In 1999 archaeologists excavated a section of the Hellweg, a medieval road near the present city of Paderborn in northern Germany. In the rubble of the road, which was an important east–west trade route, the excavators found a Jew's harp, deposited in an archaeological context dating it to the late thirteenth century. The iron instrument was well preserved, except for the broken and partly missing lamella (figure 1). It had a distinct mark punched into its forged frame. Where did this musical instrument originate and how did it arrive at this site? Was it brought here by someone who played the Jew's harp or by a pedlar carrying this instrument among other goods for sale? Who had made it and where?

The Iðunn Society of Intoners and Versifiers (Kvæðamannafélagiðd Iðunn) was founded in Reykjavik in 1929. Iðunn set out to protect the practice of rímur-'intoning and versification (kves&kapur) and immediately took very strong ownership of the means of preserving and disseminating the tradition. By nature, folk traditions are constantly fluctuating, but during the era of national romanticism it became important to preserve and “freeze” these traditions in order to serve the purposes of the formation of national identity. An example would be the Norwegian fiddle and vocal tradition which was systematically gathered from the most remote mountain areas in order to firstly save it from extinction and secondly to serve as a source for the composers of the new “national music.” The Dane Svend Grundtvig had a different agenda, wanting his collection to become a trustworthy and perfect museum of folksongs (Havåg 1997:23-33). In Finland, Elias Lönnrot gathered folksongs and compiled the Kalevala, which became the symbol of Finnish national identity (Pekkila 1994:406). Even though the rímur tradition was not an element in the official identity-building taking place in Iceland around 1930, ideas of national romantic origins had a “freezing and policing” effect on it. In this paper I will demonstrate how the Iðunn Society exercised strong ownership of the old rímur tradition. Specifically, I will show how Iðunn re-shaped and policed the form. The study also draws attention to contradictions in the way Iðunn's members took pride in their cultural roots and their childhood practice while simultaneously holding prejudices and beliefs that worked against a living tradition.

This article examines the study of folk music traditions in Denmark, with an emphasis on collection, research and scholarly publication. Popular writings, use in education and the practice of folk music have been incorporated only sporadically. Geographically, the article covers what is now Denmark as well as the Faroe Islands. Greenland, which like the Faroe Islands has a commonwealth relationship with Denmark, is treated in a separate article.

Wenn man über Musik in intermodaler ästhetischer Kommunikation sprechen will, so gehört Sprache (in all ihren aus musikologischer Sicht wichtigen Aspekten) unbedingt zum Thema: nicht nur, weil Musik und Sprache auf einem gemeinsamen materiellen Substrat (modulierten Schallwellen) basieren, nicht nur, weil sie mit demselben Sinnesorgan aufgenommen bzw. analysiert werden und mit dem gleichen physiologischen Erzeugungsapparat hervorgebracht werden können (Ohr und menschliche Stimme), auch nicht nur, weil sie in älteren (vormenschlichen) Kommunikationssystemen mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit gemeinsame Wurzeln haben und weil beide zu ihrer Herausbildung und Ausformung die Entwicklung des beziehenden (relativen) Hörens benötigen, sondern vor allem, weil sie—aufgrund dieser Gemeinsamkeiten—in der Geschichte ihrer Existenz zahlreiche Kontaktzonen und Beziehungen ausbildeten, auf vielfältige Weise ‘Symbiosen’ eingingen und sich dabei gegenseitig beeinflußten und veränderten.

Structuralist methods have been successfully used for some time in such diverse fields as linguistics, ethnology, psychoanalysis, history of religion, literature, and literary criticism. But at least one domain in which the science of signs could be of optimal use, communication by motion, has been unaccountably neglected. This paper represents a first attempt to deal with gestural movement as a system based on a code comparable to spoken language.

This paper is one of the results of my ongoing diachronic investigations concerning the music of hereditary shamans on Chindo, an island in south-west Korea. My first field research on the music there was carried out in the early 1980s for a year; this work resulted in my dissertation (Park 1985). About twenty years after my first fieldwork, during the summers of 2000-2001, I made a number of trips back to Chindo, focussing on more specific issues, such as change, improvisation, and comparative analysis. A recent publication of mine (Park 2003) deals with the general nature of the changes the tradition has undergone. The present paper deals specifically with changes in improvisational practice.

This description of the possession dance of the goddess Ame no Uzume no Mikoto in the eighth century Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) A.D. 712, to entice the sun goddess from her place of hiding, is held as the origins of kagura—a ritual dance performed by miko—female shrine attendants. The connection between myth and ritual is made early in Japanese history with the early ninth century Kogo shûi—a record of court rites stating that the successors of Ame no Uzume no Mikoto were an already extinct female priestly group, Sarume Kimi no Uji, and they in turn passed their skill on to the miko.

It's an honor for me to have been invited to speak on this occasion of the golden anniversary of the ICTM. Bemused by this choice, I have sought for the program committee's motivations and have concluded that they asked me because they thought I am such a senior citizen that I probably helped Theodore Baker proofread his dissertation in 1882. Not so, but as I was present at the 1950 meeting of IFMC in Bloomington, I may qualify as the person who has been attending IFMC-ICTM meetings longer than anyone else here today. In that summer of 1950, I had just begun to study seriously with local arrangements chair, Dr. George Herzog, and he asked me to be his errand boy. So I'll hark back several times today to those precedent-setting times. I also have the feeling that the program committee ended up with me because they associated me with the part of the world in which we are meeting today, an area that was seminal, as well, to much of what happened later in our field. And so, in looking unsystematically at our history, I'll be pointing out how so much of significance happened within two or three hundred kilometers from here. And also, while the concept of “keynote talk” suggests prediction and a perspective of the future, I have always ducked when asked by students what I think may happen some day, so I'll talk somewhat about the past and avoid prediction.

Wayang wong panggung is a Javanese dance drama performed in a theater with a proscenium stage, accompanied by traditional Javanese “orchestra” called gamelan. Characteristic of this dance theater is the minimal specific preparation made for each of the nightly performances. The music is not composed specifically for this theatrical form nor for any specific story performed in this medium. It is spontaneously chosen from a pool of musical compositions which experts consider appropriate for this theater. The choice of composition and its “treatment” (i.e. which, where, when and how the tempo, dynamics, arrangement, tuning system, etc. are chosen and changed) is executed instantaneously. The dance movements are not specifically choreographed for a given performance; rather, they are drawn from a well-established pool of movement motifs and phrases. The monologs and dialogs are improvised, following a set format, using vocabulary suitable to the character represented, the relationship between this character and the character with whom he is communicating, the situation at hand, the story, etc.

In his study on Serbo-Croatian folk songs Béla Bartók makes the statement that our current musical notation has intrinsic limitations and that “the only true notation of folk melodies are the sound tracks on the record itself.” While “these could be magnified, photographed and printed, instead of, or with, the usual notation, in view of the too complicated nature of the curves, [their use] would not be of much help; the human mind would not be able to translate the visual signs into tones.”