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

146. Music of the Great Tradition -- 46. Europe

In the last several posts I've been discussing some different, but nevertheless closely related, hypotheses: 1. considerable evidence points to the survival, mostly in remote "refuge" areas, of various so-called "Old European" oral traditions of polyphonic vocalizing, possibly dating, as convincingly argued by Jordania, to the Neolithic or earlier, almost certainly antedating the largely monophonic/unison "mainstream" oral vocal traditions now dominating the continent, which appear to have originated in western and/or central Asia; 2. the most unusual of these traditions, represented by a type of complex and highly distinctive "contrapuntal" vocalizing, typically featuring practices such as hocket/interlock, stimmtauch, canon, ostinato, and in some cases yodel or falsetto, would appear, due to its wide (though also rather sparse) diffusion throughout the continent, to antedate the other polyphonic vocal traditions, all of which have more limited distributions; 3. the earliest notated polyphony of the medieval church and monastery may have originated in attempts by the clergy to incorporate and adapt various types of traditional oral polyphony, as described in both 1 and 2 above, encountered among certain autochthonous populations while missionizing in remote areas; 4. the "contrapuntal" tradition considered above as possibly the oldest in Europe, due to its widespread though discontinuous distribution in that continent, has, in addition, very distinctive characteristics suggesting that it could be truly archaic, a survival from the earliest migration(s) "Out of Africa" during the Upper Paleolithic.

Strictly speaking, each of the above can be treated as independent of the other. We don't need to establish an African link to postulate either an ancient tradition of polyphonic vocalizing in "Old Europe" or a possible connection between such a tradition and the origins of polyphony in the medieval church. As Jordania has demonstrated, there is more than enough evidence within Europe itself for the survival of an "Old European" strain of polyphonic vocalizing. And as I hope I have demonstrated, with supporting testimony from music historians such as Bukofzer, Dalglish and Burstyn, there is ample evidence within Europe itself for linking medieval hocket, stimmtauch, round and canon with certain oral traditions reported in the past and still being practiced today.

What's truly remarkable, however, is that some of the strongest and most convincing points of similarity lie not within Europe, but between Europe and Africa -- more precisely, between what appears to be the oldest surviving musical practice in Europe (the "contrapuntal" style referenced in point 2 above) and the highly distinctive Pygmy/Bushmen style (P/B) I've been pointing to as the most likely source of a worldwide "African signature." For example, the Russian panpipers recorded by Velitchkina sound closer, according to Velitchkina herself, to certain examples of African piping than anything to be found in Europe. Compare this recording from Plekhovo, Russia, for example, with this, of Ouldeme pipers from the Mandara Mountains of Cameroon. Less striking, but nevertheless compelling, is the remarkable structural similarity between the Sumer Canon, as sung by St. George's Canzona, and a "round" sung by this group of Mbuti Pygmy women: Amabele-o-i-ye. Would it be too much of a stretch to compare this perhaps somewhat over-refined head-tone performance of a Medieval hocket, HoquetusMusicalisSciencia-SciencieLaudabili, with a more straightforwardly sung example of Ju/'hoansi Bushmen yodeled hocket, from the village of Dobe? We have already had occasion to compare -- in post 138 --some notated examples of Medieval hocket/interlock with a remarkably similar example of African instrumental hocket provided by Nketia. The resemblances are striking, as a visit to post 138 will demonstrate.

So, yes, I do think there is a case to be made for a "Great Tradition" with roots in Paleolithic Africa, and branches in, among other places, Europe -- leading us all the way from what may well be the most archaic musical tradition of that continent to the origins of notated polyphony in the Middle Ages -- which in turn forms the root of both the "popular" and "classical" traditions of our own time.

However, the situation is not quite as simple and straightforward as it might seem, in the admittedly somewhat biased manner I've been presenting it up to now. Because there is an important practice I haven't yet considered, that isn't so easily explained by my "Great Tradition" hypothesis. As Jordania's study makes clear, the most commonly encountered type of traditional vocal polyphony in Europe is not counterpoint, but a somewhat different practice of great interest and importance that he discusses in some detail: drone polyphony. And the problem for me is that drone polyphony, while common in a great many "refuge" areas of Europe, is in fact not at all typical for Africa south of the Sahara, and in all likelihood did not originate there.

(To be continued.)

145. Music of the Great Tradition -- 45:Europe

Before proceeding, it's necessary to point out certain problems with some of the "contrapuntal" traditions listed in the previous post. The Ligurian "Trallalero" sounds in some ways like the product of more "modern" developments, and indeed appears to have a history associating it with popular Genoese tavern music of the 19th century. As I see it, such repertoires are rarely if ever invented out of whole cloth, especially where untrained singers are involved, but including it in my survey might be a bit of a stretch, I admit. The Algarve fishermen's song is one of a kind, the only example I know of from this tradition, which makes it somewhat difficult to assess. Moreover, the Algarve region, located on the Portugese coast, is neither mountainous nor forested, nor is it an island or desert, thus hardly a "refuge" area of the type pointed to by Jordania. As the Algarve has a long history of both trade with and invasion by outside groups, including the Phoenicians, the Visigoths and the Moors, the fishermen's song could, for all we know, represent an imported tradition, rather than something native to the Iberian peninsula. To more fully assess its meaning, we would need more information regarding the history and origin of the Algarve fishermen and their culture.

Admittedly, the oral contrapuntal vocal traditions of Europe are relatively few, far between, and in some cases problematic. As I see it, what makes them especially meaningful nevertheless, in addition to their wide distribution in so many isolated pockets of the continent, is the presence, in one form or the other, of what I've called the "African signature." Thus, not only is the "interrupted distribution" (see post 143) of these closely related (see post 144) traditions throughout the continent in itself suggestive of great age (see the argument presented in post 143 and the quotation from Sapir), but the many tantalizing points of similarity with Africa -- specifically, the hocketed and yodelled run-on counterpoint so characteristic of P/B style -- raise the very interesting, though certainly controversial, possibility of an origin dating all the way back to the earliest migrations of "modern" humans into Europe during the Upper Paleolithic.

It might be a good idea, at this point, to revisit Nketia's skeptical remarks (as quoted in post 139) regarding the possibility of anyone drawing precisely this type of inference:

We are told by some historians that in Western music the hocket was a device -- indeed some of them describe it as a naive device-which showed itself in two forms: (a)in the form of interspersed breaks in one voice accompanied by semibreve movement in the other parts, or (b) in the form of divisions of a melody between two voices. The latter it is said, is to be found mainly in theoretical treatises rather than in actual music. There was a certain arbitrariness in the use of this device, but we learn that it was "a genuine attempt to obtain that particular emphasis of rhythm which is now styled staccato." . . .

In African music practice, the hocket is not merely a device but a technique of building up single or parallel linear structures in various types of interlocking patterns. The hockets are not arbitrary artistic devices; they are functional, in the sense that they arise out of melodic and polyphonic considerations. They are often a means to an end, not an end in themselves, and are used for achieving overall effects of continuity, for building up interlocking, and sometimes complex structures, out of relatively simple elements (ibid., pp. 51-52).

Nketia dismisses the use of hocket in Western music as a mere "device," "to be found mainly in theoretical treatises." As we have learned, this is most certainly not the case. As Dalglish and others have demonstrated, hocket was an especially important and indeed pervasive feature of both Ars Antiqua and Ars Nova polyphony. The preposterous notion that hocket originated as some sort of attempt to produce "what is now styled staccato" is no doubt a reflection of the difficulty so many musicologists have had in accounting for the existence of a practice that appears so odd and so out of place in the context of their expectations regarding the liturgical music of the time. There is nothing in what Nketia says about African hocket in the last paragraph that could not also be said about European hocket, both oral and notated. The notion that the European hocket was "merely a device" is an unwarranted and incorrect assumption. To my knowledge, Nketia never made any serious attempt to study this practice outside of Africa, in "the West" or anywhere else, so his comments may well be pure speculation.

To be fair, at the time Nketia wrote this essay there was no reason to associate African and European traditions of any kind, since there was no basis for connecting the history of the two continents at so early a period, or, indeed, at any time prior to it. Almost all archaeologists and paleontologists were in agreement that Africa and Europe had entirely different histories, with Europeans in all likelihood descended from earlier pre-homosapiens humans from the same continent, either identical with or closely related to European Neanderthals. Our picture of world prehistory has now changed, so radically and so abruptly that many anthropologists, not to mention musicologists, remain either unware or in a state of confusion regarding the most recent findings and the profound implications they bring with them.

144. Music of the Great Tradition -- 44:Europe

Of all the various types of traditional vocal polyphony to be found or reported in Europe, only so-called "contrapuntal" polyphony seems more or less evenly distributed throughout the continent as a whole. It is also the most thinly distributed, so its presence can all too easily be overlooked. This most complex of all polyphonic types has been found or reported, to my knowledge, in the following areas:

1. West Georgia generally; 2. certain isolated villages of European Russia, near the Ukrainian border, notably in Briansk, Kaluga and Kursk -- also isolated areas of the Komi Republic, Serbia, Rumania, and Lithuania ("hooted" vocalizing associated with panpipe playing, as reported by Olga Velitchkina and Ruta Zarskiene); 3. the Appenzell region of the Swiss Alps; 4. the "Tralalero" tradition of Liguria, in Northern Italy; 5. the "highland" region of Eastern Lithuania (associated with the sutartine tradition); 6. the Algarve region of Portugal; 7. medieval Wales (as inferred from the writings of Geraldus Cambrensis); 8. certain forms associated with medieval liturgical music, such as the rotus, rondellus, chace and caccia -- and practices such as the round, canon, stimmtauch and hocket/interlock, thought by some medievalists, with good reason, to have originated in oral traditions.

While it could certainly be argued that each of the above represents a unique, independently developed musical practice, such an interpretation seems unlikely, for several reasons. As with traditional polyphonic vocalizing generally, the contrapuntal type appears in almost all cases to be found in remote, isolated pockets, well off the beaten path, associated with other traditions generally thought to be ancient or archaic, often centered in the sort of mountainous or heavily forested areas where we would expect to find the survivals of any region's oldest traditions. In addition, many of these contrapuntal practices are linked by other highly distinctive musical features, such as: the presence, either common or sporadic, of "resultant" effects, produced by hocket/interlock, stimmtauch or both; and the presence, either common or sporadic, of either yodel or falsetto singing (falsetto was singled out by certain church leaders as one of the "excesses" of medieval hocket; falsetto is an important feature of the Tralalero tradition; the vocalizing of the Russian panpipers documented by Velitchkina is "hooted" in a manner very close to yodel; yodel is a common feature of polyphonic vocalizing in the Appenzel and West Georgia; yodel was associated with certain types of "popular" medieval polyphony by Bukofzer).

There are also in many cases strong associations with certain types of instrumental hocket. The panpipers studied by Velitchkina and Zarskiene sing as they hocket together on their pipes. Lithuanian sutartines can be played by hocketing pipe or trumpet ensembles in addition to being sung. Similar ensembles of horns or trumpets have been reported for Russia. Alphorns in Switzerland and elsewhere could have played together in hocketing ensembles at one time (though at the moment this is only a conjecture). There is (or was) an important tradition of panpipe hocket in Georgia. Finally, we have an intriguing quotation from Adam de la Halle associating medieval hocketing with both folksong and panpipes:

Adam de la Halle uses the term in the highest voice of a polyphonic motet. He relates how four young fellows, when they hocket, make percussive sounds faster than the panpipes. They also dance together, beating on the floor while hocketing. ("Quant il hoquetent Plus tost clapetent Que frestel Li damoisel... Et quant il font le moulin Ensamble tout quatre Et au plastre batre En hoquetant" [Tischler, 3:74-6, 4:83-4; Adam de la Halle p. 202-5].) (See http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/culture/music/hocket.html)

143. Music of the Great Tradition -- Europe

It's important to understand that the pattern I've been discussing involves all forms of traditional vocal polyphony in Europe, not only those on which I've been focusing in the last several posts (the ones apparently displaying an "African signature"). As Jordania demonstrates, societies where polyphonic vocalizing of any type comes more or less "naturally," as part of a long established tradition, tend to be found in relatively isolated "refuge" areas, such as mountainous regions, islands, forests, etc. -- and this appears to be a continent-wide phenomenon, extending to the British Isles as well. Surrounding these isolated pockets of polyphony we find very different musical traditions, where solo singing and/or group vocalizing in unison and octaves are the rule. Both traditions appear to be "old" (I'm disregarding more recent "popular" forms for the moment), but the striking difference in their distribution -- the one continuous and "mainstream," the other discontinuous and marginal -- could be an important clue, not only to their relative age as distinct musical practices, but to our understanding of European pre-history generally.

The noted anthropologist Edward Sapir wrote as follows regarding such patterns:

For chronological purposes, cases of the interrupted distribution of a culture element are of particular importance. In a general way, a culture element whose area of distribution is a broken one must be considered as of older date, other things being equal, than a culture element diffused over an equivalent but continuous area. The reason for this is that in the former case we have to add to the lapse of time allowed for the diffusion of the element over its area of distribution the time taken to bring about the present isolation of the two areas, a time which may vary from a few years or a generation to a number of centuries. . . [T]he interrupted distribution of a culture element gives us a minimum relative date for the origin of the culture element itself. The element must have arisen prior to the event or series of events that resulted in the geographical isolation of the two areas ("Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture, a Study in Method." Geological Survey Memoir 90: No. 13, Anthropological Series. Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau (1916), p. 41).

Thus, it would appear that the tradition of polyphonic vocalization pointed to by Jordania is likely to have pervaded much of Europe at some time in the distant past, prior to the advent, during a later period, of the monophonic/unison tradition destined to marginalize it. As we've learned, Jordania, following Gimbutas, associates such polyphony with "Old European" culture, and "monophony" with the migration into Europe of a more agressive, and successful, "proto Indo-european" culture. But the situation isn't quite that simple, because there is more than one type of traditional polyphonic singing in Europe, and each, as Jordania notes, is distributed somewhat differently. In what follows, I'll be drawing on information gleaned from Jordania's book, but with a somewhat different interpretation.

I want for now to focus on three of the most important types of traditional polyphonic vocalization in Europe: 1. Drone polyphony (one voice holding or repeating the same tone as one or more others sing melodically along with it), usually emphasing intervals of the 4th and 5th -- and, in many cases, dissonances based on both major and minor seconds; 2. parallel polyphony, sometimes in 4ths and 5ths, but also, in certain areas, 3rds and 6ths; 3. "contrapuntal" polyphony, involving two or more rhymically and melodically independent voices.

All I have time for today. Stay tuned.

142. Music of the Great Tradition -- 42:Hocket

Follow the evidence! And there certainly is evidence, as we have seen. The most important pieces of evidence, from a medieval historian's viewpoint, are undoubtedly the various types of round, canon, stimmtauch and hocket, as found (or reported) in various oral traditions in various parts of Europe, and certain similarly organized examples of early notated polyphony, as found in manuscripts from monastaries and churches in Western Europe and Britain (see previous posts). From the broader standpoint of the comparative musicologist, the strong resemblances between certain examples from both traditions and certain basic features of African music, especially the Pygmy/Bushmen tradition I've been focusing on, are of special interest and potentially far greater importance.

But what are we to make of such similarities? Isn't it possible to simply sift through the repertoires of various traditions that interest us, looking for similarities that could prove our point and overlooking differences that could undermine it? This sort of strategy, often ridiculed as "cherry picking," has been used to "prove" all sorts of dubious theories. To meaningfully "follow the evidence," therefore, we must first of all not fall in love with any particular theory simply because it appeals to us or seems "logical" and "reasonable." And second of all we must make every attempt to critically evaluate the evidence we are considering, to be sure we are not simply cherrypicking the "best" bits and tossing all else aside.

While clearly the notion of a "Great Tradition," as I've been describing it here, appeals to me, it may surprise you to learn that I am not in love with it -- and am perfectly willing to admit I could be wrong. What's most important about such a theory, as I see it, is not whether it is "true" in some literal, absolute sense, but the extent to which it can be profitably explored -- and whether or not it can be tested. And one of things I like about the ways in which comparative musicology can be conducted in the 21st Century is that certain things that in the past were only a matter of conjecture can in fact, for the first time -- to some degree at least -- be put to some sort of meaningful test. For one thing, there are many more recordings, field studies and regional overviews available than ever before and, thanks to the Internet, much of this is now easily accessible. For another thing, we have, in the form of the Cantometrics methodology, a tool that enables us to take both similarities and differences into account, and on a wide range of possibilities, from the local to the regional to the global. Finally, thanks to dramatic advances in the understanding of our DNA, we can check certain musical hypotheses against the findings of anthropological genetics.

From our standpoint at present, the most important regional overview can be found in the recently published book from which I've so often been quoting, by Joseph Jordania. And one of the most insightful quotes from Jordania's book may well be the following:

Most importantly, there is one very important common feature that unites most of the European polyphonic traditions. Mountains, large forests, islands- these are all geophically isolated regions. . . This fact suggests that mountains do not help to create polyphony . . . but as geographically isolated regions, they help polyphony and other elements of the culture to survive [212-213].

Thus, what is most significant about the comparisons I've been drawing between certain examples from contemporary "folk" traditions and other examples from historical sources, is that, in almost every case, the "folk" examples are drawn from oral traditions associated with exactly the sort of "isolated regions" pointed to by Jordania. The musical traditions we have been examining, therefore, have not simply been "cherry picked" from wherever I've been able to find some sort of music that "sounds right," but represent very specific practices to be found in very specific regions of the continent, regions that can, indeed, be associated with what Gimbutas referred to as "Old Europe." When we find this sort of pattern, with a clearly identifiable, highly distinctive, practice found widely dispersed throughout some of the most marginalized, isolated regions of an immense territory, it seems likely that the practice in question must at one time have been far more widespread, and what we now find are variants, surviving in what can only be called "refuge areas."