171. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- Part 11 -- African Offshoots

(. . . continued from previous post.)
While P/B style in its most fully developed and complete form is almost exclusively limited to certain African Pygmy and Bushmen hunter-gatherers, musical practices employing certain characteristic features of P/B are not uncommon among other indigenous peoples, in various corners of the world, with very different histories, traditions and modes of subsistence. In my paper on the Kalahari debate, I present statistical tables drawn from the Cantometrics database, to illustrate the manner in which two of the most distinctive characteristics of P/B, interlocking parts and yodel, are distributed, both worldwide and in Africa. For now, I'd like to concentrate on the African picture, to give us a better sense of how this style may have evolved on that continent during the earliest phase of its development and diffusion. To that end, let's take a look at Table 3 from the paper, which presents an overview of the distribution of interlock and yodel in the Cantometric sample from SubSaharan Africa, followed by some excerpts from my discussion of this table:

	Sample Size	No. Interlock	% Interlock	No. Yodel	% Yodel
Pygmies (Aka, Baka, Bedzan, Binga, Mbuti)	47	32	68%	27	57%
Twa Pygmies	4	0	0	0	0
Ju’hoansi Bushmen (including “Kung”)	21	15	71%	15	71%
“Khwe” Bushmen	6	0	0	0	0
Mikea (Madagascar)	8	4	50%	4	50%
Wayto (NW Ethiopia)	2	1	50%	0	0
All other hunter-gatherers (El Molo, Hadza, Sandawe)	10	0	0	0	0
All other groups in Sub-Saharan African	873	88	10%	44	5%
All other groups coded as interlocked	257	88	34%	24	9%

The first seven rows represent hunter-gatherers exclusively. The last two enable us to assess the degree to which interlocked vocalising and yodel is found among all other sub-Saharan groups sampled. As can be seen in row eight, from a total of 873 performances representing these groups, only 88, or 10%, employ interlock. Row nine represents a subset of the above, all songs from all such groups with at least one instance of interlock coded for each. While the great majority of performances in our Pygmy and Bushmen samples are interlocked, this type of vocal interaction is found only 34% of the time among those farmers and/or pastoralists where any instances of
interlock have been coded. Interestingly, most such groups are located in areas adjacent to or in the vicinity of, Pygmy or Bushmen populations. . .
From rows eight and nine we see that yodel is found in only 5% of our non-hunter/gatherer groups and not much more, 9%, among all such groups using interlock. Clearly, the use of both interlock and yodel is characteristic of most Pygmy and Bushmen vocalising, yet rare in either Africa or anywhere else (p. 9).

I'd like, at this point, to add another quotation, from my most recent, as yet unpublished, paper, in which I speculate further on the very interesting distribution of certain characteristic P/B traits in Africa. Please forgive these extensive quotes, but they contain much that is germane to the present discussion:

Certain aspects of P/B link the style quite closely to many types of vocal and instrumental practice in Africa, from simple call and response antiphony, which often resembles hocketed interplay, to polyrhythmic drumming, interlocking instrumental ensembles, etc. The many hocketed vocal, pipe, panpipe, trumpet and horn ensembles so commonly found in Africa may well have originated as an early derivation from P/B hocket-interlock. Interestingly, the musical traditions in Africa that are closest to P/B, in their use of interlock, hocket, stimmtauch, continuous flow, ostinato, nonsense vocables and even, in certain cases, yodel, tend to be found either among groups that have traditionally interacted closely with Pygmies or Bushmen, or groups to be found, as the Pygmies and Bushmen are now found, in relatively isolated “refuge” areas. For instance a well-known pocket of P/B style hocketed vocal and pipe-based contrapuntal polyphony can be found among several groups living in remote mountain regions of southwest Ethiopia. Another such pocket can be found in the Mandara Mountains of Cameroon, a well-known refuge area, surrounded by very different lowland groups that sing and play in markedly different styles. Another such group, the Bamoun, live in a high plateau region of Cameroon, with an elevation of close to 4,000 feet. Still another group, the Anaguta, now live in the Jos Plateau region of Nigeria, also recognized as a refuge area ("Some Notable Features of Pygmy and Bushmen Polyphonic Practice, with Special Reference to Survivals of Traditional Vocal Polyphony in Europe," p. 5).

What I am suggesting in the above can best be summarized by yet another quote (again, please forgive me, but this sort of recycling saves me considerable time and effort), this time from the abstract to a grant proposal (unsuccessful) I recently submitted to the Wenner Gren Foundation:

Informal research conducted so far suggests that variants of [P/B] style tend also to be found among food producers that have traditionally interacted closely with Pygmies, or among marginalized, relatively isolated, culturally conservative groups now living in out-of-the-way refuge areas scattered throughout the continent. Such a distribution pattern, if confirmed, would imply that all such traditions could indeed be survivals of an archaic practice, predating the Bantu expansion, possibly dating to the Paleolithic. I intend to test this hypothesis by more systematically mapping the distribution of “Pygmy/Bushmen” style vocal and instrumental music throughout Africa, as fully as current information sources permit.

I'll add one more (long) quotation, this time from the project description itself, which should give you an idea of what's been on my mind regarding the effort to understand the history of P/B, its variants, and their distribution among so many different African groups. As my proposal should make clear, there is still much that remains uncertain and merits additional research.

The proposed project will focus on certain musical traditions, both vocal and instrumental, closely related stylistically and structurally to P/B, though often somewhat simplified and less spontaneous, that can be found among certain groups of “Bantu” farmers and/or herders in various parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Interestingly, such practices are often limited to certain times of year, or certain types of situation or ritual, whereas singing in this manner is an everyday part of ordinary life for most Pygmies and Bushmen. So far, P/B variants of this sort have been found in 1. groups that have traditionally interacted closely with Pygmies (e.g., Mamvu, Lese, Bira, Budu, Ngundi) or Bushmen (e.g., Himba, Pondo, Lozi), or 2. marginalized, relatively isolated, culturally conservative groups now living in out-of-the-way refuge areas scattered throughout the continent -- e.g., the highlands of southwest Ethiopia (e.g., Dorze, Ari), the Mandara mountains of Cameroon (e.g., Ouldémé, Mofou), the Jos Plateau region of Nigeria (Anaguta), etc.

Are such distribution patterns the coincidental result of an incomplete survey? Or do they point to isolated survivals of an archaic, once ubiquitous, cultural practice, predating the Bantu expansion, possibly dating all the way back to the Paleolithic? If it can be determined with a reliable degree of statistical significance that P/B-related musical traditions are found exclusively, or almost so, among such groups, then the latter hypothesis would receive considerable support. Alternatively, a comprehensive survey might tend to support the theory offered for the distribution of hocketing wind ensembles by linguist/ethnomusicologist Roger Blench, who suggested that such ensembles could originally have been “part of the cultural repertoire of Nilo-Saharan speakers as they spread westwards across the Sudan in the Pleistocene” (Blench 2002). If no clear correlation of any sort emerges, it would be necessary to consider the possibility that stylistic practices and behavior patterns similar to P/B could have emerged independently among various “Bantu” groups, due to similarities in cognitive development, environmental influences, and/or historical events currently unknown to us. It is hypotheses such as these that I intend to more fully explore by systematically mapping the distribution of P/B style vocal and instrumental music throughout Africa, as fully as current information sources permit.

(to be continued . . . )

170. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- Part 10 -- African Offshoots

My friend Maju makes an interesting request in a comment to post #167: "So I am already anticipating the next epysode: which I presume will deal with how this ancestral style or components of it were lost or transformed into other musical styles as the human journey progressed through the world."

Point well taken. If the genetic evidence points to the Pygmies and Bushmen occupying the deepest clades in the homo sapiens family tree, and their common ancestors, who would therefore have been our ancestors as well, were making music in P/B style anywhere from 70,000 to 150,000 years ago, then why do we find this style today only among Pygmies and Bushmen, why don't we find it practiced among a great many people throughout the world? In other words, why did music evolve in such a way that there are so many different styles of music making in different parts of the world? And why did the original style survive only among African Pygmies and Bushmen?

As I see it, the answer may be much simpler than anyone might suspect. If the presence of this very distinctive style is so strongly correlated with the genetic evidence, as certainly appears to be the case, then it would make sense to assume that its survival among certain populations, but not others, could have essentially the same cause as the survival of the ancient genetic markers among the same populations, but not others. And, by the same token, whatever changes took place in the musical stylistic markers over the millennia, among so many different populations, could stem either directly or indirectly from the same causes responsible for the changes in the genetic markers among the same populations. This makes more sense than it might seem when we realize that in both cases we are dealing with neutral markers, i.e., distinctive features (of music or genetics) that appear unrelated to evolution in the Darwinian sense, i.e., natural selection based on adaptation to the environment.

The above statement might be too abstract or technical for anyone to easily accept or even fully grasp at this point, but I'll toss it out here anyhow, as it might come in handy for future reference.

Another clue comes from the realm of linguistics, a basic principle of which I was unaware, until reading the following, from the Supporting Online Materials published with the Tishkoff group's latest paper:

Our observation that the Pygmies appear to share common ancestry with several Khoesan-speaking populations raises the possibility that the indigenous Pygmy language may have contained click consonants. A recent examination of the skeletal evidence for the development of the human vocal tract indicates that full human language capacity evolved before 50 kya but after 100 kya (S119). Considering that the normative directions of phonological evolution are from greater to lesser markedness, and that clicks are among the most marked of all sounds, the fact that click consonants exist at all in present day languages favors their existence back to the earliest human languages of 100-50 kya (p. 20).

What interests me here is the notion that the characteristic clicks of Khoesan, of which there are several distinct types, may well have been present in the earliest languages and subsequently lost -- because "the normative directions of phonological evolution are from greater to lesser markedness, and . . . clicks are among the most marked of all sounds." I was not aware of that phonological principle, but it interests me, because I see an analogy between Khoesan markedness and P/B musical style, which can also be understood as heavily "marked," in the sense that it would appear to contain far more distinctive features than any other type of music to be found in any other indigenous or "folk" repertoire. Could there be an "evolutionary" tendency, based on the same principle, for both languages and musical styles to lose "markedness," i.e., complexity and/or nuance, over time? This would correspond to what appears to have happened to P/B over time -- contradicting earlier notions of musical evolution based on the opposite view, that music begins with the simplest utterances and gradually evolves in the direction of increasing complexity.

Again, I think maybe I'm being too technical in the above, and also getting ahead of myself, so please allow me to start over once again:

The place to start is, obviously, Africa. And what I'd like to do next, rather than speculate further about basic principles, is to, more concretely, consider the distribution of P/B style, or musical styles similar to P/B in certain respects, on that continent. And yes, there are many groups in Africa that sing and/or play instruments in a manner resembling P/B -- though rarely in all respects. Here again we might want to pay close attention to "loss of markedness" since I think it might help us understand what can happen to a musical tradition over time.

(to be continued . . . )

169. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- Part 9 -- Language vs. Music

Much of the population genetics research directed by Sarah Tishkoff places considerable emphasis on language. The relation between genetics and language is the theme of the 2007 paper, History of Click-Speaking Populations of Africa Inferred from mtDNA and Y Chromosome Genetic Variation, by Tishkoff et al., and the relationship among various Khoesan speakers is an important theme in The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans, where, as I've already mentioned, the very interesting question of whether the Pygmies might have originally spoken a Khoesan-related language is raised.

There is, in fact, no evidence whatsoever that any Pygmy group ever spoke any type of click language. And, as I've argued elsewhere on this blog, there is reason to believe the Pygmies never had a language of their own at all, possibly due to their having diverged from the ancestral group at a time prior to the development of fully syntactic speech -- a theory reinforced by the fact that whatever remnants of a shared Pygmy language have been identified consist solely of disconnected lexical elements with no trace of syntax.

Regardless of whether the Pygmies had their own language or whether it would have resembled Khoesan, the difficulty in determining the answers to such questions poses a problem for geneticists concerned, as is Tishkoff, with puzzling out the history of our earliest ancestors. If today's Pygmies were indeed in the habit of using click consonants, that would constitute very powerful cultural reinforcement of the theory of their archaic connection with the Khoesan-speaking Bushmen, which, as we have seen, has become an increasingly important theme in the population genetics literature.

Linguistics, along with archaeology, has always been important for population genetics. Some of Cavalli-Sforza's earliest research was in collaboration with historical linguists and from that time to this geneticists have always been eager to find correlations between patterns of linguistic association and those revealed by their own research. Why is this so important? First of all, because it's always better when findings from one field can be tested against those of another. Second, because the genetic results are not always as solid and consistent as could be desired, to the point that certain questions may have to be resolved by independent research in other fields, such as linguistics, archaeology, paleontology, etc.

And at this point I must confess that the results I've been sharing here are not as consistent as they might seem. For example, the phylogenetic tree from the Tishkoff paper of 2007, based on the mitochondrial findings, is accompanied in the same paper by a Y chromosome tree presenting a different picture, not completely consistent with the mitochondrial one. And while the comprehensive phylogenetic tree based on "D2" statistics, from Tishkoff's most recent paper, clearly places the Bushmen and Pygmy groups on its deepest branches, two other phylogenetic trees based on different statistical methods, published in a supplementary document, differ in significant ways from the first. The problem is that no algorithm has yet been developed for automatically producing unique phylogenetic trees from the genetic data, and different approaches to this problem can sometimes produce significantly different results.

Thus, without linguistic or archaeological evidence to more completely test the very special relationship between Pygmies and Bushmen so strongly suggested, but not unequivocally supported, by the genetic findings, the musical evidence becomes especially important. And in this case, as far as I am concerned, there can be no question. What the linguistic evidence fails to reveal, the musical evidence reveals in abundance -- and, as I hope my upcoming Ethnomusicology paper will convincingly demonstrate, there can no longer be any serious question regarding the common origin of the two musical traditions.

168. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- Part 8

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'd like to present some additional findings, to make my point as forcefully as I can. I must add, however, that the genetic evidence is not always completely consistent and not every result presents the same picture. I'll have more to say on the interpretation of such anomalies a bit later.

We haven't yet seen any results representing purely male lineages, so let's take a look at a phylogenetic tree based on a comprehensive re-evaluation of the Y chromosome, published (in 2002) as Figure 1 in A Nomenclature System for the Tree of Human Y-Chromosomal Binary Haplogroups, by the "Y Chromosome Consortium":

(Again I'll remind you to right-click and select "Open link in a new window" to see an enlarged image.) While references to specific populations aren't given in this figure, a key to all the groups represented in this survey is provided in Table 2, on p. 346 and 347. The table contains 11 individuals referred to as "San" (i.e., Bushmen) as well as two each representing the Pygmy groups Biaka and Mbuti. Of the San, three are classified under A2*, with the others as A2b, A3b1, B2b1, and B2b4a. The Biaka are both classified under B2b4b, and the Mbuti under B2b* and E2b. With the exception of one Zulu individual classified under B2a1, none of the other groups represented belongs to either of the two deepest clades (branches), A or B. From the perspective of this particular survey of male lineages, therefore, we find a picture remarkably similar to what we've already seen from the mtDNA (i.e., female) and autosomal trees, with the Bushmen represented at the root of the tree (A), and Pygmy groups occupying the next deepest clade (B).

Here is one more mitochondrial tree, from a recent (2008) paper, The Dawn of Human Matrilineal Diversity, by Doron Behar et al., a project sponsored by the Genographic Consortium of the National Geographic Society:
The most obvious aspect of this tree is the emphasis on the striking division between the two deepest clades, LO and L1, and the clear division between "Khoisan" and "Non-Khoisan" populations, with the Khoisan groups limited to the deepest branches of the tree, LOd and LOk (consistent with Tishkoff's mtDNA tree, as we've already seen). In this case, the term "Khoisan" can be regarded as equivalent to what we've been referring to as "Bushmen." (N.B.: LSA stands for "Late Stone Age".) From my perspective, the most interesting aspect of this report are their references to the deep antiquity of the Khoisan lineages and their divergence estimate, as summarized in the abstract:

We paid particular attention to the Khoi and San (Khoisan) people of South Africa because they are considered to be a unique relic of hunter-gatherer lifestyle and to carry paternal and maternal lineages belonging to the deepest clades known among modern humans. Both the tree phylogeny and coalescence calculations suggest that Khoisan matrilineal ancestry diverged from the rest of the human mtDNA pool 90,000–150,000 years before present . . . (p. 1).

I've seen different estimates for the earliest divergence of Bushmen and/or certain Pygmy groups from the ancestral population, ranging from 35,000 years ago (Tishkoff) to from 72,000 to over 100,000 years ago (Chen), but this is the oldest and thus, to my mind, the most appealing. :-) If correct, then it would be possible to claim that our musical time machine might possibly take us back as far as 150,000 years into the past!

Naturally, you may complain that, despite the striking similarities of musical style among the various Pygmy and Bushmen groups of today, a recording of a particular performance by any one of them won't necessarily sound the same as what their ancestors would have sung back in the "stone age." And it's true, we have no reason to believe that any given song or any given configuration of musical notes is going to be exactly the same, since as we can already tell, no two recordings of contemporary Pygmy or Bushmen music are going to be note-for-note the same. Nevertheless, there are so many striking stylistic and structural similarities among all the groups I've been focusing on that it would be very difficult to see how the music of the ancestral population from whom all these various groups diverged, literally tens of thousands of years ago, could have seriously differed, stylistically or structurally, from what can be heard today. As I've already written in one of the earlier posts on this blog,

So what could the ancestors of the Pygmies and Bushmen have been singing 76,000 to 102,000 years ago? Would it have been something roughly similar, but perhaps more "primitive," maybe less intricately contrapuntal or not contrapuntal at all -- or perhaps not as well organized, less precise rhythmically, more loosely structured? Astonishingly enough, if the Pygmies and Bushmen of today indeed sing in a manner that even the experts find it difficult to distinguish, then it's hard to imagine how their common ancestors of 76,000 years ago could have been vocalizing much differently -- in any respect. Why do I feel so sure of this? Well, let's assume that the ancestral population had a different, or at least somewhat different, musical tradition at the time when the first group of Biaka Pygmy ancestors broke away from the "founder population," 76,000 to 102,000 years ago. Once the two groups had separated, then, in order for them to be so musically similar today, their music would have had to evolve in more or less exactly the same way despite the fact that they were no longer in contact with one another. And for the life of me I can think of no "sufficient reason" (to quote Liebnitz, whose "principle of sufficient reason" is one of the backbones of science) to explain such parallel evolution, or what evolutionists call "convergence." The only explanation that makes sense to ME is that the ancestral group must have been making music in a manner that would also be indistinguishable from "modern" musical practice, among their descendents, to the same experts, if they had had an opportunity to hear it.

We can only conclude that this particular musical tradition must have been passed down from generation to generation over a period of at least 76,000 years (assuming the genetic estimates are correct) essentially unchanged -- a conclusion that, if corroborated, would totally transform our notion of cultural evolution and the role of tradition in its history.

167. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- Part 7

(. . . continued from previous post.)
The so-called "Bushmen" peoples live in a completely different part of Africa than the Pygmies, centered in the Kalahari desert region of southwestern Africa, between Botswana and Namibia, though they are thought to have, at one time, been the dominant population of southern Africa as a whole. I've already commented on the striking similarity between their musical style and that of the various Pygmy groups in various posts on this blog. To refresh your memory (or if you're new), I'll refer you to Post 7, which contains links to specific audio clips from both groups along with a fairly extensive description of what I've come to call "Pygmy/Bushmen" style (P/B).

Already in 1956, Gilbert Rouget, then director of the Ethnomusicology program at the Musee de l'Homme, in Paris, prophetically wrote:

If, as it is traditional to do, one should consider the Pygmies and the Bushmen as belonging to two races entirely distinct, how can one explain the troubling relationship between their music and their dances? It cannot be a phenomenon of convergence, the resemblances constituting a system too complex and too coherent to allow for an explanation of this order. A reciprocal influence is also to be rejected, being given the distance as much geographic as climatic which separates the ones from the others. Is it necessary to believe, then, that the Pygmies and Bushmen are of common stock, and that their dance and music represent the remainder of a common cultural heritage?

Rouget's comments were published along with an LP record (currently out of print) directly comparing examples of the music of a Pygmy group, the BaBinga, and a much studied Bushmen group, the !Kung (now usually referred to as Ju'/hoansi), known for their adherence to what appeared to be a very traditional, possibly even "stone-age," lifestyle, and their unusual language, featuring many different types of click consonants (the ! in the name !Kung stands for one such click-type). I won't get into the details of the "great Kalahari debate" concerning the history of these peoples, as this has already been extensively covered both in this blog (see Table of Contents, above) and my paper on this topic. However, I do want to share with you some of the very compelling genetic evidence, which has led many to conclude that both the Ju'/hoansi Bushmen and most of the Pygmy groups do in fact have "pedigrees" linking them quite strongly to some of our earliest ancestors.

In a recent paper dealing with the genetic relationships among various African click-speakers, Sarah Tishkoff et al. present the following chart, based on those "haplogroups" (related sets of genetic markers) closest to the root of the mtDNA phylogenetic tree:

(As with most of the other images presented on this blog, you'll get a larger and much clearer picture by right-clicking and selecting "Open link in new window.")

The uppermost row lists each of the most important haplogroups, with those representing the deepest (thus oldest) branches to the left. The leftmost column lists the various African populations studied, grouped according to language family.

The first four haplogroups, labeled LOd, LOk, LOf and LOa, are, as you can see, offshoots from the leftmost branch of the tree. Under the first column, LOd, among the most ancient of surviving human mtDNA haplogroups, the !Kung Bushmen are represented by fully 96% of their sample. The groups listed under the names !Xun/Khwe and !Xun are also represented by large percentages, 61 and 51 respectively. Since !Xun is actually a variant spelling of !Kung, I'm assuming the two groups probably represent two nearby villages with essentially the same language and culture, with !Xun/Khwe representing a mixed sample of !Xun and Khwe speakers. Together, the !Kung, !Xun and !Xun/Khwe are the only Bushmen groups in the sample, though the other two "Khoisan" speakers, Hadza and Sandawe, are also hunter-gatherers. Note that no other population on the list is represented by more than 5% of its sample for this haplogroup. Moving to the next, LOk, we see that this haplogroup, also among the oldest on the tree, is found only among the three closely related Bushmen groups.

Moving down to the next language family, Niger-Kordofanian (of which the very widespread Bantu language family is a subgroup), we find three of the Western Pygmy groups, Mbenzele, Biaka and Bakola. With only one very minor exception (2% of the !Xun sample), none of these groups share any of their haplogroups with any of the Bushmen groups. In fact the great majority of the Western Pygmy sample (97%, 77% and 100%, respectively) can be found under haplogroup L1c, stemming from a completely different branch of the mtDNA tree than LOd or LOk. And in this case also, no other group is represented in this haplogroup by more than 5% of its sample.

Moving down the first column, we see, under the Nilo-Saharan family, the sole instance of Eastern Pygmies in the sample, the Mbuti. The majority of Mbuti (55%) are represented by yet another haplogroup, L2, not found at all among the Eastern Pygmies and in only relatively small percentages among the !Xun/Khwe and !Xun (17% and 16% respectively), possibly reflecting an archaic link to a remote common ancestor. In other words, when we compare the three groups, the Bushmen, the Western Pygmies and the Eastern Pygmies, we find that each has its own distinctive haplogroup or groups that set it apart from the other two, while the great majority of the Pygmy groups cluster along completely different branches of the phylogenetic tree (L1 and L2, as opposed to LO) from all the Bushmen groups.

The only important exception to this pattern appears to be haplogroup LOa, which cuts across several groups of both hunter-gatherers and farmers. While this haplogroup could conceivably stem from a truly archaic ancestor, it is among the haplogroups whose distribution seems, in the view of the authors, largely due to relatively recent gene flow (p. 2191). Given what we know about African history, most of the gene flow in such cases can be attributed to the relatively recent (over the last few thousand years) movements of large and aggressive farming populations across vast regions of the continent (e.g., the "Bantu expansion"), and is not likely to reflect direct, face-to-face associations among the much smaller and more reclusive hunter-gatherer bands, though such a possibility cannot be completely ruled out.

Very recently, Tishkoff and her collaborators completed a truly monumental study of 121 African and African American populations, by far the most extensive and ambitious project of its kind. This time, Tishkoff concentrated on nuclear microsattelite and insertion/deletion sites, a much richer, but also more complex, set of genetic markers than the mitochondrial and Y chromosome haplotypes that have dominated earlier studies. Their findings have just been published, under the title The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans, in the journal, Science. (Unfortunately you'll need to either subscribe or pay a fee to download this article.)

Figure 1 from this paper is a remarkable "neighbor-joining" phylogenetic tree, including all populations studied, based on "D2" statistics, the technicalities of which I am completely unable to describe since, very frankly, I have no idea how they work. I've reproduced the lowest, deepest, segment of this tree below. And as before I will urge you to right-click and select "Open Link in New Window," so you can view this image properly:

Once again, the Bushmen groups, labeled in this case San and !XunKxoe, occupy the lowest, thus deepest, branch of the tree, with the Pygmy groups just above them -- though, as before, stemming from a different branch. Here again, the Eastern Pygmies, represented by the Mbuti, occupy a branch of their own, with the Western Pygmies stemming from one sub-branch, and literally the rest of the world stemming from the other.

As far as the Pygmy groups in themselves are concerned, these new results are consistent with the findings by Destro-Bisol et al. that I've already described:

Shared ancestry of western and eastern Pygmies . . . was also supported by the phylogenetic trees . . . , consistent with mtDNA and autosomal studies
indicating that the western and eastern Pygmies diverged >18,000 years ago (p. 1041).

And as far as the relation between the Pygmies and Bushmen is concerned, one of their major findings, as stated in the abstract, is as follows: "Our data also provide evidence for shared ancestry among geographically diverse hunter-gatherer populations (Khoesan speakers [i.e., Bushmen] and Pygmies)." And, even more to the point, from the body of their text:

The shared ancestry, identified here, of Khoesan-speaking populations with the Pygmies of central Africa suggests the possibility that Pygmies, who lost
their indigenous language, may have originally spoken a Khoesan-related language, consistent with shared music styles between the SAK [i.e., southern African Khoesan] and Pygmies (p. 1041).

It might interest my readers to know that the reference given for "shared music styles" is to the book Folk Song Style and Culture, by Alan Lomax et al., a reference I provided at Tishkoff's request. To my knowledge this is the first instance of a reference to the musical evidence appearing in any of the genetic literature. Hopefully it will not be the last.

166. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- Part 6

(. . . continued from previous post.)
In case its full significance might have eluded you, I'd like to repeat the last sentence of the "Author's Summary" as quoted in the previous post, with some added emphasis: "This finding suggests that the shared physical and cultural features of Pygmies were inherited from a common ancestor, rather than reflecting convergent adaptation to the rainforest.." The most obvious of the shared physical features is, of course, short stature. The gene or genes controlling human stature have not yet been isolated, but given the shared lineage implied by both the mitochondrial and autosomal (i.e., nuclear) DNA evidence it seems safe to infer that both the Eastern and Western Pygmies inherited their short stature from a common ancestor.

An alternative theory popular among anthropological "revisionists" is that the Pygmies as such do not really have a shared lineage but are simply Bantus whose ancestors happened to settle in forest areas. According to this line of thinking, their short stature is the result of convergent evolution, i.e., totally independent but very similar processes stemming from the adaptation of each group to the special conditions of life in the tropical forest.

It's important to note, at this point, that there is no way of proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that the common ancestor of today's Pygmies was short. There will always remain the possibility of convergent evolution, even if it can be proven that they all share a common ancestor -- because, strictly speaking, we have no way of proving that ancestor could not have been tall. Which brings me to a very important, though often overlooked, aspect of modern science, a principle known as "Occam's Razor," which has been summarized as follows: "one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything."

The basics are explained in a particularly clear online discussion by Francis Heylighen:

[Occam's Razor] underlies all scientific modelling and theory building. It admonishes us to choose from a set of otherwise equivalent models of a given phenomenon the simplest one. . .

Though the principle may seem rather trivial, it is essential for model building because of what is known as the "underdetermination of theories by data". For a given set of observations or data, there is always an infinite number of possible models explaining those same data. This is because a model normally represents an infinite number of possible cases, of which the observed cases are only a finite subset. The non-observed cases are inferred by postulating general rules covering both actual and potential observations.

An excellent example of Occam's Razor is provided by the application of Newton's principle of universal gravitation to our understanding of the planetary orbits. Strictly speaking the ancient Ptolemaic theory of planetary epicycles, based on an Earth-centered universe, could, in Newton's day, account just about as accurately for the planetary movements as Newton's theory. Without a principle such as Occam's Razor, we might want to consider both theories as equally acceptable, since both are capable of fully accounting for the data. However, Newton's explanation, being far simpler than that of Ptolemy, satisfied Occam's Razor, and thus became universally accepted in his day -- despite the fact there was, at that time, no way of knowing for sure that the planets did not revolve around the Earth in complex epicycles after all.

Thus, according to very basic scientific principles, when we reach a point that two or more theories account equally well for all the evidence, Occam's Razor more or less compels us to accept the theory offering the simplest explanation. Which does not rule out the possibility that new evidence might some day arise that might force us to reconsider.

All too often in the social sciences we find people who are unaware of Occam's Razor, or believe they can easily ignore it, assuming it's necessary to demonstrate the impossibility of every alternative before any theory can be accepted. Not true. All that should be necessary to establish a given theory is to demonstrate 1. that it fully accounts for all the currently available, relevant, evidence; and 2. that it presents a simpler explanation than any alternative which may also happen to account for the same evidence. That doesn't mean the theory is necessarily proven, i.e., true for all time. Absolute proof, contrary to popular opinion, is not the objective of scientific inquiry.

I would now like to return to the sentence quoted at the beginning of this post, but with a different emphasis: "This finding suggests that the shared physical and cultural features of Pygmies were inherited from a common ancestor, rather than reflecting convergent adaptation to the rainforest.." The inclusion of the term "cultural" opens up a whole new vista, rarely considered in the genetic research, but definitely worth considering here. Because, despite the indifference of most ethnologists to this line of research, it most certainly has relevance for our understanding of culture and cultural evolution, which, operating via ancestral traditions passed down from generation to generation must also be regarded as "genetic."

While Patin et al. focus on cultural practices associated with subsistence, such as hunting, gathering, honey collecting, etc., other distinctive cultural features, such as nomadism, acephalous leadership, egalitarian social structures, gender equality, non-violent behavior patterns, and, of course, distinctive modes of dancing and music-making, would also, according to the same set of findings, and the same scientific (i.e., Occam-based) logic, be due to inheritance "from a common ancestor."

Consequently: if the simplest interpretation of the genetic evidence points to a common ancestor for all Pygmy groups, and the simplest interpretation of that finding points to the same common ancestor as the most likely source of all the other commonalities, both physical and cultural, then we may safely infer that our musical "time-machine" takes us back at least 18,000 years into the past, i.e., well into the Upper Paleolithic. But that's only the beginning -- because we have yet to factor the Bushmen and their music into the equation.
(to be continued . . . )

165. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- Part 5

(. . . continued from previous post.)
Destro-Bisol's research was based on Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), inherited strictly along the female line. A more recent study, published this year, by Etienne Patin et al, was based on a wider range of markers, found in the cell nucleus and X chromosome, representing descent from both parents combined. Though the focus of the study was a comparison of African Pygmies and farmers, the data representing the various Pygmy groups tends to bear out Destro-Bisol's mtDNA findings.

Before considering any more genetic evidence, however, let's take a closer look at the various Pygmy populations. While the African Pygmies can be divided into two large groups, Eastern and Western, there are subdivisions of each, especially among the Western group, each subdivision constituting a separate population, with its own history, traditions, language, etc. Among the best known, in the Central African Republic can be found the Aka (also known as Biaka), BaBinga and Ba-Benzélé; in Cameroon, Gabon and the Republic of Congo, the Baka (sometimes confused with the Aka), Bedzan and BaKola; in the Ituri Forest, far to the east, we have the Mbuti, Efé, Asua and BaKongo; also to the East, in Ruanda and Uganda, the Ba-Twa. It must be noted that there is a certain amount of confusion regarding the naming and classification of the various Pygmy groups, so that we can find different names and even different groupings when consulting various sources.

We are now in a better position to interpret the Patin group's results, as encapsulated in Figure 2 from their paper. (If you right-click and select "Open link in new window," you'll get a more readable version of this image.)
As you can see, seven Pygmy groups are represented in the uppermost diagram, BaKola, G. Baka (Baka from Gabon), C. Baka (Baka from Cameroon), Biaka (or Aka), Mbuti, Northern Twa and Southern Twa. Each of the four graphs in the upper diagram represent different degrees of detail in the evaluation of the genetic markers. The most detail can be found in the lowermost graph, labeled K = 5, which is therefore the most useful for our purposes.

The very strong genetic difference between Western and Eastern Pygmies, as noted by Destro-Bisol, is clearly seen here in the contrast of color between the first four groups, colored mostly in green, and the Mbuti, colored mostly red. The next two, both representing the Twa, present a more complex picture, with streaks of both red and orange. The remaining groups, colored mostly in orange, are non-Pygmies, mostly Bantu speaking farmers.

(The lowermost diagram, labeled B, presents a simplified model in which most individuals of mixed ancestry were excluded -- as you can see, the Twa groups, now almost compeletely red, fit more clearly with the Mbuti.)

The Patin group's conclusions are succinctly summarized in the "Author's Summary" on page 2:

By means of simulation-based inferences, we show that the ancestors of Pygmy hunter–gatherers and farming populations started to diverge 60,000 years ago. This indicates that the transition to agriculture—occurring in Africa 5,000 years ago—was not responsible for the separation of the ancestors of modern-day Pygmies and farmers. We also show that Western and Eastern Pygmy groups separated roughly 20,000 years ago from a common ancestral population. This finding suggests that the shared physical and cultural features of Pygmies were inherited from a common ancestor, rather than reflecting convergent adaptation to the rainforest.. ("Inferring the Demographic History of African Farmers and Pygmy Hunter–Gatherers Using a Multilocus Resequencing Data Set," by Etienne Patin et al., in PLoS Genetics, April 2009, Volume 5, Issue 4, p. 2).

This is a result closely consistent with the findings of the Destro-Bisol group, who estimated the divergence of Western from Eastern Pygmies at roughly 18,000 years ago. Note also, that both Pygmy groups appear to share a common ancestor, estimated to have diverged from the ancestor of the farming populations at a much earlier date, roughly 60,000 years ago.

As far as the music is concerned, the Biaka (Aka), BaBinga, BaBenzélé, Baka, and Mbuti, representing both the Western and Eastern Pygmies, all share essentially the same style, characterized most distinctively by the use of elaborately interlocking vocal parts and yodel, though detailed study would be needed to determine whether or not there are significant differences among them with respect to certain other aspects of either musical structure or cultural context. The Bedzan would appear to share a very similar style, though for some reason, unlike any of the others, they apparently do not yodel. Since all these groups seem to have had a common ancestor roughly 18,000 to 20,000 years ago, it's not difficult to conclude that their shared musical style must, in all likelihood, be at least that old. (We're not done, of course, since we still have the Bushmen to consider.)

The only Pygmy group known to me that vocalizes in a clearly different manner are the BaTwa, who sing in the call and response style so common for most Bantu groups and indeed, as is evident from the above diagram, appear to have heavily intermixed with neighboring Bantu peoples over many years. As Patin et al. have written,

With respect to the two populations of Twa Pygmies, they clearly
clustered with South-East African farmers for K=4, consistent with these Pygmy groups being admixed (some anthropologists describe them as ‘‘Pygmoids’’), and with the complete shifting of their cultural practices towards those of neighboring agricultural populations . . . (ibid., p. 3).

I am not familiar with the music of the other Pygmy groups. But since the BaKola too appear to be heavily intermixed genetically with neighboring Bantu peoples, it's possible that they too may no longer sing in the more distinctive and complex Pygmy manner.

(to be continued . . . )

164. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- Part 4

Much has been made recently of the discovery, in Germany, of a bone flute dated to approximately 35,000 years ago (see article in Science News, June 25: Paleolithic Bone Flute Discovered: Earliest Musical Tradition Documented In Southwestern Germany).

"These finds demonstrate the presence of a well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonized Europe, more than 35,000 calendar years ago," the authors write in the journal Nature. "Other than the caves of the Swabian Jura, the earliest secure archaeological evidence for music comes from sites in France and Austria and post-date 30,000 years ago."

The archaeologists have no idea how the flute sounded, or what sort of music it made, though they found someone who figured out how to play the opening of the "Star Spangled Banner" on it. An important find, certainly. But hardly a time machine. Looking at a picture of this flute or listening to it play our national anthem will not take you back 35,000 years. But this should hardly be surprising. Time machines don't actually exist, do they?

Well, actually, they don't. There's no way to literally put yourself back into the past or forward into the future (though if you're patient you'll move into the future on your own, without needing a machine). But there is a way to listen in on sounds humans were making 35,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago, probably even 100,000 years ago -- and beyond.

Let's return to the words of ethnomusicologist Simha Arom: "Right from the beginning, I sensed that this music existed in us all, like some Jungian archetype.” I assume you've gathered by now that he's referring to the music of the African Pygmies. Of his first experience of hearing Pygmy music, from a hotel room in the capital of the Central African Republic, Arom wrote:

I felt that their music came from the back of time, but also, to a certain extent, from my own depths. Yet I could never have known it, never having heard anything like it before. It was insane. How did the musicians achieve this? I was dumbfounded.

So. Music "from the back of time." Music from "my own depths." Music that already "existed in us all." Music that functioned "like some Jungian archetype." Bold words. But what can they mean? (And what is a Jungian archetype anyhow?)

It's one thing to have a feeling about a musical experience, another thing entirely to demonstrate that your feeling could be more than just a feeling, that it might pertain to something real, something that can actually be investigated systematically, that can be researched and tested.

Let's begin with a simple observation. The music Colin Turnbull describes in his classic, The Forest People, is that of the Mbuti Pygmies, living in the Ituri Forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). The strikingly similar music studied by Simha Arom is that of the Aka Pygmies, living far to the west, in the forests of the Central African Republic. The Mbuti and Aka are representative of two completely different Pygmy groups, usually referred to, respectively, as "Eastern" and "Western."

According to a recent study by Giovanni Destro-Bisol et al,

The two principal groups are represented by Eastern Pygmies (32,000 individuals; Murdock 1959), who settled in Zaire, and by Western Pygmies (27,000 individuals; Murdock 1959), who settled in the Cameroon, Congo, and CAR. The two groups differ both biologically and culturally. The Eastern Pygmies are even smaller in stature than Western Pygmies (144–145 cm vs. 152–155 cm in males, on average) and also have lighter skin and a narrower nose.("The Analysis of Variation of mtDNA Hypervariable Region 1 Suggests That Eastern and Western Pygmies Diverged before the Bantu Expansion," in The American Naturalist, February 2004.)

DNA analysis by this group led them to conclude as follows:

The comparisons of haplogroup frequencies among the Western Mbenzele Pygmies, Western Biaka [Aka] Pygmies, and Eastern Mbuti Pygmies indicate a lack of any particular affinity between Western and Eastern Pygmies . . .
The Western Mbenzele Pygmies and Western Biaka Pygmies completely lack the L2 haplogroup and the L1e haplogroup, which are both found at high frequencies among the Eastern Mbuti Pygmies (Vigilant et al. 1991; Watson et al. 1997). However, the haplogroup L1c, observed at high frequencies in the Western Pygmies, was undetected in the Eastern Mbuti Pygmies (pp. 217-218).

The investigators conclude that the most reasonable explanation for "the observed differences in haplogroup frequencies" is "[t]he long reciprocal isolation between the two Pygmy groups," an isolation dating, in their estimate, to at least 18,000 years ago (p. 224).

(to be continued . . . )

163. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- Part 3

What if I told you I had a time machine, enabling you to listen in on events from thousands of years in the past? Naturally, you’d smile and discreetly change the subject. “Humor me,” I’d insist, flashing a smile of my own. I’d then draw a small device out of my pocket to wave slowly and mysteriously before your eyes, like a magician’s wand. “But this is just an mp3 player,” you’d protest. “I don’t see any time machine.” I’d silently produce an inexpensive headset, plug it in to the device, press the “start” button, and hand it to you. You’d place it over your ears and listen. “Hmmm, what’s this?”

For anthropologist Colin Turnbull, it was the most joyful of all the joyous sounds to be heard at “the heart of Stanley’s Dark Continent”: “the sound of the voices of the forest people as they sing a lusty chorus of praise to this wonderful world of theirs – a world that gives them everything they want. This cascade of sound echoes among the giant trees until it seems to come at you from all sides in sheer beauty and truth and goodness, full of the joy of living” (1961:13). For noted folklorist and author Alan Lomax, it was “a music that might have come from the Garden of Eden,” the virtual embodiment of an egalitarian, gender-equal, pacifist Utopia, where “men and women, old and young, are linked in close interdependence by preference and not by force” (1976:38 – Cantometrics: An Approach to the Anthropology of Music). For ethnographer Michelle Kisliuk, it was "the ultimate example of a melding of social life and aesthetic life." For ethnomusicologist Simha Arom, “It was a shock . . . It made my spine tingle. How could these people play such complex music without a conductor? For me, that was as deep a musical experience as first hearing the music of Bartok. Right from the beginning, I sensed that this music existed in us all, like some Jungian archetype” (as quoted in “No Small Triumph,” in The Independent, Oct. 6, 2003 -- http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/no-small-triumph-582413.html).

Some of the most original musicians of our time have been deeply inspired by the same extraordinary sounds. For Mickey Hart, drummer of the legendary rock band, The Grateful Dead, “these magnificent sounds . . . lit my imagination, suggested possibilities, and opened a strange new world to a kid growing up in the city. . . I was sort of listening to the roots of the roots. Deeper than the blues. What the blues was formed from” (From interview with Brian Handwerk, for National Geographic News, June 6, 2003.) Marie Daulne, founder of the innovative vocal group Zap Mama, expressed her feelings in simpler terms: “it was like an illumination, like a light” (from article on Zap Mama, in Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zap_Mama). According to composer Marc-André Dalbavie, “this is currently one of the richest musics in existence. The complexity of the polyphony and polyrhythms is absolutely marvelous. It's very removed from our traditional Renaissance polyphony. Many composers have been attracted to this sort of layered rhythmic writing recently, I think because it is so incredibly rich, fresh and has inspired a lot of people . . .”

The great Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti, best known for his score for the film 2001, was among the first classical musicians to recognize the importance of this music and be directly inspired by it. For Ligeti, “What we witness in this music is a wonderful combination of order and disorder, which in turn... produces a sense of order on a higher level” (from “No Small Triumph,” in The Independent, Oct. 6, 2003.)

"OK," you say, "I get it. There is definitely something very special about this music. But, sorry, I don't know what you mean about the 'time machine' part. How are these recordings a time machine?"

(to be continued . . . )

162. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- Part 2

Several things motivated me in writing about the Kalahari debate. For one thing, I've been a confirmed skeptic regarding the movement known as "post-modernism" for a long time now. Back in the early Eighties I wrote what seemed a blistering attack on the artistic movement of that name, naively believing I could ridicule it out of existence. Little did I realize, back then, that a reactionary artistic movement, aimed at the modernism of people like Picasso, Mondrian, Pollock, Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez, Stockhausen, Cage, Joyce, Cummings, etc. would ultimately become confused with an ideological attack on a very different sort of modernism, the modernism associated by historians and political scientists with the origins of experimental science and the Enlightenment; and then, among social scientists, in an even more confusing development, turn into a full fledged attack on the "romanticism" of certain views regarding indigenous peoples, who now, apparently, needed to be defended from traditionalist purists, whose obsessions with notions like indigeneity and authenticity were increasingly seen as sinister and destructive efforts to impose Western values on the pathetic victims of colonialism, by, horror of horrors, essentializing them. I have always found such attacks both simplistic and, to appropriate a favorite pomo putdown, reductive. I discuss my views of this aspect of revisionist ideology in some detail on this blog, particularly here and also here.

Another thing that motivated me was my recently developed interest in the truly revolutionary research that so many geneticists are devoting to the reconstruction of humankind's earliest history by studying the various ways in which genetic markers enable us to trace our ancestry back into the earliest reaches of the Paleolithic, all the way back to our origins -- apparently in Africa. One thing that struck me was the almost sublime indifference of so many anthropologists and other social scientists (such as ethnomusicologists, for instance) to this extremely promising and actually very exciting development. Though Cavalli-Sforza was already pioneering this sort of research back in the 1960's, you will find hardly any references at all to any of it in the anthropological literature, neither the academic journals nor the books. Even in the relatively new and innovative journal, Before Farming, I believe my article was the first to even mention the genetic findings. The great majority of writing in this area can be found almost exclusively in journals specializing in biological and genetic research. I need to mention, by the way, one of the great exceptions to this rule, a fascinating and very important blog run by an anthropologist named Dienekes.

Finally, and probably most important for me personally, was a desire to impress on social scientists, particularly anthropologists, the relevance of musical traditions, and music-related behavior, to their work. Here again, we find only very rarely much reference to music in the anthropology literature, and, if I may say so, wherever we do find such references, the musical findings tend not to be taken very seriously, since music has apparently little to do with the principal preoccupations of most ethnologists, i.e., kinship relations, modes of subsistence, adaptation to the environment, warfare, etc. And of course it leaves relatively little in the way of relics for archaeologists to mull over.

So. In the very special and in my view rather dramatic evidence afforded by the musical practices of certain Pygmy and Bushmen groups, filtered through an honest to God methodology (Cantometrics) through which meaningful comparisons could be made with some degree of objectivity and control, I thought I had an especially powerful tool for making a difference, hopefully changing forever the way the anthropologists view musicological research.

I'm still hopeful, after two years, that this paper will eventually have the intended impact. But so far the results have been discouraging, I must admit. The readers and the editor of Before Farming expressed the hope that my argument would be controversial enough to generate a fair amount of discussion, if not heated debate, but so far, to my knowledge, that has not been forthcoming.

I'm reminded of an old adage: "if your only tool is a hammer then you'll treat every problem like a nail." Or the story about the person who lost his keys under some bushes, in the dark, but insisted on looking for them under a street light, because that was the only place he could see clearly. I'm hoping that some day the anthropologists (and ethnomusicologists) will be willing to look for answers to some age-old problems in some of the dark shadows they've been avoiding simply because they don't feel comfortable there.

161. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- 1

As mentioned in my last post, I've written three papers since starting this blog, all focused on the very special, and to my thinking absolutely central, relation between the musical traditions of the African Pygmies and Bushmen. One has already been published, two years ago, in an especially interesting journal devoted to the study of hunter/gatherer archaeology and anthropology: Before Farming. Another was accepted last year for publication in the journal Ethnomusicology and is, as I understand it, currently slated for publication in the upcoming Fall issue. The most recent is slated for publication next year in the Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony, as held (without me) in Tbilisi, Georgia.

I'm pleased to report that the publisher of Before Farming has, at this time, generously granted permission for me to share the first of these papers with the readers of this blog (you'd need a subscription otherwise). So, without further ado, here's the pdf file: New perspectives on the Kalahari debate: a tale of two‘genomes.’ Avid readers will notice that the paper is based rather extensively on materials already posted here, in sections 64-75, and to a lesser extent sections 76-82. However, the paper presents this material in a considerably more disciplined, less discursive, judiciously edited, and generally easier to follow and far more readable format. Please note that several audio clips can be accessed via Appendix 1, on page 11, and there is a discography with more information on the sources of these recordings on p. 13.

I have also received permission to provide blog readers with a special preview of the most recent paper, written for the Tbilisi Symposium, but I'll need a bit of time to prepare before I provide you with that link. While I won't be able to make the Ethnomusicology paper available here, I do plan to offer a brief summary and discussion on this blog at some future point. In fact I'm planning to discuss all three papers here, with the aim of both summarizing the most essential points and moving on to some further considerations based on what I've been learning over the last two or three years. Since I'm also busy with other projects (see previous post) I may not be able to post here on a regular basis, so I'm hoping interested readers will be patient and check for new material from time to time -- or better, yet, become subscribers.

160. An Update

The past year has been particularly eventful for me, I've been preoccupied with various projects and people, and have consequently been neglecting this blog. At this point I'd like to update my readers on what's been going on, and also think out loud about where I'd like to take the blog in future posts.

There have been several interesting developments:

1. After a considerable delay, my collaboration with geneticists Sarah Tishkoff and Floyd Reed is back on track. To refresh your memories, here's a link to an article in Nature News dealing with an earlier phase of our work, as reported by Dr. Reed at the 2007 annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association: Music is in Our Genes. (You'll need to subscribe in order to read the entire article, unfortunately.) The title is misleading, since our research has nothing to do with the genetics of musical ability, but focuses on population genetics, a completely different matter. Since this presentation, there have been some frustrating delays in our collaboration, due largely to Tishkoff and Reed's preoccupation with their major study of African lineages, finally published last month in the journal Science: The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans. Now that this monumental work is complete, our comparative study of the population genetics and musical stylistics of Africa, based on a comparative analysis of the genetic and musical data, should move along more smoothly.

2. Over the past year or so I've been working as consultant on yet another project, headed by cognitive scientist and musicologist Steven Brown, of McMaster University, co-editor of the path breaking book, The Origins of Music. Brown's project, funded through a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, concerns a question that has fascinated anthropologists for years: the origins of Austronesian languages, culture and people. We're currently working together, along with ethnomusicologist Ying-fen Wang and geneticist Jean Trejaut, to determine whether the musical data can shed some meaningful light on this problem.

3. My paper, "Concept, Style and Structure in the Music of the African Pygmies and Bushmen," was accepted last year for publication in the journal, Ethnomusicology. After several months of frustrating delay, it looks like it will finally appear in the upcoming Fall issue. This paper is significant for at least two reasons: 1. it constitutes, as I see it, a definitive refutation of widely circulated claims, by Susanne Furniss and Emmanuelle Olivier, that Pygmy and Bushmen music represent "radically opposed" musical conceptions; 2. it draws on the insights of several different field investigators, including Furniss and Olivier themselves, to develop a more complete and comprehensive view of Pygmy and Bushmen musical structures and traditions than has been heretofor available.

4. I had the honor of being invited to participate in the the Fourth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony, to be held in the Republic of Georgia last Fall, an invitation I accepted with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, however, the political unrest that developed in this region over the summer was so unnerving that several of the invited guests, including myself, felt forced to cancel -- also known as "chickening out." All I can say in my defense is that I hate long distance traveling, am easily worn out by all the complexities and frustrations of modern air travel, and the added anxiety of having to worry about possibly being trapped in a foreign country suddenly at war with a much more powerful neighbor (Russia!) finally tipped the scales in favor of cancellation.

5. Nevertheless, I did write a paper for the conference, which the organizers were gracious enough to accept for publication in their upcoming "Proceedings," due for publication sometime next year. The paper, based on ideas and materials posted in the "Music of the Great Tradition" sections of this blog, has a somewhat lengthy and awkward title: "Some Notable Features of Pygmy and Bushmen Polyphonic Practice, with Special Reference to Survivals of Traditional Vocal Polyphony in Europe." This paper is also of special importance to me, as it builds on the "Concept, Style and Structure" paper, demonstrating, to my satisfaction at least, certain highly interesting and unusual features of Pygmy/Bushmen style that make it even more significant to the history and evolution of music than even I had suspected.

In future blog posts I plan to summarize some of the major points of both new papers, along with some additional points made in an earlier article, also focused on P/B style, my paper on the musical implications of the Kalahari debate, published a couple years ago in the anthropological journal Before Farming. These three papers taken together are especially important to me, as they constitute the beginnings of a whole new approach, not only to the history and evolution of music, but the evolution of certain key aspects of social structure and culture generally.

I've noticed, by the way, that this blog has continued to attract visitors despite my shameful neglect over the past year and is now up to a grand total of over 40,000 hits, which is quite gratifying. Thanks so much for your continued interest. For the benefit of those wanting to explore the blog in more detail but confused by all the many posts, I've recently added a Table of Contents, which should always be clearly visible at the top of every page.

159. Music of the Great Tradition -- 54:Dudki

On September 26, 1911, Stravinsky writes to his scenarist, Nicholas Roerich as follows: "'I have already begun to compose, and have sketched the Introduction for dudki, and the Divination With Twigs, in a state of passion and excitement." The introductory section of the Rite was, in fact, originally entitled Dudki. So, what are "dudki"? Literally the word means "pipes." But for Stravinksy and his collaborator, dudki had a special meaning, as we can gather from the following excerpt from Roerich's essay, "Joy in Art" (as translated in Peter Hill's Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring):

A holiday. Let it be the one with which the victory of the springtime sun was always celebrated. When all went out into the woods for long stretches of time to admire the fragrance of the trees: when they made fragrant wreaths out of the early greenery, and adorned themselves with them. When swift dances were danced . . . When horns and pipes [dudki] of bone and wood were played . . . [ p. 5].

It's difficult to say whether the dudki reference originated with Roerich or Stravinsky and there is no way to tell for sure whether or not the composer ever heard real peasants playing such instruments. According to his autobiography, however, he and his family regularly spent their summers in the Ukrainian countryside and some of his earliest childhood memories are of peasant music (pp. 3 -4).

According to Olga Velitchkina "pipes" of various kinds are still played in parts of Russia, Ukrainia, Lithuania and the Komi Republic. We've already seen her all too brief video of a Russian panpipe ensemble in an earlier post.

According to Velitchkina, such pipes have been referred to by various names, including "dudki, kuvikly, vikushki, etc." She adds: "On first listening, this music seems closer to African forms (for example, to the Ba-Benzele pygmy music) than to any European folk instrument traditions."

To see how Stravinsky's "dudki" also suggest African forms, let's take another look at the scores I presented last time, but in somewhat more detail:



(Again, please note that you can enlarge any image by clicking on it.)

I've blown up the page from the Rite of Spring so we can more easily analyze the upper wind parts. There are several things to take note of. First, compare the hocketed interplay between the four highest parts (flutes and piccolos) with the very similar interplay among Voices 1 through 4 in England's transcription of the Bushmen Eland Song. Second, compare the general outline of all the parts in both examples, noting the high degree of melodic disjunction in all except those parts that are completely chromatic. Thirdly, note how the musical fabric of both examples is built up from the continual repetition of brief, interlocking motives.

If one follows the the Rite from the beginning up to this point, the fundamentally additive nature of Stravinsky's musical strategy becomes apparent. New parts continually enter and leave and are often simply superimposed over what came before. Additive structure of this sort is characteristic of many portions of the Rite of Spring, as with many other works of his "Russian" period. And as England and many others have noted, additive structure is also a characteristic feature of Bushmen music -- and Pygmy music as well -- where each participant may enter and leave at will, singing or playing his or her own independent part.

While Stravinsky's harmonies and melodies are noted for their dissonance and complexity, all but the most chromatic parts in the upper winds (first Flute, second and third Oboes, first and second Clarinet) are limited to notes drawn from a single pentatonic scale: F, A flat, B flat, C, E flat. An additional note, G, is present only in the English Horn part (8th staff from the top). The stark simplicity of the scalar structure is disguised by the spelling of certain notes (G sharp instead of A flat and D sharp instead of E flat in the Piccolos) and also the fact that the English Horn, the "Piccolo Clarinet" (Cl. Picc., in D), and the Clarinets (in A and B flat) are transposed. When we evaluate the tonal structure at concert pitch, we see that it is in fact very close, intervallically, to the scale of the Bushmen example, an incomplete pentatonic on G: G, B flat, (C), D, F.

There are a great many examples of Pygmy/Bushmen style singing and wind playing in various parts of Africa that could be compared with Stravinsky's remarkable dudki. For example, from the Ju'hoansi Bushmen (from the CD "Chants de Bushmen Ju'hoansi," recorded by Emannuelle Olivier): The Eland -- Girl's Initiation -- and the Aka Pygmies (from the CD set "Musical Anthology of the Aka Pygmies," recorded by Simha Arom): Divining Music

An especially intriguing ensemble of interweaving flutes was recorded by Stanley Diamond among the Anaguta people of the Jos Plateau region of Nigeria. It's from a Folkways LP, Music of the Jos Plateau and Other Regions of Nigeria, that I edited and annotated in collaboration with Diamond back in 1966. The striking resemblance to the Rite introduction was immediately apparent and very puzzling at the time. The typically African additive structure is especially clear thanks to Diamond's request that they enter one at a time: Anaguta Flute Octet.

158. NB: Commentaries, Discussions, Discourses, Disagreements and Debates

Before continuing with my discussion of dudki and the Rite of Spring, I'd like to squeeze in this brief note, calling your attention to several very interesting and pointed commentaries by a poster calling himself "maju." Maju modestly describes himself as an amateur archaeologist, but may well be as knowledgeable in this field as many professionals. And unlike most archaeologists he also has an excellent grasp of the same type of genetic research that's been fascinating me so much over the last few years. He has a very interesting blog of his own: leherensuge

Maju's excellent and often extensive commentaries (and criticisms), with my equally extensive responses, can be found in the "Comments" sections of posts 153 and 123. There are over 60 comments so far, which should be of interest to anyone following this blog with any degree of serious attention.

157. Music of the Great Tradition -- 53:Dudki

I'm back, finally, after a long hiatus. Been busy with both professional and real life issues -- all good (mostly great, actually), but also time consuming. Additionally I think I got a bit off my stride in the interval, which has made it more difficult to get back into the blogger mindset. So this will be an experiment to see if I can still write this sort of thing as easily as before.

Now where was I? We were discussing the "Great Tradition," which for me begins in Paleolithic Africa, from before the (theoretical) Out of Africa excursion, a tradition characterized by certain highly distinctive practices currently found among the Pygmies and Bushmen of that continent. And the point I've been trying to make is that I see signs of the survival of this tradition, or at least certain key aspects of it, in a great many places today. Not only among certain indigenous peoples, as I argued in my "Echoes" essay, but also as a significant part of much more recent developments in both the classical and popular music of the "modern" world.

My discussion in this post will center on an especially influential figure in Twentieth Century music, Igor Stravinsky. And one of the most influential compositions of all time: the Rite of Spring. While the Rite has been hailed as one of the most forward looking and advanced works of the "classical" repertoire, it is noted for several stylistic features that have been described as "primitive" -- features that have always reminded me of certain aspects of African music: polyrhythmic juxtapositions, stark repetitions, pentatonic scales, additive structures, etc. I've often asked myself why Stravinsky, whose roots were in Russia, would write music that sounds so African.

The Rite begins with an extended section, featuring wind instruments, that contains some of the most original and remarkable music of the entire piece. While all the parts are independent of one another, each with its own melodic and rhythmic features, the result can't really be described as "counterpoint," but sounds -- and looks -- to me a lot more like the juxtaposition of parts we find in -- you guessed it -- Pygmy and Bushmen music.

Here's a particularly interesting page from this section, as it appears in the original score:

(Remember, you can blow any of these images up to a more readable size by clicking on them.)

And this is what the introduction sounds like, starting from several measures prior to the above and extending to the end of the section: Rite of Spring -- Introduction.

Here's a transcription, by Nicolas England, of a Ju'hoansi Bushmen song for comparison:


The similarities I perceive may not be obvious, but in my next post I'll be going into a more detailed analysis of both examples that should make things a bit clearer. Meanwhile I'll leave you to ponder the meaning of the title Stravinsky originally gave to this section. It's a Russian word: Dudki.

156. I'm still here, but . . .

Just thought I'd post here to let everyone know I'm planning more posts -- when I get some time. I'm still thinking about the Great Tradition and how it's affected so many aspects of the music we hear now, in the "developed" world. I think I have some really cool surprises up my sleeve, so please hang in there.

I haven't been posting lately because I've been finishing up one paper -- that's now completed and sent off. But just afterward I learned that another paper has been accepted for publication, but only after the inevitable revisions. So that's been on my mind for the last couple days. And I'll be super busy with various other matters over the next 10 days or so.

I will be back here, however, probably by mid-June, with as I say, some really unusual and surprising examples from my "Great Tradition" bag of tricks. See you then.

155. Droning on and on

Sorry to be away from the blog for so long. Please don't give up on me. I am presently struggling with a new paper with a deadline of mid-June, and it has not been easy going, so I've been forced to neglect the blog and will probably continue to be posting only sporadically. Meanwhile a very close friend died last week and the shock of his untimely death has made it difficult to concentrate. Paul Buriak was a student of mine many years ago, who became a good and very supportive friend, the sort of person who was constantly working to help friends and family in any number of ways. Paul was also a remarkable poet, but too shy and too unsure of himself to even attempt to get any of his work published. He will be greatly missed by his many friends and his family, who appreciated his many gifts, his penetrating intellect, his generous heart and his ability to bring people together and make things happen. I've been using him as a sounding board for my ideas for years and he's always had interesting, intelligent and helpful responses, as well as being consistently sympathetic and supportive. He was also an avid and enthusiastic reader of this blog, which I especially appreciated.
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I've been droning on about this topic of drone, which is very interesting and important, but also a bit of a distraction from my principal theme, to which I hope to return soon, my pet "Great Tradition" idea, which hasn't quite played itself out yet. Before I leave the topic of drone, however, I need to say a bit more, because as is well known to students of Music History (with capital letters), drone was a very important aspect of Medieval Western polyphony. I've already had a lot to say regarding my conviction that elements of Pygmy/Bushmen style, notably hocket, stimmtauch and canon, almost certainly played a role in the development of the Western polyphonic tradition, making it a part of the "Great Tradition" for sure. (IMO)

Clearly the very important drone-based oral traditions of "Old Europe" also had an important role to play, which must be recognized, despite the fact that drone is NOT part of my "Great Tradition" theory. While I don't have time to get very deeply into that development, I do want to make the following point before I leave the topic of drone: there is in my mind very little question but that the so-called "art" music of the so-called "West" was not an autonomous development born of some sort of innate creativity that suddenly sprang up out of nowhere on the part of certain monks and priests of the Medieval Christian church. It was part and parcel of long-standing traditions that had been in play for a very long time, possibly tens of thousands of years. The early polyphony of the Medieval church is saturated with drone effects strikingly similar to what can be found in a great many of the Old European traditions pointed to by Jordania (and of course many others as well). This has been studied, of course, by some very capable people, but the full impact of their work has yet to be felt in the world of professional academic musical scholarship. The role of oral "folk" traditions of all sorts in the development of Western classical music at all stages of its history has consistently been either underplayed or ignored. Which means that the real history of "Western Music" has yet to be written.

154. Mysteries of D/D -- Tibet!

A few days ago I received a very interesting email from Giovanni Grosskopf, an Italian composer with a strong interest in ethnomusicology, who teaches at a conservatory in Milan. Professor Grosskopf has been following this blog for a while, and has already provided me with some very useful information on the Tralallero tradition as well as some thoughtful and meaningful feedback on other aspects of the blog. So whenever I hear from him I always look forward to something interesting. But I was in no way prepared for the extraordinary link he sent in his most recent communication, a link to a video featuring various types of Tibetan music. For most of us, including myself, I'm embarrassed to admit, Tibetan music means the chanting of Lamaic monks, sometimes accompanied by extraordinary trumpet playing, a tradition of great interest which is also, in its own way, a type of D/D, since the chant is itself a drone, and the polyphony can be remarkably (and also very beautifully) dissonant. I was also aware of a solo vocal tradition featuring voices with a remarkable range and fluency, often going into the stratosphere. But Giovanni found something very different at a certain point in this video:

my interest raised when a group of three Tibetan women began to sing. It was a polyphonic "Tibetan women love song", according to the presentation. Their style included very frequent dissonances of second, shrill and steady voice, and glissandos on the syllable "ee", not very far from Bulgarian polyphonic chant, and not unlike what you called the D/D style.

Here's the link, courtesy of CCTV. All the music on this video appears to be reasonably authentic and well worth listening to, despite the slickness of the production. The performance to which Giovanni alludes can be found 21 minutes and 13 seconds into the show. If you have a fast connection you can move the cursor to that position and wait a second or two while it buffers. Or you can simply listen to this excerpt I recorded. And he is right! The singing of these women is astonishingly similar to the D/D styles from both the Balkans and Flores that I've been discussing. Unfortunately no information is provided as to what particular group within Tibet they represent. If anyone out there has that information or knows where to get it, please contact me or place a comment here. This is for me a completely unexpected and very intriguing development.

Unlike the Nuristan tradition unearthed by Jordania, which may well be due to a relatively recent migration from the West, this Tibetan version of D/D would appear to be indigenously Himalayan. Could it be related historically to either the Balkan or Indonesian/Melanesian D/D traditions? Or both? Could it represent some sort of musical "missing link" between them, a survival, perhaps, from some paleolithic migrations, centered perhaps in India, that might have spread in at least three directions, west, north and east, leaving little to no trace of itself anywhere in between? Again, as I've said before, the real value of such research and such speculation is that the musical evidence has led to the formulation of a testable hypothesis. If it turns out that there are unique genetic connections between any two of these groups, then music will have contributed something of real importance to our understanding of human history.

153. Mysteries of D/D -- Nuristan

(I've decided to drop the "Music of the Great Tradition" heading for the time being, as the drone traditions I'm now discussing do not appear to fit into that scheme.)

In the last post I discussed one of the great mysteries of comparative musicology, the uncanny resemblance between two Drone/Dissonance traditions located in two very different parts of the world -- the Balkans and Indonesia/Melanesia -- with nothing resembling either to be found anywhere in between. This is not quite the case, however, as Jordania has written of a very interesting D/D-based tradition still surviving in, of all places, Afghanistan, among the Kalash people, living in a remote, mountainous region overlapping the border with Pakistan, currently known as Nuristan. Here is an example of their very dissonant drone polyphony, as transcribed by Jordania (p. 153):

Here's another example, this time in the form of a dissonant round, quite close in structure and style to the Lithuanian Sutartines we examined in posts 128 and 136:

( The round structure becomes clear when you follow the part beginning on the fourth measure of the upper staff, with downward pointing stems, which is identical to the solo part at the beginning.) How remarkable to find such music smack in the middle of Central Asia, a zone where polyphonic vocalizing of any kind is all but unheard of. And how convenient it would be if this style could be posited as a sort of "missing link" between the Balkans and Indonesia.

The reality, however, may turn out to be even more remarkable. According to their legends, the Kalash are descended from Greek soldiers from the armies of Alexander the Great, who either deserted or were left behind in the wake of his military ventures into this region, ca. 326 BCE. While such claims are always regarded with great skepticism, according to a recent genetic study, "Investigation of the Greek ancestry of northern Pakistani ethnic groups using Y chromosomal DNA variation" (see http://hgm2002.hgu.mrc.ac.uk/Abstracts/Publish/WorkshopPosters/WorkshopPoster11/hgm0533.htm), they might very well be true: "Based upon haplogroup frequencies, 65-88% Greek admixture was estimated for the Kalash, consistent with a Greek origin for a significant proportion of Kalash Y chomosomes." This is exactly the sort of study I suggested could be carried out with respect to the D/D singers in the Balkans and Flores. And in this case it appears to have revealed a truly astonishing connection over a period of over 2,000 years! (Actually the results of the Pakistani study were mixed, with some evidence pointing to a Greek connection and other evidence not so clear. Thus the astonishing musical connection could well resolve the issue in favor of the Kalash claim.) If these results are verified, then this would be hard evidence for exactly the sort of musical survival Yampolsky declared to be "not plausible" ("in the absence of a method of notation or an elaborate pedagogical system . . . for transmitting the tradition, no music could stand still -- with no new ideas or gradual changes, no influences from outside -- for even a few centuries, let alone millennia"). On the other hand, we would still be left scratching our heads over the far more implausible connection between the Balkans and the island of Flores, as an ancient Greek connection dating from 326 BCE would be far too recent and too limited to account for Indonesia as well.

What's most important about this fascinating tale, both cautionary and inspiring, is the great potential of the musical evidence, combined with the genetic evidence, to make a difference in our understanding of some of the strangest mysteries of "deep history."

152. Music of the Great Tradition -- 52. Mysteries of D/D

The uncanny resemblance between the "drone dissonance" style duets of (mountainous) East Flores and the mountains of southwest Bulgaria and other enclaves in various regions of the Balkans have puzzled many musicologists for some time. The noted scholar Jaap Kunst was among the first to point to these striking similarities, in a 1954 study of the music of this Indonesian island, suggesting that they might have been due to a migration from the Balkans to Southern China that supposedly took place around 800 BC. According to Philip Yampolsky, who recorded and edited the Music of Indonesia series from which I took the Flores clip,

For decades, ethnomusicologists have laughted at Kunst's theory, but that may be because they've had so few opportunities to hear recordings from East Flores. In fact Kunst did not exaggerate: the resemblance is extraordinary [p. 8]. . .

[Nevertheless,] his theory requires us to accept that Balkan music came to Flores (but nowhere in between) and remained the same, both in substance and in some detail, in both places, with no subsequent contact between the cultures, for the next 2000 or 2500 years. But this is simply not plausible: in the absence of a method of notation or an elaborate pedagogical system . . . for transmitting the tradition, no music could stand still -- with no new ideas or gradual changes, no influences from outside -- for even a few centuries, let alone millennia [p. 9].

Yampolsky's reaction is especially interesting in that the bulk of his skepticism is not directed at the "nowhere in between" aspect, which for me is the crux of the problem -- but for him merely a parenthetical issue. For him, the real question is how a particular tradition could survive in an oral tradition virtually unchanged for "millennia." As I see it, there are a great many examples of musical traditions remaining virtually unchanged, not only for millennia, but tens of thousands of years. Anyone following this Blog with any degree of care should have no problem with that idea, which for me has been established beyond doubt.

For me, therefore, the really difficult, if not impossible, issue, is: by what means two such highly distinctive traditions, so incredibly close in so many respects, could have either 1. been conceived independently or 2. managed to transmit themselves over such vast distances without any trace of any similar survivals anywhere in between.

To be thorough it's necessary to add that the Flores D/D tradition is echoed, with varying degrees of similarity, by other musical practices elsewhere in the general vicinity -- specifically certain islands in Melanesia, such as coastal Manus (the "enrilank" chant), Fiji, and others as well, though at the moment I can't recall exactly where. There are also certain other similarities one could point to, involving other types of polyphonic and unison group performance styles between Eastern Europe -- particularly Russia -- and certain groups in Indonesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, etc. We find in both areas a very interesting practice, where different elements of a choral performance will interleave their breathing to produce a continuous stream of sound. And we also find, in many instances, melodic and harmonic passages that could be heard almost interchangeably in either part of the world.

I don't see much possibility of an ancient migration from anywhere in Europe to anywhere in Oceania, though there are some theories I've heard of that I might want to explore. It's conceivable, I suppose, that at some point during the "Out of Africa" migration, circa 90,000 to 60,000 years ago, a population bottleneck of some sort could have led to the development of this D/D style, perhaps somewhere in India, followed by a split between at least two elements of this population, one eventually finding its way to the Balkans, the other to Indonesia and Oceania. But, again, it's very difficult to understand how no other traces of the same style could have been left anywhere in between.

So, we have a true conundrum on our hands. The good news is that, thanks to advances in the genetic research, it's now possible, at least in principle, to test any theory we might want to come up with. And the very specifity of this D/D style, its presence in only very limited populations in certain very specific parts of the world, would make it relatively easy to do. One would have to arrange for teams of DNA collectors to make their way to various places in both the Balkans and Indonesia and/or Melanesia to collect samples -- but only from people known to represent precisely the musical traditions we are concerned with, preferably the singers themselves. It would then be a relatively simple matter to compare various haplotypes and haplogroups from the Balkans groups with others from the Flores groups (or elsewhere from similar traditions in that part of the world). One would then compare these genetic comparisons with comparisons drawn from various groups in the world selected randomly, as a control. If the D/D singers have significantly more haplotypes or haplogroups in common than the control groups, it might be possible to take seriously the notion of a historical connection of some sort. If not, then I suppose it would be necessary to accept that such a remarkable similarity could be due to simple coincidence -- independent invention. What interests me most about this situation is the as yet untapped power of music for pointing to certain potentially significant historical connections.

151. Music of the Great Tradition -- 51:Mysteries of D/D

The remarkable style of drone polyphony associated today primarily with Bulgaria (or more accurately Southwestern Bulgaria) is paralled by roughly similar traditions to be found, as noted by Jordania, in many more or less remote enclaves of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Greece. This can be considered a true style area, rather than simply a region of drone polyphony, as it involves several highly idiosyncratic features in addition to drone. Most prominent is the stress on extreme dissonances, based on major and minor seconds, and sometimes even smaller intervals, characteristically emphasized and often sustained, generating acoustic "beats" that can produce a powerfully resonant bodily vibration, in which the singers clearly take pleasure. Since this style so prominently displays both drone and dissonance, Jordania has labeled it the "Drone/Dissonance" style, or "D/D."

While Jordania mentions several traditions in Georgia and elsewhere that tend to also feature secundal dissonances, in most cases this is an evanescent effect, not unlike similar effects in P/B polyphony, where seconds are often freely combined with thirds, fourths and fifths. This type of polyphony could, in many cases (especially where drone is absent) be explained as an offshoot of P/B. Not so with the "Bulgarian" "D/D" style, where the dissonances are emphasized and dwelt upon in a manner totally unlike anything to be heard in Africa. Other characteristics of this very distinctive style include extreme glottalization (possibly related to yodel), tremulo, free rhythm, extreme volume, and a characteristic upward glissando "glide" prominent especially at phrase endings. While drone effects can often be combined with parallel motion (usually in seconds!), the sustaining or iteration of a single note against at least one other moving part is usually a prominent feature of this style.

So what is the problem? Couldn't such a style, so clearly localized largely in one region of Europe (the Balkans) have developed as an offshoot of certain other types of polyphony in one particular corner of southeastern Europe and spread from there? Yes, I suppose it could have. The problem is that essentially the same style of singing, complete with all the features mentioned above, can be found in a totally different part of the world.

To illustrate, let's compare this example, Zamurknia Pestotin, from Bulgaria (from Vocal Traditions of Bulgaria, Smithsonian Folkways), with this, Berasi Kremet, from, of all places, Flores (from Music of Indonesia, Vol. 8, Smithsonian Folkways), a small island near Bali, halfway round the world, in Indonesia.

150. Music of the Great Tradition -- 50:Drone

Of all the various types of polyphonic vocalizing characteristic of what I've been calling "Old Europe," drone polyphony would seem to be the only one bearing no trace of the "African signature" I've been associating with the "Great Tradition." While "heterophonic" polyphony (see "stratum" no. 2 in the previous post) doesn't seem to be particularly common in Africa, its conflation of heterophonic and polyphonic elements does in fact reflect an important and highly distinctive feature of P/B, suggesting that it could be a European variant with African roots. The simpler types of parallel motion or descant polyphony described in "strata" 3 and 4 below are commonly found in various African Bantu traditions, usually associated with "call and response" interactions of a type also not uncommon in "Old Europe," suggesting either a direct influence from Africa or, more likely, musical "mutation" along parallel lines, possibly reflecting the effects of separate population bottlenecks at different times on both continents. (For an explanation of bottlenecks and musical "mutations" see post 17, "The Bottleneck.")

Drone polyphony, on the other hand, doesn't seem to share any distinctive characteristics with P/B or any other typically African practice. That's not to say it can't be found in sub-Saharan Africa at all -- certain groups, notably the Bahima and Massai, vocalize using drone effects. But judging from its relatively sparse distribution on this continent, the practice is likely to have developed many thousands of years after the "Out of Africa" migration that led to the initial population of Europe with "modern" humans.

This might not, at first, appear to be such a terrible conundrum. After all, drone is only a single trait, while the various styles I've been tracking on this blog have usually been defined as composites of two or more inter-related traits. It's not difficult to see how, as a single, isolated feature, drone might well have been "independently invented" more than once and for various perfectly understandable reasons. After all, by having most of the singers intone one or two basic pitches over and over again, it's possible to produce the euphonious effects of polyphony among groups with relatively little interest in -- or talent for -- harmonization. Or, as Jordania has suggested, drone could have developed in some instances as a hybrid, combining the polyphonic proclivities of established "Old Europeans" with the elaborated melodic development favored by west Asiatic invaders. A somewhat similar encounter could have led to the development of drone polyphony in the Medieval church, where, in this case, the "drone" part carries the original chant melody (most likely reflecting the influence of the "Eastern" church) as a "cantus firmus," in juxtaposition with "Old European" style elaborated counterpoints above and around it, as, for example, in the work of Perotin and the Ars Antiqua style generally.

Such explanations may well account for the presence of drone polyphony in many parts of Europe and, indeed, many other places in the world where drone of one type or another can be found. So far so good. No problem.

The real difficulty arises due to the presence of certain polyphonic traditions where drone is only one element in a rare complex of traits defining a highly distinctive, easily identifiable style, a unique approach to drone polyphony usually associated with certain mountainous regions of the Balkans, best known due to the enormous popularity of a CD entitled Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares.

149. Music of the Great Tradition -- 49:A European Stratigraphy

The relatively "quick and dirty" overview I've been presenting in the last several posts is far from a complete picture, as will be clear to anyone who's done much research on European oral traditions. But it does, I hope, give us some idea of how the musical evidence can be used as an aid in exploring -- and even reconstructing, however speculatively -- at least some part of the complex cultural/historical "stratigraphy" of this remarkably complex and contentious continent. Let's give it a try, limiting ourselves for now to those styles we've already been discussing:

"Old European":
1. Oldest stratum, possibly dating from the earliest "Out of Africa" migration(s) of the Upper Paleolithic, and pervading the continent throughout the Paleolithic and much of the Neolithic: "contrapuntal" polyphony bearing the "African signature" associated with P/B style -- hocket/interlock, stimmtauch, canon, yodel, etc., as exemplified today in vocal polyphony as found in remote, highly "traditional" areas, such as Plekhovo, the Appenzell, Aukštaitija , the Algarve, etc.; certain types of Medieval notated polyphony; and certain types of hocketed instrumental ensemble, e.g., pipes, panpipes, trumpets, horns, bell chimes, etc.

2. Next oldest stratum, possibly a direct development from the above: "heterophonic" vocal polyphony, as a conflation of heterophony and polyphonic counterpoint; possibly with a very wide original distribution throughout Europe -- most commonly found today in the Ukraine and Russia, but also widely distributed throughout certain remote pockets of traditional culture in various parts of southern Europe.

3. Next oldest: harmonizing in parallel intervals (usually either fifths and fourths or thirds and sixths), a practice that may have developed largely in the west; as found today in Iceland, certain types of Medieval polyphony (fifths and fourths) and certain traditional regions of Britain, western and southern Europe (especially Basque country, Spain and Italy), but found also in some Russian and other East European traditions (thirds and sixths). Found also commonly in Africa, where it also appears to be an outgrowth from P/B.

4. Next oldest: various types of so-called "descant" harmonization, possibly a development from the above, but with a certain amount of oblique and/or contrary motion, found roughly in the same areas as above. Also commonly found in Africa.

5. ???????????????? Drone polyphony, possibly a survival from an ancient migration to Europe from Asia at some unknown time; proliferating very commonly today largely in relatively remote enclaves of Eastern and to a lesser extent Southern Europe. Commonly found also in other parts of the world, including Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, etc. This is the only type of vocal polyphony in Europe that does not appear to have roots of any kind in Africa.

Post Indo-european:

6. Next oldest: "Modern European" style, most clearly exemplified by the solo or unison simple strophic ballad and lyric song, with pentatonic or diatonic intervals, medium length phrases, relatively "strict" rhythms, regular meters, little to no embellishment, wide to moderately tense voices, etc., possibly stemming from an early Indo-european migration from Central Asia (where the strophic song is still of great importance); as found widely throughout Europe, most characteristically in the west but frequently in southern and eastern Europe as well.

7. Next oldest: "Elaborate" style, also referred to at times by Lomax as "Bardic" or "semi-Bardic" -- solo singing in both strophic and non-strophic forms (litany, complex strophe, through-composed, etc.), with an emphasis on chromatic intervals and in some cases microtones, longer phrases, relatively free rhythms (rubato), complex meters, moderate to extreme embellishment, tense voices, etc., possibly stemming from a later Indo-european migration, but with elements suggesting other influences from various parts of Asia at various times, including relatively recent Islamic influences as well; as found today almost exclusively in Eastern Europe, southern Spain and southern Italy.

8. ???????????????? Drone polyphony, as an amalgam of pre- and post- Indo-european traditions, combining polyphony with more or less elaborate solo melody, as described in 7, above, and with a somewhat similar European distribution.

My European "stratigraphy" is, of course, hypothetical, speculative and incomplete, omitting certain traditions that are also of great importance, such as, for example, the epic, the lament, various types of vocal and/or instrumental dance music, and important instrumental traditions, associated with, among others, the flute, the fiddle, and perhaps most important, the bagpipe.

What concerns me most in the present context, however, is the fact that it's possible to place every type of polyphonic singing into the sequence, however speculatively, with some degree of confidence -- with the exception of drone, which appears to have at least two possible explanations, neither of which is fully satisfactory, as I will attempt to explain in the following post.

148. Music of the Great Tradition -- 48:Drone

Before continuing with our discussion of drone and the "drone problem," let's take a closer look at some patterns of distribution for traditional vocal music in Europe generally. As I've argued, the most widely (though also sparsely) distributed vocal practice would seem to be the "contrapuntal" style I've been associating with P/B hocket/interlock, the style at the heart of my "Great Tradition" hypothesis. Its wide dispersal plus strong associations, in so many instances, with Africa, suggest that it could represent the oldest and deepest "stratum" of musical culture in Europe.

Drone represents another aspect of "Old European" polyphonic survival, with a very different distribution -- and little if any stylistic affinity with Africa. As we've already learned, traditional drone polyphony is centered for the most part in mountainous enclaves of Eastern and Southern Europe, but found relatively rarely in Western Europe, Britain and Scandinavia.

Another type of traditional "Old European" vocal polyphony, based largely on parallel thirds and sixths, has an almost complementary distribution, centered in enclaves of Britain and Western Europe, north, central, and south. While the influence of classical and popular "professional polyphony" is always a possibility, there does seem to be a preference for the "softer" intervals of the third and sixth in the European oral tradition, distributed in a cline decreasing from west to east.

Jordania points to yet another "Old European" style, "heterophonic polyphony," so-named because polyphonic passages tend to be interspersed with passages of unison and/or octaves, to produce a kind of "enhanced" melodic line. Caution is advised in the use of this terminology, however. While strictly speaking "heterophony" refers to a type of group performance in which all parts present a variant of essentially the same melodic line, the term has traditionally been used to describe performances where the same line is variously ornamented or embellished in different parts, often with varying degrees of rubato (rhythmic freedom), and little to no intentional polyphony. The examples offered by Jordania are not of this type. What he refers to as "heterophonic polyphony" is exemplified by rhythmically synchronized performances, with little or no rubato, in which various intervals, of the second, third, fourth or fifth, are interwoven with unisons and octaves to produce what he has described as a "thickening" of a single melody. A great many Russian and Ukranian "folk songs" employ this style, where each phrase often begins and almost always ends with a unison or octave.

While most of the examples offered by Jordania are from Eastern Europe, very similar practices can also be found in other parts of Europe and, indeed, many other parts of the world. Since, as I've already demonstrated (see post 102), polyphony and heterophony tend to be conflated in both Pygmy and Bushmen music, "heterophonic polyphony" might well be an offshoot of P/B style, possibly a development from an early version of the Old European "contrapuntal" style to which I've been referring so often. (See posts 108-111 for a description of a somewhat different type of "heterophonic polyphony," as exemplified in the structure of Javanese and Balinese gamelan music.)

Let's turn now to some of the most widespread non-polyphonic traditions of Europe, the "monophonic/unison" traditions of both solo and group singing that, in Jordania's view (and I tend to agree), most likely represent a later development, possibly stemming from the Indo-European migration(s) hypothesized by Gimbutas. Here too, we have a very interesting east-west divide. Simple strophic structures, such as the ballad and lyric song, characterized by relatively stable rhythms, medium length phrases, pentatonic or diatonic scales, little to no embellishment and moderately tense to moderately relaxed voices, are distributed according to a markedly descending cline, from the northwest and central regions to the south and east. This is the style that Alan Lomax called, significantly: "Modern European" (as opposed to the "Old European" polyphonic styles we've been discussing). More complex structures, including complex strophes, litanies and through-composed forms, often characterized by either rubato rhythms or irregular meters (such as so-called aksak or "limping" meters), medium to long phrases, narrow intervals, moderate to extreme embellishment and moderately tense to constricted voices, are distributed over more or less the same territory as drone polyphony, in a descending cline from Eastern to Southern Europe, with very few instances to be heard elsewhere on that continent.

147. Music of the Great Tradition -- 47:Drone

Some of the most important types of vocal drone polyphony are described by Joseph Jordania on pages 26 and 27 of his book. The basic principle common to all is the persistent presence, in one or more parts, of a single tone, either sustained or continually repeated, while one or more other voices sing melodically against it. While the drone is often the lowest tone, it can also be the highest -- or somewhere in the middle. While the same drone note often persists throughout an entire song, pitch changes are common in some styles. He points, additionally, to a very interesting aspect of drone performance practice that's often overlooked: in most cases the drone part is sung in unison by a group, while the moving parts are usually sung by soloists (p. 211).

As Jordania's survey makes clear, drone polyphony is unquestionably of great importance worldwide, and might well be the most frequently occurring type of traditional vocal polyphony in "Old Europe," found far more commonly today than the "contrapuntal" polyphony on which I've been focusing here. Certain especially revealing differences between the two types of musical practice are highlighted in Jordania's comparison between the contrasting vocal styles of East and West Georgia:

• East Georgia is considered to be the “kingdom” of the pedal drone . . West Georgia is mostly known as the “kingdom” of contrapuntal polyphony; . . .
• The metre is always precise in West Georgian songs, while in at least some East Georgian songs (particularly – the same “long” table songs from Kartli and Kakheti) the polyphony develops without a precise metre, in so-called “rubato” (free metre);
• A major part of the metered polyphonic songs in Georgia is based on the simple duple (2/4, 4/4) and triple metres (¾,
6/8). East Georgia uses all these metres, whereas West Georgia uses predominantly (and in some regions almost exclusively) only duple metres;
• East Georgian polyphonic songs are famous for their richly ornamented melismatic melodies. There are no ornamented melismatic melodies in West Georgian polyphonic songs at all (apart from the region of Racha, which has an obvious influence from the East Georgian singing style); . . .
• The yodel is present only in West Georgia; (217-218).

Remarkably, the combination of rhythmic precision (lack of rubato), duple meter, and unornamented melody, noted above as characteristic of West Georgia, also characterizes the hocket/interlock, stimmtauch and canonic examples we've been discussing, and is, moreover, typical for much of Africa as well, especially P/B style, where yodeling is also common. Jordania specifically associates West Georgia with the older, more traditional culture of "Old Europe," prior to the Indo-European migrations hypothesized by Gimbutas:

these migrations and major cultural and population changes during the 3rd-2nd millennia involved only the territory of East Georgia, while the territory of western Georgia, situated on the other side of the Likhi mountains (the dividing mountain range between the eastern and western Georgia) remained virtually unaffected (p. 219).

For Jordania, East Georgian drone polyphony, and by implication much of European drone polyphony in general, can therefore be explained as a hybrid of the original contrapuntal style now found only in West Georgia, and a

West and Central Asian monophonic style, with richly ornamented melodic lines, specific scales, free rhythm and non-metric time. As Tsitsishvili puts it, ". . . the [East Georgian] “long” songs represent a total transculturation of style which differs from both parent cultures, though belongs in the polyphonic music culture of Georgia" . . .

Moving through Europe, Indo-Europeans were in constant contact with the autochthonous carriers of the ancient European polyphony, so the possibility of mixture of these two different types of music (polyphonic and monophonic) must have been extremely high in many regions of Europe (pp. 219, 220).

While I can't do full justice here to Jordania's complex and nuanced treatment of the history and meaning of drone, admittedly not always in agreement with my own thinking, the notion of drone polyphony as a hybrid between two very different vocal styles, one polyphonic through and through, the other essentially monophonic/ unison; one representing a pre-existing autochthonous culture, the other the culture of a more recent, more aggressive and assertive "invader," does appear to make a good deal of sense. It's important to note, as well, that drone, while far more common than contrapuntal polyphony, is not as widely distributed. While the latter has been found (or referenced) sparsely scattered through many different parts of Europe overall, the former is found most frequently in Eastern Europe (including the Baltic states), less frequently in pockets of Southern Europe, but rarely in the rest of the continent, including Britain. (The many remarkable points of similarity between these drone traditions and drone as it appears in early Medieval polyphony cannot of course be ignored, but is a somewhat different issue, to be discussed in future posts.)

While all indications are that drone polyphony arose in Europe, therefore, as a mixture of an autochthonous contrapuntal practice with a newer monophonic/ unison style with roots in Asia, this explanation would appear to be inconsistent with the overall world picture, since drone polyphony of various types, sometimes strikingly similar to that of Eastern and Southern Europe, can be found, as Jordania himself points out, in many other parts of the world. This is a part of the problem I've already referred to, a very puzzling problem I'll be addressing in future posts.

To be continued