Insights into the knowledge, performance, and transmission of songs are pivotal in ensuring the survival of traditional Aboriginal songs. We present the first in-depth musical analysis of a Wapurtarli yawulyu song set sung by Warlpiri women from Yuendumu, Central Australia, recorded in December 2006 with a solo lead singer accompanied by a small group. Our musical analysis reveals that there are various interlocking parts of a song, and this can make it difficult for current generations to learn songs. The context of musical endangerment and the musical analyses presented in our study show that contemporary spaces for learning yawulyu must consider the complex components that come together for a song set to be properly performed.

浪花節は19世紀末から20世紀半ばに大衆的な人気を誇った日本の音楽的な語りのジャンルである。日本人労働移民によってハワイにもたらされ、後には日本の浪曲師がハワイ巡業を行うようになり、ハワイの日系社会でも人気を確立した。本論はハワイにおける浪花節の盛衰をたどり、移植された音楽ジャンルが日本と日系ディアスポラの文化的架け橋として機能し、いかにハワイ日系人のアイデンティティの支えとなっていたか、また国境を超えた人々と文化の往来を促していたかを明らかにする。また戦争という不可抗力によって、いかに音楽文化の運命が翻弄されうるかを描き出す。

Naniwa-bushi is a genre of Japanese musical storytelling which enjoyed its greatest popularity from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Brought to Hawai‘i by Japanese immigrants and later by itinerant Japanese performers, it soon found popularity in the diaspora community. This paper traces the rise and fall of naniwa-bushi in Hawai‘i and demonstrates how a transplanted musical genre functioned as a cultural bridge between Japan and its diaspora, helping immigrants sustain their identity and motivating trans-border flows of performers and culture. It also highlights the powerful impact of war that changed the destiny of a musical culture.

In this article, I address collecting and re(p)(m)atriation as research orientations. I draw on examples from Métis music to situate the impact of collection-oriented research, to interrogate my own practice as a Métis-music scholar, and to point to possibilities for the future. In presenting a history of collecting alongside an overview of re(p)(m)atriation, I offer readers an opportunity to meditate on the pervasiveness of collection-oriented research and how we might create a new ethnomusicology—meditations encouraged through poetic expressions. I suggest that twenty-first century ethnomusicology needs to turn towards rematriation, not only as an act of returning artifacts, but also as a way of orienting our work as scholars.

The sounds of percussion, guitar, singing, and clapping guide us from the heat of the summer pavement of the parking lot to the cool shade of the trees in the garden. Parents, staff, children, youth—we all gather here first thing in the morning. Some children immediately sit on the ground in front of the musicians, others navigate their canes or walkers to find a seat on a chair or bench or find a good spot for their wheelchairs. Some parents linger. The singing continues as everyone gathers and joins in with voices, clapping, and percussion to participate in the familiar “The boat goes down to the river, it takes me to my home …” This was our place of arrival at Spiral Garden.

The Central Australian aborigines make remarkable use of slight pitch alterations in their singing. It was this feature of their music which prompted me to make a more accurate and detailed study of the scales used in the songs I have already transcribed from T. G. H. Strehlow's collection of recordings.

The method used to determine the accurate frequency of all notes was as follows. An audio oscillator type A57321 was warmed, then plugged through a speaker alongside which another speaker reproduced the required notes from the recording. (The speed of the turntable was checked before use.) Each note of the chosen verse was taken separately and repeated until the note produced by the oscillator corresponded to it. Here some error could occur, as it was impossible to have the two notes sounding together for any length of time. It was therefore necessary to sound one and immediately follow it by the other.

The people of Bali undertake an unusually large number of vibrant and frequent festivals and religious rites. Hindu Balinese culture is particularly famous for its numerous temples (approximately 25,000) and the Odalan festivals held at them each year. The Sasak people on the neighboring island of Lombok had at one time a large number of shrines with a similar schedule of annual or seasonal Gawe or Alip festivals. As Sasak society gradually transformed from a polytheistic culture to one which follows a reformed version of Islam, most of these pre-Islamic shrines were dismantled or abandoned. Only a few polytheistic shrines remain active in the latter twentieth century, and these have assumed Islamic associations.

As in all the countries of West Africa where Islam has left its mark, and where powerful chiefs held—or still hold—authority, many griots are to be found in Senegal. Whether they be historians, genealogists or musicians, they are in most cases professionals who together form a well-defined caste. The roles they play are manifold: as historians and genealogists they are the storehouses of the records of a country that has disdained the written language; as musicians, they are present at festive and solemn occasions alike. A griot may be attached to a prince's court, and be a member of his household; or he may be independent and able to charge for his services as he chooses.

Caught up in the life of African society, where intense rivalries excite tribes, clans and families, the griots have always aroused feelings of fear or contempt. More than one enmity, more than one dispute, has originated in the indiscretion of a griot. Their caste, like those of the blacksmiths, the ropemakers, the weavers, etc., is one of the lowest in the hierarchy.

In Eastern Moravia and districts still further east, we find a special type of rhythmical accompaniment in folk dance-music, performed by second fiddle and bass in a string ensemble. Each bow-stroke (both down and up) regularly combines two rhythmic values with the accent on the second element. Two bow-strokes, first down, then up, correspond to a single two-four bar. Variant types of this accompaniment are also found in Hungarian and Rumanian folk music. In some districts in Slovakia, it is referred to as duvaj, perhaps an attempt to express its character onomatopoeically.

The duvaj-accompaniment has distinctive characteristics in each district. This is clearly shown by the optical recordings of changes in sound intensity (Fig. 1). The first example (upper tracing of five bars) comes from Eastern Slovakia (Vyšné Raslavice); the second (lower tracing of eight bars), is from Central Slovakia (Hrochot pod Polanou). In the second example, irregular sub-division within the bar is shown.

The study of song texts by scholars in various fields has taken many directions. Some of those directions have been the result of particular disciplinary methodology such as literary history and criticism, history, folklore, anthropology, linguistics, and musicology. Others have been the result of peculiarities of a language, such as the problems of song in tone languages. This article is an introduction to and analysis and reinterpretation of some of the approaches to the study of song texts which seem at this time to present fruitful avenues for future research.

A long-standing conception in the history of the study of culture has been the model of two distinct types of traditions interacting with one another but remaining essentially separate. Dichotomies such as folk vs. high or fine art, little vs. great, rural vs. urban, or village vs. court have been used in reference to this distinction. There are a number of problems with such a model, to be sure, but it is not my intention to consider them all here. Rather, I intend to refer to the binary division, because it is so widely held in so many cultures around the world, as popular conception, and to view recent developments within a particular tradition as a response to that conception. The division usually implies a hierarchy. Carriers of what is seen as a lower tradition may be dissatisfied with that status. One response they might choose is to abandon that tradition altogether in favor of a more widely respected one. Another is to modify its practice in such substantial ways that it resembles other more widely respected traditions. But still another response—one which counters the notion of these two types of tradition as separate entities—is to adopt some elements of the other in order to legitimize their own. For musical traditions these elements may include authoritative texts, notation, terminology, theoretical writings, codification, distribution through the media, and formalized transmission in an academic setting.

Investigations made in the Soli area of Zambia during 1968 yielded songs in a number of different languages. There were songs in Soli, songs in Lenje, songs in a mixture of these two languages, songs in Karanga (one of the Shona group of languages of Rhodesia), and songs in Ndebele (one of the Zulu group of languages found in Rhodesia and South Africa).

The idea of comparing Indian songs with those of Siberia and China as a means of discovering the origin of the former occurred to me only recently, that is since 1920, though abundance of materials has been at hand for years. Nearly 1,000 native songs of British Columbia and Alaska have been recorded for the National Museum of Canada since 1912, and many others are preserved in the collections of the United States and Germany. Many ancient Chinese and Japanese songs have been marketed by the phonograph companies. In addition, over 100 Siberian songs were collected by the Russian exile, Jochelson, for the Jesup Expedition more than sixty years ago and the records were stored at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I had duplicates made of these for our National Museum, and I understand that the original Edison phonograph records are now preserved at Indiana University.

Twelve years ago during the IFMC conference at Copenhagen, Arnold Bake gave an excellent paper on Nepalese folk music, which unfortunately appeared in the Journal of the IFMC only as a short summary. But even this brief summary shows the very complicated situation arising from the fact that in Nepal two communities, the Nevari and the Nepali, have lived together for two hundred years, each preserving more or less intact its own language and separate musical tradition as well as its own hierarchy of castes. These castes, because of their social separation, continue to keep pure their separate traditions. Hence, one cannot understand the different styles of Nepalese music in their cultural context without taking into account the caste system and its effect on the music.

Oral tradition is the theme for the event that we are initiating now. We will attempt to present a synthesis of the emergence and development of popular music and its importance in Brazilian culture. It is our intention to present a brief summary of all this trajectory throughout the national territory, particularly focusing, though, on popular music in the city of Rio de Janeiro.