passage, occasionally glancing at
both her and the audience. He immediately looks around at VS and nods in approval, appearing
to mouth words of approval.
SS marks the first sam with a flick of her left hand. When after a short harmonium solo
VK begins to sing again, she focuses her gaze on him, moving her head and shoulders with
him as she follows his improvisation. She catches brief glances at VS (25”) and at the audience
(35”), making eye contact as if in approval of VK’s performance, but then returns her gaze to
the singer, marking the second sam once again with a flick of the fingers of her left hand. VS
continues his role of engaging with other participants in turn, with more animation than in the
earlier clip. He nods his head vigorously on the first sam, then nods repeatedly as the second
mukhrā approaches—again as if in approval—before marking the second sam most emphatically,
smiling and nodding towards the audience so that his whole upper body leans far over to his
right (towards the audience).
Several audience members mark the first sam and then relax; their nods of approval become
more noticeable, then a few mark the start of the mukhrā and the final sam. A couple of factors
become more noticeable in this Clip: First, that those who mark the sam gesturally prepare these
movements well in advance, raising their hands in time with the preceding beat; second, that Veena
Sahasrabuddhe—not coincidentally, the senior musician present—is the most active audience
member, and others occasionally glance at her as if to take a lead from her.
What becomes clearer in this Clip is the nature of the interaction between participants,
and the different roles they assume. VK is obviously the musical leader, but he maintains
his introverted stance: He clearly focuses his attention on SS for much of his sargam sing-
ing, attending to her accompaniment, and exchanges glances with both SS and VS before
and after sam, but only shoots quick glances at the audience (probably focusing on Veena
Sahasrabuddhe, who as the senior musician is the most animated listener, assuming the role
of “lead auditor”). SS has to concentrate mainly on VK in order to accompany him, but when
she feels able she shoots glances at audience or at VS. VS takes on the most dynamic role,
fixing his fellow performers as well as audience members in his gaze, and obviously showing
his appreciation: This is clearly consistent with his own comments on his role, quoted above.
The audience, led by Veena Sahasrabuddhe, show their approval periodically with subtle head
gestures, but their most notable movement is at the sam. Here it is noteworthy that listeners
start to prepare for their sam-marking gestures more than a second before sam itself: This is
a demonstration of the fact that they are following the music closely and sharing the sense
of release that the mukhrā signals and the sam confirms. The flow from sam to sam has
established a clear attentional rhythm with a period equal to that of the cycle (c. forty-seven
secs). The significance of this is that one would not normally observe such regular atten-
tional rhythms of this duration in other kinds of interaction (such as conversation): Musical
performance is an efficient means of coordinating different individuals’ attentional rhythms,
and slow khyāl appears to be particularly effective in establishing shared attentional periods
of over forty seconds.
262 • MARTIN CLAYTON

Clip 3: ākār tāns (36:01–36:49)

Following an acceleration at 32’ the energy levels of both performers and audience increase
markedly: This clip was selected as an example in which VK’s gestures are particularly animated,
in which he appears to make eye contact with audience members (albeit briefly), and in which
several audience members interject vocal expressions of approval.
This excerpt begins in a similar fashion to Clip 2, with VK focusing on SS as he reaches sam (3”)
with a slap of his right hand and a flick of his left hand. He then sways away from SS and makes a
brief shake of the head, clearly indicating to her that she should play solo for a while (Emblem). This
time he does not wait for her invitation to restart, however, as he overlaps her improvisation with
his own (11”). He first sings four rapid bursts of ākār tāns (rapid passages sung to “aah”), with SS
following closely on the harmonium: Remarkably, he does this with no noticeable hand movement
whatsoever, his hands resting on his lap. After the second of these bursts, the audience’s (and SS’s)
calls of approval are audible (23”). The next ākār is accompanied by hand gestures, his hands rising
together upward and rightward, the right hand then taking the lead with his left hand remaining
a few inches above his lap; he then swings both hands to the left, and reverts to his normal “sam”
position, right hand slapping his thigh and left hand flicking upwards (49”).
SS nods with VK on the first sam: Her attention is then mostly on the singer, apart from a brief
glance at the audience. As the second sam approaches, perhaps influenced by the high energy
level of the audience, she turns to her left and looks toward the audience as she marks sam with a
downward nod. VS once again seems to be interacting with fellow musicians and audience in turn,
making exaggerated body movements towards sam.
Apart from the vocal interjection noted above, there is considerable audience involvement, both
responsive and participatory. Not only the two sams, but also mātrās 8 (23”, after which the interjec-
tions are heard), 11 and 12 are marked by body sways and hand claps, before the second sam (37”).
The most notable feature of this clip is the response of accompanists and audience at 23”. The
contrast here from the previous example is that this is a response, rather than an act of participation:
where the gestures marking sam are clearly prepared well in advance, the motion of the responsive
gestures begins only after the tān has been concluded. There are several approving glances during
the preceding tān that indicate a shared appreciation of VK’s improvisation and suggest that such
a response was being prepared, in some sense—the difference is that since no-one but VK could
have predicted with any certainty that the tān would end on mātrā 8, they were unable to prepare
the timing of their appreciative responses by focusing their attention at this moment, and thus the
gestures of appreciation indicate a different focus of attention.

3. Discussion
The preceding section has described two phases of analysis: (1) a description of the gestural behavior
of all participants, based on viewings of the whole performance as a picture-in-picture image; and
(2) detailed analyses of three clips. In the following discussion I will pick up on a few features of
the performance that seem to be particularly noteworthy.

i. The performance clearly must be understood as a multi-modal experience: Although VK

himself spends much of the time with eyes closed or averted, eye contact and bodily orien-
tation do play an important role in the performance dynamics, for instance when the singer
twists his body to the left when concentrating on SS’s harmonium accompaniment, or when
VS looks to the audience to share the experience of the sam.
ii. Very little of the interaction between participants can be described as emblematic (in the
gesture studies sense of “standing for verbal utterances”): In fact, even that which does occur,
such as VK’s signal that he is about to begin his bandiś, is almost certainly redundant. The
 TIME, GESTURE, AND ATTENTION • 263

more significant gestural functions seem to be the Illustrators (almost exclusively VK, as he
moves his hands and upper body with his singing in a variety of ways); and the beat Markers
(especially but not only on sam).
iii. The last category takes on a particular importance: By marking the significant beats together,
participants share these moments, and affirm that they share the experience of time and
motion generated by the musical and gestural acts (something that VK confirms is signif-
icant for him as a performer). In this I include both performers and audience: There is no
difference in principle between the way the musicians and the listeners mark the sam, and
in this sense the audience clearly participate in the performance rather than respond to it.13
iv. Audience gestures of approval and vocal interjections are, in contrast, responses to the music,
rather than the result of shared periodic attention: They can begin only after the event being
responded to, and are therefore constrained by the time it takes to prepare and effect the
response.
v. The overall trend of the performance describes a linear intensification, matched by an increase
in the energy expended by performers. This is matched by the audience, who display a steady
increase in attention, involvement, and physical movement. In the latter case, however, the
audience’s energy peaks around the end of the vilambit khyāl and relaxes after the early stages
of the drut (fast) composition.
vi. The logic of tāl and bandiś describes a periodic ebb and flow of attentional energy, rising
through the latter part of the cycle to a peak on sam and then rapidly relaxing. In fact, the
mukhrā is also important here: Once the improvised passage has flowed into this opening
phrase there is an initial release of tension as the listeners appreciate how the āmad (approach)
has been effected: The flow of the mukhrā into sam is a familiar refrain and merely confirms
the relaxation.
vii. The gradual increase in attentional energy through the cycle is nurtured by the musicians’
performance: We might suppose that the increase in the audience’s attentional energy is a
function not simply of the expenditure of energy by the performers, but of their producing
the cues necessary to evoke a response. This interpretation is backed up by the evidence
of the drut khyāl here, where an increase in speed and intensity is not matched by greater
audience attention and involvement.
viii. The audience’s role seems to be one of continual feedback and affirmation rather than input
aimed at directing the course of the performance: By participating in the appropriate manner
they encourage VK to maintain his concentration and affirm their own status as knowl-
edgeable listeners. Therefore, in this case at least, it appears to be more productive to see the
performance as an event constituted by all its participants, rather than to see the audience
as the “context” for the musicians’ performance.
ix. Vijay Koparkar’s use of gesture displays a marked laterality, with the left hand dominating
in what I have termed Illustrator gestures, the right hand leading in Markers of beat and tāl.
This is consistent with his description of his use of gesture as “natural,” i.e. not codified.

These observations tell us something about the experience of different time levels in the per-
formance of the vilambit khyāl. The tāl cycle extends to thirty-five or forty-eight secs, divided
into mātrās of 2.9 to 4 secs, which are further subdivided by the tablā thekā into four beats each
lasting a second or less. The mātrā functions as a metrical unit—that is, each mātrā comprises
one measure of a four-beat meter. The tāl cycle functions as a regular hypermetric unit of twelve
mātrās. This higher level is particularly interesting, for it appears to lie beyond the time scale within
which meter can be modeled as neurological entrainment. It coincides with the level described by
Trevarthen as a “narrative” level—comprising durations within which an episode of a story can
be presented and understood—which in speech would not usually be as clearly periodic as it is in
this performance. The structure of the thekā, composition, and other aspects of the performance
264 • MARTIN CLAYTON

support the kind of long-term attentional periodicity that allows performers and listeners to focus
some of their attentional resources on this higher-level structure, to maintain its periodicity and
to concentrate on a specific point in the period (the sam). This time scale has parallels in other
musical repertories, of course—the unusual feature here lies not in the time scale per se but in the
participants’ attention on the process of āmad and the release facilitated by the mukhrā. It could be
argued that one of the functions of the event itself is precisely to facilitate this sharing of attention
and of temporal expectations within an intimate group.
The study has presented a series of observations on gesture, interaction, attention, and temporal
structure in a khyāl performance by Vijay Koparkar, considering both musicians and audience. I
have demonstrated that given suitable audio-visual recordings and analytical methods, much can
be deduced about all of these aspects of performance. Detailed observation of participants’ move-
ments demonstrates clearly, for instance, not only that listeners recognize the sam (beat one) but
also that they prepare their gestures marking this event well in advance: A significant part of their
attentional resources is spent on tracking the long time cycles of the slow ektāl. The same observa-
tions indicate a clear distinction between gestures showing—to performers and other listeners—that
one is tracking these durations correctly, and gestures and exclamations of approval, whose timing
cannot be predicted with any certainty but whose occurrence indicates a different kind of attention,
that which focuses on the moment by moment events in the performance. Such exclamations are
distributed unevenly through the performance, and there are too few in a single performance to
generalize about when they are occurring, except to say that this is likely to be when the singer
has the full attention of the audience and is able to evoke an energetic response: In the case of this
performance, the audience’s energy seems to peak towards the end of the vilambit phase, and this
is where the approval gestures are concentrated. These are the main conclusions to be drawn with
respect to my initial questions, although the analysis has also thrown up issues deserving further
investigation, such as lateralism in singers’ gestures and the differing roles of tablā and harmonium
accompanists in facilitating these socio-musical interactions. There can surely be no doubt that
wherever such investigations lead, there is more for us to learn about Indian rāg music through
the empirical study of its performance.

Notes
1. The performance discussed in this article is an example of a khyāl vocal performance. As is usual for the main item
of a recital, a rāg (in this case Multānī) is briefly introduced without tabla drum accompaniment; the longest part
of the performance is a vilambit (slow) or baṛā (great) khyāl, sung in slow tempo; this is followed by a drut (fast)
or choṭā (small) khyāl performed at a faster tempo. In both baṛā and choṭā khyāl the composed material comprises
two short sections, sthāyi and antarā respectively, the second of which focuses melodically on the upper part of the
octave. The greater part of the performance is extemporized within the frameworks of rāg and tāl (metric cycle),
using portions of this precomposed material as a refrain. For an introduction to khyāl singing see Clayton and
Sahasrabuddhe (1998).
2. The main revision to the original article in this version is in the slimming down of this literature review section,
abbreviating it to concentrate on material essential to the analysis. I have not taken the opportunity to add more recent
literature on music and gesture, especially in Indian music. Studies relating to gesture in Indian music published since
2007 include those of Clayton (2008), Clayton and Leante (2013), Dahl et al. (2009), Fatone et al. (2011), Leante (2009,
2013a, 2013b), Moran (2013), Pearson (2013, 2016) and Rahaim (2012).
3. For Praat see www.praat.org. Pitch plots were made using a procedure outlined by Wim van der Meer in his “Praat
Manual for Musicologists” (www.musicology.nl > research, accessed 27 Sept 2005). Although more accessible software
is available that can be used for pitch tracking, e.g. Sonic Visualiser, Pratt remains a viable option.
4. This analysis was carried out using the Observer observational analysis software. Apart from this commercial package
a number of free software packages are also currently available which support this kind of analysis, for instance ELAN
(tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/) and ANVIL (www.anvil-software.org/).
5. The event was organized jointly by myself and Veena and Hari Sahasrabuddhe. It was recorded by myself, Laura Leante,
and Jaime Jones. The research trip was funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council grant no. 19110. I am grateful
to Hari Sahasrabuddhe, Richard Widdess and Laura Leante for their comments on a draft of this paper.
6. Video recordings were made in miniDVCAM format (progressive scan PAL at 15fps), and miniDV (interlaced PAL
25 fps). Audio was recorded in ProTools (24 bit, 96 kHz). Editing was carried out in Avid Express Pro.
 TIME, GESTURE, AND ATTENTION • 265

7. Since he wrote the words out for us before the concert, I know that he had prepared three, the third in fast
ādācautāl, but in the event he only presented these two. Thanks to Hari Sahasrabuddhe for his help with the
translations.
8. Although in most cases the timings logged from different views match within one frame (40 msec), in a few cases the
difference is significantly greater (up to 360 msec). This is due to the limited depth of field of video recording: It is dif-
ficult to pick up movement towards and away from the camera. For this reason, comprehensive gestural transcriptions
should ideally be compiled from more than one view, although of course this is subject to practical limitations.
9. Since each mātrā is subdivided into four beats, the tempo ranges from 60–80 bpm rather than 15–20 bpm.
10. “Vāh, kyā bāt hai”—literally “Wow, what a thing it is!”—is a conventional expression of approval in Hindi/Urdu, used
also by those whose mother tongue is other than Hindi or Urdu.
11. This measurement was actually taken from the harmonium pitch track, where the Sa is a more stable pitch.
12. The letters used are as follows: S = Sa (^1), R = Re (^2, in this case flat), G = Ga (^3, also flat), M = Ma (^4, in this case
sharpened), P = Pa (^5), D = Dha (^6, also flat), and N = Ni (^7).
13. In fact it is not unknown for members of intimate baithak audiences to join in with the singing of the mukhra (Hari
Sahasrabuddhe, pers. comm.).

References
Clayton, Martin. 2005. “Communication in Indian Raga Performance.” In Musical Communication, Dorothy Miell, Raymond
MacDonald, and David Hargreaves, eds., 361–381. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clayton, Martin. 2007. “Observing Entrainment in Indian Music Performance: Video-based Observational Analysis of
Tanpura Playing and Beat Marking. Musicae Scientiae 11(1): 27–59.
Clayton, Martin. 2000. Time in Indian Music: Rhythm, Metre, and Form in North Indian Rāg Performance. Oxford; New
York: Oxford University Press.
Clayton, Martin. 2008. “Toward an Ethnomusicology of Sound Experience.” In The New (Ethno)musicologies, Henry Stobart,
ed., 135–169. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press.
Clayton, Martin, and Laura Leante. 2013. “Embodiment in Music Performance.” In Experience and Meaning in Music
Performance, Martin Clayton, Byron Dueck, and Laura Leante, eds., 188–207. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clayton, Martin and Veena Sahasrabuddhe. 1998. Khyāl: Classical singing of North India. OU Worldwide ETHNO/VC01.
VHS video, 45 mins, with accompanying booklet. Milton Keynes: Open University. The booklet is available from
www.dur.ac.uk/resources/music/khyal.pdf
Dahl, Sofia, Frederic Bevilacqua, Roberto Bresin, Martin Clayton, Laura Leante, Isabella Poggi, and Nicolas Rasamimanana.
2009. “Gestures in Performance.” In Musical Gestures: Sound, Movement, and Meaning, Rolf Inge Godøy and Marc
Leman, eds., 36–68. Routledge.
Eitan, Zohar and Y. Roni Granot 2006. “How Music Moves: Musical Parameters and Listeners’ Images of Motion.” Music
Perception 23(3): 221–248.
Fatone, Gina A., Martin Clayton, Laura Leante, and Matt Rahaim. 2011. “Imagery, Melody and Gesture in Cross-cultural
Perspective.” In New Perspectives on Music and Gesture. Anthony Gritten and Elaine King, eds., 203–220. Farnham,
Surrey: Ashgate.
Goffman, Erving. 1969[1959]. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press.
Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leante, Laura. 2009. “The Lotus and the King: Imagery, Gesture and Meaning in a Hindustani Rāg.” Ethnomusicology
Forum 18(2): 185–206.
Leante, Laura. 2013a. “Gesture and Imagery in Music Performance: Perspectives from North Indian Classical Music.” In
The Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture, Tim Shephard and Anne Leonard, eds., 145–152. New York:
Routledge.
Leante, Laura. 2013b. “Imagery, Movement and Listeners’ Construction of Meaning in North Indian Classical Music.”
In Experience and Meaning in Music Performance. Martin Clayton, Byron Dueck, and Laura Leante, eds., 161–187.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McNeill, David. 1992. Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
McNeill, David. 2005. Gesture and Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McNeill, David and Laura L. Pedelty, 1995. “Right Brain and Gesture.” In Language, Gesture and Space, Karen Emmorey
and Judy S. Reilly, eds., 64-85. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Moran, Nikki. 2013. “Social Co-regulation and Communication in North Indian Duo Performances.” In Experience and
Meaning in Music Performance, Martin Clayton, Byron Dueck, and Laura Leante, eds., 40–61. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Naimpalli, Sadanand. 2005. Theory and Practice of Tabla. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan.
Pearson, Lara. 2013. Gesture and the Sonic Event in Karnatak Music.” Empirical Musicology Review 8(1): 2–14.
Pearson, Lara. 2016. “Coarticulation and Gesture: An Analysis of Melodic Movement in South Indian Raga Performance.”
Music Analysis 35(3): 280–313.
Qureshi, Regula B. 1995[1986]. Sufi Music of India and Pakistan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Racy, Ali Jihad. 2003. Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge
University Press.
266 • MARTIN CLAYTON

Rahaim, Matthew. 2012. Musicking Bodies: Gesture and Voice in Hindustani Music. Middletown, CO: Wesleyan University
Press.
Rimé, Bernard and Loris Schiaratura. 1991. “Gesture and Speech.” In Fundamentals of Nonverbal Behavior, Robert S.
Feldman and Bernard Rimé, eds., 239–281. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rowell, Lewis. 1992. Music and Musical Thought in Early India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Trevarthen, Colwyn. 1996. “Lateral Asymmetries in Infancy: Implications for the Development of the Hemispheres”.
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 20(4): 571–586.
 16
Speaking with the Body in Nigerian
and Cuban Orisha Music
Musical Movements in Song,
Dance, and Trance
Amanda Villepastour

On my first trip to Nigeria in 1999, while waiting to be taken to a traditional festival in Oshogbo
where I could undertake my drumming research, I chatted with Doyin ’Fáníyì, a chief priestess
of the orishas, Yoruba deities that are now well-known in the African diaspora and beyond.1
Endeavoring to use the time constructively, I sang some songs from the Cuban orisha tradition
and asked Faniyi whether she recognized them. She identified several cognates and allowed me
to video her impromptu performance of local Yoruba versions of the Cuban songs. Excited to
discover some parallel songs considering the vast passage of space and time since West African
slaves took their spiritual practices to the Caribbean, I was surprised by the close relationship
between the Nigerian and Cuban melodies and texts. I was especially intrigued and curious about
Faniyi’s gesticulations, which appeared to be a structural component of some of the songs rather
than improvisational movements that accompanied or were superimposed over the voice. She
remained seated as her upper body movements corresponded with the rhythmic arrangement of
her vocal phrasing, occasionally repeating the movements when song sections repeated. At the
time, I had a naїve understanding of movement within musical performance and it hadn’t yet
occurred to me that Doyin’s arm and hand gestures could be considered a form of dance. What I
could be sure of in this moment, however, was that Faniyi’s integration of musical utterance and
movement was not arbitrary.
After fifteen years of engaging with African and Caribbean musicians alongside the growing
body of interdisciplinary literature about the musical body, my understanding of music’s corporal
aspects has advanced, in large part because of that first encounter with the unfamiliar that forced
me to reconsider what I thought I knew about music, dance, gesture, and movement. Alongside my
related drumming research in Nigeria and Cuba, I became increasingly aware of the extra-sonic
aspects of orisha song specifically and music generally. In August 2011 I returned to Faniyi with a
camera in hand to collect more of the gestures embedded in orisha song, dance, and other ritual
actions in order to further my understanding of the role of corporal engagement in orisha music.

267
268 • AMANDA VILLEPASTOUR

This chapter focuses specifically on the integrated somatic performance embedded in sacred music
and trance, highlighting revealing correlations I have found in transatlantic practices. More widely,
I argue for the usefulness of a holistic approach that gives gesture and dance equal significance to
music’s sonic components.

Music and Dance in Nigerian and Cuban Orisha Devotion

Since the early twentieth century the vast majority of dialect groups (now collectively known
as the Yoruba) in southwest Nigeria and southern Benin have become Christians or Muslims.
This leaves only a small minority (said to be no more than 5 percent) who worship the orishas,
a complex of spirits which has proliferated around the world during and since the transatlantic
slave trade. The nineteenth-century documentation by early travelers, missionaries, and scholars
in the region describes a congeries of regional and variegated spiritual practices. Localized orisha
traditions only began to coalesce into the conceptual ideas of a collective orisha religion within
the mid-twentieth-century literature of Christian Yoruba scholars,2 though considerable diversity
nevertheless persists in contemporary Nigeria. Despite the regional distinctions of the past, many
of the orishas now span Yorubaland and are worshipped throughout the diaspora; most populous
traditions are Brazil’s Candomblé and Cuba’s Santería (also known as Regla de Ocha).3 Despite the
diversity of globalized orisha traditions, of generic importance across these multifarious practices
is utterance as performed in prayers, incantations, and songs, the central role of divination and
making sacrificial offerings, and the essential function of spirit possession, which allows the orishas
to temporarily inhabit human bodies and communicate orally with orisha devotees. Embedded
within each of these modes of worship is the animated human physique.
There has been a sustained scholarly interest in the connections between Yoruba spiritual tra-
ditions and their expressive arts around the Atlantic rim. This fascination with cultural roots and
retention among slave descendants gained traction around the mid-twentieth century with the
transatlantic studies of, for example, Melville Herskovits in Brazil and North America, Lorenzo
Turner in South Carolina and Georgia, Artur Ramos in Brazil, and Fernando Ortiz in Cuba.4 Within
the expanding body of transatlantic musical research, studies that rigorously examine aural musical
materials are still surprisingly rare as most research continues to rely on analyzing text that has
been extracted from its sonic and corporal components,5 yet song melodies can be more stable and
enduring than text in environments where languages have become lexicons (as in Cuba).6 Similarly,
researchers broadly agree that gestures are often more resistant to change than language over time,
yet the intrinsic gestures of devotional singers, dancers, and trancers7 is an under-researched area of
comparative African diaspora religions.8 The general neglect of gesture and dance in orisha studies
may partly be explained by the misconception that the corporal engagement of transatlantic devotees
is too different to be relevant when viewed superficially at a surface structure level. Sustaining its
privileged status both as the research object and the medium of reporting, writing about written
text continues to dominate interdisciplinary transatlantic musical studies. Yet even in Western art
music, where written text and notation supposedly provide the dominant sources of knowledge,
musical experience and transmission—whether intra- or cross-cultural—is not primarily linguistic.
As any self-aware musician or dancer understands, musical enculturation and later-life learning
are far more dependent on complex aural, kinesthetic, and visual processes that have little to do
with reading.9 Like dancers, musicians learn and perform with the body as “[m]usical action is
also physical action” (Fatone et al. 2011, 203).
While musicologists and ethnographers of Afrocuban music have focused primarily on musi-
cal sounds and structures and their social contexts,10 visual ethnographers such as Verger (1982)
and Thompson (1974, 1981, 1993) detail ritual attire, accoutrements, and to a certain extent, the
corporal expression of transatlantic sacred music. As expected, it is the interdisciplinary dance
 SPEAKING WITH THE BODY • 269

scholars who have led research on the musical body yet few have engaged in orisha studies.11 The
pioneers of transatlantic dance scholarship were Katherine Dunham (1909–2006) and Pearl Primus
(1919–1994), both of whom were dancers, choreographers, anthropologists, and among the earliest
initiates into Afro-Caribbean and African spiritual traditions. Engaged with the notions of “African
retentions” through her studies with anthropologist Melville Herskovits, Dunham connected prac-
titioners of Cuban Santería, Haitian Vodou, and Brazilian Candomblé in her choreographed stage
performances, thus contributing to a burgeoning pan-Africanism in the USA.12
Building on the research and artistic endeavors of Dunham and Primus, anthropologist Yvonne
Daniel has written about many dance traditions of the Caribbean and the Americas in transatlantic
perpective. Although her research has impressive breadth, her fieldwork has been concentrated in
the Caribbean and her Yoruba research is neither specialized nor holistic. The scholarly extraction
of text from sound is perhaps analogous to Daniel’s separation of the body from musical sound.
Fragmenting the larger research corpus she opts to “analytically separate dance from music practices”
(2011, 18) explaining, “studies of Caribbean-derived music have been numerous and sometimes
misleading when it comes to dance.” Yet Daniel’s bifurcated approach perpetuates the music-dance
binary that scholars from both “sides” are endeavoring to deconstruct in the recognition that, for a
start, music is somatic and dance is sonic. In our efforts to make sense of culture-specific expres-
sive systems such as those of the Yoruba and Cubans, the insertion of objective taxonomies in the
multi-sensory sound-body complex we call music may be inadvertently ethnocentric. Although
many trained stage performers in Nigeria and Cuba don’t believe in the orishas they represent and
may assume the Westernized delineation of music and dance,13 the way devotees use the body when
worshipping the orishas or even performing in secular contexts is better represented by a holistic
approach that avoids segmenting sound and movement.14

Making Sense of Musical Movements

Orisha music routinely involves the systematic use of the body through emblematic stance and
movement, so provides a particularly rich field for exploring how the body metaphorically speaks
alongside the semantic content of song and the sophisticated surrogate speech of Yoruba drum-
ming. Just as musical sounds are communally understood and so have communicative potential,
the gestures and postures that constitute part of humans’ musical experience are also symbolic,
culturally conditioned, laden with collectively shared meaning, and can be powerfully transfor-
mative. Yet as with many languages, Yoruba has no generic word for music that encompasses its
components, such as song (orin), drumming (ìlù), and dance (ijó).15 Likewise, there is no musical
metalanguage to describe hand and other body gestures embedded in Yoruba sacred song, dance,
and trance. The language does, however, include words and phrases to describe culturally defined
kinesic expressive behavior, such as fi ọwó ̣ tabí ara sò ṛ ò ̣ láìfọhùn (use the hand or body to speak
without the voice), ìfọwọ́júwe (gesture with the hand), and ìfarajúwe (gesture with the body).16
English and Spanish also lack terminology for the body’s musical contribution, thus for the cur-
rent discussion I devised the term “musical movements” to represent intentional human kinesis
(motion) related to sound that is culturally framed as music.17 My usage of “musical movement”
pertains to a continuum encompassing fine gestures through to fully-fledged choreography, the
latter of which is commonly framed as “dance.” “Musical movements,” however, does not merely
substitute a familiar term with a novel one, but serves to include isolated gestures and the larger
corporal locomotion which reside within song, dance, and possession performance.
The body’s engagement in music has been of interest across a range of disciplines. As with eth-
nomusicology’s recurrent urge to liberate the term “music” beyond its bounded sound definition,
dance scholars are challenging narrow Western notions of dance as choreographed movement
within the spatial confines of the stage and are favoring larger terminologies such as “embodied
270 • AMANDA VILLEPASTOUR

knowledge,” “expressive communication,” “the music/dance complex,” and “corporealities.” John

Blacking was among the first music researchers to alert us to the body-as-instrument, stating,
“music and its associated social and cultural situations are understood as expressions of cognitive
processes which are contained in the physiology of the body and the central nervous system, but
developed and modified in an infinite variety of ways in the course of shared experiences in society”
(1971, 103). Also innovative was Blacking’s musical application of Chomsky’s (1969) paradigm of
surface and deep structures, explaining:

The secret of tonal relationships lies “in the notes”; but the notes are more than patterns of
sound. They are not sonic objects which can be analyzed without reference to the deep, and
often non-musical, structures which generate them [. . .] if similar surface structures have
been generated by entirely different processes, they cannot be compared simply because they
sound alike. On the other hand, when we know the deep structures of different musical tradi-
tions, we may be able to compare styles which had previously seemed incomparably different.
(Blacking 1971, 108)

By applying Blacking’s theory of surface and deep structures pertaining to the musical body, I
argue that interpreting the less obvious structures of the physical repertoires of transatlantic orisha
singers, dancers, and trancers can reveal abstract meanings, mimetic codes, and trance technologies
that can bring the traditions into closer alignment. More broadly, I advocate granting corporal
engagement—in all of its manifestations in the complex of intention, posture, gesture, and what
we understand to be dance—equal status in our musical analyses rather than regarding it as an
added communicative device, dramatic effect, or decorative afterthought.
Since 2000 there has been an upsurge of interdisciplinary research focusing more narrowly on
music and gesture; notable are two edited volumes dedicated to the topic. Gritten and King’s col-
lections (2006, 2011) are primarily authored by musicologists (several of whom draw on semiotic
theory), whereas Godøy and Leman’s volume (2010) is more interdisciplinary and scientifically
orientated and includes collaborative studies emerging from systematic musicology, cognitive psy-
chology, information science, and other technical fields. All three collections add to what we know
about gesture in Western art music and popular music, yet very little in these volumes pertains to
non-Western music or music in cross-cultural context. While the human anatomy certainly has
cross-cultural neurophysiological commonalities, as asserted in the Godøy and Leman collection,
the body’s enculturation is central to the development of the musical person. Bourdieu’s theory
of habitus remains relevant here in recognition that humans learn and embody social behaviors,
unconscious memories, and personal and collective histories. Although ethnomusicologists have
been researching the kinesthetic processes of music on the gesture-dance continuum for decades,
the discipline’s central interest in the body’s integration into music making has yet to be compart-
mentalized as an isolated object of study for an ethnomusicological edited collection.18 Although
the growing body of ethnomusicological studies has been dominated by the regional interests of the
researchers leading the field (particularly North Indian classical music), a collaborative chapter by
Fatone et al. (2011) broadens the discussion from “individual topographies” (219) to cross-cultural
explorations of complex cognitive processes.
One of the few scholars to approach gesture in African music is Agawu (2016), whose study
of West African rhythm gives gesture its rightful place in music’s sound-body complex with the
following model:19

gesture spoken word vocal music instrumental music dance

 SPEAKING WITH THE BODY • 271

Captioned as “A framework for conceptualizing the domain of rhythmic expression,” this depar-
ture from semiotics and body communication theory is useful in its recognition that not all
intentional gestures are emblems or illustrators (Argyle 1988, 188) or mere tools for transmission
and reception (Fatone et al. 2011, 206). Agawu’s theoretical restriction to rhythm, however, is
curious as his paradigm lends itself to a more inclusive and holistic model for musical experience.
Although the broad segmentation of gesture, spoken word, vocal music, instrumental music,
and dance is theoretically useful, the sonic isolation of gesture and its linear placement between
dance and spoken word becomes problematic. While Agawu acknowledges the diagram’s simpli-
fication and refers to “porous boundaries, noncontiguous affiliations, and putative left-pointing
arrows,” he tells us, for example, that “gesture is rhythmic but silent.” Yet cross-culturally, and
particularly in West Africa where bodies are routinely adorned with sonorous attire and deco-
rated with additional idiophones for musical performance, gesture inadvertently or intentionally
activates sound.20
Figure 16.1 reworks Agawu’s model by extracting his discrete units of sound and movement
out of their linear organization and rearranging them into a multi-directional complex that better

silent
gesture
isolated

full-body

spoken
dance
word

non-semantic

semantic

instrumental vocal
music music

sounded

Figure 16.1 The Sound-Body Complex

272 • AMANDA VILLEPASTOUR

represents the interdependence of music’s multi-sensory components. By intersecting gesture with

music’s full range of parts and possibilities, this pentagonal diagram suggests a complex of intrinsic
continuums such as: isolated↔full-body; non-semantic↔semantic; and silent↔sounded (perhaps
better expressed as sound activating↔sound producing). By freeing the categories from any implied
hierarchy, my revised model, I believe, better reflects how orisha musicians think and speak about
their musical experiences. Although even my enhancement of Agawu’s model is relatively simple
in comparison to the complexities of musical movements presented by, for example, Fatone et al.
(Ibid)—whose study isolates gesture in relation to tonal structure, periodicy, and intersecting aural/
visual/motor/imaginary fields they deem “cross-modal”—Figure 16.1 is designed to provide easy
access with its coarser range of considerations.
Shifting to the specific, Yoruba gestures are functionally and performatively diverse and routinely
emerge in conversation, song, chant, dance, ritual action, and spirit possession, none of which
are performed in stasis. Symbolic motion or posture can involve a single body part, such as an
extended foot gesturing towards the messenger orisha Eshu,21 who sits on the ground in material
form as a figurative stone or molded cement object. The entire human physique is often employed,
as seen in the hunched, low posture and slow, fluid motion of the orisha Obatala,22 simultaneously
mimicking his sacred animal, the round-backed snail, and the elderly male orisha, whose spine is
curved by age. Significant gestures may appear in solitary musical, dance, or trance performances to
salute priests or deities or emulate the orishas’ esoteric essence. Gestures may also be coordinated,
as I have observed among hundreds of festival goers simultaneously gesticulating to manipulate
collective intentional energy, clicking the fingers of both hands as the arms repeatedly sweep back
from the ears to cast negative energy behind them.23
More generic musical movements that dramatize shared social realities sometimes appear
across different orisha repertoires. For example, one or two hands may impersonate hitching
an imaginary baby higher on the back. Less mimetic gestures can embody and invoke complex
philosophical ideas that defy linguistic reduction, such as the hands clutching the head to signal
Orí, one’s personal orisha of destiny who resides in the cranium, while other less abstract symbolic
gestures dramatize the ìtàn (Y: myth/story/history) of deified historical figures (as illustrated
with Oshun and Shango below).24 Despite their stylistic differences some sacred Yoruba postures,
gestures, and coordinated movements are easy to correlate in the parallel orisha worship dances
and rituals in Nigeria and Cuba while others, particularly at the surface structure level, seem
unrelated. The representational movements encased by natural phenomena are generally easier
to identify, such as Shango’s habit of pulling lightning bolts down from Nigerian or Cuban sky or
Oya’s embodiment of the tornado, symbolized by emblematic controlled circular wrist and arm
movements that can explode into wild corporal spinning as the music intensifies.25 Performances
for the river goddess Oshun may mimic the water currents through rippling full-body motion
or simulations of scooping medicinal waters with graceful rising movements of rounded hands
holding an imaginary gourd.26 Other gestures that are easy to correlate across the Atlantic are
those that play out the worldly occupations of the orishas within their mythological craft lineages,
such as the hunter Oshosi posturing with a bow and arrow or the blacksmith Ogun motioning
with an imaginary or real machete.27
Although our shared biology determines many universal gestures that undercut culture, such
as mimicking holding a baby, gesture is also a rich field for culture-specific markers. Argyle (1988,
191) reminds us: “it is the non-verbal signal that is most affected by socialization and by cultural
history.” General linguistic loss in the Yoruba diaspora has likely heightened the significance of
non-semantic musical sound and embedded body semantics, both of which are less complicated to
transmit and maintain than spoken language. Numerous ritual postures and gestures that closely
cohere across the Nigerian and Cuban sacred movement repertoires not only provide evidence of
a shared “embodied spiritual habitus” (Beliso-De Jesús 2014, 504), but the “body as index” (Ajayi
1998, 38) has the potential to hold complex meanings in the diaspora.
 SPEAKING WITH THE BODY • 273

Making Sense of Trance

Within the melange of disciplinary approaches to music, gesture, and trance, anthropological
theories of embodiment also resonate with the discourse of orisha priests, whose craniums and
bodies provide vessels for the spirits to inhabit. Cultural anthropologist Andrew Strathern (1996,
202) describes embodiment as “the being that resides in doing, that issues from and is expressed
only in doing.” Applied to orisha rites, doing—which almost always involves gesturing, incanting,
singing, playing, and/or dancing—induces a being that is not one’s own. In transatlantic sites, the
orisha devotee anthropomorphizes the spirit by becoming the orisha rather than representing or
signaling it, as semiotic theory would propose.28 Gesture serves as a bridge or device that invites the
spirits into the physical world, where the devotee becomes the orisha and no longer is the person.
Gesturing and dancing are integral aspects of the one-week initiation into the orisha priesthood
in Cuba as in Nigeria.29 For those who are not already enculturated into the tradition, including
Africans and Cubans who were not born into families that worship the orishas, learning the
movement repertoire relevant to one’s own deity is as important as studying the written and oral
prayers, incantations, chants, and songs of ritual. While instrumental and uttered music praises
and calls the spirits, the body—most crucially the head—receives the orisha. Although trance can
and does unexpectedly overwhelm devotees in the absence of music, full spirit possession most
usually descends upon bodies that are animated by music.
In secular contexts, Nigerian and Cuban stage performers draw from those same repertoires of
musical movements in order to create artistic representations that are broadly mimetic of devo-
tional practices.30 Choosing from the vast raw materials of orisha ceremonies, ensemble directors
restructure ritual action into re-contextualized, narrative stage performances that simulate ritual
singing and dancing, imitate possession, and dramatize orisha myths. Although extracted from
their sacred milieu, however, the music, gesture, and dance amalgamation appropriated for sec-
ular stage performance does not necessarily lose its transformative power, especially for initiated
performers. Nonetheless, the complex matter of music’s capacity to engender altered states of
consciousness cannot be simplistically attributed to the power of suggestion. Cross-disciplinary
trance research alerts us to a wide range of psychological and physiological possibilities, while the
religious practitioners themselves regard music and movement as sacred technologies that allow
access to the unseen world. The scientific findings of researchers and the experiential knowledge
of devotees, however, are not always conflicting as one might expect and indeed have important
intersection points.
In order to summarize the three main threads in current ethnomusicological scholarship on
music and spirit possession, Perman’s review essay (2013) compares: (1) Becker’s Deep Listeners
(2004), which blends cross-cultural ethnographic research with neuroscience; (2) Friedson’s cul-
ture-specific Remains of Ritual (2009), researched through reflexive, phenomenological ethnog-
raphy; and (3) Jankowsky’s Stambeli (2010), which intersects musical analyses with ethnographic
observation. Of the three, it is Becker’s notion of “deep listeners” that resonates with the discussions
one might hear between orisha believers about individuals’ predisposition for trance. Further, the
corporal education built into orisha worship is consistent with Becker’s argument that “[t]rancing
is a learned bodily behavior acted out within a culturally pregiven religious narrative” (2004, 42).
Where Becker uses empirical data to assert that repeated behavior habituates linkages that even-
tually cause structural change in the brain, orisha devotees understand that the repeated practice
of prescribed movements invites the orishas to inhabit human bodies.
The trance research of psychological anthropologist Felicitas Goodman also intersects in
interesting ways with the explanations I have collected from orisha devotees on both sides of the
Atlantic. Where ethnomusicologists view musical experience within social and cultural contexts,
Goodman instigated experiments that researched corporal and psychological experience outside
of belief systems and social conditioning. Through controlled laboratory experiments that isolated
274 • AMANDA VILLEPASTOUR

specific gestures and postures “without recourse to religious dogma” (1986, 82), Goodman discov-
ered that certain physiological frameworks not only induced similar neurophysiological outcomes
in socially diverse participants, but they frequently reported shared cognitive experiences, such as
seeing bright lights or reporting seeing the same colors as each other.31
Having noted that most trance practices involve “considerable acoustic driving in the form of
music, clapping, and rhythmically shouted religious formulas” (1986, 87), Goodman used a gourd
rattle for her experiments, though made no reference to its use in many trance traditions.32 Through
repeated experiments, she discovered that most people typically enter trance after fifteen minutes.33
Like Blacking, Goodman adapted Chomsky’s linguistic surface/deep structure paradigm, but unlike
Blacking’s culturally distinct approach, she argued for a single, intercultural “religious or ritual
state of consciousness” as a shared deep structure, framing “differences in experience” as surface
structures. She concluded, “experiences mediated by the posture [. . .] fine-tunes an obviously large
number of complex physiological parameters. These in turn translate into the specific perception
in an as yet unknown way” (1986, 112).
If many trance practitioners also don’t know how corporal postures and sequences work, they
know that they work and what responses to expect, as the following examples illustrate.

Being Oshun

After having observed many Nigerian and Cuban possessions in orisha ceremonies, I witnessed
two remarkable events in secular contexts in the United Kingdom in the early 2000s that gave
rise to discussions about the role of musical movements in inducing spirit possession. At this
time, visiting orisha priestess Doyin Faniyi was leading workshops in several English primary
schools in preparation for a collaborative public stage performance.34 None of the children were
familiar with orisha music or ritual, yet two girls experienced altered states of consciousness
during the workshops, which Faniyi interpreted as the onset of out-of-context trances. As part of
the stage play, Faniyi had dramatized a ritual that is core to an annual orisha festival, which takes
place in her hometown of Òṣogbo, one of Yorubaland’s heartlands for the river orisha Oshun.35
The festival dramatizes a mythological treaty between the town’s founder, Oshun, and the
traditional ruler, the Àtáó ̣ja. Central to the month-long proceedings is the Arugbá, a young
virgin who is selected from the town’s royal family through divination to fulfi l various private
and public rites during the sacred proceedings. Now attracting thousands of people, including a
substantial international contingent of orisha devotees, the public climax of the festival is marked
by the emergence of the Arugba from several weeks’ seclusion in the Ataoja’s palace shrine to
make her way to the town’s sacred Oshun grove. Although only 1.2 kilometers, the Arugba’s
bare-foot walk through thousands of devotees, while balancing a large, heavy vessel filled with
sacrificial offerings on her head, can take hours. As it has been explained to me, the intensity of
her trance “comes and goes” during her sacred trek to the river. Flanked by priests and musicians,
who protect the girl from the energetic devotees, tourists, and assertive journalists tussling for
a visual, the Arugba must not stumble as she makes her way to the river. Her cheeks are inflated
by kola nuts to prevent speech as she silently moves through the layered soundscape of diverse
drumming ensembles, specialized praise chanters, and devotees shouting their prayers towards
the sacred procession.
Redacting the Arugba’s sacred journey for the secular drama developed for the British chil-
dren’s public performance, Faniyi taught some of the songs and dances of the annual procession
to the river. Her dramatized version included a range of bodily gestures and postures that were
guided by two ritual musicians who also traveled from Nigeria for the project, drummer Rábíù
Àyándòkun and his wife, oríkì (praise) singer Sakirat Àyándòkun. In one school, the child playing
the role of the Arugba supported a large bowl-shaped vessel on her head with raised arms. Her
 SPEAKING WITH THE BODY • 275

cheeks puffed out by imaginary kola nuts, she moved gracefully forward with the ritual dance
steps Faniyi had taught the group of young actors (see Figure 16.2). A few minutes after this
photograph was taken, the Arugba actress became increasingly unsteady during the circular
procession of around twenty children and appeared to be losing her balance. Faniyi rushed to
the girl, and with a sequence of gestures I have witnessed in ceremonial settings in Oshogbo,
the priestess authoritatively removed the child from the circle, sat her down, and dabbed key
points of her body with water while pressing one hand on her upper chest for several minutes
until she had regained her composure. Since I caught the child’s dancing and loss of balance
on video, Faniyi and I later viewed the footage, at which time she explained that she saw signs
of the onset of a trance and had taken measures to halt it. Remarkably, the very next day a
different girl in another school had a similar response while playing the same role during the
same dramatic sequence. As this second trainee Arugba actress balanced the calabash on her
head and entrained her steps to the drum, she became visibly wobbly in a similar manner to

Figure 16.2 (From Left) British child rehearsing the Arugba role with priestess Doyin Faniyi and drummer Rabiu Ayandokun36
276 • AMANDA VILLEPASTOUR

the schoolgirl on the previous day. Once again, Faniyi moved quickly towards the girl and
proceeded to divert spirit possession. Faniyi later explained that she had taken measures to
stop their oncoming trances as it would be inappropriate for the girls to receive the spirit in a
secular setting.37
Faniyi’s explanation of the schoolgirls’ experiences resonated with Hagedorn’s discussion of
Afrocuban “inappropriate possession” in profane settings, framing such occurrences as function
pervading and overtaking form (2001, 107–117). She explains, “the primary goal of a mimetic
folkloric performance seems to be the resurrection of potential (if not actual) sacredness during
the circumscribed length of the staged performance” (117). Hagedorn’s anecdotes, however, differ
from the UK school events in that the inappropriate possessions she described were received by the
bodies of enculturated, trained priests in the Santería and Haitian Vodou traditions. Her assertion
that “[i]t is the memory of the utterance, whether vocal or gestural, that moves fluidly from religious
to profane” (117) cannot, however, explain the powerful responses of the British schoolgirls, who
had no direct preparation, experience, or memory of the sacred sounds and gestures that Faniyi
incorporated into the drama.
The absence of prior knowledge posed no problem to Faniyi, who explained that the combination
of the drumming, orature, and choreography create “a framework that the orishas recognize,” thus
opening a pathway for them to enter the bodies of human participants. Not only are the orishas
believed to be responsive to bodily movement, targeted utterances, and coded instrumental music,
but the possessing spirit becomes visible through recognizable gestures that bring their mytholog-
ical history, personality, and healing essence into the physical space. Faniyi also remarked of the
girl in Figure 16.2, “She has spiritual energy.” She later said she had noticed an energetic potential
in both girls (who later experienced the onset of trance) and had chosen them to play the role of
Arugba for this reason.
Where Hagedorn’s description details the acquired skill in receiving or repelling the spirits
and attributes choice and agency to the spirit medium, Faniyi ascribes choice and agency to the
orisha, implying that the music-movement complex provides a technology and pathway to a
passive recipient.38 Further, through a lifetime’s experience of participant-observation in a devout
orisha community that also regularly receives international devotees, Faniyi intuitively recognized
a predisposition for trance in selected children by closely observing their bodily response to the
music and gauging their potential to open to, connect to, and receive the orishas. Unlike Faniyi,
who was parented by orisha priests, Hagedorn had a middle-class upbringing in the USA and
was initiated as an adult and trained as a trancer from outside of Cuban culture. Although both
experienced trancers are university educated, their analyses are primarily shaped by their differing
social backgrounds.39
As an enculturated priestess, Faniyi’s close observation of musical responses to determine
the trance potential or “spiritual energy” of participants resonates with Becker’s label “deep
listener”—one who has a heightened emotional sensitivity to sound and music. The rationalization
of conditioned social and bodily learning theorized by Becker and Hagedorn, however, differs from
Faniyi’s understanding since she attributes greater agency to the spirit than the person. The Nigerian’s
assertions about the mind-changing efficacy of corporal routines, however, sits comfortably with
Goodman’s research. Although her cause-and-effect findings are stripped of any social content and
belief framework, Goodman’s “do this and that might happen” reasoning is in some ways similar
to Faniyi’s theologically framed explanation.40
Where some gestures and postures may have physiological and cognitive consequences for
some participants, sound-producing gestures can also be conceived to add aesthetic and spiritual
value. In ritual contexts, the animated arms of priests transform Oshun’s ritual brass bracelets into
 SPEAKING WITH THE BODY • 277

musical idiophones that call the goddess. This sacred sound loops back into her songs as uttered
onomatopoeic text:

Ó ń ró wẹdẹ wẹdẹ wẹdẹ

Ló ń ró
Nílé ìyá mi o

It makes the sound wẹdẹ wẹdẹ wẹdẹ (jangling of the bracelets)

It’s making a sound
In my mother’s [Oshun’s] house

In a different song for this orisha, one of Oshun’s orikì (praise poems) reports the effect of this
sacred sound of clashing brass in relation to Oshun’s special status as child-giver:

Mo rí Yèyé o Afidẹrẹmọ
Afidẹrẹmọ
Yèyé o Afidẹrẹmọ
Yèyé o

Mother, mother
I saw mother, the-one-who-calms-children-with-brass (praise name)
The-one-who-calms-children-with-brass
Mother, the-one-who-calms-children-with-brass
Mother.

Both of the above songs are also popular praise songs for Oshun in Cuba. Although orisha devotees
may not identify the song correlation from these written texts, they can easily recognize the mel-
odies. Regardless of whether or not devotees are performing parallel transatlantic songs, however,
it would be a very unusual Oshun ceremony where the room was not resonating with jangling
bracelets and brass bells, especially when the intensity builds as a congregant approaches trance.
The general demeanor of Oshun’s transatlantic manifestations seems starkly different at the
surface structure level. In Nigeria, integrated into her archetypal qualities of femininity and
motherhood, we find a warrior queen wielding a brass fan in one hand and a cutlass in the other.
Her temporally compressed mythology includes her halting the northern jihad of Dan Fodio in
the eighteenth century in Oshogbo through poisoning the soldiers’ food. By contrast, in Cuba we
encounter a sexualized, giggly mulata (Sp: mixed-race woman) who controls through seduction
rather than the brute force of a cutlass. Beyond these starkly contrasting representations, I began
to recognize some transatlantic correspondence while learning Oshun’s ritual dances in Nigeria.
Most intriguing is a small hand gesture that is emblematic in both Nigerian and Cuban Oshun
dances. Well beyond a similar moment in sacred dance, this gesture demonstrates how complex
meanings and global histories can converge in a single pair of hands. This easy-to-form gesture
that reaches across the Atlantic world involves the placement of one closed fist over the other then
alternating the joined hands between the left and right hip in coordination with dance steps. In
Cuba, dancers say that this two-hand gesture evokes Oshun holding oars and rowing a boat down
a river. A less common explanation, which is more likely to emerge from orisha devotees than
atheist folkloric dancers, is that the gesture is mimetic of Oshun holding a pestle and pounding
leaves in a mortar to make medicine. Those with deeper knowledge attribute this movement to a
278 • AMANDA VILLEPASTOUR

specific camino (Sp: road/avatar) of Oshun in Cuba called Ibú Kolé, a fearsome sorcerer known for
her medicinal powers and who is affiliated with the buzzards that soar over the Matanzas Marina.
Yet even in Matanzas performers say the gesture is becoming increasingly rare in folkloric perfor-
mances, though the movement emerges in possession performance and identifies that someone
has been mounted by Oshun.
In Oshogbo, this same hand position is understood differently though finds equivalence in
terms of its spiritual power and significance (see Figure 16.3). Among traditionalists, the ges-
ture is generally covert as it functions primarily as a salute for members of the Ògbóni society, a
judiciary cult once associated with kingship. Always the left hand over the right with the thumbs
concealed, the saluting hands move up and down three times to encode the symbolic Ogboni cult’s
number. Depending on the context, the gesture can be construed as a greeting, blessing, prayer,
or supplication but always signals membership in the secret society. As with Oshun, brass is the
sacred metal of the Ogboni society’s orisha, the earth goddess Onílè ̣whose brass figures, ẹdan, are

Figure 16.3 Ogboni salute

 SPEAKING WITH THE BODY • 279

usually chained together in male and female pairs. During my early fieldwork in Oshogbo, I was
occasionally mistaken as a society member as I passed things with the left hand, unaware that this
is one of the covert codes that allows Ogboni members to identify each other. As a “leftist” (as my
Oshogbo friends called me), I had no idea my writing hand was transmitting cultural codes that
invoke the hidden world of ancestors and dreams, believed to be folded into the left.
In Oshogbo the Ogboni society interlocks closely with the Oshun cult, explaining why the salute
is subtly woven into Oshun’s dance. In the private ritual domain, new Oshun initiates are presented
with two little brass Ogboni edan figures among the other consecrated objects that live in her sacred
calabash. Yet although Oshun is intimately associated with the river in its many ibú (Y: avatars),
this gesture is not associated with oars—at least in the contemporary imagination—and is more
likely to be depicted as half fish and half human than a woman sitting in a boat. If the Nigerian
gesture has no apparent relationship to oars or pestles, how was an Ogboni salute reinterpreted as
a clutched oar or pestle in Cuba?
The Ogboni society did not survive as a functioning cult in Cuba. Prior to the repatriation
of Ogboni practices in Cuba since 2014 by Cuban psychiatrist William Viera Bravo, who was
initiated in Nigeria to around thirty orishas, I had not encountered anyone in Cuba since
1998 who had even heard the word “Ogboni.”41 Despite the absence of the cult, the salute did
endure and has been attributed new meanings.42 When speaking of people being very close
friends, Cubans often employ this very gesture, even moving the closed fists up and down as
in an Ogboni salute.
In ascertaining how the Ogboni salute became conflated with holding oars, one has to explore
how oars became associated with Cuba’s Oshun. The obvious connect is found in the story of
Cuba’s national saint, La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre (literally The Virgin of Charity of
Copper).43 Faithful to both the story and La Caridad’s many famous lithographs, the contem-
porary painting in Figure 16.4 depicts La Caridad in her best-known form, though stealthily
ruffles her Catholic rendering by way of her scalloped skirt, which alludes to the scales that
invoke the mermaid.44
La Caridad’s myth reaches back to Cuba’s early history of mineral wealth concentrated on the
east of the island in the copper mines of Santiago del Prado.45 Initially Tainos, one of Cuba’s indig-
enous peoples, were forced to work in the mines and by the middle of the sixteenth century were
joined by African slave laborers. It is against this history of imposed ethnic encounters that La
Caridad’s mythological and visual images emerge in the national imagination. In a story that has
cross-cultural archetypes, three seafarers were caught in a storm while at sea in a small boat and
were saved by a female esoteric entity.46 The Cuban myth portrays three men, the black slave Juan
Moreno—whose story of an event in 1611 or 1612 was recorded in a deposition in 1687—and
the Taino brothers Juan and Rodrigo de Hoyos. Now commonly redacted to “the three Juans,”
the men found themselves in a small boat in a terrible storm and their prayers for rescue were
answered by a sudden calm descending. The saint miraculously presented herself in the form of
a statue floating on a wooden plank with the inscription “Yo soy La Virgen de la Caridad” (“I am
the Virgin of Charity”).
Caridad’s oral history gave rise to a proliferation of shrines in the area, where the saint became
associated with feminine healing as well as liberation from slavery and Cuba’s fight for indepen-
dence. The story of how La Caridad became inextricably associated with Oshun is a complicated
and largely speculative one, which calls on scholarly notions of syncretism and relies on the
assumption that slaves routinely duped their masters and the Catholic clergy by hiding their orisha
with imagery of Catholic saints. I propose that as the mythological oars of the three Juans took
on miraculous properties, they found their way into Oshun’s herramientas (Sp: literally “tools”),
a word for the miniature metal or wood icons that are consecrated and go into, on, or around
sacred orishas’ vessels.
280 • AMANDA VILLEPASTOUR

Figure 16.4 Painting of La Caridad by Cuban Artist Mercedes Rivadulla Pérez (known as Amaya or Meme)
Owned by the author

Just as I have hypothesized that the rowing gesture in Oshun’s Cuban dance relates to the
Nigerian Ogboni salute, I propose that the oars among Oshun’s herramientas link directly to the
brass anthropomorphic edan that symbolize the Ogboni’s orisha, Onile (see Figure 16.5).
The Nigerian edan and Cuban remos (Sp: oars) resemble one another in both form and function.
That the Cuban oars are made of brass and not wood is significant, and viewed in juxtaposition
with the anthropomorphic edan figures, which are typically elongated and straight-shaped with
over-sized heads, the Cuban objects—which once would have been produced in extremely low-tech
conditions imposed by slavery—resemble the outline form of Nigerian edan. In terms of function,
the edan and oars are treated similarly during the procedure of initiating new priests. Both are
among the sacred objects that are fed with blood and washed with a medicinal herbal potion to
unleash the esoteric power that protects the initiate.
 SPEAKING WITH THE BODY • 281

Figure 16.5 Brass oars (length approximately 12.5 cm)

Owned by the author

To end with some cautionary words, the surface-structure differences between such examples as
Oshun’s sacred objects and dance gestures should not be appropriated as evidence of how the Cubans
“got it wrong.”47 Lest we imagine a static homeland and a changing diaspora, the irrelevance of oars
in Oshun’s movement vocabulary in Oshogbo should not be assumed to indicate their absence
in Oshun dances throughout Yorubaland and across time or that the Cubans merely invented a
rowing dance movement. Ajayi (1998), for example, describes an annual regatta to appease the
lagoon orisha Ekinẹ in Ẹpẹ (200 km southwest of Oshogbo) to ensure her continued protection
over the town. The following description of the dancers performing on platforms in the center of
the boats also evokes the movement to which I have given comparative focus:

Groups of dancers. . . . recreate into dance the rowing motions being carried out at the sides
of the boat . . . In an almost erect posture, with the slightest suggestion of a bend at the knees,
the dancers hold out each arm bent at the elbows, at an angle of about 60 degrees away from
the armpit, then bringing the hands together at the front “row” in easy flowing motion, first
to one side, then to the other. Each sideways movement is broken and punctuated with short
vibratory movements of the stomach before switching to the opposite direction of the arms’
movement. The dancers are able to create a picture contiguous with the actual rowers who
are seated and whose practical movements they artistically imitate.
(Ajayi 1998, 112–113)
282 • AMANDA VILLEPASTOUR

Much of Ajayi’s description could be used to described Oshun’s rowing motion in Cuba’s sacred
dance. Far from “getting it wrong” or fabricating choreography in a spiritual vacuum, it is possible
that Cubans have maintained an important gestural symbol inter-generationally.

Becoming Shango

If the correlation of gesture in transatlantic Oshun devotion is obscure, the extroverted, explicit
gestures of the hyper-masculine orisha Shango is more immediately discernable. Indeed the
“energetic shapes” (Fatone et al. 2011) within Shango sacred performance provides a powerful
intersection point between contemporary Nigerian and Cuban musical movements. The primary
Shango ritual and dance accoutrement, the oshe (carved double axe),48 and the obvious coherence
of red-white color-coding of Shango’s scalloped bante (ritual apron or skirt)49 are explicit examples
of transatlantic parallels at the surface structure level (see Figure 16.6). The oshe and bante also

Figure 16.6 From left, Rodolfo Fournier performing in London, 30 March 1999; Shango elẹ́èg̣ ùn (Y: spirit medium) Performing
in the Oyo annual Shango festival (24 August 2003)
 SPEAKING WITH THE BODY • 283

coerce the Shango dancer into a vocabulary of musical movements that highlight his accoutrements
as he thrusts the axe towards the sky (whose thunder and lightning he is believed to control) while
swirling his hips to animate his skirt.
Whether or not grasping the oshe in Shango’s dance, the hand that thrusts up and down
has its own nuanced repertoire. While transatlantic gestures are easy to identify at a surface
level, their deeper meanings sometimes diverge. In Shango’s historical heartland, Ò ̣yó ,̣ priest
Ké ̣hìndé Abímbó ḷ á clarified that one kind of movement that gently clutches on the downward
decent “pulls down all things good, drawing in those things one has prayed for,” whereas
a slightly different movement, which relaxes the hand with a slight flick of the wrist when
reaching its highest point “sends out lightning bolts.” London-based Cuban dancer, Mario
López-Giocoechea, however, knows of no Cuban Shango gesture that “sends out the lightning.”
Incorporating contemporary notions of masculine power, virility, and machismo in Afrocuban
culture, the gesture is always pulling the lightning into or passing through the crotch where
Shango’s electricity, creativity, and power are believed to converge. Notwithstanding the home-
land-diaspora details of whether the lightning bolt moves in or out, Shango’s hand and arm
movements usually revolve around handling lightning in what Fatone et al. may categorize as
“imagined object motion” (2011, 215).50
In her virtuosic exposition of a ritual performer becoming possessed by Shango, Ajayi’s
technical description makes direct connections between the performer’s movement repertoire
and this orisha’s complex mythological history (1998, 76–95). Describing the transformative set
of performance techniques, she explains: “The particular gesture of pointing the oṣe towards
heaven and then bringing it down towards the earth is an important leit-motif repeated sev-
eral times during the dance. . . . The leg opposite one shoulder is flicked out sharply and then
dragged back slowly” (89–91). Portraying the diagonal tension between the raised arm, twisted
torso, and outstretched foot (also seen with less intensity in the Cuban movement in Figure 16.6),
Ajayi continues, “The result of the tug-of-war on the body is a frayed center, which suddenly snaps,
resulting in the missed steps. When the personal (conscious) control falls apart, the deity’s spirit
takes over, and the dancer’s physique changes.”
After witnessing many orisha possessions in Nigeria and Cuba and having conversed
with drummers who masterfully manipulate the sonic sphere, the similarities between these
transatlantic sacred technologies became increasingly evident. The destabilizing contortions
of Shango’s upward-bound arm and outstretched foot over a rotating torso is intensified by
the bata drummers, whose musical “conversations” become increasingly complicated as the
ceremonial energy increases.51 As the dancer shows visual signs of approaching the precipice
of possession and lingers in a liminal space, expert Nigerian and Cuban ritual musicians
slip stealthily along the metric continuum as they melt the binary-ternary boundary with a
parallel musical liminality.52 By manipulating the groove and inserting musical motifs that
subvert rhythmic predictability, the drummers systematically undermine the dancer’s poise
and destabilize his corporal control until liminality tips into a loss of self-consciousness and
self-control that allows the spirit to take over. Drummers can be guarded about discussing
these refined techniques, which are regarded as part of a highly specialized trance technology.53
Developing masterful musical practices that are able to control human bodies and unseen
forces is a hard-earned power.
Although Ajayi’s analysis is framed by semiotic theory, habitus becomes relevant and appli-
cable when considering the shared discourse and dance language of Cuban stage and possession
performers despite their 100-year isolation from the African form. Referring to Cuban Shango
dance specifically, Ajayi confirms, “while the verbal aspect has ‘lost’ the energizing concept of
Ṣàngó’s personality, the body as signifier still remains true to the original signified concept”
(1998, 94).
284 • AMANDA VILLEPASTOUR

Speaking for the Body

Most comparisons of the Nigerian and Cuban orisha traditions are asymmetrical in that they often
attribute greater cultural authenticity, spiritual power, and/or complexity to contemporary Yoruba
practices in Africa. Few comparative approaches are holistic and unintentionally privilege our
primary medium of scholarly communication—language. Cubans generally land on the back foot
when orisha ritual practices and arts are scrutinized through a linguistic lens, as Lucumí (a lexicon
alongside Cuba’s first language, Spanish) and modern Yoruba are not structurally comparable.
Beyond the incongruous juxtaposition of Yoruba and Lucumí, language often takes a subsidiary
role in religious learning in orisha tradition to ensure that sacred knowledge is transmitted through
physical presence and bodily experience rather than transferable text; many a time my questions in
Oshogbo have been answered with “you need to learn with your body.” Similarly, musical learning
is not primarily linguistic as it relies heavily on aural, tactile, and visual perception, as is particularly
explicit in very young, pre-lingual learners. Yet despite the multi-sensory nature of musical and
religious pedagogy, experience, and expression, words continue to marginalize the body in much
interdisciplinary musical discourse.
As a scholar who has been very interested in how language shapes musical organization at the
deep-structure level, the interrelationship of linguistic and musical structure constitutes just one
aspect of music’s overarching architecture. Understanding how the body shapes and is shaped by
music beyond language not only has the potential to take our analyses to an entirely different deep
structure but promises to take us closer to how many people understand their own musical traditions.
Ethnomusicology’s decades-old expectation that we acquire language and musical competence so that
we might become bilingual and bi-musical is now so well-established it tends only to be discussed
in undergraduate education. Yet no equivalent expectation exists that we must internalize the full
range of embodied technologies related to the music we study in order to become “bi-corporal.” For
many ethnomusicologists, dancing is the thing that happens at the end of the working day.
To return to my more narrow focus on orisha traditions, Faniyi’s metaphysical explanation that
the orishas recognize musical movements as frameworks or pathways to enter human bodies is
not wildly at odds with Goodman’s physiological explanation that certain postures induce altered
states of consciousness or Becker’s theory that social learning and repetition induce structural
change in the brain. Perhaps the primary usefulness of scientific approaches for orisha communi-
ties is the possibility that their spiritual practices may be destigmatized in the face of colonial and
religious repression, and in the case of Cuba, Communist atheism. Trance research is increasingly
acknowledging that efficacious embodiment technologies function through communal biophysical
knowledge rather than hollow belief. Notwithstanding, the body is a cross-cultural site for taboo.
As harsh scholarly critiques of reflexive and phenomenological methods attest, the ethnomusicol-
ogists who do engage fully in bodily practices in the pursuit of holistic knowledge are still widely
regarded with skepticism in academia; full participation is considered acceptable so long as we
don’t actually believe, which threatens to obscure a privileged register of knowledge. For orisha
devotees, including those engaged in academic research, applying movement technologies that
manifests spirits in the physical world transcends belief, whereby embodied knowing allows the
body to do its ritual work to heal humans.

Notes
1. This chapter has been developed from a conference presentation at a joint meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology
and the Congress on Research in Dance (November, 2011, Philadelphia). I am grateful to dancer/scholar Melissa
Noventa, who shared her Afrocuban expertise and valuable insights in response to drafts of the original conference
paper and this chapter.
2. For example, see Lucas (1948), Idowu (1962), and Awolalu (1979).
3. Other important sites of orisha worship include Trinidad, and since the late twentieth century, the tertiary diasporas
throughout South and North America along with a growing congregation in Europe.
 SPEAKING WITH THE BODY • 285

4. Since 2000 there has also been a growth of theoretical literature critiquing these earlier comparative approaches. On
Yoruba religion, see Matory (2005) and Palmié (2013), and for a critique of transatlantic musical methods, see Iyanaga
(2015).
5. See, for example, Castellanos and Castellanos (1992), Mason (1992), Warner-Lewis (1996), Abimbola and Miller (1997),
Miller (2005), Wirtz (2005), and Christopher (2013).
6. I provided numerous examples of melody’s resistance to linguistic change in Vincent [Villepastour] (2006) and I will
be presenting more developed research in forthcoming publications.
7. In this essay I use the word “trance” in an intercultural and generic sense to capture a continuum of lucid changes in
consciousness through to amnesic spirit possession rather than as a distinct category as proposed by Rouget (1985).
Cubans use the Spanish word posesión and the Yoruba use è ̣gùn or “trance” in English to encompass a range of spiritual
experiences.
8. An interesting exception is Cuban Martinez-Ruiz (2009), who expanded his interest in transatlantic writing systems
between the Bakongo in Angola and Palo in Cuba to a study of hand gestures.
9. This is not to diminish language’s capacity to shape musical sound. See, for example, Villepastour (2010, 2014), which
explain how Yoruba language shapes drumming and song structure. See Clayton (2007a) for a scientific study of how
obscure visual components enable musical entrainment in Indian raga performance.
10. The most prolific Cuban ethnographer was Fernando Ortíz, whose publications gave a great deal of attention to
organology and the social and religious contexts of music making in his five-volume tome Los instrumentos de la
música afrocubana (1952–1955). Despite the enormous volume of research dedicated to religious music, he offered
only limited information about performance techniques and sounds and gave even less attention to dance and the
essential role of the body in ritual performance.
11. A notable exception is Ajayi’s (1998) excellent monograph on Yoruba dance analysis. See also David and Dankworth
(2014) for an intercultural volume that explores issues of sacred dance in diaspora.
12. Where Dunham did not visit sub-Saharan Africa until 1965, Primus traveled the continent widely from 1948, eventually
earning her PhD about the Mano masquerade in Liberia.
13. In reference to the post-revolutionary folkloricization of Afro-Cuban performance, trained Cuban dancer Mario López-
Goicoechea stated, “the synergy of music, song and dance has been almost lost . . . Afro-Cuban dance is approached
less as a holistic phenomenon and more as a spectacle” (pers. comm., email, 13 October 2016).
14. Most post-independence Yoruba folkloric performers of orisha traditions are Muslims, and less commonly Christians.
In post-revolutionary Cuba many folkloric performers are atheists or Christians, though orisha devotees constitute a
more significant proportion of the profession than in Nigeria.
15. For ease of reading, where possible I employ English spelling in the main text to include each and all orisha tradi-
tions. Foreign spellings in the main text and endnotes are marked (Y), (Lu), or (Sp) for Yoruba, Lucumí, and Spanish
respectively and most Yoruba words have diacritics on first appearance only. For example, the English spelling orisha
encompasses òrìṣà (Y) and oricha (Lu). Most Lucumí words are pluralized with an /s/ as in English, while all Yoruba
words are singular and plural.
16. The etymology of ìfọwọ́júwe is ìfi (the use of) ọwọ́ (the hand) júwe (to explain, describe, imitate, or point out/at), while
ìfarajúwe indicates use of ara (the body).
17. I devised this term before encountering its use by Echard (2010), who applies the term differently.
18. A group of ethnomusicologists has been publishing individually and collaboratively, contributing to recent edited
volumes about music and gesture. See, for example, Clayton (2007a, 2007b), Clayton and Leante (2013), Fatone (2010),
Leante (2009, 2013), and Rahaim (2008).
19. Agawu published this model in African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective (1995, 28) and The African Imagination
in Music (2016, 162). The middle three categories “spoken word”, “vocal music,” and “instrumental music” each have
two sub-categories in Agawu’s original diagram but these are not pertinent to my discussion.
20. Some music and gesture scholarship has created taxonomies, including “sound-producing gesture.” See, for example,
Godøy and Leman (2010), where sound gestures are a recurring theme.
21. Èṣù (Y)/Echú (Lu) is the messenger orisha believed to reside between heaven and earth. He is considered to be tricky
and mischievous.
22. The creator orisha Ọbàtálá (Y)/Obatalá (Lu) is imagined as an old man or hunchback who sculpts fetuses and is the
caretaker of disabled people.
23. Leante (2009, 191–192) points out particular kinds of movements that may have common meanings across culture:
“experimental evidence suggest that a gesture moving away from the body can convey a sense of ‘avoidance,’ and a
negative feeling.”
24. Clayton (2007b, 75) (requoted in Fatone et al. 2011, 205) offers three categories of gesture: (1) markers (nondepictive
gestures) of musical structure; (2) illustrators (depictive gestures) that are linked to the melody; and (3) emblems
(symbolic gestures) that have verbal equivalents.
25. Ṣàngó (Y)/Changó (Lu) is a deified fourteenth-century king known as the orisha of thunder and lightning, while his
mythological wife, Ọya (Y)/Oyá (Lu), is associated with rivers and tournados.
26. Also Shango’s wife, Ò ṣ̣ un (Y)/Ochún (Lu) evokes femininity and and in Nigeria, is also a warrior queen.
27. Ò ṣ̣ ó ̣ò ̣sì (Y)/Ochosi (Lu) is a hunter, while Ògún (Y)/Ogún (Lu) is the blacksmith/hunter orisha who is also considered
to be a war deity.
28. In ethnocentric Saussaurian terms, the gesture might be the assumed sign, the orisha the signified, and the trancer the
signifier.
29. Orisha initiations are remarkably similar in Africa and Cuba. On the first day, the head is shaved, painted, and washed
with herbal medicine in preparation for “seating” the orisha inside the initiate’s cranium to facilitate full spirit possession.
286 • AMANDA VILLEPASTOUR

30. See Hagedorn (2001) for a detailed study of how the folkloricization of orisha music and dances has looped back into
ritual.
31. For her experiments, Goodman chose men and women from diverse religious backgrounds, ethnic groups, and ages.
Postures were chosen from illustrations of various spiritual traditions in ethnographic literature ranging from cave
paintings to contemporary photographs.
32. Gourd idiophones are prevalent in orisha trance ceremonies in Nigeria, Cuba, and Brazil, where they are sounded close
to the medium’s head when they appear to be approaching trance. Gourds with beads and shells strung on the outside
are known as ṣè ̣kè ̣rè ̣ (Y)/chekeré (Lu)/xequeré (Brazilian Nagô) and gourds with rattling objects inside are called ṣé ̣é ̣ré ̣
(Y)/acheré (Lu)/xeré (Nagô).
33. Gioia (2006, 61) astutely makes a connection between Goodman’s laboratory findings and Friedson’s field observations
by noting that during Tumbuku rituals in Malawi drummers change rhythms at the fifteen-minute mark if possession
has not been induced.
34. I have been intentionally vague about the time frame, location, and performance context to protect the children’s
identities.
35. I attended the Oshun Oshogbo festival in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2003. See Badejo (1996) and Probst. (2011) for details
of the Oshun festival.
36. All photographs are by the author.
37. Melissa Noventa pointed out that in Cuba, experienced dancers/spirit mediums have the ability to disrupt the onset
of trance if the social context is not appropriate, such as in a stage performance, though this skill can be overridden
by an unexpected or powerful trance (pers. comm., email, 7 October 2016). I witnessed a visiting Cuban dancer being
overridden while teaching a dance class in London, March 2003.
38. Reflective of this passivity, spirit mediums are referred to as horses in many traditions and are said to be ridden. Yoruba
spirit mediums are called è ̣lé ̣è ̣guǹ (literally, “the one who is ridden”) or ẹṣin òrìṣa (the orisha’s horse). In Cuba the
medium is called el caballo (Sp: the horse).
39. Faniyi is also educated to doctorate level has a masters degree in linguists from Ibadan University but has yet to complete
her PhD in the discipline, also at Ibadan.
40. It is important to add that even a perfect social context with experienced and skilled drummers, singers, and spirit
mediums will not guarantee a possession, reinforcing the notion of the orishas’ agency in spirit possession and allowing
for an overlap between Faniyi’s and Hagedorn’s trance explanations.
41. Angel William Viera Bravo (Awo Yeju Aworeni) undertook several initiations into the Ogboni cult in Ilé-Ifè ,̣ Nigeria in
2015 and 2016 and has since been initiating Cubans into Ogboni in Havana. I found a reference to the Ogboni society
in Yemiló (1990), which is a tratado (unpublished religious manual) that pre-dates the Yoruba reclamation movement
that started in the mid-1990s in Havana. Viera was extremely surprised when I shared this source, deeming it “too early”
(pers. comm., Havana, 10 September 2016). More research is needed to establish whether this reference to Ogboni refers
to obscure Cuban knowledge or was inserted from secondary sources or following contact with Nigerian priests.
42. The salute also emerges in Brazil in Nana-Buruku worship, as seen in a Pierre Verger photograph (1982, 248). One
sees the reversal of the hand order in the male posture.
43. A dazzling array of lithographs, paintings, and statues can be sourced by Googling La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre.
44. Amaya confirmed my interpretation and explained that the painting was done on commission for a man who asked
that Caridad be “half human and half fish.” After his death, the painting was returned to Amaya (pers. comm., Havana,
10 September 2016). She resold the painting to a Cuban who gave it to me as a gift in London.
45. Murphy’s (2001) excellent social history of the syncretism of the saint with Oshun in Cuba is summarized here.
46. I was first struck by the archetypal nature of water-bound women when visiting St. Senara Church in Zennor in the
south of England, where a fifteenth-century carved pew depicts a siren said to have lured a parishioner to sea. Half
human and half fish and holding a mirror in one hand and a comb in the other, this image has an uncanny resemblance
to representations of Oshun in both Nigeria and Cuba and likely emerged from Mediterranean predecessors (see Drewal
2008, Drewal and Houlberg 2008).
47. See Abimbola and Miller (1997) and Abimbola (2000) for an array of examples of such correctives.
48. Oṣé (Y)/oché (Lu).
49. Bàńté́ ̣ (Y)/banté (Lu).
50. In her study of Hindustani devotional music, Leante applied cross-cultural gesture research to suggest, “a ‘reaching out’
gesture . . . gives the positive connotation bringing out ideas of ‘temporariness’ and hope of reunion after separation”
(2009, 192). It is easy to frame the Shango dancer’s reaching for lightning in this manner.
51. Bàtá (Y)/batá (L) (sing. and pl.) are two-headed drums said to be Shango’s favorite and are closely associated with his
worship. The two largest Yoruba bàtá drums embed surrogate speech while the smallest pair of drums, the omele akọ,
fulfils only a rhythmic role. In Shango drumming specifically, the omele ako? breaks out in furious and sustained rolls
to evoke (and it is believed, invoke) thunder. Cuban batá drumming embeds only vestiges of surrogate speech and is
structured around mostly non-semantic llames (Sp: calls), respuestas (responses), and conversaciónes (conversations)
(see Villepastour 2010 for Nigerian bàtá analysis and Schweitzer 2013 for Cuban batá analysis). Although distinct,
there is, however, significant overlap in the two traditions’ performance techniques and musical structures (see Vincent
[Villepastour] 2006 and Villepastour 2017).
52. The theory of ritual liminality was developed by folklorist Arnold van Gennep (1873–1957) and anthropologist
Victor Turner (1920–1983). Adapting the Latin word līmen (the threshold where a stimulus produces a physiologi-
cal or psychological response) the theory encompasses preliminal (separation), liminal (transition), and postliminal
(incorporation) stages in ritual. The middle ĺiminal phase is one of ambiguity and disorientation. The term “musical
liminality” to name this space of metric uncertainty is my own.
 SPEAKING WITH THE BODY • 287

53. Having experienced this device in Cuban, Nigerian, and Haitian rituals and noted similar slippage between binary and
ternary structures in Candomblé and Moroccan Gnawa trance music, I propose that this is a cross-cultural technique
that requires further research. Averill and Wilcken (2014, 130) describe the mechanism in Haitian vodou drumming:
“The break (kase) of Vodou drumming, a pattern played by the master drummer, cues the dancer to execute a movement
also known as kase. Drummers and adepts claim it is an agent of spirit possession. A master drummer is attuned to
the kinetics of the ritual. When he sees the onset of possession in an adept, he plays a kase to bring the spirit fully to
the adept’s head. The structure of the master drummer’s kase is oppositional to the structure of the main pattern. The
effect is one of displacement within a continuously cycling pattern.”

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 17
Gaming the System
Gender Performance in Dance Central
Kiri Miller

The Kinect sensor bows its motorized head, scanning me up and down, assessing my body’s dimen-
sions and position. My silhouette appears in a small frame in the corner of the screen, a miniature
shadowbox theater. “Wave for Kinect,” the screen text suggests. I comply, and a cartoon hand
appears, moving frenetically over the screen. I calibrate my motion until the cartoon hand hovers
over the Dance Central 2 icon, and the game loads. Presented with a song list ranked in order of
difficulty, I choose “Reach,” by Atlantic Connection and Armanni Reign (2011). The default game
character for this song is Bodie, a shaggy-haired white surfer/bro type. As the song begins, Bodie
appears at a sunset beach party, surrounded by friends.
Bodie starts to dance, and I try to mirror his movements. His body is loose-limbed, his gestures
expansive. A series of flashcards scrolls down one side of the screen, providing an icon and a name
for each upcoming move. As moves begin to repeat, I can use the cards to anticipate the choreog-
raphy rather than always trailing Bodie by microseconds. The first move is called the Frat Step, and
the name reorients my body: My shoulders broaden, my chest puffs up, my knees and elbows open
out wide. I think of the guys who spread their knees out on the subway, unapologetically claiming
space. The next move is the Select, a hand wave that seems to say “Bring me bottle service over
here!” Bodie is relaxed and confident; I channel his easy-going entitlement.
A brief freestyle section arrives, and Bodie’s animated body gives way to my abstracted silhou-
ette. I keep doing the Frat Step while I try to code-switch to dancefloor creativity. Camera-shutter
sound effects alert me to virtual paparazzi, and a few still images of my performance flash across
the screen—souvenirs that I can revisit or share later. Bodie returns and we finish the song together.
The scoring screen comes up, displaying a star rating, a numerical score (awarding credit for
different levels of accuracy on each move), and a photograph of me striking the final pose. In the
photo, my brow is furrowed in concentration; my cluttered basement TV room seems hilariously
distant from any beach party.
I move to the next song in the list, “Real Love” (Mary J. Blige 1992). Now the on-screen dancer
is Miss Aubrey, a tall white redhead whose ice-queen bearing is only slightly undermined by her
close-fitting sailor-suit romper. Her routine starts with the Old Bop: legs together, alternating knee
bends with cocked hips, arm motions constrained in front of the body. Then there’s the wide-stepping

289
290 • KIRI MILLER

Boardwalk move, followed closely by the Bunny Hill: legs together again, a hop-swivel-crouch that
presents her (and my) rear end in profile, as though posing for a ski-resort fashion shoot. This
routine involves more hip action, asymmetrical postures, and diagonal motion. Bodie’s blocky
power stances have been replaced with flirtatious freeze-frame poses.
I finish “Real Love” and want to try it again, but this time I change the on-screen dancer to Mo,
a wiry African American man in hip urban streetwear. We do the dance again. It is exactly the
same, the same motion-capture data mapped to a different animated skeleton and skin. But the
femme hip swivels appear uncanny on this b-boy’s body, and other moves seem to change their
character. The Shoulder Pep now invokes an old-school hip-hop move. The No Worries—crossed
hands fanning downward in front of the chest—projects a dismissive nonchalance infused with
cool masculinity. Mo and I are making it look easy, casually fending off an ineffectual challenger
(gameplay notes, June 2012).

***
This article investigates how the Dance Central game series invites and persuades players to
experiment with gender performance. Developed by Harmonix Music Systems, Dance Central
(2010) was among the first commercially released digital games to use a full-body motion-sensing
interface, the Xbox 360 Kinect. Grounded in qualitative ethnographic research that gives equal
attention to interface affordances, game design, player experiences, and game-related discourse,
this study shows how Dance Central stages visceral encounters with gendered choreography,
generating both embodied gender work in the course of gameplay and reflective gender discourse
in public-sphere social media contexts. I offer evidence that Dance Central’s developers drew on
performative, constructivist gender theories in making the game, and I explore the consequences
of those choices: What happens when designers enlist players in putting theory into practice?
Ultimately, this article shows how the technological affordances of the Kinect, the “lusory atti-
tude” inculcated by digital gameplay (Salen and Zimmerman 2004, 574), the broader context of
contemporary social media practices, and players’ beliefs about embodied and performed identity
are working together to enculturate motion-sensing interfaces as “technologies of the gendered
self ” (Royse et al. 2007).
Dance Central was designed as one of the launch titles for the Kinect, the motion-sensing
camera peripheral released by Microsoft in 2010 as a “platform wars” one-up on the Nintendo Wii
(Jones and Thiruvathukal 2012). Players could now achieve the extension-of-powers experience
of digital gameplay by moving their own bodies, with prosthetics cast aside (see Figure 17.1).
The advertising slogan for the Kinect, “You are the controller,” promised enhanced and seem-
ingly unmediated player agency—the next step in the lineage of interfaces “driven by a dream
of individual control” (Chun 2011, 62). Dance Central was meant to demonstrate the distinctive
affordances of this new device, engaging players in full-body dance routines that showcased the
Kinect’s ability to track the motion of twenty individual joints on the human body (Pitts 2012). It
was also positioned to compete with Just Dance (Ubisoft 2009), the game series for the Wii that
debuted in 2009 and had sold 10 million units by the end of 2010 (Reilly 2011). While thus far
the Kinect has not caught up with the Wii—24 million Kinect sensors sold as compared to 99.84
million Wii consoles by March 2013—the Dance Central series has been a critical and commercial
success, selling about 5.5 million game units between fall 2010 and spring 2013 (Makuch 2013;
Nintendo 2013; VGChartz.com 2013).
In highlighting the Kinect’s affordances, Dance Central also privileged particular dance tech-
niques and kinesthetic styles (Foster 2011), incorporating and expanding on the choreographic
repertoires in previous games. Dance Dance Revolution required technically precise footwork on
a floorpad, relocating a traditional button interface under the player’s feet (Konami Corporation
1998; Smith 2004). Just Dance emphasized upper-body motion and directional gestures, tracking the
 GAMING THE SYSTEM • 291

Figure 17.1 Riffraff67 performs “Call Me Maybe” on YouTube (Riffraff67, 2012)

Screen capture by the author

movement of a hand-held Wii Remote. The Kinect’s innovative potential lay in its capacity to track
torso, hip, and shoulder movements, as well as the simultaneous, coordinated motion of different
parts of the body—affordances that made it an excellent match for contemporary hip-hop and club
dance styles. The sensor’s technical limitations also shaped Dance Central’s stylistic norms and
performance frames: The Kinect privileged a frontal orientation and well-defined two-dimensional
silhouette. The Kinect could not track overlapping bodies, so two-player choreography could
not include physical contact. Instead, two dancers perform side by side, maintaining a mirroring
relationship with two on-screen characters. (However, additional players often dance at the fringes
of the play space without being tracked by the Kinect.)
Popular dance genres transmit and reinforce established norms for moving one’s body in ways
considered appropriate to one’s identity traits, including gender, sexuality, race, age, and class
(Desmond 1997; 2001; Foster 1998). The kinds of movements showcased by the Kinect are among
the most powerful markers of gendered, sexualized, and racialized dance styles (Bollen 2001; Bosse
2007; DeFrantz 2001). Dance Central draws on hip-hop, Latin dance, music videos, club dances,
YouTube dance crazes, and social dances of past decades, creating an idiosyncratic archive of kines-
thetic styles. The available game characters constitute a Benetton-style utopian racialized array that
“awaken[s] the senses to difference” (Guterl 2013, 83): a collection of young, slim, conventionally
attractive bodies whose racial/ethnic diversity are indexed by skin tone, hair texture/style, facial
features, and vocal accent/idiom. Characters vary slightly across game editions, but the core group
is presented in five “crews” in Dance Central 2:

Riptide: white male Bodie, white/ethnically ambiguous female Emilia

Hi-Def: African American male Mo, Asian American male “child prodigy”
Glitch Flash4wrd: African American “big sister” Taye and “little sister” Lil’ T
Lu$h: white female Miss Aubrey, Latino male Angel
The Glitterati: white gender-ambiguous identical twins Jaryn and Kerith
292 • KIRI MILLER

A promotional video draws parallels between the diversity of Harmonix staff and of the game
characters: Chanel Thompson, an African American staff choreographer, asserts, “If I can see
someone that acts like me, talks like me, dances like me, I’m more likely to be more comfortable
in who I am self-esteem-wise” (HarmonixMusic 2011).
While numerous intersecting cultural connotations render these screen bodies and dance
styles legible to players and their audiences, gender distinctions play a starring and explicit role.
Players routinely refer to particular moves as “masculine” or “feminine,” ascriptions rooted in
existing gender ideologies and intensified through a process of polysemic reinforcement that
crosses linguistic, gestural, and aural domains (Miller 2014). Move names often allude to gen-
der: consider the Frat Step, Diva, Eyeliner, Bromance, Muscle Man, Booty Pop, and Pretty Face.
Regardless of their names, moves invoke gendered movement styles from other contexts: a hip
shimmy versus a pelvic pop, a football throw versus a pom pom shake, a flexed chest with open
arms versus a “heartbreak” clutch at one’s sternum as the chest collapses. These moves tend to
reflect or reinforce gender connotations in the musical material, including lyrics, the singer’s
gender, and more subtle aspects of production that have coalesced into gendered genre norms
for pop, rock, hip-hop, and electronic dance music. The particular symbolic baggage of a given
song may further inflect gendered moves with respect to race, sexuality, or class. As my opening
gameplay notes suggest, the player’s choice of on-screen character may reinforce or destabilize
the associations of some moves. The range of available characters lets players treat race and
gender as separable variables, and encourages experiments with recombinant intersectional-
ity: How does a Frat Step or Booty Pop look on a Latino adult man’s body versus an African
American young girl’s body? How do these moves feel in one’s own body when dancing along
with different screen bodies?
One might easily imagine Dance Central as a disciplining apparatus, reinforcing established
norms through repetition in the guise of play. Indeed, all dance repertoires discipline bodies, and
“choreography presents a structuring of deep and enduring cultural values that replicates similar
sets of values elaborated in other cultural practices” (Foster 2011, 5). However, Dance Central was
designed to encourage cross-gender experimentation and denaturalize gender binaries by “dra-
matiz[ing] the separation between the anatomical identity of the dancer and its possible ways of
moving” (Foster 1998, 7). Matt Boch, the series project director and lead designer, is a queer-iden-
tified man who has urged the game industry to advance “a social progressivism that matches our
technological progressivism” (Alexander 2012). He told me,

We want people to play all sorts of different songs, and I think it’s exciting and compelling to
break out of your assumed gender norms and try something different. . . . I think in playing
with gender you become aware of the fact that it is a performance. I think that’s one of the
most powerful things.
(Interview with the author, Boston, MA, 6 April 2012)

Boch has adopted an ethos of inclusive game design, which dictates that designers should “reveal
to the player what the type of experience could be, and then allow the player to make their own
choice” (Alexander 2012). Here, the initial vision of “what the type of experience could be” grew
out of constructivist gender theory. Dance Central extends Judith Butler’s discourse-oriented
gender performativity into the realm of bodily performance in ways that echo Carrie Noland’s
theoretical work (2009): “Just as the repeated citation of speech acts can either consolidate or sub-
vert a normative identity, the reiteration (‘citation’ in a metaphorical sense) of gestures can either
‘reconsolidate naturalized identities’ or produce ‘a dissonant and denaturalized performance that
reveals the performative status of the natural self ’” (190, citing Butler 1990, 146). As Boch noted,
“What’s interesting about dance is that it’s incredibly performative, and it implicates the body in a
way a lot of other video game-type interactions don’t. . . . We implicate the players’ identity in their
 GAMING THE SYSTEM • 293

body in a novel way, in an unfamiliar way” (Alexander 2012). This article examines the nature and
consequences of those design choices: How do players negotiate their participation in a game that
stages gender as performance?

Research Methodology and Theoretical Framework

This study is part of a larger research project on forms of play, performance, and embodied
practice that bridge virtual and visceral experience. I employ qualitative ethnographic methods
to investigate how digital media are brought to bear in the transmission of multisensory embod-
ied knowledge (Miller 2012). This article draws on data from seven complementary research
approaches: (1) twenty-eight months of participant-observation in 2011–2013, including regular
gameplay informed by game-related social media; (2) analysis of game-related Web materials,
including industry-sponsored and player-produced discussion forums, blogs, YouTube videos,
game advertising, professional and amateur reviews of Dance Central and other motion games,
and published interviews with Dance Central developers; (3) semi-structured interviews with
seven Dance Central players who were especially active and influential on YouTube and Twitter,
conducted via recorded telephone conversation, Skype video conference, or email in 2011; (4)
fieldwork at the PAX East game convention in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2012 and 2013; (5) an
hour-long face-to-face recorded interview and follow-up correspondence with lead designer
Matt Boch; (6) daily drop-in gameplay sessions at Brown University in the summer of 2013,
yielding eleven volunteers for semi-structured interviews that focused on inexperienced players’
impressions of gameplay and comparative reflections about their other dance and gaming expe-
riences; (7) a Web-based qualitative survey designed to solicit experienced players’ reflections
on key themes identified through the other research channels.
Pursued in tandem, these research approaches offer overlapping windows into diverse player
and industry perspectives, and they provide comparative checks that help distinguish outlier expe-
riences and interpretations from those that are commonly held or broadly influential (Boellstorff
et al. 2012; Coleman 2010; Miller 2012). In the present context, these data support insights into
designed and perceived potential—the transformative possibilities of virtual and visceral gender
performance—rather than documenting quantitatively verifiable “effects” on a given population.
A multitude of invitations, cultural assumptions, and forms of persuasion are embedded in these
games, and individual players engage with them on their own terms as they “co-construct” emergent
game culture (Taylor 2006, 126–127).
This study builds on a foundation of ethnographic scholarship in popular culture, performance
studies, and media studies, informed by Birmingham School cultural studies, anthropological and
phenomenological theories of embodied practice, and interdisciplinary approaches to participa-
tory culture and interpretive communities (e.g. Bourdieu 1990; Fish 1980; Jenkins 2006; Ortner
1984; Sobchack 1992). I address gameplay as a form of expressive culture that relies on cumulative
rehearsals of “restored behavior” (Schechner 1985). I investigate how people build up performance
practices based on the designed and perceived affordances of interfaces (Chun 2011; Galloway
2012; Miller 2012), as well as on the “relational infrastructure” offered by communities of prac-
tice (Hamera 2007; see also Lave and Wenger 1991; Pearce 2009). Dance Central teaches players
a choreographic repertoire, using pedagogical methods borrowed from contemporary popular
dance classes. The Kinect is a sensor—a data-gathering device—but Dance Central also exemplifies
“an emerging form of information distribution” (Gillespie 2010, 355), archiving and transmitting
kinesthetic repertoires in a manner radically different from any previous form of dance inscription.
In Dance Central’s design and players’ performances, “One can see the residue of strategic choices
concerning representation as distinct from the bringing to liveness of those choices. And in this
distinctiveness, the contrasting functions of choreography and performance are apparent: dance
294 • KIRI MILLER

making theorizes physicality, whereas dancing presents that theory of physicality” (Foster 1998,
10). This article addresses the gendered pleasures and perils built into Dance Central’s “theory of
physicality” and realized through players’ embodied experience, in counterpoint with their own
gender identities and ideologies. My analysis builds on prior scholarship on gendered game design,
as well as ethnographic work exploring the motivations and experiences of adult female gamers
(e.g. Kafai et al. 2008; Pearce 2009; Royse et al. 2007; Stromer-Galley and Mikeal 2006; Taylor
2006). I follow Royse et al. (2007) in focusing on “technologies of the gendered self,” “integrating
Foucault’s ‘technologies of the self ’ into the feminist model of ‘technologies of gender’” (Balsamo
1996, 560). This approach acknowledges players’ agency in their individual negotiations, while still
“attending to the multiplicity of forces” that organize the gaming situation and interpellate play-
ers (Behrenshausen 2013, 882). For example, players who encounter a “feminine” Dance Central
move—say, a hip swivel in “Call Me Maybe”—might construe it as an accurate and straightforward
choreographic translation of a “girly” song; as reinforcing or conflicting with their own embodied
gender identity; as an opportunity for camp performance (Meyer 1994) or “queer kinesthesia”
(Bollen 2001); as hazardous to their conventional masculinity and/or their feminist ideals; as too
sexy or too gender-nonconforming for their children to perform, etc. Games may “help [players]
to define their gendered selves . . . through integration, negotiation, or rejection” (Royse et al. 2007,
561), rather than simply through identification or disidentification with stereotypically “masculine”
or “feminine” content.
Several related avenues of inquiry can only be addressed allusively here, but are part of my
ongoing project—including close analysis of Dance Central’s musical repertoire and movement
vocabularies, its model of dance pedagogy and able-bodied “fitness,” its remediation of American
popular culture for players in other parts of the world, and its affordances for “identity tourism”
(Nakamura 2002). While much could be said about voluntary identity play in Dance Central, I dwell
more on players who are reluctant participants in cross-gender performance. As someone else’s
choreography passes through players’ bodies, it calls attention to existing structures of embodied
experience: The moves can feel easy or challenging, natural or alien, permissive or compulsory.

Designed Affordances and Generative Contradictions

Dance Central’s core gameplay mechanics and contextual framing are built around two con-
tradictions. First, there is the public/private tension: These games offer private dance lessons
driven by a surveillance technology. Be they professional game critics or online retail customers,
Dance Central reviewers often dwell on the potentially humiliating nature of dance and the
games’ promise of a safe, private performance venue. This is a significant innovation in dance
transmission: Dance Central players can learn a physically demanding, minutely codified rep-
ertoire without ever interacting with a physically present teacher. However, while players can
learn and experiment in private, they also have optional access to communities of practice and
to public performance venues. Company-sponsored and fan-produced Web forums, Twitter
feeds, Facebook groups, blogs, and YouTube videos encourage the production and circulation of
game discourse and gameplay performances. Dance Central players turn to the Web for human
advice on the subtleties of tricky moves, and share their excitement about particular routines
on Twitter. They may choose to dance only in private while also becoming active participants
in public discourse about the games.
The second contradiction derives from the Kinect’s heady promise that “You are the controller.”
In Dance Central, the player’s motions do not control the on-screen character’s motions. If the player
makes a mistake with an arm gesture, the character’s corresponding arm will glow red to indicate the
problem area, but the screen body doesn’t actually perform the mistake. This design choice reflects
a technical limitation. The motion-capture process for the in-game animated dance performances
 GAMING THE SYSTEM • 295

involves twenty-four cameras in a 360-degree array, collecting data from forty light-emitting diodes
(LEDs) on a dancer’s bodysuit (Pitts 2012). The Kinect collects comparatively limited data about
the player’s performance—far too little data to support high-quality animation. Project director
Matt Boch has emphasized that the on-screen dancers are not meant to be traditional playable
characters: “They are them, you are you, the playspace is as big as your whole living room. . . .
You’re not being represented by that person—you’re dancing with them” (Harmonix Music Systems
2011). Nevertheless, the conventions of digital game design, the games’ real-time multisensory
feedback, and the embodied experience of mirroring the on-screen dancer all encourage players
to approach Dance Central’s characters as avatars. These mixed cues have led players to imagine
the on-screen dancer as an idealized mirror image, a teacher, a star musician dancing in a music
video, a representation of the choreographer, or sometimes just another person on the dance floor
at a club—a potential friend, rival, or romantic partner.
Given that the on-screen dancer is a model, not a mirror or a puppet, and that the gaming
challenge involves transferring the screen body’s choreographed repertoire into one’s own body,
we might reconsider the implications of the Kinect interface in this gaming situation: Is the player’s
body an input device, or is it an output device?

Dancing Like a Lady

Shortly after midnight on 27 May 2012, a Dance Central player from Atlanta, Georgia, posted a cry
for help to the player forums, starting a new thread called “Dancing Like a Lady.”

Even tho some of the Dance Central soundtrack is awesome!.But lately i feel like some songs
got my feeling like I have to close my shades or wait till everyone is sleep to dance to some
of those songs. Well,what I’m saying is lots of songs are for the ladies not guys. Can you have
male,female same song DLC [downloadable content]? My hips are getting sore. . . . .and for
some reason going shoe shopping.
(blaksonatl, posted to DanceCentral.com 2012)

This player is describing a visceral encounter with gendered choreography: “dancing like a
lady” feels wrong in his body, so wrong that it would be shameful for anyone else to witness.
He testifies to the lingering physical effects of unaccustomed hip motions, and he closes with
a half-joking allusion to deeper transformative consequences: Perhaps dancing like a lady
might even reprogram a man to think, act, and consume like a woman. blaksonatl suggests that
Dance Central should accommodate gender-normative performance for every song by offer-
ing separate male and female performance options. This is a common request, one that Matt
Boch encountered during pre-release playtesting. He described “a strong push from a bunch of
people to record [i.e. motion-capture] every song with a guy and record every song with a girl.
And not have the routines necessarily be different, but have the performances of those moves be
masculine or feminine” (Interview with the author, Boston, MA, 6 April 2012). Boch rejected
this gender binary out of hand, asserting his own belief in a gender continuum. He told me it
would be “heartbreaking” and “disenfranchising” if a gender-queer or transgender player were
required to “make some binary assertion” at the beginning of gameplay. Players can select among
several different characters with conventionally male or female body types and names, but no
character, song, or routine is ever designated as “male” or “female” via on-screen text or menus
(cf. Nakamura 2002 on “menu-driven identities”). Most importantly, the choreography and
motion-capture data do not change when players choose different characters. Even if players only
use male characters, they still have to perform “feminine” choreography (and vice versa). Boch
framed this requirement as an opportunity: “That’s part of the nature of dance. . . . We want to
296 • KIRI MILLER

offer people that fluidity.” However, for some players, it presents a problem—most notably for
men who are uncomfortable with feminized movement.
Players have developed a variety of strategies for approaching cross-gender performances.
Responding to blaksonatl’s discomfort, one female-identified player offered a list of songs that
she assessed as “‘guy” or gender neutral songs,” along with the names of the game choreographers
who tended to produce more masculine routines—although she also ended her post with “Lose
your inhibitions or you’ll never have any fun” (DanceCentral.com 2012). A male-identified player
seconded this suggestion and added:

Doing “girly” dances on a video game isn’t the same as going out and busting some moves
to “It’s Raining Men” in a club or at a school dance or something. . . . To me, dancing to
a “girly” song just shows confidence and/or the ability to disregard what other people
think, and not dancing to them is just like a waste of $15- $20 or however much the songs
would add up to.
(DanceCentral.com 2012)

This response rationalizes cross-gender performance in the context of digital game-play—partly

on the grounds that gameplay need not represent or reflect one’s real-life gender identity, but also
drawing on the gaming imperative to complete all available missions, and the neoliberal imperative
not to “waste” one’s investment in this media product and its associated competences.
Other forum respondents asserted that it was possible to maintain a robust heteronormative
sexuality even while indulging in cross-gender performance. One male player suggested that it
might help to play “girly” songs with a female character: “Try dancing with Emilia to those routines;
they have become some of my favourites LOL” (DanceCentral.com 2011). This player’s other posts
about Emilia, which dwell on her sex appeal, clarify his advice: He recommends selecting a female
character not in order to roleplay as a female performer, but rather so that one might admire the
sexy spectacle of the character’s performance. Indulging in the pleasures of heterosexual voyeurism
could offer an antidote to “girly” choreography, even as the player simultaneously performs those
same moves. The player’s ambiguous relationship to the character generates an unstable power
dynamic: The on-screen dancer is an authority figure, empowered to animate the player’s body, but
the player can turn the tables by making the character dance on command, converting a virtual dance
teacher into the object of an erotic gaze. A player called Kat Rina offers a variant of this approach
in her YouTube gameplay videos. Many of her videos do not show her own dancing body at all,
but rather the performances of Angel, a character whose voice and name mark him as Latino (Kat
Rina 2011; see Figure 17.2). In the comment thread for her video of “Lapdance” (N.E.R.D 2011),
Kat Rina and her viewers engage in playful sexual banter about Angel’s performance:

125AcDc: Did it just get steamy in here? LMFAO

darkria4: Whenever Angel makes direct contact with “you” his eyes are so sparkly. I can sense
attitude and ego in those eyes . . . mmf *swoon*
Kat Rina: @darkria4 *gasps* me too, but i find it’s his smile and grin that really gets me,
hahaha! . . . oh my

Kat Rina had to perform stereotypical feminine “stripper” moves in order to watch (and record) a
male game character performing them against his gender type. There is a peculiar deferral of agency
here: The dancing player submits her own body to the will of the game choreographers so that she
can in turn fetishize the dancing character. Meanwhile, Kat Rina has received viewer complaints
about “having Angel doing feminine moves” (email interview, 2011). Some viewers suggest that
forcing Angel to engage in drag performance is deviant or exploitative—“just not right,” although
sometimes also funny.
 GAMING THE SYSTEM • 297

Figure 17.2 Kat Rina’s video of Angel’s performance of “Lapdance” on YouTube (Kat Rina 2011 [former username
‘twinbladestaff’])
Screen capture by the author

Butching Up or Crossing Over?

Yet another strategy for approaching the gender politics of Dance Central involves “butching up”
one’s approach to feminine moves. In an interview for a player’s video blog, Harmonix choreogra-
pher Ricardo Foster, Jr, offered some tips:

Foster: “Rude Boy,” we all know, yeah, it feels like more of a female song. But: you can make every
one of those movements masculine. . . . Focus more on the arms. Like in “Rude Boy,” you
definitely see this going on. [gyrates hips]
MightyMeCreative (interviewer): You can’t hide from that.
Foster: Exactly! . . . Guys, just really move more back and use your arms more. That takes away
all of the things that may be uncomfortable for you, but being able to really whip it down
[demonstrates with arms], the Kinect still sees that you’re doing the movement and still reads
you as a “Flawless” score. . . . So you can focus more on the arms, and be more of a—Bam!
Masculine, dominant effect, rather than being real roll-y [moves hips]. . . . We made sure that
it was for y’all too, so y’all could feel like men after you do it!
(MightyMeCreative 2011)

While some players take Foster’s advice, figuring out how to perform all moves in a way that lets
them “feel like men,” others embrace the opportunity to engage in gender-bending performance.
Many enjoy playing with their gender identity or exploring the possibilities of a fluid gender con-
tinuum, in line with Matt Boch’s intentions. However, some virtuosic cross-gender performers
298 • KIRI MILLER

Figure 17.3 rosroskof Performs “Lapdance” on YouTube (rosroskof 2011)

Screen capture by the author

have unassailable confidence in a fixed gender identity—indeed, it is that very conviction that leads
them to recognize a satisfying technical and artistic challenge in the task of embodying another
gender through dance. For instance, one player posted a YouTube video of his performance of the
“Lapdance” routine, which juxtaposes strongly marked masculine and feminine segments (rosroskof
2011; see Figure 17.3). He told me, “I have received a few comments referring to my moves being
too feminine, or the choreo was too feminine for a straight guy to perform, but I don’t mind them
at all. I considered them as compliments. Comments along those lines confirm that I performed
the moves correctly” (email interview, 2011). Meanwhile, information in his YouTube profile and
comment threads shores up his heterosexuality and normative masculinity: Viewers learn that he
has a wife and small child, and that he serves in the Navy.
Another player, Riffraff, told me that in the case of “Lapdance” he thought the Dance Central
choreographers had deliberately included both “male” and “female” moves as a sly joke on players:

It’s funny just how quickly the mood changes from really rough guy moves to really girly, girly
moves. . . . I thought they were kind of drag-esque, almost. It was a little too exaggerated. . . .
When I was first trying out the song, I was like, “What is this?” and I just started laughing
because I found it really funny how they snuck that in there. . . . You already bought the
track, so what are you going to do?
(Telephone interview, 2011)

Like many experienced players, Riffraff positions himself as a “hospitable host” for Dance Central’s
choreography, allowing alternative gender performances to pass through his body without ceding
his own “possession of the premises” (Sobchack 1992, 271–272). He interprets “Lapdance” as a
deliberate rejoinder to players who believe in fixed gender identities: In the course of performing
this song, their own bodies will betray them, revealing flexible capacities that testify to the radical
 GAMING THE SYSTEM • 299

contingency of gender performance. However, Dance Central also leaves room for players to
reinforce established gender and sexuality norms through ironic engagement with deviance: “a
strategy of un-queer appropriation of queer praxis” (Meyer 1994, 5). Matt Boch expressed pride
in the possibility that “people who may not feel very comfortable in their current gender, or are
discovering exactly where they fit on a gender continuum” might find a greater range of expressive
possibilities in Dance Central. However, he also acknowledged, “There are plenty of times when
you have people who are cisgender male, like alpha kind of dudes. And you get them up and they’re
playing some type of feminine song and they’re totally into it—but it’s funny to them, and it’s funny
to everyone else around them” (Interview with the author, Boston, MA, 6 April 2012).

Going Public: Gender and Sexuality Discourse on YouTube

When male players take their gender-bending Dance Central performances public on YouTube,
they generate predictable derogatory comments about their sexuality—an established genre in
YouTube trolling. However, a community of players often rallies around the dancer, sometimes
voicing support of more flexible gender and sexuality norms (cf. Sutton-Smith 1997, 105). For
example, a male-identified YouTube user uploaded a “Call Me Maybe” gameplay video, using a
female game character and never showing his own body on screen (AverageAsianDude 2012).
When I was reading the comments, I encountered a post that had been hidden from view after
receiving too many “thumbs-down” from other users. Upon clicking through to see it, I found a
typical misogynist/homophobic insult: “If guys dance this song, they’re considered bitches.” Other
commenters responded:

Beato Carlos del Toro: if you don’t have your masculinity well marked and you doubt about it just
for dance a song that’s your problem
AverageAsianDude [video uploader]: the only bitch in here is you [226 “thumbs-up”]
Tu Nguyen: Out of all 47,783+ viewers, you are the only 1 bitch. Congrats bitch.
VIDGamefrk9: FYI I have DC2 and I can do better on most songs by females, with means I am
a total feminist! I love how people diss guys for having feministic viewpoints. I wonder what
would happen if I were to make a feministic comment on a CoD [Call of Duty] gameplay[. . .]
(comments posted to AverageAsianDude 2012)

This discussion shows how “a media text becomes material that drives active community discus-
sion and debate at the intersection between popular culture and civic discourse” (Jenkins et al.
2013, 168)—although one might wish that these respondents had not been so quick to redeploy
the derogatory feminine epithet “bitch.”
Female players who post to YouTube are working with a different set of gender and sexuality
norms. I have yet to encounter a woman who expresses discomfort with performing “masculine”
Dance Central moves, or a YouTube comment that criticizes a woman for cross-gender perfor-
mance. By recursive definition, “masculine” moves convey physical strength, technical prowess,
and/or sexual dominance; female players often describe them as empowering (cf. Taylor 2006).
Yet there is little risk that a woman’s “masculine” performance will be perceived as threatening,
because these power moves have no direct object. Even in the two-player mode, Dance Central
players perform the same routine side-by-side, rather than engaging in the gendered power
dynamics of partner dancing. Certain moves do conjure an invisible partner, but there is no
direct representation of dominant/submissive dancefloor relations: A player cannot perform
a “masculine” routine that complements another player’s simultaneous “feminine” routine.
While female players seem untroubled by cross-gender performance, they sometimes express
discomfort with moves that invoke sexuality, especially feminized, racialized, or “low-class”
300 • KIRI MILLER

sexuality. As one woman told me, citing some of the moves in “Lapdance”: “For example, the
moves called ‘dirty dog,’ ‘caress up,’ ‘caress down’ & ‘caress front.’ I just don’t feel comfortable
to make those moves in public” (Lola, email interview, 2011). These anxieties are exacerbated
for women who post gameplay videos online, where the unstable power dynamic between
on-screen character and player/spectator takes another turn. In video performances, the player
reprises the role of the game character: She may be perceived as a respected authority and role
model—an expert gamer/dancer—or as the object of an erotic gaze, available for instant replay
on demand. The latter phenomenon instantiates “the process whereby new technologies are
articulated with traditional and ideological narratives about gender” (Balsamo 1996, 60). Women
who post Dance Central videos online routinely contend with sexual objectification, including
comments on their bodies, comparisons to the bodies of the game characters, speculation about
their relationship status, and explicit sexual harassment. For women of color, these comments
often include a racial valence.
For example, consider a video uploaded by Latty2cute, a Canadian woman of Afro Caribbean
heritage, featuring her performance of “Milkshake” (by Kelis [2003]; Latty2cute 2012). Numerous
commenters complimented Latty2cute on the technical tour-de-force of doing a challenging routine
in high heels. Many also addressed her as an eroticized spectacle:

Robert Taylor: is it the shoes!!!! u rocked it . . . when this song play in the club i bet u be doing
this whole dance lol. . . .
yan Leonardo: Dang girl, you sure got style! In your clothes and dancing. Good job on dancing
with heels! Are you african american or hispanic?
deanna bull: i am a boy on my sis acownt. me the boy: you are so hot and sexy. o btw my name is
darrell and i am 11 and sexy

In one thread that played out over several months, a commenter informed Latty2cute that he was
treating her video as pornography. As she worked through the process of decoding his slang, other
commenters offer wincing condolences-in-advance:

stareco copeland: fap mode -activated-

Latty2cute: yaaay! i think? wats fap?
JessicaCIH: omg . . . you dont want to know
Shining Armor: You’re kidding right?
kayiscool12: i love u girl. . . . . .but u reallllllllyyyy dont want to know. . . . . . .
SmashJohn: FAP is the sound you make when you masturbate so. . . . .yes . . . [i.e. “yes” to the
‘yaaay! I think?’ that implied a perceived compliment]
Latty2cute: OMG thats sick!
stareco copeland: lmao!! now you know
Latty2cute: i found out from a friend on Twitter. . . . .NOT COOL. . . . .lol
(comments on Latty2cute 2012)

Ending with a “lol” [laughing out loud] that undercuts the serious reprimand “NOT COOL,”
Latty2cute seems to be trying to restore this episode to “only a game” status—corralling her
performance back inside a “magic circle” of gameplay whose borders are always breaking
down (Jones 2008; Miller 2008; Salen and Zimmerman 2004). This example illustrates the
uncontrollable “collision and disruption of frames” (Fischer-Lichte 2008, 47) that characterizes
YouTube reception: Viewers are free to approach such performances as virtuosic gameplay,
ironic femme drag, or soft-core porn, and to comment accordingly. However, performers
can and do talk back, influencing the formation of competing interpretive communities
(Miller 2012).
 GAMING THE SYSTEM • 301

Conclusion: Gaming the Gender System

By design, Dance Central makes an argument about gender. Through its own procedural rhetoric,
“the practice of using processes persuasively” (Bogost 2007, 3), the games present gender as a
performative process. Some players resist or reject the terms of this argument, because it conflicts
with their own gender ideologies; even if they engage in cross-gender performance, they might be
reinscribing essentialist gender binaries through parody (Butler 1990, 139). Nevertheless, Dance
Central asserts not only that everyone can dance, but that everyone can dance as a virtually gendered
body; that gender feels viscerally real in practice, but is a quality cultivated through performative
repetition; and that players can choose which repertoires to repeat. By producing “intense kinesthetic
and affective experiences of dissonance,” Dance Central demonstrates that “the moving, trained,
and trainable body is always a potential source of resistance to the meanings it is required to bear”
(Noland 2009, 175). It fosters a “queer kinesthesia,” “a marshaling of kinesthetic resources that dis-
articulate ways of moving from the demand for consistently gendered performance” (Bollen 2001,
309). The games stage gender as a technology: not dictatorial programming with straightforward
outcomes, but a tool, interactive by nature.
Dance Central can persuade players to engage in gender work because it conjoins a dancer’s
orientation to a performance repertoire with a player’s orientation to a game challenge (Miller
2014). Like theatrical performances, games invite participants to “play with the frames of the
mundane” (Sutton-Smith 1997, 148). In a game where, as Matt Boch put it, “You might be giv-
ing [players] instructions or content that is unfamiliar to them, or uncomfortable for them, or
somehow inconsistent with their own notion of their identities” (Alexander 2012), players can
claim that they’re only doing these moves for the sake of high scores, getting to the next level,
or completion. Players also engage in the pleasurable process of analyzing the Kinect’s potential,
including how to “game” the interface: Exactly what range of physical performances will lead to
full credit for a move? What does the Kinect perceive and value? Adopting a gaming sensibility
leads Dance Central players to try out kinesthetic styles and repertoires that they might otherwise
reject, especially in a public setting.
Dance Central shows how the technical affordances and limitations of a motion-sensing inter-
face can be marshaled in the service of experiential education—in this case, teaching theories of
performativity through embodied practice (cf. Gee 2004). Players must engage in an extensive tri-
al-and-error process to render their bodies legible to the Kinect. Successful play requires attending
to the smallest details of the on-screen dancer’s gestures and bodily comportment, working out
what counts for credit and where there is more latitude. Is it the angle of the torso, the rhythm of
the pelvic popping, the coordination of hands and feet, or the precision of finger snaps that will
push the score from “Nice” to “Flawless”? This trial-and-error citational process is at the heart
of performativity (Butler 1993). It requires heightened attention informed by phenomenological
reflection: Players become conscious of themselves and the game as mutually implicated perceiving
subjects and objects of perception (Sobchack 1992).
Ultimately, Dance Central gameplay undermines the Kinect’s “You are the controller” promise in
two ways: not only by choreographing players’ performances but also by offering constant reminders
that the human body is not a mass-produced technical interface like a traditional game controller.
As players feel out each routine, they feel out the differences between their own and others’ kines-
thetic experience, engaging with inter-sectional embodied identity at a visceral level. As they mix
and match dance styles and game characters, they may become more aware of their enculturated
assumptions about the kinds of motions that are “supposed” to feel familiar or natural for them.
For example, one player told me, “Hip shaking for me is always awkward, but I’m Latina so I have
to get over that even if I feel awkward”; meanwhile, a self-described “uptight white guy” observed,
“I feel [hip motions] as blacker moves. I mean, when I see black guys dancing. When white guys
do those moves, they look really gay, which is to say feminized” (gameplay interviews, 2013). Such
302 • KIRI MILLER

accounts show how kinesthetic experience intersects with a “system of racial sight” (Guterl 2013,
45), and how “gestural performatives” (Noland 2009) might simultaneously destabilize norms in
one domain of essentialized difference and reconfirm them in another.
Visceral engagement with difference is part of learning any codified performance practice: Every
ballet rehearsal, b-boy cypher, or aerobics class offers stark evidence of the variable capacities and
acquired competences of human bodies. Dance Central intensifies the process by encouraging
players to adopt movement styles that do not match their own sense of self. When players submit
their dancing for public evaluation, they must also engage with the cultural consequences of these
“mismatched” performances. Ideologically driven perceptions of “matching” performances may be
just as generative—as when YouTube viewers treat a player’s over-the-top, role-playing performance
of femme dance moves as an opportunity to reconfirm her sexual objectification as a woman of
color, and she responds with an ambivalent “NOT COOL. . . . .lol.”
Dance Central’s game designers and living-room dancers have engaged in a complex and
sometimes contentious collaboration, finding ways to use emerging technologies and established
social media platforms to support the virtual transmission of embodied practice. Players forfeit
traditional puppet-master control over an avatar and accept an invitation to investigate the per-
formative affordances of their own bodies.
As motion-sensing and haptic interfaces become commonplace, these games show how people
draw on their accumulated embodied knowledge in making sense of new technologies, and how
that accumulated knowledge can be playfully tested, seriously challenged, and perhaps ultimately
transformed through digital gameplay. You can still “feel like men after you do it”—if that’s what
you want.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Matt Boch, all the research participants, Aleysia Whitmore, Patrick
Jagoda, and two anonymous reviewers for contributing to the development of this article.

Funding

This work was supported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the American Council of
Learned Societies, and the Brown University Creative Arts Council.

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 Part VI
Curating Sound
 18
Preserving the Past, Activating the Future
Collaborative Archiving in Ethnomusicology
John Vallier

Call to Action

In a 1977 article for the journal Midwest Archivists, social historian Howard Zinn decried the
inequity of the archival record:

That the collection of records, papers, and memoirs, as well as oral history, is biased towards
the important and powerful people of the society, tending to ignore the impotent and
obscure: we learn most about the rich, not the poor; the successful, not the failures; the
old, not the young; the politically active, not the politically alienated; men, not women;
white, not black; free people rather than prisoners; civilians rather than soldiers; officers
rather than enlisted men. Someone writing about Strom Thurmond will have no problem
with material. But what if someone wants to write about the blind black jazz pianist, Art
Tatum?
(Zinn 1977, p. 21)

Zinn was calling archivists to action. In addition to proposing that they “campaign to open all
government documents to the public” (p. 25), he pressed archivists to take an active role in creating
archival collections that represent those who have been traditionally excluded from the historical
record:

[T]ake the trouble to compile a whole new world of documentary material, about the lives,
desires, needs, of ordinary people. . . . To refuse to be instruments of social control in an
essentially undemocratic society, to begin to play some small part in the creation of a real
democracy: these are worthy jobs for historians, for archivists, for us all.
(Zinn 1977, p. 25)

I argue that ethnomusicologists, since the discipline’s formative years, have been doing just that: doc-
umenting the lives of so-called ordinary people, albeit with a focus on their extraordinary music and

307
308 • JOHN VALLIER

the cultural life it plays in their communities. True, the motivation for compiling such documentation
has not always been inspired by notions of social justice or reciprocity. Nonetheless ethnomusicolo-
gists—and comparative musicologists before them—helped establish a rich historical record of sounds
that emphasize a world of musical and cultural difference. And it is precisely these recordings, not
our theoretical musings about them or the people represented through them, that ethnomusicology
will be remembered for. As Anthony Seeger (1986) noted, if properly archived for the ages, these
recordings will endure and therefore have the potential to elicit change in innumerable ways: “No
one can predict the ways their collections will be used. Some will become one of the building blocks
of cultural and political movements; some will bring alive the voice of a legendary ancestor for an
individual; some will stimulate budding musicians, some will soothe the pain of exile, and some will
be used for restudies of primary data that may revolutionize approaches to world music” (p. 264).
With this essay I offer an overview of archives’ at times wavering significance in ethnomusicology,
from its role in our discipline’s origin story to its more recent revival as a vehicle of active reciprocation
and community collaboration. I describe the recent growth of interest among ethnomusicologists
in archives and, more generally, among scholars in the humanities and social sciences. Reflecting
on my own work, I describe a selection of challenges I have encountered in my own collaborations
as archivist in a university setting. Using brief case studies from work with community partners,
for-profit organizations, and others individuals, I share some of the lessons learned. I end by empha-
sizing why I believe such partnerships are essential for safeguarding our musical heritage and make
recommendations for those interested in pursuing this line of work, most notably by endorsing the
set of retooled archival functions set forth by Chaudhuri and Seeger in their “The Contributions of
Reconfigured Audiovisual Archives to Sustaining Traditions.”

Archival Origins

Sound recording archives played an integral role in the establishment and growth of ethnomusi-
cology into an independent discipline (Seeger 1986; Nettl 2015). Those involved with compara-
tive musicology, ethnomusicology’s precursor field of study, evangelized the archive. In 1899 the
Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna was established by Ludwig
Boltzmann and Sigmund Exner. As the first sound recording archive dedicated to the preservation
and systematic study of recorded sound, the Phonogrammarchiv played a foundational role in our
discipline. Exner, the archive’s first director, not surprisingly extolled archiving as an imperative:
“The collection of musical performances of savage peoples may prove to be especially fruitful for a
comparative musicology, which would probably be made possible in this way” (Pudor 1901, p. 60).
While his language references a troubling view that promoted notions of European superiority,
there is no denying how essential Exner thought archives were to the establishment of a field that
is now historically linked to ethnomusicology.
While the Phonogrammarchiv was the first of its kind, it was the Berliner Phonogrammarchiv
that soon became the foremost archival institution. Founding director Erich Moritz von Hornbostel
picked up where Exner left off, proclaiming the recording and preservation of music as core to what
was then an aspiring field of study. At a 1905 meeting of the International Society for Musicology,
in front of what must have been a skeptical room of musicologists, Von Hornbostel rhetorically
asked “what is to be gained . . . by having a Hottentot sing into the phonograph” (Ames 2003,
p. 300). Von Hornbostel continued, reinforcing the importance of sound as a source for history,
noting that such “exotic music offers astounding analogies to earlier forms of our own music,
which we know only through a tradition that has gaping holes in it. We gain a better idea of how
ancient Greek music must have sounded by listening to, say, Japanese musicians, than by reading
the works of Classical authors” (Ames 2003, p. 317). In Berlin, as in Vienna, the archive helped lay
the foundation for the field of ethnomusicology.
 PRESERVING THE PAST, ACTIVATING THE FUTURE • 309

Archival Ambiguity

Ethnomusicology’s disquieting colonial and evolutionary origins are well documented (Seeger
1986; Ames 2003). However, the early quest to record, collect, archive, and analyze music also had a
more laudable outcome: Recordings of diverse musics—the comparative musicologist’s data—were
compiled and safely stored. The rush to record and archive audio data was fueled by an impending
sense that time was running out. Von Hornbostel (1975) believed that action was needed before
difference was replaced with sameness. He said,

The danger is great that the rapid dissemination of European culture will destroy the remaining
traces of ethnic singing and saying. We must save whatever can be saved before the airship is
added to the automobile and the electric express train, and before we hear “tararabumdieh”
in all of Africa and, in the South Seas, that quaint song about little Kohn.
(1975, p. 270)

This reliance on the sound archive continued in the twentieth century as the field of ethno-
musicology developed. Many ethnomusicologists working in the early years acknowledge
the significance and support sound recording archives gave to the growth and intellectual
maturity of the discipline (Kunst 1959; Krader 1980; Seeger 1986).1 As Bruno Nettl (2015)
writes, “early in the history of our field, archives were the indispensable centers of research
and sources for teaching, and after the war, when graduate ethnomusicology programs were
established at American (and other) universities, an archive of recordings was considered
as important for ethnomusicology as a research library was for the study of music history”
(p. 169). Nettl also reminisces about his own work with George Herzog at Indiana University
in the late 1940s. Unpacking boxes of recordings that the Boasian scholar brought with him
from Columbia University, this collection formed the foundation of what is now the Archives
of Traditional Music.
By the mid-1980s, influenced in great part by cultural anthropology’s refl exive turn,
ethnomusicologists began to distance themselves from the archive. Traditional modes of
objectively-grounded musicological analysis were supplanted by new modes of explanation:
deeper ethnographic descriptions and heady hermeneutic interpretations. It was musical context,
not content, that ethnomusicologists were drawn to. Research that included analysis of music
from archived sound recordings quickly became reminiscent of old-school, evolutionary-minded
armchair comparative musicology. Archives became unwelcome reminders of a problematic
past where the discipline was at its best concerned with salvaging and saving sounds, and at
its worst mired in the early twentieth century eugenic movement. Archives were further iden-
tified as sites where authorial dominance over the sounds, symbols, and lives represented on
sound recordings was asserted by ethnomusicologists.2 And as ethnomusicologists distanced
themselves from the earlier modes of analysis and scholarship, sound archives [housing field
data] grew ever quieter. Sound recordings were seen, in the words of Jonathan Sterne, to hold
“embalmed” utterances and expressions, “a resonant tomb, offering the exteriority of the voice
with none of its interior self-awareness” (Sterne 2003, p. 290).

Archival Panopticon

[T]here is no political power without control of the archive, if not memory. Effective
democratization can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation
in and access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation.
(Derrida 1996, p. 4)
310 • JOHN VALLIER

Writing in 2004, Marlene Manoff calls attention to an increasing focus on the archive among
scholars in the humanities and social sciences. “There has been a striking growth of interest in the
concept of the archive outside of the library and archival communities. In the past decade histo-
rians, literary critics, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, political scientists,
and others have wrestled with the meaning of the word ‘archive’ ” (p. 9). Manoff notes that Jacque
Derrida’s “Archive Fever,”3 in particular, had a striking impact on both the shape and popularity of
this critical discourse among scholars working in postmodern, postcolonial, and subaltern con-
cerned fields of study. Interest in the archive became further pronounced as scholars began to revisit
Michel Foucault’s deliberations on the archive, that “system of discursivity. . . . The archive is first
the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events”
(Foucault 1972, p. 129). No longer were archives seen purely as a storehouse of documents that
unbiasedly reflected events as they happened. Archives were contested spaces where knowledge
was produced and access controlled.4 As the University of Amsterdam’s Erik Ketelaar writes,

The panoptical archive disciplines and controls through knowledge-power. This knowledge is
embedded in the records, their content, form, structure, and context. Moreover the physical
ordering of the archives . . . express knowledge-power. Archival institutions, unlike libraries,
do not publicly display their holdings to offer a panopotic view to their clients. But they do
display the knowledge-power of the finding aids, as representation of what the public may
not see openly, but may expect to find behind the closed doors of the prison-like repository.
(Ketelaar 2002, p. 234)

Prompted in great part by Derrida and Foucault’s work, numerous early twenty-first century
scholars contributed to this critical discourse.5 In The Archive and the Repertoire, Diana Taylor
provides a fresh perspective on the critique by contrasting the archive with performance as an
alternative mode of understanding. She describes the archive as a place where “memory exists as
documents, maps, literary texts, letters, archaeological remains, bones, videos, films, CDs, all those
items supposedly resistant to change . . . [and] succeeds in separating the source of ‘knowledge’
from the knower” (2003, p. 19). She contrasts this archival system of “storing and transmitting
knowledge” (p. 18) with the repertoire, which “enacts embodied memory: performances, gestures,
orality, movement, dance, singing—in short, all those acts usually thought of as ephemeral, non-
reproducible knowledge” (p. 20). In opposition to the archive, “The repertoire requires presence:
People participate in the production and reproduction of knowledge by ‘being there,’ being a part
of the transmission. As opposed to the supposedly stable objects in the archive, the actions that are
the repertoire do not remain the same” (p. 20). The archive then not only shapes the knowledge it
holds, creating its own privileged body of knowledge by way of imposing processes, policies, and
systems on collections and users, it also by its very nature—according to Taylor—sidesteps what
is arguably central to many an ethnomusicologist’s research: embodied performance.

Archival Reciprocity

When paired with the reflexive turn seen first in anthropology, the critical examination of the archive
appears to have influenced a new generation of scholars to take up a reciprocally oriented and
activist minded approach to archiving. In ethnomusicology these ventures are most often realized
through archival repatriation and community collaboration projects. The growing interest in such
applied work is evidenced by the popularity of recent presentations and an increased number of
publications on archives. For example, at the Society for Ethnomusicology’s 2010 annual meeting
in Los Angeles, a pair of sessions were held under the heading: “Repatriation of Audio-Visual
Archives in the Twenty-first Century.”6 With turnout heavier than expected (standing room only
 PRESERVING THE PAST, ACTIVATING THE FUTURE • 311

at times), the presenters described a range of archival repatriation projects, including: returning
digitized copies of Colin McPhee’s films and 78s to musicians in Bali, reconfiguring the International
Library of African Music into a site of “heritage activism,” and reintegrating songs recorded by
Laura Boulton into the Iñupiat community of Alaska’s North Slope.
Two years later a leading journal in the field was devoted to the topic of archives and commu-
nity engagement: “Ethnomusicology, Archives and Communities: Methodologies for an Equitable
Discipline.” In their introduction to this issue of Ethnomusicology Forum, editors Carolyn Landau
and Janet Topp Fargion (2012) write that the authors “provide examples of how the field of ‘proactive
archiving’ . . . is evolving in exciting new ways: ethnomusicology scholars both up-and-coming and
already-established are developing innovative methodologies, based on collaboration with cultural
heritage communities and with archives, to explore existing and emerging themes within ethno-
musicology” (p. 126). Landau and Topp Fargion continue, noting that the issue’s authors “explore
the ideologies, methodologies and outcomes of a number of recent ground-breaking projects, each
making a unique and significant contribution to existing scholarship in ethnomusicology and, more
particularly, in applied ethnomusicology” (p. 126). In the issue, Don Niles offered a comparative
analysis of three repatriation projects in Papua New Guinea, demonstrating how archivists can play
a critical role in connecting collections with the communities of origin; Thomas Hilder applied
Taylor’s archive/repertoire distinction to Sámi joik music in order to resituate our understanding
of these contemporary performances as living “indigenous museum”; Noel Lobley described his
curatorial moves to reintroduce Hugh Tracey’s field recordings into the communities from which
they were originally sourced; and Emma Brinkhurst described her work to connect recordings
from the British Library (BL) with the neighboring Somali community, an effort that both revived
“embodied memories” and highlighted the “challenges of collaboration between an institution such
as the BL and an orally-founded refugee community” (Brinkhurst 2012, p. 243).
A critically grounded sense of altruism, one that harkens back to Zinn’s call to action, pervades
the work of these and the other archivally-minded ethnomusicologists. While their efforts may be
connected to the larger growth of interest in archives among artists, humanists, and social scien-
tists, such work should also be seen as being based in the emergent phenomenon of what Landau
and Topp Fargion (2012) call the “applied ethnomusicology ‘movement’ ” (p. 127), an effort that
prioritizes outreach and reciprocity across a variety of activities in the discipline.7 Whatever the
sources of inspiration, the dedicated journal issue and popular SEM sessions are merely a few exam-
ples of recent interest in community collaboration and archives. When viewed within the broader
context of other activity—including articles, classes, and grant funded projects8—a pattern clearly
emerges: a renaissance of interest in archives is occurring in the discipline.9 Perhaps one the most
telling indications that there has been a rebirth of interest in archives is the shift in opinion of one
of the discipline’s patriarchs. In the first edition of his The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-Three
Discussions, Bruno Nettl identifies key reasons why archives had fallen out of popularity in ethno-
musicology (e.g., remnants of salvage ethnomusicology, lack of usefulness for emerging scholarly
trends, etc.) and suggests that they are possibly not worth the effort required to maintain them.
However, some thirty-three years later in the book’s third edition, Nettl (2015) rescinds his critique:
“In 1983 . . . I wrote that perhaps they [archives] had outlived their usefulness. I was wrong. They
are definitely alive and well. Maybe they never declined in importance as much as I said, but in
any event their significance has again increased . . .” (p. 170).

Case Studies

It is inspiring to see ethnomusicologists—both established and up and coming—exhibiting a

critically grounded, community oriented, and reciprocally focused interest in archives. I applaud
what they are doing and encourage them to continue. Their collaboratively-minded approaches
312 • JOHN VALLIER

to archiving are necessary if we intend to safeguard and promote the musical and broader cultural
knowledge of those who have been, and continue to be, written out of mainstream histories. Without
such efforts to empower traditionally marginalized groups, our archives will also, perhaps rightly
so, wither from a lack of relevance.
Writing and talking about archives are important activities, but archiving itself requires
prolonged commitment by the institutions that support them. Yes, it is important to critically
reflect on the overarching meaning of such projects and offer methodologies for a more equitable
discipline, but it is also critical to look at such projects with a practical eye. We may need to
step back from our own research agendas and ask: What is and is not working in the project?
Are my community partners’ expectations being met? Are the archives’? What is the nature and
condition of the recordings, the metadata, and the associative rights issues I am working with?
Will new community outreach projects tax the already limited time of the archive staff working
to preserve, describe, and provide access to already existing collections? These and others issues
demand attention even though they can be challenging.
In my experience, community collaborations can be simultaneously rewarding and challeng-
ing for all involved. Unrealistic expectations about the capacity of the archive, the unforeseen
fallout from community micro-politics, basic misunderstandings about the goals of the project,
and an overly optimistic outlook on the part of the ethnomusicologist/archivist may complicate
this work. In what follows I highlight a few of the challenges, opportunities, and successes I have
encountered in my own work with such community oriented archiving. I offer an overview of
a selection of efforts I have been involved with to build unique regional music collections at
the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of Washington (UW) in
Seattle. I focus on the collaborative aspects of these efforts, and in so doing describe my work
with musicians, community-based non-profits, archivists, students, record companies, and oth-
er stakeholders. I attempt to show that although collaboration at times requires a recalibration
of expectations, the end results are well worth the effort. In so doing, I intend to help prepare
ethnomusicologists and archivists who have been or considering similar kinds of collaborative
archival projects.

Community Non-Profits and Performers

Between 2002 and 2006 I was the archivist at UCLA’s Ethnomusicology Archive. The economic
climate for UCLA was good, so good that UCLA was able to fund community partnerships
between university departments and Los Angeles-based community non-profits. In collabora-
tion with community members and faculty, I wrote the proposals and then acted as the principal
investigator for two of these grants. With the first partnership, Archiving Filipino Music in Los
Angeles (AFAMILA), we collaboratively documented Filipino American musical events over
the course of the year and added these recordings to the Archive. From indie-rock to hip-hop to
kulingtang, we made hundreds of live recordings with the help of students and our community
partners. With Gospel Archiving in Los Angeles (GALA), we again recorded hundreds of hours
of performances but this time primarily at one location, the Greater New Bethel Baptist Church
of Inglewood, California. With both projects we held culminating events and festivals with our
community members.
While we celebrated the successes of the projects, we were cognizant that frustrations were also
part of the collective experience. A few groups we wanted to record refused to participate because
of an uneasy pre-history they had with our community partners, something we were not initially
aware of.10 Also, one performance group wanted to explicitly ban a particular ethnomusicologist
from accessing recordings of their performances in the Archive. I was empathetic with the com-
munity members’ concerns, but given the public nature of our institution I could not justify ban-
ning access. Difficulties also arose internally as some participating ethnomusicologists became
 PRESERVING THE PAST, ACTIVATING THE FUTURE • 313

preoccupied with the grant as a site for their own research, thus temporarily losing sight of the
grant’s goals. Finally, perhaps my grandest (and most naїve) hope of all—that the archive would
become a place that community members would use for research and study—didn’t work out. It’s
difficult to convince a local community member to visit an archive when it is tucked away in an
ivory tower setting, ringed with pricey parking lots, and open for limited weekday hours. If they
do manage to visit, a community member’s expectation for instantaneous YouTube-like playback
will most likely collide with the all-too-common archival reality: restricted in-archive use policies
and backlogs of legacy collections awaiting digitization and item level description and access.

Recording Engineers and For-Profit

Kearney Barton was a Seattle recording engineer considered to be the godfather of the so-called
Northwest Sound, an analog and reverb rich aesthetic that one can hear on recordings by such
proto-garage bands such as The Sonics, The Frantics, and The Ventures. He recorded thousands of
other performers in his five decades of work, including a pre-Heart Ann Wilson, the Seattle Opera,
funk bands for Quincy Jones, and—so legend has it—a teenage Jimi Hendrix.
While the content of his collection was impressive, its physical condition was alarming. Years
of neglect had contributed to the collection’s degradation. He was not an archivist, but working
with Barton was a joy. He understood the considerable commitment of time and resources it
would take to catalog and preserve his legacy. It was with another partner, a record company
that was rereleasing parts of the collection, where some early misunderstandings surfaced. Even
though I was clear about UW’s inability to accession, process, and preserve the collection without
additional funding sources, some at the label thought UW should be able to accession, process,
and provide convenient access on demand. As I worked more closely with the record company,
unrealistic expectations subsided just in time for another source of collaborative frustration to
rise. Representatives from Google called to propose that they digitize all 6,000 tapes at no cost, so
long as they were able to exclusively license rights for distribution on Google Play. Proposals were
written, conference calls took place, but—in the end—Google withdrew their offer to collaborate.
There was disappointment at the time, but celebrations followed because an endowment from
Barton’s estate is now providing ongoing care for the collection.

Collectors and Fans

A collection that encompasses five-years of live recordings made at the Crocodile Café, a Seattle rock
club that played a key role in showcasing such grunge bands as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, and
Tad, offered another challenge at the UW Archive. This particular collection comprised recordings
made at the Crocodile Café between 2002 and 2007, well after grunge faded. It documents a time
in Seattle music history when multiple scenes were developing in grunge’s wake led by such bands
as Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, Reggie Watts’ Maktub, and Harvey Danger. The collection
documents touring acts as well, including Yoko Ono, Adam Ant, and Robyn Hitchcock.
Possibly the most significant issue related to the collection: Jim Anderson, the sound engineer
who made the recordings, did not receive permission from the bands before recording them.
Instead, he recorded the artists without their knowledge—so as not to disturb the authenticity of
their performance—and then would tell the bands after the show, asking if they wanted to buy
a CD of the recording. Apparently the bands were unanimously appreciative of his efforts and
would often purchase CDs. Some bands were so impressed with the quality of the recordings that
they went so far as to repackage and duplicate the recording as a commercial release.11
In 2007 Anderson approached me about donating his collection to UW Libraries. Due to the
challenging rights issues attached to the recordings, several UW administrators recommended
that we not accession the gift. Thankfully, working in collaboration with Laurel Sercombe at UW’s
314 • JOHN VALLIER

Ethnomusicology Archives, we managed to bring the collection to UW and to make it accessible

on our archival jukebox, an in-library listening station.
Given the popularity of many of the bands found in the collection, I thought the collection’s
release on the jukebox would be well received by fans and scholars alike. However, as I began
surfacing online feedback about the collection, I was caught off guard. Despite a few positive
blog posts about the collection being made available in this way, the overwhelming reaction from
readers who commented on such posts, and from fans communicating in online forums, was
negative. People loved the collection, but the fact that it was offline and only available in a library
angered many listeners; some openly described plans to steal the recordings. For example, despite
an upbeat post about the donation, “Josh” comments: “Searching through the near-encyclopedic
list of the thousands of hours of footage induces feelings of joy and dread at the prospect of being
able to re-listen to some of my favorite shows I saw at the Crocodile at the expense of listening
while being strapped to a pair of headphones under fluorescent lights.”12 Simply put, fans were far
from universally excited by the idea of having to come into an archive to listen to “their music.”
There were many more comments that put the archive in a less than favorable light, including a
thread where fans planned to break in at night and pull off a “Mission Impossible type maneuver”
to steal the recordings. It was not only fans that expressed frustration with the restrictive nature of
the collection. A scholar who wanted to use parts of the collection in an online exhibit expected to
use the unpublished recordings under the guise of fair use and without permission from perform-
ers. While frustrating at first, these reactions spurred me to join online forums and communicate
the intricacies of the rights issues at play with the collection. Once explained, fans empathized
with the situation and appeared mildly appreciative that the collection would be preserved and
made somewhat accessible. These interactions motivated me to work further with the collector,
fans, bands, and others to make at a portion of the recordings more widely available online.13

Community Archivists
The Bob Nelson Collection contains hundreds of hours of unique 1960s-era folk revival recordings
created in and around the Pacific Northwest. From so-called hootenannies and living room jams, to
radio broadcasts and festival concerts, the recordings reflect Nelson’s lifelong commitment to the
folk music community. Over the years, Nelson’s friends and fellow performers donated their analog
reel-to-reel recordings to him knowing that he was determined to document and digitize the tapes
on his own time and using his own equipment. Nelson was, in essence, his community’s archivist.
As Nelson delved further into his project he began to realize he needed assistance with such
issues as metadata, access, and long-term storage for his digital objects. We connected and agreed
to partner. While I was eager to integrate his collection into the UW local music archive, I had to
become comfortable with the fact that Nelson’s do-it-yourself and grassroots efforts would mean
that certain archival digitization and description standards were not going to be realized. Thank-
fully my colleagues and I worked with Nelson to provide quality control for his metadata and
digital transfers, and to make a portion of the recordings available online. A lesson learned from
this experience is that collaborating with and building the capacity of community archivists is vital
to the success of building rich local music collections. However, for the good of the overall project,
professional archivists may from time to time need to sidestep, or at least postpone, the implemen-
tation of exacting archival standards, standards that could inadvertently kill the project as a whole.

Students
At UW I have also attempted to establish ties between the archive and UW’s own on-campus
community by way of teaching courses on archiving and local music. In these classes students are
introduced to Seattle’s music history. We learn about the city’s history of exclusion, domination,
 PRESERVING THE PAST, ACTIVATING THE FUTURE • 315

rebellion, and consumerism, all through the lens of music from pre-contact to today. Students are
introduced to Seattle’s lesser known—often anonymous—contributors to music scenes, as well as
superstars with worldwide name recognition: Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana,
and Kenny G. For final projects students put their knowledge into practice by documenting an
aspect of local music of their choosing, then proposing why their work should be incorporated
into UW’s collections. Ideally their musical interests and discoveries in and around Seattle become
a part of the archive. The archive, in this way, grows by reflecting the interests of one the primary
communities is it designed to serve.
By enticing students into a class with a topic they are interested in—Seattle music—and then
introducing them to something they are less interested in—archives—I have forged a greater
appreciation for sound recording archives and the discipline of ethnomusicology. At the same
time, I have attempted to democratize the notion of the archive so students know they have the
power to influence change by way of shaping the development of these collections. As one student,
Bahari Watkins, recently wrote in a class I co-taught14 on archiving Seattle hip-hop:

I been told I don’t deserve a place in history

I’m mystified, it’s a mystery
Since the day one I was surrounded by controversy
Just thug music, I was unworthy
My words and lyrics been misunderstood
But like the Black Panthers, I’m good for the hood . . .
Finally moves are bein made in the archives
Define a focus, get the info & source, then open their eyes (Watkins 2016)

For Watkins, and many of his classmates, a hip-hop archive has the power to correct the historical
record and, potentially, be a part of a larger effort to provide reparations for slavery. With energy
and a passion to right past wrongs, these students breathe new life into the potential of the archive
to effect change, picking up on Zinn’s call to action and the more recent work of media artists such
as Sharon Daniel.15 Nonetheless, as with the other collaborations described above, these classes
offer a range of challenges for both students and instructors alike. In particular, limited class time
curtails our ability to adequately discuss the nuances and intricacies of ethnomusicology, Seattle
music history, and archival practice. It also limits to our capacity to, as one student recently wrote
in an evaluation of the course, “listen to more music!”

Road Map for the Future

Despite the issues that community collaborations may raise, such partnerships—be they with local
performers, collectors, record companies, or students—are necessary if we want our archives to
thrive, or merely survive. The passive “build it and they will come” approach to archiving, where
researchers and archivists create collections in the hopes that they will be used, is no longer feasible
as a stand alone approach (especially as university administrators cut budgets across departments
and programs). Active outreach, collaboration, and interaction with community members is needed.
“The safeguarding of musical traditions,” write Seeger and Chaudhuri, “in the future will owe a great
deal to the collaborations of community members and audiovisual archives. With all the problems
that archives have and the resources that they demand, they can be the link between the past and
the future, a place where communities, practitioners and scholars can go to access what is no lon-
ger performed or has changed” (Seeger and Chaudhuri 2015, p. 31). Indeed, as musical traditions
fade and ultimately vanish, archival collaborations can provide the nexus for future works, be they
conservative reproductions or new, genre bending innovations. Such community involvement,
316 • JOHN VALLIER

in turn, is often championed by administrators as examples of how educational institutions are

meeting the needs of citizens both inside and outside of academia.16
As I look back on my colleagues’ and my own collaborative archiving ventures, I wonder what
ultimately makes such projects successful. While each collaboration presents a unique set of chal-
lenges and opportunities, all projects benefit when they are grounded in mutual understanding. As
ethnomusicologists and archivists, we need to make every effort to understand where our partners
are coming from, what their expectations and capabilities are. By the same token, we need be sure
that our partners understand the archivists’ and ethnomusicologists’ expectations, capabilities, and
limitations. This requires critical self-reflection, transparency, open communication, and looking
beyond ourselves to shared goals: empowering our community partners to shape the ways in which
they are represented in our archives and ensuring that these representations, and associated collec-
tions, are preserved/made accessible for generations to come. When we do that, frustrations fade,
celebrations emerge, and a new era of active and reciprocally oriented archiving appear.

Notes
1. As Phillip Bohlman notes somewhat idealistically, “Each modern institution of ethnomusicology supports some form
of archive for the storage and study of data and fosters field study by its staff and students, which in turn enriches the
holdings of the archives: the locus of the archive, therefore, is inextricably bound to the center of theoretical work”
(Bohlman 1988, 38). In reality archives suffer from a perennial lack of funding and support.
2. Jesse Ruskin writes, “whether conceived of as a scientific laboratory, a repository for field research, or a sanctuary
for endangered music, [the ethnomusicology archive] is a space in which researchers exercise the power to represent
culture” (Ruskin 2006).
3. Derrida first delivered “Archive Fever” as a lecture in 1994. He then published it in French in 1995 as Mal d’archive:
une impression freudienne. It was translated into English in 1996.
4. For a comprehensive overview of the development of archival activism from the perspective of archival scholars, see
Vukliš’ and Gilliland “Archival Activism: Emerging Forms, Local Applications” (2016).
5. In a previous paper on this topic (Vallier 2010), I highlight the work of anthropologist Ann Stoler (2002) and archival
theorist Erik Ketelaar 2002) in particular.
6. See www.indiana.edu/~semhome/2010/pdf/SEM%202010%20Program.pdf
7. The International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) defines applied ethnomusicology as an “approach guided by
principles of social responsibility, which extends the usual academic goal of broadening and deepening knowledge
and understanding toward solving concrete problems and toward working both inside and beyond typical academic
contexts.” See www.ictmusic.org/group/applied-ethnomusicology.
8. See Muller 2002; Seeger and Chaudhuri 2004; Ruskin 2006; Seeger 2006; Rancier 2014; Nannyonga-Tamusuza and
Weintraub 2012; Post 2015; Thram 2015; Seeger and Chaudhuri 2015.
9. This is not to say that archival-oriented ethnomusicologists (or, ethnomusicological-oriented archivists) have been
inactive until now (see, for example, Tony Seeger’s seminal “Sound Archiving in Ethnomusicology” article from 1986,
and Judith Gray’s work on and article about the Federal Cylinder Project from 1997). Archivists and ethnomusicolo-
gists—from institutions such as Indiana University, UCLA, the University of Washington, the Library of Congress, and
the Smithsonian—have stuck with their archives throughout less celebrated times. Without their work and dedication,
our archives may have been dismantled, deselected, and forgotten.
10. As archivist Richard Cox notes, “reaching into the community seems like a logical activity, but it is not one that should
be undertaken without some careful thought. Acquiring the records of one group might offend other groups” (Cox
2009, 257).
11. See, for example, Camper Van Beethoven’s “In the Mouth of the Croc” (Pitch-A-Tent Records, 2004).
12. See http://seattle.metblogs.com/2009/08/07/live-from-the-croc-listen-on-aug-11/: accessed July 16, 2016.
13. See https://soundcloud.com/uwlibraries: accessed July 16, 2016.
14. I co-taught this course, Hip-Hop Archiving in the Pacific Northwest, with Dr. Third Andresen.
15. See, in particular, Daniel’s “Hybrid Practices” (2009).
16. Seeger’s and Chaudhuri’s 2015 article is particularly useful for those of us engaged in this work. Their analysis of the four
functions of the archive—acquisition, organization, preservation, and dissemination—and resulting nine practically
minded recommendations of how community partnership can greatly aid these activities are, in effect, a roadmap for
such projects. Their emphasis on the valuable role community partners can play, particularly in the areas of acquisition
and dissemination, is welcomed advice for both beginners and veterans alike.

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and Sound Repatriation in Uganda.” Ethnomusicology, 56(2): 206–233.
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Nettl, Bruno. 2015. The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-Three Discussions. 3rd ed. Urbana; Chicago; Springfield: University
of Illinois Press.
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geschichte_e.htm (accessed May 13, 2015).
Post, Jennifer C. 2015. “Reviewing, Reconstructing and Reinterpreting Ethnographic Data on Musical Instruments in
Archives and Museums.” In Research, Records and Responsibility: Ten Years of PARADISEC, Amanda Harris, Nick
Thieberger, and Linda Barwick, eds., 135–161. Sydney University Press.
Pudor, Heinrich. 1901. “Das Phonogramm-Archiv der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften.” Phonographische Zeitschrift
2: 60.
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sicology, 58(3): 379–404.
Ruskin, Jesse. 2006. “Collecting and Connecting: Archiving Filipino American Music in Los Angeles.” Pacific Review of
Ethnomusicology 11(Winter).
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50(2): 214–235.
Seeger, Anthony. 1986. “The Role of Sound Archives in Ethnomusicology Today.” Ethnomusicology 30(2): 261–276.
Seeger, Anthony, and Shubha Chaudhuri. 2004. Archives for the Future: Global Perspectives on Audiovisual Archives in the
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 19
“Curating Sound Is Impossible”1
Views from the Streets,
Galleries, and Rainforests
Noel Lobley

In an age of choice where the idea of “curation” is applied to music streaming playlists, Facebook
profiles, and restaurant menus, where industry giants like Apple, Netflix, and Amazon deploy and
market curatorial powers of selection for their consuming public, why have some sound experts
argued for sound to be “uncurated”?2 Can we even consider sound and its transient, escaping,
and fluid communicative properties as any kind of object or experience that can be curated? How
might a close tracing of the connective possibilities of ethnographic sound, the music and sound-
scapes closely documented, studied, and preserved by ethnomusicologists, enhance the long term
possibility of sustainable and equitable curatorial practice? Can curation of sound material—the
selection and archiving, displaying, presenting, interpretation, remixing, and experiencing—deepen
an ongoing understanding of the relationships forged through ethnography? By illustrating possible
ways of curating archival collections of music and soundscapes from southern and Central Africa,
I trace some sound stories, following sound fragments and ideas from communities to archives
and onto street corners, into art spaces and rainforests. I explore how responsive sound might be
to the possibilities of curation, and consider how responsible collaboration in this process opens
up creative and ethical possibilities.

Introduction: Curating Sound in an Age of Plenty

If everything is now curated and curatable, how can music and sound be used to develop models
for more collaborative curation, and how can the specificity and localization of some music prac-
tices be highlighted when apps on smartphones can remix and sample almost anything instantly?
The remix tool of the DJ and producer is increasingly being used to circulate recorded fragments
of sound and history. After the hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa donated his hip-hop collection
to Cornell University for preservation in 2007,3 leading next generation artists DJ Shadow and
Cut Chemist could then access this historic collection and subsequently mix the collection live

319
320 • NOEL LOBLEY

as part of the Renegades of Rhythm DJ tour in 2014. Similarly, the John Peel Archive, a vast and
unique popular music collection amassed by a major international broadcasting pioneer from the
1960s until his death in 2004, spans almost every conceivable genre and has now been turned into
an online archive and arts space for invited artists such as dubstep producer Mala to explore and
curate, re-activating the histories in the collections by appealing to new audiences.4
Ethnographic sound has long been interwoven with both the popular and the avant-garde, as
artists and collectors juxtapose different listening practices. Composer, artist, and author David
Toop expertly crafted a DJ mixtape for Radio 3’s Late Junction program in June 2016,5 blending
the diverse sounds of his own recordings of Yanomami shamans made during a trip to the Amazon
in 1978, with Chicago footwork, free improvisation, and Tropicália, to explore what it means to
listen intimately to fragmented sound cultures.
In many ways online streaming is driving these creative responses. Apple Music’s
award-winning “History of Sound” advert traces sound recording technology from 1888 to 2015
inside ninety seconds, cutting between music genres and across continents and cities, drawing
punk, hip-hop, and gramophone listening in India inside its own delivery system that connects
the streaming user to global choice. The user, it seems, is in control of content and can choose to
listen to anything, within Apple’s curatorial streams. “The New Professors,” announces the front
cover of the August 2015 issue of Wired magazine, profiling Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, the minds
behind Beats and Apple Music (Tanz and Pugliese 2015). With production credits for artists as
high profile as Eminem, Bruce Springsteen, and U2, they now position themselves as curators
moving the needle on popular culture, making decisions about the selection, availability, and
delivery of sound recordings.
The age of mass data and limitless choice now redefines the possibilities for curation. Will
Prentice, sound preservationist at the British Library, has argued that if the twentieth century was
the era for an audiovisual memory, then the twenty-first century will be one in which curators
make important decisions about what to leave out of the curatorial frame.6 As recording and
listening have become ubiquitous (Kassabian 2013), recordings can often misrepresent a genre
or practice. David Grubbs (2014), for example, following John Cage’s disdain for recordings,
argues that many new genres from the free and avant-garde music scene in the 1960s—such
as indeterminate music, live electronic music, and free improvisation—were never meant to
be reduced to the fixity of recording, and that it is ironic that many people have now come to
know the genre through the recordings themselves. Thus both recording and curatorial practice
have to some extent become ubiquitous. According to Balzer, “curationism” is the extension of
museum and gallery practice to select, organize, and present material that since the mid 1990s
has now bled far into popular culture. Balzer observes the “acceleration of the curatorial impulse
to become a dominant way of thinking and being” as an imparter of value at both institutional
and individual levels, arguing that ubiquitous curating inevitably devalues a premium role within
museum and gallery practice (2015, 8).
But amid this hyper connectivity of streaming music services and the fingertip availability of
most of the world’s music to anyone who can afford a streaming service and Internet connec-
tion, what role do curators of ethnography have to play? The top down dangers of sampling and
appropriation of ethnographic sound recordings are well known to ethnomusicologists, versed in
Deep Forest and Pygmy Pop moments and stories where ethnographic recordings are sucked into
powerful mainstream currents (Zemp 1996; Feld 1996; White 2011). More recently, two British DJs
kick-started a campaign to redress Richard Spencer, the copyright owner of “Amen, Brother” by the
Winstons, one of the most sampled records of all time and the blueprint for entire sub genres of
drum and bass, and hip-hop. Gregory C. Coleman, the drummer and creator of the “Amen break,”
died in poverty in Atlanta in 2006. Subsequently, DJs Martyn Webster and Steve Theobald set up
a GoFundMe campaign to raise awareness that the Winstons had almost never been paid for the
use of their sound. When Spencer was presented with £24,000 in 2015, Webster and Theobald
 “CURATING SOUND IS IMPOSSIBLE” • 321

considered this to be the beginnings of acknowledgment and redress, necessarily incomplete and
insufficient given that it is estimated that “Amen, Brother” has been sampled in over 2,000 songs.7
As debates about creative commons and arguments against copyrighting bars of music in order
to preserve a richer public domain evolve, ideas and impulses to “uncurate” sound are coming from
the sound art world, in part reflecting a concern about the institutional forces necessarily at play
inside gallery spaces and the effect that a desire to contain sound might have on our experience
of the medium. David Toop, curator of “Sonic Boom: the art of sound,” the first major exhibition
of sound art in the UK held at the Hayward Gallery on London’s South Bank in 2000, is alert to
the very contradictions of this position. With a remit to curate sound for Sonic Boom that was
visually appealing, perhaps inevitable in space designed predominantly for visual art, Toop (2014)
has since urged curators to take sound beyond galleries, observing that their walls and institutions
often limit our experiences of sound.8 However, Toop also acknowledges that some of the close
listening enabled in gallery spaces has been amongst the most intimate listening he has witnessed,
especially in proximity to Max Eastley’s kinetic sound sculptures that bounced and scratched against
the Hayward Gallery’s immense walls.
With the expansion of curation into the digital and scientific realms, curatorial practice is being
both refined and overproduced. Some institutions and curators explore the difficult and often vio-
lent and disruptive knowledge, whether in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission,9
the 9/11 Memorial,10 or the exhibition in public places of other violent pasts (Lehrer et al. 2011).
Many new media artworks can be difficult to classify according to traditional curatorial models,
and as Graham and Cook argue, today the curator is often “acting as a kind of interface between
artist, institution, and audience” (2010, 10). Thinking about the specificity of sound as a medium
and how it may develop curatorial practice that is both socially-responsible and sustainable over
time, might be one way forward.
What role does the ethnomusicologist as curator have to contribute here? It is self-evident that
many communities are recorders themselves, as the role of the ethnomusicologist as external docu-
menter changes. Saharan musicians, for example, self-produce and record their music on their cell
phones and make local videos to accompany themselves, uploading them as soon as they access
Bluetooth or Internet connections.11 DJ/ Rupture reports the ubiquitous sounds of Auto-Tune in
Berber studios in Morocco, noting how quickly technology has been adapted into local styles and
aesthetics (Clayton 2016, 26 ff.). The iconic ethnographic image of Janáček, Francis Densmore,
or Alan Lomax pointing recording devices at people to perform into no longer prevails, but as
soundscape recordist Bernie Krause notes “throughout much of the twentieth century, those of
us in the field were charged with carefully abstracting brief individual sound sources from within
the whole acoustic fabric” (2012, 33).
Will curators permit surgically-excised ethnographic fragments to be mere source material for
today’s culture of remixology (Gunkel 2016), the practice of sourcing small samples and re-building
new work? Technomusicologist Wayne Marshall calls this “World Music 2.0,” a place where the
Internet and digital culture is creating new younger international audiences for music from far
away.12 Ethnomusicologist David Novak argues that the aesthetics and ethos of record labels such as
the Seattle-based Sublime Frequencies—which releases a wide range of ethnographic and popular
recordings from across Africa and Asia and the Middle East—are partly serving to replace the loss
of an analog underground culture in North America by discovering its own nostalgic distortions
elsewhere in the world (2011, 630).
Recent work on sound archiving explores more equitable practices, the building of collabo-
rative models between institutions and communities to enable new models and mixed perspec-
tives for re-studies and sound elicitation (Landau and Topp Fargion 2012). Aaron Fox and Chie
Sakakibara have explored how a relatively small collection of Inupiaq recordings made by Laura
Boulton in Barrow in Alaska in the 1940s and held in the archive at Columbia University Center
for Ethnomusicology can intersect powerfully with local communities, historians, and heritage
322 • NOEL LOBLEY

centers (Walker 2009). Folklorist Stephen Wade (2012) explores the resonant legacies of a selec-
tion of 1930s field recordings made for the Library of Congress, investing much time in tracing
back family members and friends of the deceased musicians, recompensing communities where
commercial reward from advertising was due, bringing palpable human stories and dimensions
together with the existing ethnographic fragments.
Curation patterns are emerging that actively blend sound recordings with broader commu-
nities. Repatriation projects developed by the Association for Cultural Equity working with the
Alan Lomax archive has led to an ongoing process of recordings being returned to Italy, Spain, the
United States, and the Caribbean.13 Similarly, soundscape ecology projects such as Bernie Krause’s
The Great Animal Orchestra and his mapping of “wild soundscapes” (Krause 2016, 2015, 2012),
are actively designed to map changes in the way environments sound and how this affects interac-
tions between humans and other species. Evidence is presented as recordings, texts and explored
in interactive art installations.14 The London Sound Survey is developing a multi-layered sound
map of the UK’s capital, designed to be crowd sourced and to explore issues such as identity, class,
ethnicity, and migration through sonic records of localized places.15
The role of the ethnographic sound curator will be to consider long-term relationships between
archival fragments and the communities from where the music and sound can be traced, collab-
orating and co-curating with communities, and exploring the different types of sound stories that
can be told and shared through active engagement with sonic and social histories.

Beyond Hush and Decorum: Sustainable Sound Curation

“I’m not sure,” writes popular music critic and scholar Simon Reynolds, “music of any kind really
works in a museum, a place of hush and decorum” (2011, 3). But why should music and sound suit
online streaming and organization and be ill-suited for appearing in galleries and museums? Many
examples of music exhibitions in museums and galleries—especially of popular music, including
artists of the caliber of Björk—have received reams of negative press, and major enterprises such as
the National Centre for Pop Music in Sheffield (UK) failed to attract sufficient audiences to avoid
nose-diving into administration inside fifteen months. However, it is equally possible that music
in museums, both archived and designed, exhibited and delivered, might be one of the richest sites
for the evolution of its ongoing related biographies, offering a framework for sustainable interactive
communication between institutions and communities of music makers.
Museum curators often consider objects to be active items, repositories of distributed memories
and intentions, at times extracted violently and inequitably from communities but not divorced
from them (Peers and Brown 2003). Objects such as Congolese nail fetishes, for example, acquire
their active power through use, the practice of having nails driven into them, to activate prayers.16
Similarly, ethnographic recordings should be thought of as active, living objects, records that acquire
power and significance when they are released from storage shelves and storage and circulate again
among people in social spaces and social mechanisms that are usually the creative grounds for
musical production.
Sound curation today does not mean merely the documentation or the preservation but the
active building in of community involvement and experience, an emphasis that is increasingly held
in the world of museum studies and exhibitions. Sound repatriation projects, aimed at returning
recordings that have often been made by outsiders to the communities recorded, is a growing
field, including a range of initiatives to build links between recorded heritage and contemporary
community practices. But what does it actually mean to repatriate sound, given that the term itself
has specific etymological relationship to returning a person to his or her native land? In order to
explore this question, I now consider two ongoing case studies developing long-term relationships
between recording collections, institutions, and communities, projects that explore the latent
 “CURATING SOUND IS IMPOSSIBLE” • 323

affordances and possibilities of ethnographic archives, engaging with colonial anthropological

legacies and post-colonial futures.

Hugh Tracey, the International Library of African Music, and Curating Local

Having been engaged with the delivery of recorded sound for my entire career—in the music
industry, and as a performer, DJ, and events producer—I decided to combine curatorial train-
ing in galleries and museums with ethnography and artistic practice to explore the potential of
re-engaging ethnographic archives. In my own practice, the possibilities of curating sound beyond
institutional walls and archives was first imagined and realized through an ongoing collaboration
with local South African musicians, artists, and activists in the townships and villages of the
Eastern Cape province.
The International Library of African Music (ILAM) is the world’s largest archive of ethnographic
recordings,17 established in 1954 by Hugh Tracey, an English entrepreneur and keen amateur musi-
cologist who arrived in Zimbabwe—Southern Rhodesia at the time—in 1921, to join his brother on
a tobacco farm. Tracey was inspired by the songs and instruments of the local Karanga musicians
and began to pay close attention to the artistry, expressions, and knowledge conveyed through local
music. The main body of ILAM’s recorded content was collected by Tracey between 1921 and the
1970s, amounting to more than 30,000 recordings that were made in sixteen different countries
across sub-Saharan Africa during nineteen dedicated recording tours. Operating firmly in the
salvaging paradigm, Tracey tried to map a record of highly distinctive music-making, traditions
that he feared were threatened and altering irreparably through mass rural to urban migration
as mining companies lured extraordinary numbers of people away from village homes onto their
compounds and into townships for extensive periods of the year.
ILAM’s recordings document an extraordinary range of local music-making practices, instruments,
stories, and vocal styles representing 179 different languages. While immersed in listening, it became
clear to me that the ambition and scope of the recording project had itself become an archival project
with limited circulation and availability (Lobley 2010).18 Tracey dreamed of mapping and codifying
the entire range music-making of sub-Saharan Africa, recording and transcribing to extract its logic;
of building teams of researchers and linking to other institutions and industries to help disseminate
recordings. He believed that the records would promote the music internationally, which to some
extent proved true, as many libraries and universities received copies of the Sound of Africa and the
Music of Africa compilation series. He also believed that a study of the musical arts within a wider study
of the arts in Africa could show how music might be used to improve social conditions, indigenous
welfare, and even race relations within an increasingly segregated country and continent.
I was also struck by the fact that, save for an updated series of CDs by the independent record
label SWP Records in Utrecht,19 there seemed at the time to be little ongoing dissemination of
the recordings. Any analysis and responses to recordings were almost always from international
academics, musicians, and tourists, and it was very difficult to detect much meaningful ongoing
use being made of the recordings by local African audiences.
Why was this, I asked friend and collaborator Nyakonzima Tsana (“Nyaki”), a professional artist
and dancer from Grahamstown whom I first met at a workshop where he was teaching break-
dancing to youths in the townships around Grahamstown. I had invited Nyaki into the archive
to listen to the 185 Xhosa recordings that Tracey has made in the nearby regions of the Eastern
Cape in the mid and late 1950s, including some recordings made in Grahamstown itself and some
nearby villages. While spending much time with local musicians and artists in Grahamstown and
its townships, connecting with local hip-hop, house, reggae, gospel, rock, and fusion scenes, as
well as more traditional ceremonies such as the imigidi initiations for young boys about to become
adults, I wanted to learn from Nyaki whether the recordings might resonate in the contemporary
324 • NOEL LOBLEY

world of the Grahamstown townships. Would people be interested today in Xhosa music recorded
in the 1950s, considering that some of the songs, sounds, and instruments seemed to be no longer
performed? Nyaki was adamant that many people would be interested and that the problem of
connection was not a matter of content or the date, but rather the method of exposing or sharing
the recordings.
“Yo! This is our anthem,” immediately exclaimed Nyaki, when first hearing the recording Tracey
made of Somagwaza among a group of Mpondo people in 1959. Somagwaza, Nyaki assured me,
was known and sung all the time today in his communities, but that no-one would even know that
it had been recorded fifty years earlier. Accordingly, together we began to plan ways to connect
recorded heritage to local social and artistic practice, in ways that would be relevant, accessible,
and sustainable within the local social mechanisms for music and cultural performance and
transmission. Nyaki’s first idea was to call together a collective of young local poets, storytellers,
musicians, and activists that he regularly worked with, and to hire a donkey cart for traveling
through the townships and performing announcements. The artists learned some of the songs in
recordings, played them using tape players on the back of the cart, and sang along with songs and
encouraged people to follow them. They then set up a sound system in front of the public library
in Joza township in order to DJ some of Tracey’s recordings alongside other genres of music such
a hip-hop, gospel, house, ragga, and kwaito.
The re-performance of field recordings on the streets by young DJs and artists seemed to
modernize the way historical recordings might be perceived, and when mixed within impromptu
performances of poetry and hip-hop, drew audiences with a wide range of ages, from young chil-
dren to adults and elders. The artists told stories about their own art practices, then decided to play
recordings of traditional Xhosa bows such as the uhadi and umrhubhe. Quite spontaneously, they
then asked the audiences whether this was their traditional Xhosa music, whether people know
the songs and sounds, whether they wanted more access to the recordings, and solicited ideas
from others as to how the recordings could be used. Some elders recognized sounds from their
youth growing up in nearby villages—such as the mbayizelo teen dance with harmonicas—while
other musicians struggled to name the instrumental sounds of bows they rarely heard any more;
many told stories about ceremonial songs, demonstrated their dances, and launched into full and
expansive speeches about the importance of respecting Xhosa music and culture. When DJ-ed on
street corners in townships, field recordings became live catalysts for people to talk about both the
strength and loss of Xhosa identity—Often comparing their own practices to other groups such
as Zulu people—and led elders and activists to call each other and children into action that might
take ownership over the recordings of Xhosa heritage.
Having tested the value of broadcasting field recordings in public on the street, the next stage for
curation—the building of sustainable relationships between institutions and communities—was to
expand this method across a full year, taking recordings into homes and yards, schools, community
workshops, bars, shops, and taxis, in collaboration with local artists and community members,
many of whom rapidly developed a curatorial desire to engage with their own recorded heritage
and to increase their sense of local ownership (Lobley 2012b).
Sound curation on the streets and in the homes and schools of the townships of Grahamstown
required a network of permissions and trust that could only be enabled by local artists and other
community members who were respected by elders, teachers, and parents and subsequently
allowed to bring the recordings into their communities. The shining of local knowledge and prac-
tice into a colonial sound archive both critiqued and expanded the entire remit of archiving and
curating. Local critiques were strong. Who was Hugh Tracey? Why did he record Xhosa music?
Who benefitted from these recordings, and how, and why? Why did more Xhosa people not know
about this history, and what could be done with this resource? Similarly, many artists and activists
rapidly realized they now had access to a major resource to expand their own artistic practices.
For example, a group of young actors listened carefully to all of the words in Xhosa recordings and
 “CURATING SOUND IS IMPOSSIBLE” • 325

extracted morals. This group of young boys and girls adapted the themes of Dlalani—a song about
courting—into a play about the importance of treating the opposite sex with respect.
Recordings and museum objects in general often drift a long way from non-institutional audi-
ences, reproducing the divides between those with access and resources and infrastructure, and
the local realities that, as in the case of the townships in Grahamstown, clearly lacked the initial
connections with, or even awareness of, institutional archival practice. A locally-engaged curation
revealed the real potential for archival collections to be curated by local artists and other experts,
enabling access and creative ideas, and the conditions for local knowledge to remain an active and
evolving contemporary part of the curated record.

Sound Galleries

The Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM), the University of Oxford’s museum of anthropology and world
archaeology, has been collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting ethnographic objects, images, and
recordings for more than a century.20 Within its sound archive,21 the PRM owns the world’s largest
collection of ethnographic recordings of BaAka music and soundscapes from the Central African
Republic.22 Recorded by American recordist Louis Sarno between 1985 and the mid 2000s, the
collection is an attempt to document the entire range of music making of a single community of
BaAka hunter-gatherers across more than a generation (Lobley 2012a). Significantly, Sarno wanted
to record music in its local context, experimenting with a range of recoding perspectives within
the rainforests and roadside villages that create extensive audio documents of music-making, and
the sounds of the everyday life of a community’s engagement with its environment (Sarno 1993).
Polyphonic yeyi vocal lines have been recorded as their resonance shapes and is shaped by rainforest
canopies, while net-hunting signals and songs document hunters moving through environments as
they communicate to each other the tracks and locations of animals. Sarno has also made multiple
recordings of all known spirit songs and dances, documenting some across days and even weeks.
Like Hugh Tracey, Sarno maintains that this collection is for the benefit of the BaAka communities
who have been recorded, especially if any commercial use is made of the collection.
But how can a digitized collection of sounds from tapes and DATs stored on a museum server as
high quality WAVs and compressed MP3s remain connected with a rainforest community whose
own performative practice and lifestyles usually owe little to the notion of audio-visual recording
or archiving? Can these recordings even matter to a community whose personal relationship to
music exists in performance and in context, with very little relationship to media beyond the
occasional mobile phone, or when people make trips to the capital Bangui or other larger towns?
As a sound curator, the PRM’s public galleries offered a productive and creative space to decol-
onize the museum and experiment with ethnographically-informed design and delivery. Through
ongoing research into the music and soundscapes documented in Sarno’s collection, I paid close
attention to the spatial qualities of Sarno’s recordings, such as the relationship between music and
movement through the rainforest; for example, when women walk through rainforests and sing
yeyi to communicate with each other across space, or when men sound as they move to hunt small
game, using signals to startle and drive blue duikers and other bush meat into the reaches of their
widely strung nets. It seemed that one way to begin activating an archival record to put the focus
back on the BaAka communities whose music is represented, was to shape and build the recordings
into immersive sound installations that would both convey a sense of sound as something to be
experienced through immersive listening, while at the same time highlighting the flattening and
reduction of a community or culture that seems inevitable while recording
Together with Nathaniel Mann, artist and Embedded composer in residence at the PRM,23 we
designed a series of “Sound Gallery” events, immersing the PRM’s public spaces in interactive
rainforest soundscapes built from the recordings made by Sarno (Lobley 2014). We designed the
delivery of multi-layered soundscapes using multiple surround-sound speakers positioned at
326 • NOEL LOBLEY

various heights throughout gallery spaces and within this immersion created localized moments
of listening using iPads and other intimate sound sources. Our focus was on listening, movement,
and overlapping sounds as we tried to convey some of the musical and sonic principles in the
recordings. The sounds of musicians improvising on the mondumé harp-zither and mbyo notched
flute within night soundscapes of pulsing and croaking cicadas and frogs were broadcast in the
darkened galleries, inviting audience members to listen and explore with low-powered torches.
Sound Galleries was designed to bring an immersive dimension back to recordings, widening their
sonic content into re-spatialised moving sound installations that enabled audiences to experience
them both intimately and viscerally.24
We also designed an interactive “visualizer” to project images into the galleries from Sarno’s
collection of photographs of the BaAka members of the community at Yandoumbe, the settlement
in the extreme south west of the Central African Republic. Hundreds of images of the everyday
lives of the BaAka people that Sarno lives and records with were projected behind a rolling sound
wave display of the soundscape in the galleries. The sound wave was a visual representation of the
immersive BaAka soundscape being delivered through the surround-sound speakers, mixed with
the sounds of the audience moving within this as they were amplified by microphones positioned
in the galleries that fed back into the overall recorded soundscape. As people realized that their own
sounds affected the soundscape sufficiently to change the sound waves displayed on the visualizer,
some started to clap, laugh, and sing in order to watch their own audible input “spike” the amplitude
of the sound wave on the visualizer, which in turn altered the amount of the image visible behind
the sound wave. Throughout, the BaAka community remained projected as images, flattened and
partly buried behind the moving sound waves that were a live mix of their recorded archive and
the live sounds generated by movement in the galleries. Their absent role within the gallery space
was both literally and metaphorically represented.
Yet unbeknownst to the thousands of visitors in the PRM galleries, several BaAka community
members were also watching them. These community members had walked for an hour through
the forest to reach the World Wildlife Fund office in Bayanga, their nearest town. From there,
they were able to access a satellite phone connection and watch a live audio-visual stream of this
installation and performance of their archive. While ongoing political violence in the Central
African Republic had prevented ethnographic fieldwork at the time, the virtual link-up offered a
small window in which the sound experience could briefly be made collective and connected. It is
the ongoing role of the ethnographic sound curator to expand and push such possibilities, so that
sound experiences and conversations move freely back and forth across and between archives,
galleries, communities, and other accessible spaces.

Conclusion: Curating Sound Stories

Let’s expand notion of curation beyond (but not excluding) archives and gallery spaces.
Ethnographically-informed sound curation is a vital form of story-telling, re-activating audio
recordings as living resources. If ethnographic sound has been recorded by ethnomusicologists,
anthropologists, or other collectors and the explicit intention has been to benefit the communi-
ties recorded—and especially if that community has been recorded by someone external to the
culture—then future sound curation is a matter of exploring longer-term relationships between
archives, institutions, and communities aimed at sustainable exchanges. Ethnographic recordings
become flattened fragments and windows into particular musics and soundscapes, as well as the
relationships between a community and a recordist and other audiences. Many ethnographic
recordings swell with latent possibilities for activation, re-performance, and re-socialisation. This
can be explored both through sound and installation design in gallery spaces, online, and further
afield, and by entering the hands of empowered local artists and community members who can often
bring non-institutional insights to share and enlighten frozen moments of recorded relationships.
 “CURATING SOUND IS IMPOSSIBLE” • 327

The ongoing curation of Hugh Tracey’s recordings on the streets of Xhosa townships in the
Eastern Cape of South Africa is intended to bridge some of the established gaps between extracted
recordings, institutional preservation, and local communities by collaborating with empowered
local artistic practice that becomes part of the evolving sound stories. Local social mechanisms
that actually drive musical transmission slowly enter collaborative conversations with institutional
archival practices.
The ongoing curation of Sound Galleries starts by first addressing the distance and power dif-
ferential between institutions and remote communities without any access to archival resources.
Metropolitan gallery spaces are activated by sound to expose general audiences to multiple aspects of
BaAka music and sound making, such as the importance of rainforest acoustics and the relationships
between sound and movement and between music and the sounds of other species. By presenting
these immersive sonic experiences with interactive visual metaphors that “flatten” communities,
listeners are reminded that the transient, reproducible, and portable properties of sound can leave
curatorial practice far removed from local communities, but that the same properties can also allow
for local stories and knowledge to be shared and strengthened across time and space.

Notes
1. I am very grateful to David Toop, listener, composer, author, and sound curator for sharing this provocation that he
has developed in conversation with artist, scholar and curator Salome Voegelin and others (personal communication).
2. See, for example, Salome Voegelin’s position here http://salomevoegelin.net/public_html/salomevoegelin.net/uncurating_sound.
html (accessed 3rd October 2016)
3. http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/hiphop/ (accessed 3rd October 2016)
4. www.johnpeelarchive.com/ (accessed 3rd October 2014)
5. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0400rhp (accessed 3rd October 2014)
6. www.thewire.co.uk/video/watch_exclusive-visit-to-the-british-library_s-sound-archive (accessed 3rd October 2014)
7. www.whosampled.com/The-Winstons/Amen,-Brother/ (accessed 3rd October 2014)
8. For the wider context for Toop’s keynote address, please see Sound Art Curating Conference website http://ocradst.
org/soundartcurating/ (accessed 3rd October 2016)
9. For example, see www.districtsix.co.za/ (accessed 3rd October 2016)
10. www.911memorial.org/ (accessed 3rd October 2016)
11. https://sahelsounds.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-saharan-cellphones (accessed 3rd October 2016)
12. http://wayneandwax.com/?p=2527 (accessed 3rd October 2014)
13. www.culturalequity.org/ace/ce_ace_dissemprogram.php (accessed 3rd October 2016)
14. www.wildsanctuary.com/ and www.legrandorchestredesanimaux.com/en (both accessed 3rd October 2016)
15. www.soundsurvey.org.uk (accessed 3rd October 2016)
16. www.prm.ox.ac.uk/mavungu.html (accessed 3rd October 2016)
17. www.ru.ac.za/ilam/ (accessed 3rd October 2016)
18. Beginning in 2008 during the first year of fieldwork researching the contemporary relevance of Tracey’s recordings.
19. www.swp-records.com/ (accessed 3rd October 2016)
20. www.prm.ox.ac.uk/ (accessed 3rd October 2016)
21. http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/reel2real/ (accessed 3rd October 2016)
22. http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/reel2real/index.php/collections-sarno.html (accessed 3rd October 2016)
23. http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/reel2real/index.php/our-composer-in-residence.html (accessed 3rd October 2016)
24. http://pittrivers-sound.blogspot.com/2014/05/curating-sound-galleries-at-pitt-rivers.html (accessed 3rd October 2016)

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 Contributors

Samuel Araújo is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where
he has been coordinating joint research projects with local activists and residents in the city´s
favelas, and was Tinker Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago in 2015. He has published
articles in book collections and in Yearbook for Traditional Music, Latin American Music Review,
Ethnomusicology, Transcultural Music Review, and Diogène. Other works include Guerra-Peixe:
Estudos de folclore e música popular urbana, Editora da UFMG, 2007, and a co-edited volume, Música
em debate; perspectivas interdisciplinares (Music under debate; interdisciplinary perspectives),
MaudX Ed., 2008). He has served as president of the Brazilian Association for Ethnomusicology,
as well as on the Executive Board of the International Council for Traditional Music and on the
SEM Council.
Bernd Brabec de Mori received his PhD in musicology from the University of Vienna. He special-
ized in indigenous music from the Ucayali valley in Eastern Peru, where he spent some years among
the indigenous group Shipibo-Konibo. Since 2006, he has been working at the Phonogrammarchiv,
Vienna, and later as a research and teaching assistant at the Centre for Systematic Musicology, and
as senior scientist at the Institute of Ethnomusicology, University of Music and Performing Arts,
Graz. His publications contribute to the research areas of Western Amazonian indigenous music,
arts, and history as well as the complex of music, ritual, and altered states.
Martin Clayton is Professor in Ethnomusicology at Durham University. His publications include
the books Time in Indian Music (Oxford University Press, 2000), The Cultural Study of Music
(Routledge, second edition, 2012) and Experience and Meaning in Music Performance (Oxford
University Press, 2013).
Aaron Corn is Professor and Director of the National Centre for Aboriginal Language and Music
Studies at the University of Adelaide.
Ethnomusicologist Beverley Diamond is Professor Emerita at Memorial University of
Newfoundland where she founded and directed the Research Centre for the Study of Music,
Media, and Place (MMaP). She has contributed to Canadian cultural historiography, to feminist
music research, and to Indigenous studies. Her research has explored constructs of technological
mediation, transnationalism, and, most recently, concepts of reconciliation and healing.

329
330 • CONTRIBUTORS

Rebecca Dirksen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at

Indiana University and a 2016– 2017 Radcliffe Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
at Harvard University. Working across the spectrum of musical genres in Haiti and its diaspora,
her research concerns cultural approaches to development, creative responses to crisis and disaster,
dialogues of sustainability and diverse environmentalisms, intangible cultural heritage and cultural
policy, and applied/engaged scholarship. Her work has been published in the Yearbook for Traditional
Music, Ethnomusicology Review, the Bulletin du Bureau d’Ethnologie de la Republique d’Haïti,
Conjonction, and elsewhere. Dirksen has served as Senior Editor for the six-volume Dictionary
of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography, curating entries on Haitian and Francophone
Caribbean cultural figures.
Frode Fjellheim is a Saami composer and musician from Norway. She leads the popular band,
Transjoik.

Kirsty Gillespie is currently Senior Curator (Anthropology) at the Museum of Tropical Queensland
and a member of staff at James Cook University, Townsville, Australia. She received her PhD from
the Australian National University in 2008 for research into the music of the Duna people of Papua
New Guinea (PNG). Kirsty is the author of Steep Slopes: Music and Change in the Highlands of
Papua New Guinea (ANU Press, 2010) amongst other publications. Since 2007 Kirsty has worked
with the people of the Lihir Island Group, PNG, on a cultural-heritage program as they experience
large-scale gold mining in their islands.

Catherine Grant, Senior Lecturer, Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, Brisbane,

Australia, is recipient of the Australian Future Justice medal for her research and advocacy on
cultural sustainability. Her book Music Endangerment: How Language Maintenance Can Help was
published by Oxford University Press in 2014.
Catherine Ingram is a postdoctoral fellow at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and visiting
expert with the Chinese Music Ecology Research Team, Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Since
2004 she has conducted extensive ethnographic research on big song and other Kam musical genres.
Her numerous publications center on Kam minority music while also encompassing issues con-
cerning gender, the environment, language-music connections, digital fieldwork, anthropological
studies of “tradition” and notions of intangible cultural heritage. She is co-author of Environmental
Preservation and Cultural Heritage in China (Commonground, 2013) and co-editor of Taking Part
in Music: Case Studies in Ethnomusicology (Aberdeen University Press, 2013).
Benjamin D. Koen (孔青山, 博士, 特聘 教授) is Distinguished Professor of Medical
Ethnomusicology and Medical Anthropology at Xiamen University, China. He is widely pub-
lished and author of the Oxford University books Beyond the Roof of the World: Music, Prayer and
Healing in the Pamir Mountains and The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology. Koen is
an acclaimed jazz saxophonist, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist, specializing in meditation
and music-sound healing.
Cheryl L’Hirondelle is a Métis/Cree media artist and musician who comes from the Canadian
northern plains.
Noel Lobley is an ethnomusicologist and sound curator who works across the disciplines of music,
anthropology, and sound studies to develop a series of international curatorial residencies. He has
collaborated with musicians, sound artists, DJs, composers and performers in South Africa, the
UK and throughout Europe and the United States to develop creative and responsible ways for
recordings to be experienced in spaces ranging from art galleries and museums to schools and
township street corners. He is currently Assistant Professor in the McIntire Department of Music
at the University of Virginia.
 CONTRIBUTORS • 331

Moana Maniapoto is a Maori singer-songwriter from New Zealand. Her band, Moana & the Tribe,
was formed in 2002.
Allan Marett is Emeritus Professor of Musicology at the University of Sydney. He has published
many studies on Australian aboriginal song and dance.
Kiri Miller is Associate Professor of Music (Ethnomusicology) at Brown University, where she is
also affiliated with the departments of American Studies and Theatre and Performance Studies.
Her work focuses on digital media, virtual performance, and participatory culture. Miller is the
author of Traveling Home: Sacred Harp Singing and American Pluralism (Illinois, 2008); Playing
Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance (Oxford, 2012); and Playable Bodies:
Dance Games and Intimate Media (Oxford, 2017).
Taqralik Partridge is an Inuit throat singer from Northern Quebec who combines popular music
and traditional Inuit genres in her performances.
John-Carlos Perea is an ethnomusicologist and associate professor of American Indian Studies
in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, as well as a GRAMMY award
winning performer.
Ulla Pirttijärvi is a Sami joik singer from Finland. She performs traditional joik music with Western
arrangements of contemporary instruments.
Jennifer C. Post is currently Lecturer at University of Arizona School of Music and Honorary
Senior Research Fellow at University of Western Australia. Recent publications include articles
on Mongolian Kazakh music in Ethnomusicology Forum and Yearbook for Traditional Music, in
Current Directions in Ecomusicology (A. Allen and K. Dawe, eds., Routledge, 2015), and in Music
and Sustainable Cultures (T. Cooley, ed., University of Illinois Press, forthcoming). Her forthcoming
monograph Wood, Skin and Bone: Musical Instrument Production and Challenges to Local and Global
Ecosystems, features case studies on Mongolian and Central Asian musical instrument production
(University of Illinois Press).
Kay Kaufman Shelemay is the G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and Professor of African
and African American Studies at Harvard University and a past president of the Society for
Ethnomusicology. Author of many books and articles, in 2015, she published both the third edition
of her textbook, Soundscapes. Exploring Music in a Changing World, and an edited volume of essays,
Creating the Ethiopian Diaspora: Perspectives from Across the Disciplines (with Steven Kaplan). She
spent the 2015–2016 academic year as the Marta Sutton Weeks Fellow at the Stanford Humanities
Center writing a book about musicians from the African Horn in global motion.
Michael B. Silvers is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, where he was a 2015–2017 Junior Fellow of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive
Theory. He teaches courses on music and ecology, Brazilian music, music, gender, and sexuality, and
ethnomusicological theory and methods and is currently completing a book project on music and
its relationship to the sociocultural and environmental effects of drought in the Brazilian Northeast.
Per Niila Stålka is a Swedish Saami joiker from the Sirge’s Sami village with an interest in building
an archives of Saami musical traditions.
Henry Stobart is Reader in Music/Ethnomusicology in the Music Department of Royal Holloway,
University of London. He has published widely on the music of the Bolivian Andes. His early
work primarily focused on rural indigenous perspectives, but more recent research has stressed
wider cultural politics, the impact of digital technologies, music video production and piracy, and
heritage declaration issues. His books include the monograph Music and the Poetics of Production
in the Bolivian Andes (Ashgate, 2006) and the edited volumes Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media
332 • CONTRIBUTORS

(co-edited with Thomas Hilder and Shzr Ee Tan, Boydell & Brewer 2017), The New (Ethno)
Musicologies (Scarecrow, 2008), Knowledge and Learning in the Andes: Ethnographic Perspectives
(co-edited with Rosaleen Howard, Liverpool UP 2002), and Sound (co-edited with Patricia Kruth,
Cambridge UP, 2000).
John Vallier is an archivist and ethnomusicologist at the University of Washington (UW). He
studied anthropology at UC Santa Cruz and ethnomusicology at UCLA. At UW he curates the
ethnomusicology archives and teaches on a range of topics, including Seattle music, remix studies,
and sound/video archives. He has published essays for European Meetings in Ethnomusicology,
Oxford University Press, the Music Library Association, the International Association of Sound and
Audiovisual Archives, among others. Before coming to UW, he was the ethnomusicology archivist
at UCLA and a drummer for various indie-rock and experimental music projects.
Amanda Villepastour is an ethnomusicologist in the School of Music, Cardiff University, UK.
Drawing on two decades of fieldwork in Nigeria and Cuba, her analyses have encompassed the
ethnographic, musicological, organological, linguistic, and dance aspects of Yoru`bá orisha music
and religion. Villepastour’s wide interests can be found across a range of publications, including her
monograph Ancient Text Messages of the Yoru`bá Ba`tá Drum (Ashgate, 2010) and edited collection
The Yoruba God of Drumming: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Wood that Talks (University Press of
Mississippi, 2015), the latter of which received a commendation in the British for Ethnomusicology
Book Prize (2016).
Chuen-Fung Wong is Associate Professor of Music at Macalester College, where he teaches courses
in ethnomusicology, world music, and Chinese music. His research focuses on the modern per-
formance of traditional Uyghur music in northwest China, particularly in relation to the rising
Chinese and Uyghur nationalisms in the twentieth century and beyond.
Abigail Wood is senior lecturer in ethnomusicology in the Department of Music, School of Arts,
University of Haifa. Her research is primarily concerned with musical life in urban spaces, from
contemporary Jewish musics to the reflection of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the contested
soundscapes of Jerusalem’s Old City. Her current research focuses on musical practices at Palestinian
Arab weddings in northern Israel.
 Index

aesthetics 25, 54, 61, 97–8, 120, 136, 143, 162, 186–7, 209, Caribbean x, 187, 217, 267, 269, 322
233–5, 242–4, 276–7, 313, 321 Central African Republic 4, 10, 325–6
Agawu, Kofi 3, 9, 270–2, 285 Chaudhuri, Shubha 308, 315–16
agency x, 7–8, 181–94, 200, 276, 286, 290, 294, 296 Chile 43–4
Angola 285 China x, 5, 7, 38, 53–63, 122, 141–159, 176–8
anthropology ix, 6, 8, 68–9, 82–4, 90, 95, 112–13, 192, Chomsky, Noam 270, 274
243, 273, 286, 293, 309–10, 323–6 choreography 43, 269–70, 276, 282, 289–96, 298, 301
applied anthropology 6, 68–9, 82 Clayton, Martin 3, 9, 250–1, 259, 264, 285
applied ethnomusicology ix–x, xiii, 1, 4–7, 10–11, 67–79, climate change ix, 7, 161–3, 174–8
81–96, 97–110, 111–23, 310–11, 316 cognition x, 6, 9, 186, 192
appropriation 17–20, 28, 31, 32, 57, 63, 320–1 cognitive studies 8–9, 70, 111–13, 115, 183, 250, 270, 274,
Araújo, Samuel 6, 11, 31, 71, 73–4, 76, 77 276–7
archaeology 235, 236–7, 310, 325 Cohen, Judah 6, 112
archives x, 9–10, 19–20, 33, 70, 72, 77, 86, 108, 143, 157, collaboration 3–4, 6, 10–11, 17–34, 37, 40, 67–79, 90–2,
209, 227, 307–17, 319–28 104, 108, 113, 143, 161–79, 307–17, 319–28
Australia 3, 20, 24–5, 29–32, 70–1, 84 collaborative ethnomusicology 3, 10–12
authenticity 55, 62–3, 127–8, 137, 284, 313 collaborative management 8
Averill, Gage 8–9, 211, 216–18, 220, 226–7, 287 commodification x, 4–5, 19–23, 67–9
comparative musicology xi, 2, 6, 308–9
Babiracki, Carol 3 Condry, Ian 49
Bakan, Michael 6 conflict x, 6, 11, 30, 41–9, 200, 234, 239, 243
Barney, Katelyn 3 Cooley, Timothy 2, 11, 77
Barz, Gregory 2, 6, 11, 77, 112 copyright 4–5, 17–34, 35–52, 71, 74, 182, 320–1
Bates, Eliot 1, 184, 192 Corn, Aaron 5, 11, 20, 25, 33
Becker, Judith 112, 273, 276, 284 Cuba 4, 9, 267–88
Benin 268 curation x, 9, 10, 13, 319–28
Blacking, John 1, 69, 181, 270, 274
Bohlman, Philip 3, 11, 232, 316 decolonization 3, 31, 35–6, 325
Bolivia 5, 35–52, 162 DeFrantz Thomas E. 291
Bollen, Jonathan 291, 294, 301 Densmore, Francis 321
Born, Georgina 7–8 Derrida, Jacques 309–10, 316
Bosse, Johanna 291, 302 Descola, Philippe 182, 185, 188, 192
Boulton, Laura 321–2 Diamond, Beverley 5, 10, 33
boundaries 2–4, 7–8, 70, 90, 92, 167, 172, 174, 197, diaspora 8, 98, 123, 197, 199–202, 207–10, 229, 267–8,
199–201, 208–9, 219, 243, 258–60, 271 272, 281, 283–5, 287–8
Bourdieu, Pierre 76, 270, 293 Dirksen, Rebecca 4, 8–9, 220
Brabec de Mori, Bernd 7–8, 182, 185–7, 189–90, 192 disciplinary boundaries 2–4, 90, 192
Brazil 6–7, 11, 52, 67–79, 127–39, 162, 268, 286
Buchanan, Donna 53–4 ecological knowledge 7, 17, 127–40, 141–60,
Butler, Judith 292, 301 161–80
economic change 7, 35, 97–110, 132–3, 219–20
Cambodia 97–110 economic impact 22, 35, 163
Canada x, 21, 23, 25–6, 28, 32, 152, 194, 198, 209 economic stability 49–50, 176–7

333
334 • INDEX

economy 7, 22, 35–6, 40, 69, 82, 132–3, 161–5, 200–1, indigenous knowledge 3–5, 7, 10–11, 17–34, 35–52, 57,
219–21, 224, 228 62, 70–1, 112, 114, 127–8, 137, 142, 151–2, 161–3,
education 3–4, 11, 28, 63, 70–1, 82, 90, 93, 101, 103–4, 177–9, 181–2, 185–91, 209, 220, 279, 311, 323
177, 228, 273, 284, 301 Indonesia 184, 311
Ellis, Catherine 64, 70–1, 77 Ingram, Catherine 7, 142, 147–8, 155, 157
embodiment x, 4, 9, 53–64, 112, 115–18, 185, 190, 234, intangible cultural heritage (ICH) 5, 32, 98–9, 106–8,
238–9, 249–66, 269–70, 272–3, 284, 289–304, 309–10 141, 157
emotion 7–8, 11, 103, 111–23, 131–2, 152, 155–6, 167, Israel x, 209, 231–45
186–7, 211, 238, 240, 249, 276 Italy 322
entrainment 117, 191, 263–4, 275, 285
environmental conditions 163 Japan 4
environmental degradation x, 7, 128–9, 162–3, 176–7 Jerusalem 9, 12, 231–45
environmental management 148–9, 162 justice 6, 11, 35–52, 308
environmental sounds 151–4, 183
Erlmann, Veit 31 Kazakhstan 54, 164, 168, 176–8
ethics 4, 10, 21–2, 70–1, 74–5, 77, 81, 232, 238–9, Kenya 200
243, 319 King, Elaine 9, 270
Ethiopia 8, 197–210 Kisliuk, Michelle 4
ethnicity 55, 98, 160, 209, 239, 322, 324 Knopoff, Steven 151
ethnographic practice 2–4, 7, 9–11, 19–20, 30, 68–9, 72, Koen, Ben 6–7, 111–15, 122–3
75–7, 82–3, 91–2, 95, 129, 137–8, 142–3, 162–3, 182, Krader, Barbara 309
197, 268–9, 273, 290, 293–4, 302, 319–28 Krause, Bernie 321–2
Kunst, Jaap 1
Fatone, Gina 9, 264, 268, 270–2, 282–3, 285 Kyrgyzstan 162
Feld, Steven 5, 7–8, 19, 33, 128–9, 151, 155, 157, 162,
187–90, 320 Lancefield, Robert 5
feminism 4, 7, 11, 294, 299 Landau, Carolyn 10, 311, 321
fieldwork ix–x, 1–3, 5, 9–11, 72, 92, 98–9, 117, 158, 162, Latour, Bruno 7, 184, 192
209, 234, 269, 278, 293, 326–7 Leante, Laura 9, 264, 285–6
Fjellheim, Frode 5, 27 Leman, Marc 9, 270
Foucault, Michel 294, 310 León, Javier 3, 11
Freire, Paulo 70–2, 75–7 Levin, Theodore 157, 162, 165, 173, 178
Friedson, Steven 112, 273, 286 LGBT issues 292, 294–6, 299, 301
Frisbie, Charlotte 151 L’Hirondelle, Cheryl 5, 25–8, 31
Frith, Simon 17, 19 Lobley, Noel 10, 311, 323–5
local economy 82, 161–2
Gell, Alfred 7, 13, 185–7, 190, 192 Lomax, Alan 128, 321–2
gender 2, 9, 11–12, 92, 105–6, 159, 185, 289–304
geographical borders and boundaries 48, 54, 117, 145, Mackinlay, Elizabeth 3
167, 172, 200–1, 208 Malawi 286
Germany 86–7 Malaysia 6, 112
gesture 9, 211, 249–66, 267–88, 289–304 Malcomson, Hettie 3
Gillespie, Kirsty 6, 81, 83–4, 86, 91–2 Maniapoto, Moana 5, 27
globalization x, 4–5, 7, 36, 164, 268 Marett, Allan 5, 24, 129
Godøy, Rolf 9, 270 masculinity 46, 63, 282–3, 290, 292, 294–9
Grant, Catherine 6–7, 98, 100–1, 104, 106, 108 McCann, Anthony 5, 32
Gritten, Anthony 9, 270 McCann, Bryan 129, 132
Guy, Nancy 19, 128, 162–3 media x, 2, 4–5, 9, 11, 23, 35–52, 106, 134, 164, 197, 216,
218, 227, 289–304, 315, 321, 325
Hagedorn, Katherine 4, 276, 286 Meintjes, Louise 5, 11
Hahn, Tomie 4 memory 33, 68, 69–72, 74, 115, 166, 202, 276, 309–10, 320
Haiti 8–9, 211–29, 287 Merriam, Alan 1, 77
Harrison, Klisala 4, 6, 81 methodology ix, 1–3, 6–7, 113, 143, 185, 189, 197, 228,
health and healing 6–7, 97, 111–23, 128, 158, 162, 181, 250, 293–4, 311–12
189–91, 232, 234, 276, 279 Mexico 3, 162
heritage 5, 18, 32, 54, 62, 77, 81–95, 97–110, 141, 157, 166, migration 129–30, 197, 200, 209, 322–3
172, 201, 300, 208, 311, 321–4 Miller, Kiri 9, 12, 292–3, 298, 300–1
Herskovits, Melville 268–9 Mills, Sherylle 4, 19
Herzog, George 309 modernity 52–3, 58, 62, 64, 67–9, 160, 316
Hilder, Thomas 19–20, 32, 311 Mongolia 8, 57, 161–79
Hornbostel, Erich Moritz von 184, 192, 308–9 Monson, Ingrid 4
Morocco 321
identity ix, 6, 26, 42, 46, 48, 51, 58, 72, 77, 98, 117, movement 4, 6, 9, 21–34, 43–5, 47, 57, 61, 63, 72–5, 115,
122, 128–30, 132–5, 137, 139, 174, 207, 209, 236, 130, 173, 185, 203, 207, 209, 217–18, 226, 267–88,
289–304, 324 289–304, 310, 323–4
Impey, Angela 11, 77, 128, 162 museums 4–5, 9, 72, 81–96, 102, 106, 311, 320,
India 9, 249–66, 320 322–6, 328
 INDEX • 335

musical instruments: accordion 130–1, 138; acheré 286; religious communities, Buddhist 7, 97–110
bata 283, 286, 288; beeba 147, 159; bell 241, 242, 277; religious communities, Christian 12, 28, 200–1, 204, 207,
cello 63; charango 37, 41–4, 46–7; chekeré 286; dap 58; 209, 231–45, 268, 285
dáyere 118; didjeridu 24; doire 120; dombyra 165–6, religious communities, Jewish 201, 209, 232–234
170, 173–4; double reed 61; dutar 58; fiddle 55–6, religious communities, Muslim 53–4, 58, 117–19, 201,
73–4, 118, 130; fife 130; flute 27, 46–7, 127, 165, 167, 209, 232, 234–5, 238–9, 268, 285
185, 326; frame drum 27, 58; galamit 88; gambang 184; repatriation 5, 10, 29, 83, 86, 177, 200, 279, 310–11, 322
ghéjek 52, 55–7, 61–3; ghizhak 118; gongs 239; gourd resistance 5, 28, 63, 200, 220, 239
rattle 274; guitar 27, 130, 184, 287; harmonicas 324; Reyes, Adelaida 11, 197
harmonium 252–5, 257, 261–2, 264–5; harp 326, 330; Rice, Timothy 2–3, 11
idiophones 271, 277, 286; ilib (drum, PNG) 188; jula ritual 7, 30, 43, 76–7, 84, 97, 105–6, 112, 115–16, 120, 122,
jula (Bolivian panpipes) 43; kamánche 118; krar (lyre) 145–6, 158, 162, 175, 184–6, 189, 191, 202, 205, 207,
209–10; kulingtang 312; lute 54–7, 60, 118, 147, 165, 232, 238, 241, 243, 267–9, 272–9, 282–8
184–5, 192, 210; lyre 209–10; mbyo 326; mondumé 326; Roda, P. Allen 184
organ 243; piano 130; pinkillu 46–7; pipa 159; qobyz Roseman, Marina 6, 112, 128, 157, 162
177; rabāb 54; rabeca 73; Ranaat eek 184; rattle 274; Rowell, Lewis 260
rawap 54–5, 57–60, 62–4; ruan 56; rubáb 118, 120; rural practices 37, 43–4, 50–1, 62, 130–5, 143–59, 162,
rubab 54, 116; rubob 54; sanxian 57; satar 55; saz 184; 164–5, 167, 172–3, 176–8
ṣèḳèṛè 286; shanz 57; spike fiddle 55–6, 118; strings 25, Russia 176–7
54–6, 59, 63, 120, 130; sunay 61; sybyzghy 165, 167–9;
tabla 184, 194, 264–5; tanbur 118; tanpura 265, 287; Sachs, Curt 184, 192
tembur 57–8; tsuur 165; viola 56, 134; violin 54, 56–7, Sakakibara, Chie 162, 321
60–1, 63; xequeré 286; xushtar 55–6, 63; xylophone 184, Sarno, Louis 325–6, 327
193; zither 326 Schafer, R. Murray 7, 75–6, 78, 183, 244
music industry 4, 7, 11, 28, 37, 127, 323 Schechner, Richard 217, 293
musicology xi, 2, 6–7, 9, 192, 264, 270, 308–9 Seeger, Anthony 4, 7, 10, 19, 70, 73, 128, 139, 157, 160,
190, 192, 308–9, 315
nationalism x, 5, 20, 26–7, 41–3, 53–64, 132–5 semiotics 128, 137, 270–1, 273, 283
Nattiez, Jean-Jacques 152 Sercombe, Laurel 18, 313
Nettl, Bruno 1, 3, 11, 181, 192, 308–9, 311 sexuality 291–2, 296, 299–302
New Zealand 27, 28, 32–3 Sheehy, Daniel 6, 70
Nigeria 9, 267–88 Shelemay, Kay Kaufman 8, 12, 197, 201, 208–9
Niles, Don 86, 311 Silvers, Michael 7, 11
non-human agency 181–94 Simonett, Helena 5, 162
social and socio-economic boundaries 2–3, 8, 197,
organology 185, 192, 285 199, 219
Ortiz, Fernando 268, 285 Solis, Gabriel 2
Ortner, Sherry 293 Solomon, Thomas 128
Sorce Keller, Marcello 7, 182, 192
Pakistan 250 soundscapes 7–9, 53–5, 57, 60, 62–3, 75–6, 127–9, 130,
Palestine 231–45 133, 176, 183, 191, 205, 231–45, 274, 319, 321–2,
Papua New Guinea 6, 8, 81–96, 151, 162, 178, 187, 311, 330 325–8
Partridge, Taqralik 5, 17, 22, 25 South Africa 10, 68, 162, 321, 323, 327
pedagogy x–xi, 4–5, 54, 60, 71, 74, 98, 102, 104, 115, 301, Spain 322
309, 314 spirituality 24, 25, 30, 112, 114–23, 162, 165, 185, 189–90,
Pedelty, Mark 128 191, 234, 243, 267–9, 276–8, 284
Pegg, Carole 11, 162 Stålka, Per Niila 5, 28
Perea, John Carlos 5, 18, 22, 24–7, 32 Sterne, Jonathan 309
Peru 8, 37, 39–40, 48–50 Stobart, Henry 2, 5, 11, 19, 37–9, 43–4, 50, 162
Pettan, Svanibor 6, 77, 81 Stokes, Martin 2–3, 11
Pirttijärvi, Ulla 5, 17, 27 Süzükei, Valentina 157, 165, 173, 178
places 28, 149, 165–7, 169, 171–3, 197–210, 234, 239, 321–2
political economy 69, 75, 224–5 Taiwan 128, 162, 189
politics x, 3–9, 20, 28, 31, 35–7, 53–4, 61–3, 67–79, 93–4, Tajikistan 7, 111–23
132, 134, 138, 200, 208, 211–29, 232, 239, 243, 297, Tanzania 238
307–10, 312, 326 technology 28, 32, 137, 184–6, 276, 283, 294, 301,
Porcello, Thomas 243 320–1
Portugal 72–4 Thailand 112, 122, 184, 193
Post, Jennifer C. 8, 163, 178 theory in ethnomusicology 2, 4, 67, 98, 229, 250, 256, 265,
psychology 7, 9, 40–2, 50, 111–23, 192, 250, 270, 273–4, 286 270–1, 273, 283–4, 286, 288, 290, 292, 294, 303
Timor Leste 29
Qureshi, Regula 250 Titon, Jeff Todd 6, 70, 128, 158, 160
Toop, David 320–1, 327
Racy, Ali Jihad 250 Topp Fargion, Janet 10, 311, 321
Rahaim, Matthew 9, 264, 285 tourism x, 5, 29, 43, 49, 55, 71, 73, 102, 157–8, 209, 219,
Ramnarine, Tina 162 234, 241–2, 274, 294, 323
religious communities 181, 232, 234, 239–40, 268 Tracey, Hugh 323–7
336 • INDEX

transmission 8, 20, 30, 60, 98–9, 104, 129, 137, 149, 157, 186, Venezuela 138, 193
189–90, 197, 200, 268, 271, 293–4, 302, 310, 324, 327 Villepastour, Amanda 9, 285–6
Trinidad 217, 284
Turner, Edith 234, 240–2 Weintraub, Andrew 5, 316
Turner, Victor 234, 240–2 Witzleben, J. Lawrence 3
women 2–4, 11, 21–3, 26, 28, 44–6, 92, 105, 141, 300,
Uganda 6 307, 325
United Kingdom 10, 274, 325–6 Wong, Chuen-Fung 5, 54, 58, 60, 63
United States 3, 8, 18–19, 32, 106, 197–210, 221–2, Wong, Deborah 4
311–15, 322 Wood, Abigail 8–9, 244
urban practices 8, 10, 43–4, 46, 48, 73, 98, 100, 132, 162,
165, 173, 176, 197–210, 216, 224, 243, 323 Yung, Bell 5
Uzbekistan 55, 62
Zemp, Hugo 72–3, 320
Vallier, John 10 Zimbabwe 323
Vanuatu 94 Zinn, Howard 307, 311, 315