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A Yurok Song Without Words

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

R.H. Robins  and
Norma McLeod
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Extract

This paper is intended as a sequel to our ‘Five Yurok songs’, published in the issue of the Bulletin dedicated to Professor J. R. Firth, and the statements there made about Yurok music in general apply also to the song presented and analysed here. This song was excluded from our previous article, not merely for reasons of space, but from a consideration of its composition. In the five songs already published, text and music, though realized together in the singing of the song, could be distinguished and separately analysed. In this song (a Brush Dance song) the human voice serves simply as a musical instrument, and the melody and rhythms making up the music are carried on a series of syllable sequences, to which no grammatical or lexical analysis can be applied and to which no translation can be given.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , February 1957 , pp. 501 - 506
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1957

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References

page 501 note 1 BSOAS, XVIII, 3, 1956, 592–609.Google Scholar

page 501 note 2 For detaUs see Kroeber, A.L., ‘Handbook of the Indians of California’, BAEB, 78, 1925, 61–2.Google Scholar

page 501 note 3 Roberts, Helen H. and Swadesh, Morris, ‘Songs of the Nootka Indians of western Vancouver Island’, Trans. Am. Philosophical Soc., N.S., XLV, 3, 1955, 199–327 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 502 note 1 With this linking of a with ? may be compared the linking of a with the other ‘glottal’ consonant, h, in the Indian phonetic tradition (ef. Allen, W.S., Phonetics in ancient India, London, 1953, 59.Google Scholar