129. Music of the Great Tradition -- 29:Old Europe -- The Swiss Alps

In America, yodelling is popularly associated with the Alps and Switzerland. The prevailing theory is that it has something to do with individual herders calling out from one peak to another, as though its orgins lay in purely practical concerns. (The common tendency to interpret various traditional practices as pragmatic responses to environmental or social challenges is what could be called the "folklorist fallacy" -- a similar set of assumptions became the basis for the "functionalist" school of anthropology.)

In his recently published book, Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World, Bart Plantenga presents a very interesting and amusing "Summary of Origin Theories and Cultural Strategies" associated with yodelling (p. 24). Noting that neither the "echo theory," the "affect theory," the "Alphorn imitation theory," the "phonation theory," the "race theory," the "shout theory," the "magic theory," the "need to communicate over great distances," theory, nor the "basic human need to be musical" theory are completely convincing, he is most sympathetic to a theory offered by a man named Leuthold, who argues that yodelling is among the earliest musical activities of humankind, a practice related to the "development of early language awareness in small children." Perhaps. Though the yowling I've heard from small children sounds a lot more like -- well -- yowling, than anything resembling yodel.

I agree that yodeling probably does go back to our earliest musical efforts, but for reasons very different from those of Leuthold (see posts 21-24, from June, 2007). With Jordania, I see the yodelling of the Alpine herders as part of the same set of Old European traditions highlighted by Gimbutas -- i.e., as associated with the survival of an old, autochthonous, pre-IndoEuropean polyphonic tradition, ultimately originating in the yodelled P/B style polyphony of the earliest "Out of Africa" migrants.

Tragically, the truly magical polyphonic yodelling tradition of the alpine herders has been almost completely supplanted by a virtuosic solo tradition that has, very sadly, become popular in some of its most embarrassingly cornball manifestations. (There does seem to be an ancient solo yodelling tradition, by the way, that can be traced back to the reindeer "herders" of paleolithic Europe and remains alive among the Saami of Lapland and the Paleosiberians of northern Asia. Many variants of this tradition can be found in Europe and also the Americas -- e.g., the "cowboys" -- where it is almost always associated with herding. IMO this tradition can also be rooted in the "Out of Africa" migration tree, though via a different branch.)

Fortunately, some excellent examples of Swiss alpine polyphony have been recorded, initially by the pioneering Romanian ethnomusicologist, Constantine Brailoiu, and more recently by Hugo Zemp, released some years ago as part of the anthology Voices of the World: Appenzell-Yodel, Zauerli.

128. Music of the Great Tradition -- 28:Old Europe -- Lithuania

An especially interesting type of Old European polyphony, the sutartine, can be found in the Aukštaitija (literally, "highlands") region of Lithuania. An informative discussion of the various forms of sutartine, with some very useful audio clips and transcriptions, can be found on a website devoted to Lithuanian folklore, compiled by Skirmantė Valiulytė.

Most sutartines take the form of canons or rounds, usually in two contrapuntal parts, though they can be sung, or played, by two, three or four performers. Here's a transcription, from Valiulytė's website, of a particularly interesting three voice example, Turėja liepa, lioj taduvėla:

Here's an excerpt from the audio clip on the same web page: Tureja liepa. As with the examples from Russia (see previous post), there are many striking similarities with aspects of P/B style, as enumerated in posts 103 and 104, below. In this instance: interlocking or interweaving parts, producing a "contrapuntal" effect; cyclic structure -- most vocalizing in both traditions is based on an underlying, regularly repeating, rhythmic cycle of anywhere from 4 to 16 "beats"; conflation of polyphony and heterophony; temporal displacement -- notes, motives or phrases can be displaced in time, to produce an echo or canonic effect; repetition; unification of musical space -- melodic lines and harmonies are tonally unified in that both employ intervals of the second -- dissonances produced by simultaneous seconds are a distinctive feature of the sutartine style; continuous flow -- though the underlying cyclic structure is based on what could be called a melody or phrase, the polyphonic foreground lacks any clear melodic sense of direction, nor are phrases articulated by cadences, as in most other types of music, either tribal, folk or otherwise. Instead there is usually a continuous flow of unarticulated, interwoven motives, to produce the musical equivalent of a "run on sentence."

127. Music of the Great Tradition -- 27:Old Europe -- Plekhovo

One of the most remarkable of all "Old European" polyphonic survivals is presented -- and analyzed -- in an excellent essay I've referenced a few times already in this blog, The Role of Movement in Russian Panpipe Playing, by Olga Velitchkina, as published in the Internet journal, Ethnomusicology Online. In the introductory section, she presents a brief video clip of three Russian women from the village of Plekhovo singing and playing together with unbound panpipes. (You may need to click on this QuickTime video twice before it starts.)

Velitchkina presents a transcription of a "duet" from this repertoire, clearly demonstrating how intricately the vocal and instrumental parts interweave:Here is her recording of the first performer's part, as shown on staves a (vocal) and b (pipe): Veltichkina-Audio9. As Velitchkina notes, the transcription is a bit misleading, as the performers never sing and play at exactly the same time. A more detailed transcription would make the basis in hocketing even more evident. Note also the delicate balance between polyphony and heterophony, especially evident in measure two. Another remarkable point of similarity between this tradition and the African models I've been pointing to, is the cyclic organization of these pieces into distinct periods. Moreover, as Velitchina's analysis makes clear, variation from one period to the next is an important element in this style, as it is in P/B. Many other points of similarity with P/B, as already enumerated below, in posts 103 and 104, are evident from both the recordings and her analysis.

Velitchkina herself makes the point that "[o]n first listening, this music seems closer to African forms (for example, to the Ba-Benzele pygmy music) than to any European folk instrument traditions." Here is an example of Ba-Benzele hocketed vocalizing with pipes, for comparison: Song After Returning from a Hunt. Here's an even closer example, from the Ouldeme people of the Mandara Mountain region of Cameroon (another typical "refuge" area): Ouldeme Pipes. To me, the resemblance with the Russian pipers is uncanny.

126. Music of the Great Tradition -- 26:Old Europe -- The Role of Women

Is the "Great Tradition" a musical tradition only? Or are the musical practices I've been discussing part of a larger cultural gestalt, roughly along the lines suggested by Lomax and Gimbutas, where polyphonic singing with open, relaxed voices, reflecting key aspects of what I have called Pygmy/Bushmen style, reflects what she called a "matristic" society, characterized by (in Lomax's words) male-female "complementarity"? For Lomax, this was indeed the culture of our earliest fully human ancestors, hunter-gatherers like the Pygmies and Bushmen, whose music does indeed seem the perfect embodiment of a highly integrated, egalitarian, gender-equal society. Could this ancient culture have survived along with the music, in various parts of the world, among people who managed to preserve their lifestyle and traditions by migrating to marginal or easily defensible refuge areas, such as forests, islands and mountains?

One thing seems certain. It isn't possible to consistently associate either P/B style music or the "matristic" lifestyle with hunting and gathering. Though many hunter-gatherers of today still sing polyphonically, others (the Australian aborigines, for example) do not. While we find both "Pygmy/ Bushmen" style and matristic, complementary societies, in many pockets where Old European traditions have survived, agriculture rather than hunting and gathering is the principal means of subistance. The same is true for pockets of P/B style music making in many parts of the world (e.g., the highlands of New Guinea, where horticulture has been practiced for thousands of years).

As for those elements of greatest importance to Gimbutas, the matristic, egalitarian aspects, this remains a very intriguing possiblity. We know that many indigenous and peasant societies in many parts of the world are still highly egalitarian, with great emphasis placed on either simple sharing of resources, or systems of barter and gift-exchange. Whether such practices can consistently be associated with polyphony, open-throated singing, etc. appears, at this time, to be an open question, certainly very much worth exploring.

125. Music of the Great Tradition -- 25:Old Europe and the Role of Women

Is there some sort of universal cause and effect relation at work between the role of women in society and certain aspects of musical style? More specifically, is there a cause and effect relation, as Lomax claimed, between male-female complementarity and polyphonic vocalizing, relaxed voices, and "good" tonal blend? Or are the correlations he found due to historical processes at work in a specific time and place -- in this case neolithic Europe -- affecting both the treatment of women and many other aspects of culture, as Gimbutas' theories suggest?

Universalist claims of this sort can be tested by determing whether or not the correlations still hold in a completely different socio-historical context. Consider, for example, native North America. Here we have both hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists, simple tribal cultures and advanced civilizations. We also have patrilineal societies, where women are clearly subordinate, and matrilineal societies, where women have considerable influence and freedom. Yet throughout the length and breadth of this vast area, we find only the barest trace of polyphonic vocalizing, mostly in very limited areas, such as pockets in the Northwest Coast and, in northern California, among the Hupa -- who are patrilineal. The music of just about every other native American tribe north of Mexico, whether matrilineal or patrilineal, aggressive and warlike, or relatively quiet and passive, is dominated by unison singing, with little to no trace of polyphony. Evidently, the correlation Lomax found between complementarity and polyphony cannot, therefore, be regarded as universal, as it doesn't seem to apply in North America.

As for the other musical characteristics Lomax associated with complementarity -- relaxed voices and "good" tonal blend -- the picture is not so clear. The Navaho and many Pueblo groups are matrilineal -- and have indeed been characterized as "Apollonian" (as opposed to "Dionysian") cultures. Their voices do in fact tend to be more relaxed than is typical for native Americans in the north -- and Pueblo singing is noted for its smooth vocal blend. The Apache, however, close relatives of the Navaho, and also matrilineal, tend to have a more strident, tense and harshly blended style of vocalizing. Since it's not clear whether or not the Apache pattern could be a response to relatively recent historical events, additional research would be necessary before a firm conclusion could be reached.

Returning to our consideration of Europe, we are probably safe in concluding that Old European polyphonic vocalizing, associated by Lomax with the role of women, was most likely the product of historically contingent, rather than universally necessary, forces -- as implied by both Gimbutas and Jordania. There would seem to be no hard and fast rule causing humans to sing in harmony wherever women are treated as equals.

Nevertheless, as Gimbutas would surely point out, the Old European pattern does suggest that gender-balance, acephalous, egalitarian political systems, group integration, cooperation, and sharing, along with an overall lack of competiveness and aggression, do seem to go hand in hand, both with one another and also with musical practices expressing harmoniousness, social integration and simple pleasure. It does seem reasonable, therefore, to associate smoothly blended, relaxed voices, singing spontaneously together in harmony, with the sort of harmonious culture one might expect when both women and men are socially integrated on a free and equal basis, with minimal opportunities for sexual rivalry and tension to arise. In other words, while the correlations Lomax discovered do not necessarily point to cause and effect relationships, they strongly suggest that the various aspects of any culture can best be evaluated as parts of an integrated whole, with each tending to influence the other.

124. Music of the Great Tradition -- 24:Old Europe & the Role of Women

When Alan Lomax collected folk music in Spain and Italy during the 1950's, he was struck by certain differences in singing style between north and south in both countries, that appeared related to the role of women. Specifically, where women played a more important and active role in the society and had a certain amount of sexual freedom, as in the north, voices tended to be more open, relaxed and "well blended," and there was a tendency to sing in groups, often polyphonically. Where women played a subordinate role, and their sexuality was strictly controlled, as in the south, voices tended to be constricted and tense, solo singing was more common, and group singing usually in harsh unison. Since Lomax was something of a Freudian -- and a disciple of Margaret Mead -- it's not difficult to see how he could have associated sexual tension with vocal tension, male-female harmony with musical harmony.

Since this was one of the principal "epiphanies" that led him to focus on the stylistic aspects of music, the testing of this hypothesis became one of the earliest goals of Cantometrics. Drawing upon the "Ethnographic Atlas," a database compiled by ethnologist George Murdock, containing, among other things, data pertaining to the role of women in a number of different societies, Lomax found correlations that did, indeed, appear to confirm his initial hypothesis. Of particular interest is a graph appearing on p. 167 of Folk Song Style and Culture, with "productive complementarity" as the horizontal axis, and mean percentage of polyphonic singing as the vertical. The graph progressively rises from left to right, indicating a growing tendency, worldwide, for polyphonic vocalizing as the participation of women in food producing activities, according to Murdock's ratings, increases (M and N indicate male domination for such tasks, D and E rough equality of males and females and F and G almost exclusively female participation):

Interestingly, there is hardly any difference between female polyphony (scored line) and polyphony generally (solid line), indicating that the differences between "men's songs" and "women's songs" (an issue that has received much attention over the last 25 years or so) may matter less than differences in the way women are treated in the society as a whole.

While many of the relationships Lomax found between song style and social structure remain, in my opinion, either problematic or difficult to assess, his correlations between male-female "complementarity" and aspects of song style such as polyphony, tonal blend and vocal tension have always seemed more convincing. While it's not clear whether such a correlation can be regarded as truly universal, it does seem to hold for large portions of both Africa and Europe.

Lomax's notion of complementarity seems quite close to Gimbutas' idea of the matristic -- a "balanced society" where women and men live and work together on a more or less equal basis. Lomax described this type of society as follows: "[W]here women take a leading recognized part in the central activity of a society, such as supplying the main source of food, they assume, at least in this respect, a complementary, or more or less equal, interactive relationship with men. . . People tend to sing in wide voices in societies where women are most secure in their productive and sexual roles and where, therefore, they are freest to relate fully to the males" (pp. 199-200).

While Lomax often writes as though he sees a cause and effect relationship between sexual and vocal tension, complementarity and polyphony, etc., he also associates polyphonic vocalizing and wide, relaxed voices with the same "Old Europe" that Gimbutas associated with the earlier, matristic societies that dominated all of Europe prior to the advent of the Indo-Europeans. Which raises a fascinating question: are we dealing with a rather Freudian situation, where tensions between men and women, sexual and otherwise, lead to the development of a particular musical style? -- or do the differences, both sexual and musical, reflect the contrast between two periods of human history, the early matristic, complementary, polyphonic culture of Africa and Old Europe vs. the later patriarchal, repressive, violent, monophonic culture of the Indo-Europeans?

123. Music of the Great Tradition -- 23:Old Europe & the Role of Women

Marija Gimbutas' last, and best known, book is entitled The Civilization of the Goddess:The World of Old Europe. In the Preface, Gimbutas writes:

This book examines the way of life, religion, and social structure of the peoples who inhabited Europe from the 7th to the 3rd millennia BC, which I have termed Old Europe, referring to Neolithic Europe before the Indo-Europeans. During this period, our ancestors developed settled agricultural communities, experienced a large growth in population, and developed a rich and sophisticated artistic expression and a complex symbolic system formulated around the worship of the Goddess in her various aspects (vii).

In an interview with David Jay Brown & Rebecca McCLen Novick, Gimbutas speaks of her childhood in Lithuania, a country which, at the time, was, as she says, "still fifty percent pagan." She goes on to explain as follows:

Yes, well Lithuania was Christianized only in the fourteenth century and even then it didn't mean much because it was done by missionaries who didn't understand the language, and the countryside remained pagan for at least two or three centuries. And then came the Jesuits who started to convert people in the sixteenth century. In some areas, up to the nineteenth and twentieth century, there were still beliefs alive in Goddesses and all kinds of beings. So in my childhood I was exposed to many things which were almost prehistoric, I would say. And when I studied archaeology, it was easier for me to grasp what these sculptures mean than for an archaeologist born in New York, who doesn't know anything about the countryside life in Europe.

She goes on to describe the essence of her hypothesis:

[P]roto-Indo-European people came from South Russia to Europe, introduced the Indo-European culture and then European culture was hybridized. It was the old culture mixed with the new elements - the Steppe, pastoral, patriarchal elements. So already at that time, thirty years ago, I sensed that, in Europe there was something else before the Indo-Europeans. . .
The Indo-European social structure is patriarchal, patrilineal and the psyche is warrior. Every God is also a warrior. The three main Indo-European Gods are the God of the Shining Sky, the God of the Underworld and the Thunder God. The female goddesses are just brides, wives or maidens without any power, without any creativity. They're just there, they're beauties, they're Venuses, like the dawn or sun maiden.

So the system from what existed in the matristic culture before the Indo-Europeans in Europe is totally different. I call it matristic, not matriarchal, because matriarchal always arouses ideas of dominance and is compared with the patriarchy. But it was a balanced society, it was not that women were really so powerful that they usurped everything that was masculine. Men were in their rightful position, they were doing their own work, they had their duties and they also had their own power. This is reflected in their symbols where you find not only goddesses but also, Gods. . .

Rebecca: Why did the patriarchal culture choose to dominate?

Marija: This is in the culture itself. They had weapons and they had horses. The horse appeared only with the invaders who began coming from South Russia, and in old Europe there were no weapons - no daggers, no swords. There were just weapons for hunting. Habitations were very different. The invaders were semi-nomadic people and in Europe they were agriculturalists, living in one area for a very long time, mostly in the most beautiful places.

When these warriors arrived, they [i.e., the pre Indo-European farmers -VG] established themselves high in the hills, sometimes in places which had very difficult access. So, in each aspect of culture I see an opposition, and therefore I am of the opinion that this local, old European culture could not develop into a patriarchal, warrior culture because this would be too sudden. We have archaeological evidence that this was a clash. And then of course, who starts to dominate? The ones who have horses, who have weapons, who have small families and who are more mobile. . .

David: Is there any evidence that the takeover was violent and how much did the people try to defend themselves?

Marija: It was violent, but how much they defended themselves is difficult to tell. But they were losers. There was evidence of immigration and escape from these violent happenings and a lot of confusion, a lot of shifts of population. People started to flee to places like islands and forests and hilly areas.

Whether there was literally a "cult of the Goddess" or "language of the Goddess," as Gimbutas claimed, is less important, as I see it, than her insight into the essentially "matristic," egalitarian and pacifist nature of Old European culture, prior to the transformation of Europe by the Indo-Europeans. The Old Europe she describes seems quite close in many ways to the culture of the Pygmies and Bushmen of Africa, as commonly described in both the ethnographic literature and books desiged for the general public, such as Colin Turnbull's The Forest People and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas' The Harmless People. And, as I must not fail to point out, both of these peoples, like the Old Europeans, have been preserving age old traditions for thousands of years in marginal areas, surrounded by more highly "developed," and often violent, populations.

When we combine Gimbutas' ideas with certain basic hyphotheses associated with the "Out of Africa" model; plus the musical evidence, as described in Jordania's writings, my "Echoes" essay, and, of course, Lomax's ideas and research, going all the way back to the Fifties; then it's possible to associate her vision of Old Europe with traditions stretching all the way back to the Paleolithic and the earliest migrations of "modern" humans into Europe from Africa, ca 40,000 to 50,000 years ago.


To help us understand how "African" Old Europe may have been, I'm appending two sets of images to this post, the first representing rock art from southeastern Spain, as presented by Gimbutas in her Civilization of the Goddess book (p. 187), the second a selection of four unrelated rock art images from Southern Africa, usually associated with the Bushmen culture of anywhere from several hundreds to several thousands of years ago:

122. Music of the Great Tradition -- 22:Europe

The term "Old Europe" was apparently introduced into the archaological literature during the 1950's by an important but also somewhat controversial figure, Marija Gimbutas. She is credited with developing the so-called Kurgan Hypothesis which identifies the "Kurgan" people with the origins of the Indo-European language family and its related culture. According to this model, Indo-European language and culture developed in the "Dnieper/Volga" region in the "earlier half of the 4th Millennium BC" and spread from there in many directions, both to the east and west, facilitated by the Kurgan mastery of horsemanship. The Wikipedia article on the Kurgan Hyphothesis includes the following "Map of Indo European migrations from ca. 4000 to 1000 BC according to the Kurgan model":


From this map we can get an idea of what Jordania is talking about when he associates the Indo-European migration into (or, if you prefer, "invasion of") Europe with the disappearance of the most traditional forms of vocal polyphony throughout most of the continent during the last few thousand years. Note the yellow area in the map, between the Caspian and Black Seas, representing an area, roughly where Georgia is located, that was left unconquered by the agressive and warlike Indo-Europeans.

121. Music of the Great Tradition -- 21:Europe

According to Jordania, "unlike many countries in Europe, where the tradition of polyphonic singing is represented only in some of the regions, the whole of Georgia is one big group of closely related polyphonic traditions" (p. 75). Perhaps for this reason, the traditional vocal polyphony of the Republic of Georgia is probably the most intricate, varied, and highly developed of any large area outside of Africa. To judge from Jordania's descriptions, the parallels with Africa (and Pygmy-Bushmen style) would seem to be most prominent in West Georgia, where the most complex forms can be found, including "contrapuntal polyphony," yodel and improvisation.

As far as the traditional music of Europe generally is concerned, however, the picture is rather patchy, with mostly rather small islands of polyphonic vocalizing surrounded by a sea of monophonic and unison singing, dominated by solo genres such as the epic, lyric song, ballad, religious chants and intonations, etc. (I am, of course, omitting the European "classical" and "popular" traditions, what Jordania aptly calls "professional polyphony," with which I'll be dealing presently.) Alan Lomax called these mostly isolated pockets of untutored group harmonisation "Old European" style, as opposed to the "Modern European" style of the solo songs and ballads.

To better understand why Lomax would characterize this style as "Old European," we need to back up a bit to consider the meaning and history of (traditional) vocal polyphony worldwide. For this purpose, I'd like to quote some authoritative, and convincing, comments from Jordania's book:

A study of local polyphonic traditions suggests that the prevailing tendency of the historical dynamics is the disappearance of the vocal polyphonic traditions. Actually,this is not a prevailing, but the only tendency. Historically documented cases of the disappearance of polyphonic traditions come from Europe, Asia, America, and Oceania. On the contrary, the documented cases of the appearance of vocal polyphonic traditions (as the natural evolution of polyphonic singing from monophony) are conspicuously absent. This means that the universally accepted idea of the natural evolutionary transformation of monophonic singing into polyphonic singing is a fiction, totally unsupported by the evidence. . . [209]

According to my model, the earlier we go in human and hominid prehistory, the more polyphony will be found, and ultimately, the origins of polyphony must be somewhere in the very process of the evolution of our human ancestors in Africa, before their dispersal throughout different continents of our planet . . . [293].

I remember very well that every time ethnomusicologists start discussing the distribution of polyphonic traditions throughout Europe and try to discuss the possible reasons for the emergence of choral singing, one of the most popular ideas among ethnomusicologists is the crucial importance of the “mountain factor”. “Look”, someone would say, “most of the European mountain ranges are populated by the carriers of the polyphonic tradition. There is something in this. Somehow mountains help to create polyphony”. . . But there is another very important peculiarity of the distribution of polyphonic traditions in Europe as well: besides the mountain regions, there are also very important non-mountain regions with traditions of vocal polyphony. . .

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].

For Jordania, the most likely explanation for the European situation is the migration of Indo-European speaking peoples into the continent during the Neolithic, a development that forced the older populations, with their more archaic polyphonic traditions, into marginal areas, such as certain mountain, forest and island refuges.

120. Music of the Great Tradition -- 20:Georgia

As Jordania stresses in his book (see especially pp. 75-76), group vocalizing in just about every region of Georgia is so thoroughly polyphonic that unison singing is literally unheard of. Most Georgians are capable, it seems, of spontaneously hearing and singing separate parts. This in itself is of great significance, since it has generally been assumed, by those schooled in West European traditions, that some special training and skill is necessary just to be able to sing in harmony at all, much less naturally and spontaneously, without even thinking about it.

Jordania ascribes such abilities to the existence of an ancient tradition of polyphonic singing that goes back to our earliest human ancestors in Africa. This tradition would have survived in various "marginal" areas of the world, such as islands and mountains, where it has been protected from the encroachment of more recent traditions based mostly on monophonic singing.

Jordania's position is quite close to my own in many ways, though for him the tradition goes back much farther into the past, in fact millions of years. He sees it as spreading to the rest of the world with the first wave of migration out of Africa of so-called Homo Erectus peoples, whom he regards, along with proponents of the "multiregional" model, as already full fledged "Homo Sapiens." I, on the other hand, tend to be more comfortable with the model that sees "modern" humans (Homo Sapiens) leaving Africa for the first time roughly 70,000 to 90,000 years ago, the so-called "recent Out of Africa" model. The jury is still out on which of the two models best fits all the evidence -- though as I see it, the bulk of the genetic evidence points to the more recent exodus. In any case, we both agree on the importance of Georgia as a refuge area where some very old and powerful polyphonic vocal styles have survived for a very long time indeed.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, several examples of Georgian music can be heard on the website entitled The Traditional Polyphony of Georgia, where a regional map is displayed. If you click on region no. 15, Guria, you'll hear an example of vocalizing that, for me, resembles P/B style in many ways, especially when we consider the elaborately yodeled highest part. Some traces of interlock can also be heard. A type of hocket, along with yodel, can be heard in the concluding section of this Georgian Work Song, as performed by the Rustavi Choir (track 14, from the CD Georgian Voices).

119. Music of the Great Tradition -- 19:Georgia

Shortly after I completed the last post, ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl, with whom I've been corresponding, sent me a pdf copy of a fascinating book by a leading authority on Georgian music, Joseph Jordania. This was a remarkable and very welcome coincidence, not only because I am currently discussing Georgian music, but also because what Jordania has to say about the meaning and origins of European polyphonic vocal music generally is so relevant to the discussion of this same tradition that I've been planning to get into here. In fact, there are a great many ideas and arguments in Jordania's book, entitled WHO ASKED THE FIRST QUESTION? The Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech, which I find remarkably astute and also quite sympathetic. Jordania's knowledge of vocal polyphonic traditions generally, as found all over the world, is both extensive and impressive. And many aspects of his interpretation of their meaning and origin are very close in many ways to my own.

(In addition to the thorough treatment of the vocal traditions, on which Jordania appears to be quite authoritative, the book contains many speculations regarding the relationship of music generally to the origins of, as his title states, "intelligence, language and speech," that I see as problematic, though always interesting and thought provoking. Where he and I differ most is that his theories of musical -- and linguistic -- evolution are grounded in the "multiregional" model of human history, whereas mine follow the more recently developed "Out of Africa," or "replacement" model. Our differences complement one another in a very interesting and, possibly very useful, way. I hope to get into some of these more basic issues in future posts.)

As Jordania is so authoritative on the subject of Georgian and European polyphony, and since his ideas are so close to my own on this subject, I've decided to quote from his book wherever appropriate. Here are some of his thoughts on the special role of Georgia in European history:

Georgia (in Georgian "Sakartvelo") shows an array of important signs of unbroken cultural ancestry. Autochthonous residents of the Transcaucasia, Georgians still speak the Georgian language, which survives from the epoch of the pre-Indo-European languages. The only possible relationship of Georgian language outside the Caucasus
seriously discussed by linguists is that with the Basque language, the only survivor of the pre-Indo-European languages in Western Europe. Geographically Georgia is part of the region known as "Transcaucasia", situated on the southern slopes of the Great Caucasian mountain range, stretching from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea (more correctly – the Caspian lake, the world’s biggest lake). Being surrounded by the highest mountains of Europe (reaching at several points more than 5.000 meters), the Caucasian mountain gorges represent the ideal "hiding spot" from outer influences for isolated populations. [p. 74]

There follows, in pages 74 through 104, a fascinating description of extraordinary interest and value, including many excellent transcriptions, of many different types of Georgian vocal polyphony, from various regions, both secular and religious. I can't hope to summarize this here, but will be discussing certain points of particular interest in future posts.

Jordania's extraordinary book can be downloaded from the website The Traditional Music of Georgia. The link appears close to the top of the page.

118. Music of the Great Tradition -- 18:Georgia On My Mind

No, not that Georgia. The one in the Caucasus Mountains, the one that used to be part of the USSR. According to a very interesting Wikipedia article, "the Caucasus Mountains are commonly reckoned as a dividing line between Asia and Europe, and territories in Caucasia are variably considered to be in one or both continents." A convenient map shows how this region is tucked neatly between the Black and Caspian Seas. A commonly accepted version of the "Out of Africa" model, as expressed, for example, in Stephen Oppenheimer's remarkable book, The Real Eve, has the first wave of European Homo Sapiens entering that continent from western India via the Caucasus. These Europeans would not have been Europeans as we now picture them, however -- because there were no Europeans at that time -- these Europeans would have been Africans! In my essay, "Echoes of Our Forgotten Ancestors," I write about them as follows: If the Trans-Caucasus were indeed a major staging ground for early humans into Europe, there is reason to believe their musical practices might be alive and well in the region to this day. What is now the Republic of Georgia is justly famous for a tradition of elaborate (and enormously impressive) polyphonic vocalizing stretching back historically as long as records exist. While interlocked vocalizing is usually intermittent, not pervasive, it is nevertheless an important and striking feature of many up-tempo performances, as is some truly spectacular yodeling. In terms of vocal style (open, relaxed voices) and choral blend (highly integrated), Georgian singing also matches P/B style quite closely, the only important differences being accent (forceful in Georgia, usually relaxed among the Pygmies and Bushmen) and the use of phrased, as opposed to continuous, melodic structure (for examples, see Supra: Georgian Banquet and Georgian Voices: The Rustavi Choir). Is this a style that must necessarily have evolved from monophony to polyphony, simplicity to complexity, according to traditional notions of evolutionary "development"? Or was the complexity there from the beginning, a legacy from our African ancestors and their HV, Inos, and Ruslan descendants? [HV, Inos and Ruslan are Y chromosome "haplotypes" associated, by Oppenheimer, with this region.] Is the remarkable vocal polyphony found in so many regions of Georgia a part of The Great Tradition? And could this remarkable song style tell us anything about the extension of that tradition into Europe? For the moment, I'll leave you to explore some of these traditions on the following web page, entitled The Traditional Polyphony of Georgia. Click anywhere on the map and you'll hear examples of vocal polyphony from that region.

117. Concept, Style and Structure . . .

My music-theory oriented paper on Pygmy and Bushmen music (in response to Furniss and Olivier) is finally available. Here's how I just announced it on the Ethnomusicology mailing list:

A preprint of my recently completed essay, "Concept, Style and Structure in the Music of the African Pygmies and Bushmen: A Study in Cross-Cultural Analysis," is now available, in pdf format, via the Eunomios website: http://www.eunomios.org/contrib/grauer3/grauer3.pdf Here's the abstract:

The highly distinctive contrapuntal vocalizing of the so-called "Pygmies" and "Bushmen" of Africa has been a topic of considerable interest to musicologists for some time. In comparative studies, many striking stylistic and structural similarities among almost all such groups have been observed. Surprisingly, however, recent research by ethnomusicologists Susanne Furniss and Emmanuelle Olivier has led them to a very different interpretation: though the two traditions may be "acoustically" very close, they must be regarded as, nevertheless, "radically opposite" due to a fundamental difference in "conception." This unexpected and challenging conclusion, based on the distinction they draw between the stylistic features of a musical tradition and the conception underlying it, encouraged me to undertake a thorough re-examination -- part ethnomusicology, part music theory, part hermeneutics -- of the musical structures underlying both traditions and the manners in which such structures may be understood and interpreted. In this paper I draw upon insights into the nature of Pygmy and Bushmen music afforded by the research of Furniss and Olivier to argue against their interpretation of its meaning. In the process, I hope to demonstrate how extraordinarily close, conceptually and otherwise, the two traditions really are.

While the above might, on the surface, appear to represent a typical academic dispute, of interest to only a few specialists, I can assure you, this one is different. For one thing, my intention is not only to challenge my "opponents," but also to call attention to their extraordinarily valuable and important research, from which I have learned a great deal; with which I am, for the most part, in enthusiastic agreement. Indeed, Furniss's detailed and painstaking analysis of a single Aka "song," (included in Michael Tenzer's recent collection, *Analytical Studies in World Music*) has, in my opinion, and in spite of certain points open to question, taken our understanding of African Pygmy music to a whole new level.

For another thing, the old question regarding the relationship between the Pygmies and the Bushmen, their music and their history, remains of central importance, not only to ethnomusicologists, but archaeologists, ethnologists, population geneticists, linguists, historians, etc. If I am right, and the research of Furniss and Olivier (not to mention Kisliuk and England, on whose work I also draw rather heavily) demonstrates, on the basis of detailed musical analysis (and contrary to their own interpretation), how remarkably close the two traditions actually are, such a conclusion, coupled with equally compelling stylistic evidence gleaned (by Alan Lomax and myself) from Cantometrics, and fortified by all the remarkable new genetic research on human "deep history", would represent possibly the first solid evidence of (non-material) cultural survival dating all the way back to the Upper Paleolithic.

Finally, if I am right, a whole set of assumptions now held by the great majority of ethnomusicologists would be seriously called into question, most notably, 1. music can be understood only in its immediate social context; 2. it is inappropriate, improper, unscientific, etc., to extrapolate backward from the present to the distant past.

I would welcome any comments, suggestions, criticisms, etc., that anyone on this list might have with respect to any aspect of my paper, the work of Furniss and Olivier, or any of the issues raised above. The Eunomios Forum is accessible from their home page, at http://www.eunomios.org/. Responses can also be posted on this list, or to me personally.

Needless to say, I also welcome responses posted as comments to this blog. But read the thing first, OK? :-)

116. Music of the Great Tradition -- 17:Gamelan

As should be clear from posts 107 through 115, there are many correspondences, on many different levels, between Pygmy/Bushmen style and the structure of gamelan music. There are also significant differences: gamelans are primarily instrumental; they are stratified into hierarchically ordered layers, with each layer playing a rigidly defined role; while variation is possible, it is restricted to certain instruments only -- most simply repeat a melodic or percussive pattern; the basic, or "nuclear," theme is almost always directly stated, rarely implied; each piece is organized more or less as a fixed composition, with predetermined sections and a clear beginning and ending; tempo is flexible; etc. All of the above represent significant differences from P/B style, which is usually vocal (though sometimes performed on pipes and/or whistles); unstratified; non-hierarchical, with everyone present participating equally; with continual variation in all or most parts; with the controlling theme often implied rather than directly stated; loosely organized, with no clear beginning or ending; and performed, almost invariably, in a single, inflexible, tempo.

What are we to make of this array of similarities and differences? Is there some scientific method that would enable us to objectively test the claim I am making, that the gamelan can be regarded as part of a"Great Tradition" rooted in Africa, disseminated along with the "Out of Africa" migration? Unlike the simpler patterns I've been tracing in earlier posts, many of which can be tested, more or less scientifically, through a combination of cantometrics, ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, genetics, etc., the more complex and subtle relationships I'm discussing now probably cannot. There are simply too many variables to precisely manage, too many intangibles to objectively assess.

On this, more complex, more qualitative, level of comparative thinking, we are, willy nilly, forced to move from the objective realm of "scientific" testing, to the more problematic, but also, perhaps, deeper and more challenging, realm of interpretation -- or, if you prefer a more technical term: hermeneutics. It is on this level, the level of subjective, but also critical, interpretation -- of all sorts of evidence, from a variety of different realms, moving back and forth between the whole of history, both musical and social, as we now only dimly perceive it, and its various parts (the so-called hermeneutic circle) -- that we must proceed in our dauntless quest for traces of the "Great Tradition" that might still survive in the music of today.

115. Music of the Great Tradition -- 16:Gamelan

Returning to Indonesia, let's listen to an example of some very interesting and unusual vocal hocket, from the island of Flores, near Bali, recorded by Phillip Yampolsky. Listen carefully, as the hocketed voices are somewhat covered by a higher pitched solo voice. This type of singing is organized in a manner quite similar to the hocketed gong ensembles found on the same island, where each person plays a different instrument (also recorded by Yampolsky). Compare with the Ouldeme pipers from the previous post -- or the Mbuti Pygmies for that matter. (Very similar types of pipe and panpipe hocket can be found in Southeast Asia and Melanesia as well -- see posts 41 et seq., below).

Simple gong ensembles, similar to the those of Flores, are quite common in Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Here's a nice video of dancing gongs, from the Igorot, of the Philippines, compliments of YouTube. The Kulintang ensemble, of the Philippine Magindinao people, is a kind of rudimentary gamelan. This YouTube video shows four men hocketing with gongs in a manner quite similar to that of the Flores and Igorot examples, as a man in the center plays the Kulintang proper, a tuned gong set very similar to what would be found in a Javanese or Balinese gamelan.

In this case, the gongs could be understood as a kind of speeded up colotomic layer, analogous to that of the Indonesian gamelan tradition. This video also contains a very interesting demonstration of how these gongs are used to communicate, a practice linking them with the very important slit drum traditions found throughout this region and Oceania generally -- and also, of course, Africa. This type of gong is probably descended from the slit drum. The last part of the video returns to the Kulintang ensemble, allowing us see in some detail how the various parts interlock.

What we see and hear above is especially meaningful, since it gives us a sense of how the colotomic layer of the gamelan may well have originated in this much more rapid type of hocketed gong interlock, which can, in turn be related to both African hocket and kotekan. And indeed there are examples of Indonesian gamelan playing where the colotomic gongs clearly hocket in a manner very similar to that of gong ensembles such as the Kulintang, as is evident in this YouTube clip, from a Balinese Barong ritual, where the colotomic instruments can be heard playing more rapidly than usual, in a manner recalling the ensembles presented above.

114. Music of the Great Tradition -- 15:Gamelan

As we have seen, the more elaborate gamelans are organized in terms of layers, in a manner roughly analogous to the stratigraphic layers so important to both geologists and archaeologists. Close to the "surface," we find the rebab, a bowed string instrument strongly associated with Muslim culture. Digging a bit deeper, we find drums, played in a style strongly resembling that of Indian classical music, based in Hindu traditions. Deeper still, perhaps, is the Gambang, a xylophone, suggesting African influence, most likely via some ancient slave trade between Africa and India. The presence of bronze instruments, of a type similar to those found in China and Southeast Asia, suggests the presence of a "Chinese" stratum, either direct or indirect.

Since we cannot, like geologists, examine these layers directly, our musical "stratigraphy" must necessarily proceed by inference, based on whatever documentation we have regarding the history and provenance of certain instruments and practices. Historical documentation fails us, however, when we try to account for the two most interesting and mysterious gamelan "strata," that of the so-called "elaborating" and "colotomic" instruments. In my view, certain aspects of both practices might well belong to the deepest and therefore oldest stratum, forging what is arguably the strongest and most convincing link of all between the Gamelan and the "Great Tradition."

Let's focus our attention first on an especially interesting feature of the elaborating layer: hocketed interlock, known in Bali as kotekan and in Java as imbalan. An excellent description of kotekan is provided in Michael Tenzer's essay, Theory and Analysis of Melody in Balinese Gamelan, published in the Internet journal, Music Theory Online. (See especially paragraphs 2.2, 3.8 through 3.10, and 4.6 through 4.12.) Tenzer's Example 2, below, provides us with an excellent picture of how one type of kotekan interlock works:

Both kotekan parts are in the topmost staff, one part represented with stems upward, the other with stems downward. The lower staff contains the "nuclear melody," or basic theme. In Tenzer's Sound File 2 we hear the entire melody played through first without the kotekan part, and then repeated, this time with it. As this moves quite rapidly, it might not be that easy to follow, but it's a good example of how kotekan sounds in context. Some other examples of Kotekan, taken out of context, can be found on this web page, along with easily heard MIDI-based audio clips.



For comparison, let's listen to an example of something that sounds quite similar, at least to me, as performed by a group of Ju'hoansi Bushmen, from the village of Dobe (from the CD, "Mongongo"). I've managed to produce a simplified, probably somewhat inaccurate, partial transcription, showing how two of the more prominent voices might be relating to one another, as they repeat the same pattern over and over again, with variations:
Since it's almost impossible to sort out all the details in this type of recording, my breakdown of the two parts might well be inaccurate, but it should give you an idea of how such parts can interlock with one another, to produce a hocketing effect quite similar to certain types of kotekan.

Here are two more audio clips from Africa exemplifying, for me at least, very similar types of hocketed interlock: Mbuti Pygmies, with "Luma" pipes and drums (from "On The Edge of the Ituri Forest," recorded by Hugh Tracey); an Ouldeme Pipe ensemble, from the Mandara Mountains of Cameroon. In both cases, each pipe plays only one note.

113. Intermezzo

I must interrupt my disquisition on the "Great Tradition" to update my loyal readers (you know who you are) with respect to some noteworthy events. First, an essay of mine, originating with some posts on this blog, has recently been published: "New Perspectives on the Kalahari Debate: A Tale of Two Genomes," in the online anthropological journal, Before Farming. Here's the abstract:

While the ‘Great Kalahari Debate’ hinged almost exclusively on the interpretation of sparse and confusing archaeological and historical data, abundant and convincing genetic evidence from the realm of biological anthropology has been largely ignored, while equally compelling cultural evidence drawn from the musical traditions of the populations in question has been overlooked entirely. In this paper, I attempt to demonstrate how genetic and musicological research can be combined to provide a compelling case for the ‘traditionalist’ position in this ongoing controversy. To this end, I draw upon an important but little known musical ‘genome’, the Cantometric database, compiled under the direction of the late Alan Lomax, at the Columbia University Bureau of Applied Social Research.

Unfortunately, you'll need a subscription to read the paper online. If you send a request via email, however, I'll be happy to respond with an attached offprint, in pdf format.

My second piece of news concerns a presentation given at the recent meetings of the American Anthropological Association, based on my collaboration with genetic anthropologists Drs. Sarah Tishkoff and Floyd Reed, of the University of Maryland, and Dr. Anna Lomax Wood, director of the Association for Cultural Equity (founded by her father, Alan Lomax), thanks to whom the Cantometric database has been updated and made available for current research. Floyd Reed put this together at the last minute, in the wake of many distractions, much travel, travail and illness, and after months of work back and forth between the two of us, trying to find the most effective ways of querying and interpreting the Cantometric data -- and comparing it with the extensive database of African DNA put together at the direction of his boss, Sarah Tishkoff, a major figure in anthropological genetics for some time (an important publication on African genetics and history, by the two of them, should be coming out soon). It was titled: "A Comparison of Genetic and Musical Affiliations in Subsaharan Africa." Here's the abstract:

Recent advances in anthropological genetics have prompted an interest in possible correlations between cultural and genetic inheritance. Thus far, however, research along such lines has typically been limited to the consideration of linguistic distances as a metric of cultural change. While linguists have, indeed, made great strides in categorizing the language families of the world and reconstructing their histories, another field, arguably of equal interest and importance, the comparative study of musical traditions, has received little if any attention from genetic anthropologists. We have consequently taken a novel approach, comparing two databases, one genetic and the other musical, in order to make inferences about African population history. The genetic database, compiled under the direction of Dr. Sarah Tishkoff, at the University of Maryland, represents 1,374 highly variable autosomal loci genotyped in a diverse world-wide sample of thousands of individuals, including 84 ethnolinguistic populations in Africa. The musical database, compiled under the direction of the late Alan Lomax, at the Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University, represents over 5,500 sung performances, drawn from 857 culture groups worldwide, including 181 from subsaharan Africa, encoded along a range of 37 parameters. Limiting ourselves at this point to Africa, south of the Sahara, we apply a variety of statistical and analytic techniques to both
databases, to investigate the degree to which the study of musical traditions might shed light on aspects of genetic-cultural co-evolution.

Though I wasn't present, I understand that Floyd's presentation generated considerable interest. Which brings me to my third piece of news, a report on the presentation, recently published in the journal Nature. Earlier today, I was able to access the article in full, but now I see that only the first paragraph is freely available -- to read the rest you'll have to send a payment or subscribe. What a shame, especially since I didn't think to copy it myself when I had the chance.

My fourth news item is the announcement of my recently completed essay in response to the views of Susanne Furniss and Emmanuelle Olivier regarding Pygmy and Bushmen music and whether or not the two traditions are, in their words "radically opposite." Needless to say, my views are radically opposed to theirs -- and for good reason. Here's the abstract:

The highly distinctive contrapuntal vocalizing of the so-called “Pygmies” and “Bushmen” of Africa has been a topic of considerable interest to musicologists for some time. In comparative studies, many striking stylistic and structural similarities among almost all such groups have been observed. Surprisingly, however, recent research by ethnomusicologists Susanne Fürniss and Emmanuelle Olivier has led them to a very different interpretation: though the two traditions may be “acoustically” very close, they must be regarded as,
nevertheless, “radically opposite” due to a fundamental difference in conception. This unexpected and challenging conclusion, based on the distinction they draw between the stylistic features of a musical tradition and the“ideas” underlying it, encouraged me to undertake a thorough re-examination -- part ethnomusicology, part music theory, part hermeneutics -- of the musical structures underlying both traditions and the manners in which such structures may be understood and interpreted. In this paper I draw upon insights into the nature of Pygmy and Bushmen music afforded by the research of Fürniss and Olivier to argue against their interpretation of its meaning. In the process, I hope to demonstrate how extraordinarily close, conceptually and otherwise, the two traditions really are.

I'll be making this paper freely available somewhere on the Internet soon, so stay tuned.

112. Music of the Great Tradition -- 14:Gamelan

Now that I've listed several points of similarity between the Pygmy/Bushmen and gamelan traditions, it's time to focus on one very important difference. The more elaborate gamelans, especially those associated historically with court traditions, are organized hierarchically, according to a principle often referred to as "layering," where each instrument has a strictly defined and delimited role, with varying degrees of importance (and skill) associated with each. This is radically different from the P/B tradition, where all parts are, in principle, equal, both in importance and function.

For clarification I'd like to draw on a very interesting and informative website, created by Yee-Seer See (with the advice of his teacher, Professor Han Kuo-Huang): Indonesian Gamelan. The page entitled Function of Instruments provides us with a clear picture of five basic layers of a typical Javanese gamelan, with links to descriptions of the instruments appropriate to each:

A. instruments that play the basic, or "nuclear" theme. (This is usually presented in longer note values, with little rhythmic differentiation); B. instruments that typically elaborate on the theme (using shorter note values); C. instruments (or voices), such as the rebab (bowed lute), suling (endblown flute) or voice(s), characterized as playing a "counter-melody." This term is a bit misleading, since, as can be seen from the transcription provided in earlier posts, these instruments also follow the nuclear theme heterophonically/ polyphonically, though with more freedom and flexibility than the others; D. instruments whose role is limited to "punctuation," i.e., the so-called "colotomic" layer (see under 17. in the previous post); E. "rhythm" instruments, in the form of three types of membranophone (drums with skin head(s)).

It's not difficult to see how certain layers, and instruments, could be associated with certain cultures that influenced Indonesia during different historical periods. For example, the rebab is strongly associated with Muslim culture, and could thus be a relatively recent introduction; the drums supplying the "rhythmic" layer look very much like -- and are played very much like -- Indian drums, suggesting that they could be associated with a somewhat older stratum dominated by Hindu culture; one of the elaborating instruments, the Gambang, is a xylophone, suggesting African influence, possibly via ancient slave trade, as has been suggested by Roger Blench (the noted ethnomusicologist A. M. Jones produced a fascinating comparative study of African and Indonesian xylophones in an attempt to demonstrate that they were of Indonesian origin, making their way to Africa via the Indonesian colonisation of Madagascar, an interesting theory that has not survived closer scrutiny).

Especially relevant, in the present context, are traces within this hierarchy that suggest the surival of a much older historical level, a level that can be associated with the "great tradition." To understand this connection we will need to look more closely at two specific layers: "elaboration" and "punctuation."

111. Music of the Great Tradition -- 13:Gamelan

More list items:

16. Polyrhythm can be defined as the simultaneous presentation of two or more independent rhythms in such a way as to produce a sense of tension between them. For a detailed explanation, see the excellent Wikipedia article. While rhythmic clashes of this sort are most commonly found in west and central Africa, and are, of course, characteristic of P/B, they can also be found in gamelan music, most dramatically in the relatively new Kebyar style. Whether the rapid, dynamic polyrhythms of Kebyar are completely new, or derived from certain aspects of older Balinese traditions is a very interesting question that I'm not knowledgeable enough to get into at this time. Polyrhythm is present in the older styles as well, as evidenced in the Javanese example I've presented, particularly in the Bonang panerus part -- see, for example the groupings, in the second and third measures, of eighth notes into threes and then twos, as well as the quarter note triplets in measures 1, 4 and 6.

17. If you take another look at the Aka example (see post 108), you'll see four "percussion" parts at the top of the score, two clapping parts and two drum parts. If you take another look at the Javanese gamelan example (also in post 108), you'll see parts for four instruments at the botttom of the score, the Ketuk, Kenong, Kempul and Gong. These and some other instruments are sometimes referred to as the "colotomic," or "punctuating" instruments of the gamelan. Instead of playing melodic material, they play single notes that divide the basic rhythmic cycle into segments. While the percussion parts of a typical Pygmy or Bushmen song are much more dynamic than the colotomic parts of a typical gamelan, they have an essentially similar function, that of clearly segmenting the basic "time cycle" with percussive or monotonic sounds. Whether or not the colotomic layer of gamelan music can be regarded as derived from the percussion layer of P/B style would be a very difficult matter to consider, but it remains a very interesting possibility that cannot be dismissed. There are, additionally, certain features of the colotomic parts that suggest a derivation from certain hocketed gong and/or slit-drum ensembles found in Bali and other parts of Indonesia and Melanesia, which may, in turn, be derived from other aspects of P/B style, as discussed in my "Echoes" essay.

18. As I've already pointed out, the encoding of multipart performances in monophonic melodies is a highly distinctive and unusual aspect of both Pygmy and Bushmen musical traditions. Nicholas England was probably the first to describe the manner in which a Bushmen shaman will learn a healing song in a dream, which he will then teach to his wife in the form of a single melodic part repeated over and over again. The wife then passes this on to the other women, who use the melody as the basis for elaborately interwoven, polyphonic/ hetrophonic performances. Michelle Kisliuk has described Aka pygmy songs as similarly based on the polyphonic/ heterophonic elaboration of a single "theme." (Susanne Furniss has demonstrated how the Aka can, vice versa, also derive a single melody from a multiple set of "constituent" parts.)

As I understand it, something similar can be said of gamelan pieces, for which only the "nuclear theme" was traditionally passed down, in a simplified, letter notation. Most of what happens in the other parts could be inferred from the theme alone by musicians thoroughly trained in the tradition.

110. Music of the Great Tradition -- 12: Gamelan

The list, continued:

9. Tonal displacement -- notes from the nuclear theme are routinely displaced at the octave in gamelan music, to accommodate the range of each instrument.

[10. Temporal displacement does not appear to be a significant feature of gamelan music.]

11. Repetition -- certain types of gamelan performance can be highly repetitious, especially when associated with ritual.

12. Variation in gamelan music tends to be more "vertical" than "horizontal" with variants of the nuclear theme appearing simultaneously with its presentation. Improvisation is strictly limited to only a few instruments.

13. Melodic disjunction is not unusual in gamelan music, though found probably less often than in P/B.

14. "Unification of musical space," through use of the same intervals both vertically and horizontally, is a distinctive aspect of both the P/B and gamelan traditions. The gender panerus and gambang kayu parts of the gamelan score I've presented are excellent examples of this. Note the harmonic clashes that arise from the interaction of these parts at several points, e.g., where the notes d and e flat are played simultaneously in the second measure, or e flat and f in the third. Several other clashes of this type can be found throughout the excerpt.

15. Continuous flow. Another very striking similarity between these two traditions is their strong tendency to "fill in the spaces" with continually interlocking parts. The only difference in this respect is that the end of a gamelan cycle is usually marked with a stroke of the largest gong, while P/B cycles remain unarticulated throughout.

109. Music of the Great Tradition -- 11: Gamelan

Is the gamelan music of Java and Bali part of the "Great Tradition" I've identified, originating in musical practices ancestral to those of the pygmies and bushmen of today? Or are the similarities I've found simply a coincidence, due to independent invention? This is a huge question, too complex for me to fully tackle here. All I can say for now is that there are many striking points of similarity that are, for me at least, very interesting to contemplate. I'm hoping that sooner or later some of the real experts in gamelan music who might be browsing here (you know who you are!) might be willing to share their expertise by chiming in with comments, corrections, suggestions and criticisms.

I'll list some of the more striking points of similarity below, followed by some important differences that must also be considered. For convenience, I'll follow the order of my original listing when I compared Pygmy and Bushmen music, beginning with post 103.

In both P/B and gamelan music we find:

1. Interlocking parts, closely related to . . .

2. Hocket. "Imbal or imbalan is a technique used in Javanese gamelan. It refers to a rapid alternation of a melodic line between instruments, in a way similar to hocket in medieval music or kotekan in Balinese gamelan" (from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imbal ). Imbal and kotekan are especially relevant features of gamelan music that I'll be discussing in more detail presently.

[3. Yodel is not a significant aspect of Indonesian music.]

4. Cyclic structure. In the Pygmy example presented in the previous posts, the beat is subdivided into three, giving a "measure" of four beats. In this case the complete cycle consists of 12 such beats, divided by Kisliuk into three "measures." More typically, the underlying theme of Pygmy songs (and in many cases Bushmen songs as well) often, though not always, consists of four "measures" of four beats each, giving a "cycle" of 16 beats altogether. This emphasis on the numbers four and sixteen, as the basis for the underlying musical cycle is very common in Africa generally. In the court traditions of Indonesia and other parts of Asia, such "foursquare" divisions of the basic musical cycle are practically the rule in almost every case.

5. Basic melody. As stressed in my previous post, both the Pygmy example and the gamelan piece are based on a recurring theme. Typically with Pygmy and Bushmen music, the length of the theme coincides with that of the basic cycle, but in gamelan music the theme can encompass several cycles.

6, 7 and 8. As illustrated in the previous post, polyphony and heterophony are conflated in both the P/B and Indonesian traditions.

That's all for now. I'll continue with this list in the next post.

108. Music of the Great Tradition -- 10: Gamelan

Let's look more closely at the two examples from the previous post, beginning with the BaAka pygmy song, as outlined by Michelle Kisliuk:

As Kisliuk explains, the polyphonic songs of the Aka are cyclic, based on a recurring fundamental melody, or "theme," which may or may not be actually sung during any given cycle. In the above instance, the theme is presented on the uppermost five-line staff, just below the percussion parts. Voices A through D, just below, are labeled "Counter melodies," implying independent polyphonic parts, which they are. Except that they also are not. Because, as I've already argued (see post 102), polyphony and heterophony tend to be conflated in the musical practices of both the Pygmies and Bushmen. I've added vertical lines above all notes in voices A through C that are either in unison or octaves with the theme and, as seems evident from the many matches, all three can be regarded as both heterophonic variants of the theme and counterpoints against it. The only fully independent part is D. (With each repetition of the cycle the parts will be varied, so what we see here represents a typical instance, one of many possible combinations.)

We can now compare the Pygmy example to the Javanese Gamelan score (to which I've added some arrows, for reasons that will become clear momentarily):
Gamelan music is also cyclic, and also based on a recurring melody, usually referred to as the "nuclear theme," played by instruments called "sarons." In this case, the nuclear theme is presented in the Saron barung and Saron demung parts, five staves from the bottom, doubled by the Slentem part, just below. Gamelan music has often been described as essentially heterophonic, as should be evident from the arrows I've placed above those notes either in unison or octaves with the nuclear theme. However, there are many instances of true polyphony as well, as should be clear from careful examination of the faster moving Gender, Gambang and Bonang parts. Clearly, we find a conflation of heterophony and polyphony in both examples.

There are certain other very interesting points of similarity between the African and Indonesian traditions -- and also some important differences. I'll have more to say on both in my next post.

107. Music of the Great Tradition -- 9: Gamelan

In earlier posts I traced an "African signature" along some Out of Africa pathways, illustrating the connections with various audio clips. The "Great Tradition" I have in mind now involves connections that are not so obvious, and in some cases seemingly rather distant.

One tradition that has intrigued me for years in this respect is that of the Indonesian Gamelan, a largely percussion ensemble, most commonly composed of metallophones of various kinds, including gongs, with drums, and also in many cases xylophones, flutes, a string instrument (rebab), and voices. Strongly associated with the pre-Islamic Hindu courts of Java, the gamelan appears to be a hybrid, incorporating musical instruments and practices of various historical periods, and symbolizing various social levels, within a multi-layered ensemble in which each performer has a strictly defined and limited role.

What has for some time most interested me about the various types of gamelan, in both Java and Bali, is the way in which certain aspects of gamelan performance appear, very strangely, to echo certain aspects of Pygmy/Bushmen style. And the more I've been learning about the way Pygmy and Bushmen music is organized, thanks to my readings in the work of Michelle Kisliuk, Nicholas England, Susanne Furniss and Emmanuelle Olivier, the more intrigued I've become.

Here is a somewhat simplified outine of the basic structure of a BaAka Pygmy song, "Mama Angeli," from Kisliuk's book Seize the Dance, p. 83 (I've added some lines above certain notes for reasons I'll explain presently).

And here, for comparison sake, is the score of an excerpt from a Javanese Gamelan piece, from Music Cultures of the Pacific, the Near East and Asia, by William Malm, pp. 28 & 29 of the 1967 edition):

For those of you who enjoy puzzles (and can read music), I'll let you contemplate these two scores for a while to see if you can spot any interesting points of similarity. (To get a better look, click on the images and then click again, to enlarge them to full size.) In my next post, I'll share my own thoughts on the matter.

106. Music of the Great Tradition -- 8

I have only one more item to add to the list -- for now. I'll sneak it in here:

19. Most songs in both traditions are sung to meaningless vocables. Meaningful texts are used, but play a strictly limited role.

The list is remarkable for many reasons. First, because it represents so many striking points of similarity between the musical traditions of peoples living at such great distances from one another, and in all likelihood, as I've argued, separated for tens of thousands of years. Second, because so many of the shared traits are so distinctive: e.g., interlocking "counterpoint"; hocket; yodel; the remarkable ways in which polyphony and heterophony are conflated in both traditions; melodies functioning as unsung mental referents; temporal displacements ("canonic" imitation); the "unification of musical space" through the equivalence of horizontal and vertical intervals, etc. Third -- and this will be my focus for the rest of this series of posts -- certain items in the list read like a menu from which all sorts of other peoples, in completely different parts of the world, have drawn in the development of their own musical styles.

In order to understand the (possible) significance of this last point, we need to back up just a bit to consider the significance of all the evidence suggesting such a great age for "Pygmy/Bushmen" style. As I've argued in my essay, "Echoes of Our Forgotten Ancestors," we have good reason to believe that P/B was the dominant musical style not only of the earliest "modern" humans in Africa, but also the small band of migrants that first ventured "Out of Africa" to become the ancestors of all non-Africans alive today. If this is the case, then P/B must be regarded as the ancestor of all the music we hear in the world of today. And the question we must answer is: what happened during all these many tens of thousands of years that resulted in such a great variety of musical styles today?

I'm not sure I can provide a completely satisfactory answer, but I can say this: when something changes it never changes completely, there are always some aspects that change and others that remain the same. Which means that in many cases we might be able to find some traces of the original, ancestral form, in something that now appears to be "completely different."

For example, since P/B style conflates polyphony and heterophony, and if it is prototypical for all types of music that developed subsequently (as one might expect if one accepts the Out of Africa theory of human evolution), then perhaps certain musical traditions that are now predominantly either polyphonic or heterophonic represent aspects of the original tradition that have survived. Similarly, all the many musical styles of today based on cyclically repeating structures might also have inherited this basic principle from the original source.

We find a great many examples throughout the world of "strophic" structures based on a melody that repeats with different text in each verse. Could this practice be a survival of P/B, based on the importance of item 5 on my list? And what about all the nonsense refrains so important in European and British folk songs? Could they have derived from the nonsense vocables so prevalent in P/B style (see item 19 on my list)?

Now please, before someone has an absolute fit: I'm not saying that this is what actually happened. All I'm saying is that the combination of what I've been arguing with regard to P/B style in itself -- i.e., the possibility of it being of great antiquity -- plus the completely new way of thinking about history mandated by the Out of Africa theory, forces us to consider certain possibilities very seriously that we previously might have felt we could dismiss out of hand. In future posts I'll be considering some of these one at a time and in some detail.

I won't be posting on this blog for a while as I'll be visiting with family over the Thanksgiving holiday, starting EARLY tomorrow morning. Have a happy holiday, everyone -- I'll see you back here soon.

105. Music of the Great Tradition -- 7: The List Completed

16. Polyrhythmically related vocal parts.

17. Polyrhythmic percussive accompaniment, usually but not always, limited to handclapping.

18. The encoding of multipart performances in monophonic melodies and vice-versa, i.e., the encoding of monophonic melodies in multipart performances.

That's all I can think of for now, though I might have more items to add later.

It's important to understand that ALL the many aspects listed pertain to both Pygmy AND Bushmen traditions, making an especially compelling case, as I see it, for common origin. I have recently completed an extensive comparative study based on the research of Susanne Fürniss, Emmanuelle Olivier, Michelle Kisliuk and especially Nicholas England, whose painstaking book-length study of Ju'hoansi Bushmen music is remarkably detailed, thorough and convincing, and am more convinced than ever that the two musical styles are intimately connected and must therefore, in the words of Gilbert Rouget, "stem from a common root."

What most interests me at this point is the way in which so many of the individual characteristics I've listed here would seem to pertain to the music of other traditions, both in and out of Africa. And the question most on my mind is whether or not Pygmy/Bushmen style was 1. the musical tradition carried out of Africa by the original migrant group; and 2. whether certain aspects of this tradition are at the root of so many other musical traditions that developed in the wake of the great "Out of Africa" migration. In other words, was there really a "great tradition" and if so, where are the signs of its influence in the world of today?

104. Music of the Great Tradition -- 6:The List continued

9. Tonal displacement -- pitches in a repeated motive or phrase can be displaced, most usually at the octave, but also at other intervals, such as the fourth and fifth.

10. Temporal displacement -- notes, motives or phrases can be displaced in time, to produce an echo or canonic effect.

11. Repetition -- motives and phrases are frequently repeated, either with or without . . .

12. Variation -- motives and phrases are frequently varied from one rhythmic cycle to the next.

13. Disjunction -- melodic lines tend to be disjunct, often with wide leaps of a seventh, octave or more, an effect usually associated with yodel.

14. "Unification of musical space" -- melodic lines and harmonies are tonally unified in that both employ essentially the same intervals. This is a rather distinctive aspect of Pygmy/Bushmen style, though not unheard of in certain other indigenous traditions. In most types of polyphony, tribal, ethnic, folk and classical alike, melodies tend to be stepwise, i.e., based on intervals of a second, while harmonies are most often in thirds, fourths and/or fifths. (Interestingly, "the unification of musical space" is a phrase coined by Arnold Schoenberg to describe the new approach he was taking when he introduced his "Method of Composing with Twelve Tones," where horizontal and vertical realizations of the tone row are regarded as structurally equivalent.)

15. Continuous Flow -- though the underlying cyclic structure is based on what could be called a melody or phrase, the polyphonic foreground lacks any clear melodic sense of direction, nor are phrases articulated by cadences, as in most other types of music, either tribal, folk or otherwise. Instead there is usually a continuous flow of unarticulated, interwoven motives, to produce the musical equivalent of a "run on sentence." This is another way of saying that, while this music is highly organized, it is without "syntax" in the usual sense of that term.

103. Music of the Great Tradition -- 5: The List

Last time I promised a list of certain points of similarity between the musical traditions of the African Pygmies and Bushmen that seemed particularly significant -- and could lay the groundwork for our exploration of the great tradition that, as I see it, developed from essentially the same type of practice, as observed by the common ancestors of both groups. Here it is:

1. Interlocking or interweaving parts, producing a "contrapuntal" effect.

2. Use of hocket (the interlocking of relatively short motives to produce a single line or texture, with or without a certain amount of overlap).

3. Yodel.

4. Cyclic structure -- most vocalizing in both traditions is based on an underlying, regularly repeating, rhythmic cycle of anywhere from 4 to 16 "beats."

5. Basic melody -- most songs are based on a repeated melody or phrase that serves as a mental referent, even when it isn't being sung.

6. Polyphony -- singing together in harmonically related parts.

7. Heterophony -- the elaboration of a single melody in different versions in two or more parts.

8. The conflation of polyphony and heterophony is an important and highly distinctive feature of both tradtions.

That's all I have time for now. I'll be adding to the list in my next post.

102. Music of the Great Tradition -- 4

I've been doing a lot of research and writing on "Pygmy/Bushmen" style these days, trying to make sense of all the various pieces of evidence and all the theories from a variety of sources. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, two leading researchers in this arena, Susanne Furniss and Emmanuelle Olivier, both students of Simha Arom, have declared that the two traditions, while "acoustically" very close, are in fact "radically opposed" in terms of basic "concept." If this were actually the case, then my "great tradition" would be stopped in its tracks before it could get started. I would simply be on the wrong track. That is of course still possible. But hear me out.

After careful review of their research, both in itself and in comparison with other, equally authoritative sources, such as Nicholas England and Michelle Kisliuk, I remain even more convinced than ever that the two traditions are in fact extraordinarily close, not only "conceptually" but also in just about every other respect one could name. This conclusion is supported in a variety of ways, from careful inspection of the musical transcriptions they offer, to comparison with certain very different examples provided by England and Kisliuk, along with the very different interpretations they have offered.

For example, while Furniss and Olivier have insisted that Bushmen music is based on a strictly linear "mental referent" as opposed to Pygmy music, which is, for them, fundamentally polyphonic in concept, Nicholas England's intensive study of essentially the same tradition led him to a diametrically opposed conclusion: "Bushman music . . . is polyphonic at its very basis." Similarly, my review of Kisliuk's research reveals the Pygmy music she studied to be fully as "linear" as it is "polyphonic."

Nevertheless, Furniss and Olivier are not completely mistaken. As can rather easily be demonstrated, once all the many academic and theoretical cobwebs are removed, the two traditions can be regarded as both polyphonic and heterophonic -- which means that neither can be regarded as either exclusively linear or multi-part at base. And here I must briefly pause to define my terms for those of you who are not music theoreticians. "Polyphonic" music is usually understood as conceived in multiple parts, which when performed together, produce harmonies. By "heterophony" is meant a musical structure where all parts perform a somewhat different version of the same melodic line, with occasional, but not essential, moments when some type of harmonic interval could be present. Certain Pygmy and Bushmen musical practices conflate both possibilities, and in a truly remarkable manner, characteristic not only of their own cultures, but certain others as well, as found in various parts of the world that partake of what I am calling "the great tradition."

Over the years I have noted several very interesting points of similarity between the two styles and, thanks to the work I've been studying lately, by Furniss, Olivier, England and Kisliuk, I have recently become aware of certain others. In my next post, I plan to list as many of these as seem relevant, to provide us with a baseline we can use as a reference as we follow the great tradition down the corridors of history, from then to now.