Folk Music Traditions Research Articles

The tuning and vocal formant features of Chinese folk song singing: a case study of Hua'er music

Hua'er music is one of the representative folk music traditions in China today, designated as part of the world intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2009. Whilst folk music traditions like Hua'er have been promoted in the education of young musicians due to their musical and cultural significance, no in-depth research has analyzed the acoustic characteristics of this vocal style. In this study, studio recordings were made of eighteen folk song examples sung by four four traditional and one formally educated singers. Analyses showed that both the traditional and the formally trained singers used a tuning pattern containing four main anchor-pitches approximating a Pythagorean tuning. The voice source in two different vocal styles ('Zhensheng' and 'Jiasheng'), reportedly used by these singers in performances, were examined by inverse filtering. LTAS of songs performed by the traditional singers were similar and showed a 'Speaker's formant' cluster near 3.5kHz. Implications are drawn for the education of folk music singers in higher education.

A comparative phylogenetic study of genetics and folk music

Computer-aided comparison of folk music from different nations is one of the newest research areas. We were intrigued to have identified some important similarities between phylogenetic studies and modern folk music. First of all, both of them use similar concepts and representation tools such as multidimensional scaling for modelling relationship between populations. This gave us the idea to investigate whether these connections are merely accidental or if they mirror population migrations from the past. We raised the question; does the complex structure of musical connections display a clear picture and can this system be interpreted by the genetic analysis? This study is the first to systematically investigate the incidental genetic background of the folk music context between different populations. Paternal (42 populations) and maternal lineages (56 populations) were compared based on Fst genetic distances of the Y chromosomal and mtDNA haplogroup frequencies. To test this hypothesis, the corresponding musical cultures were also compared using an automatic overlap analysis of parallel melody styles for 31 Eurasian nations. We found that close musical relations of populations indicate close genetic distances (<0.05) with a probability of 82%. It was observed that there is a significant correlation between population genetics and folk music; maternal lineages have a more important role in folk music traditions than paternal lineages. Furthermore, the combination of these disciplines establishing a new interdisciplinary research field of "music-genetics" can be an efficient tool to get a more comprehensive picture on the complex behaviour of populations in prehistoric time.

Automatic Transcription of Bell Chiming Recordings

Bell chiming is a folk music tradition that involves performers playing rhythmic patterns on church bells. The paper presents a method for automatic transcription of bell chiming recordings, where the goal is to detect the bells that were played and their onset times. We first present an algorithm that estimates the number of bells in a recording and their approximate spectra. The algorithm uses a modified version of the intelligent k-means algorithm, as well as some prior knowledge of church bell acoustics to find clusters of partials with synchronous onsets in the time-frequency representation of a recording. Cluster centers are used to initialize non-negative matrix factorization that factorizes the time-frequency representation into a set of basis vectors (bell spectra) and their activations. To transcribe a recording, we propose a probabilistic framework that integrates factorization and onset detection data with prior knowledge of bell chiming performance rules. Both parts of the algorithm are evaluated on a set of bell chiming field recordings.

(Re)creating the (folk music) tradition: The national competition of brass orchestras at the Dragacevo Trumpet Festival

This paper deals with the problem of the treatment of traditional music at the Dragačevo Trumpet Festival, one of the most important folk music festivals in Serbia. In over half a century of its existence, the Festival has developed from a local event into an international spectacle with a programme scheme which reflects the growing tendency towards multiculturalism, also obvious at the national contest, which refers conceptually to the national folk music tradition. The effects of 'festivalization' are analyzed on the example of the 50th contest (2010), as a paradigm of the modern treatment of the folk music tradition at the Festival. The complexity of the web of the Festival's protagonists (musicians, organizers, the members of the jury, the audience), requires a consideration of the issue through different domains which represent their participation in the (re)creation of tradition.

On the Overland Trail: Sheet Music, Masculinity and Travelling ‘Country’

On the Overland Trail: Sheet Music, Masculinity and Travelling ‘Country’

The Hungarian state folk ensemble as a dynamic institution in Hungarian ethnography

Every year thousands of individuals come to know Hungarian folk culture through staged performance. From children’s ensembles to amateur ensembles to the most professionally organized groups, audiences in Hungary are treated to a wide variety of creatively reinterpreted Hungarian folk dance and folk music traditions. Staged folk dance has become a unique and powerful mode of cultural expression. This article attempts to illuminate staged folk dance’s potential for commentary, focusing on the choreographies and work of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble (Magyar Allami Nepi Egyuttes, or MANE as it is commonly referred to). Established in 1951, it is one of the oldest folk ensembles on the European continent and is the only professional ensemble in Hungary that is referenced as a State ensemble. Much more than a static or isolated organization that provides a pleasant evening’s entertainment, the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble is integrally woven into the fabric of social life, qualitatively shaping and contri...

Two Sides of Frenchmen Street and New Orleans Hybrid Music: The Panorama Jazz Band and the Zydepunks

Drawing on folk and ethnic music traditions, the Panorama Jazz Band and the Zydepunks demonstrate how traditional music can be reinvented. In their continuing musical hybridity, these two groups draw new listeners to old traditions, while performing the creative synthesis that has the potential to recharge New Orleans. Interviews with each group's leader reveal the close identification of their music with New Orleans, their musical emphasis on dancing and the body, their incorporation of jazz‐related spontaneity and improvisation, and their representative resiliency, and commitment to and allegiance with New Orleans as the cultural space that both inspires and sustains their music.

Mapping Polka and Its Ethnic Heritage in the United States

Ethnic music is a strong indicator of cultural identity. Central and Eastern European ethnic groups have historically been associated with folk music traditions, such as polka, and radio broadcasting patterns in the United States reflect continued demand for and support of this music. Data from the 2000 Census was used to generate maps of the county-level ancestral patterns from European regions traditionally associated with polka music and was compared with the locations of radio stations that play polka. This article demonstrates straightforward quantitative approaches to evaluating these patterns of musical preferences. This study serves as an example for ways in which mapping and GIS can be used as tools for teaching and learning topics related to cultural geography.

The ′Guslar′: Individual identity and tradition

The subject of this paper is the relation between individual and collective identity within the folk-music tradition, from the perspective of ethnomusicology. Solo folk musicians have more latitude than those who perform in ensembles. They are more independent in developing their own style. As an example of this intermingling of individual and traditional styles, we have chosen Branko Perovic, ?guslar? (a singer of epic songs who accompanies himself on the ?gusle?) - currently one of the very best. Both his extraordinary vocal qualities and his unique combination of temperament and emotions have enabled Perovic to develop an original performing style. By comparing the regional, Montenegrin style of gusle-playing (of which Perovic is a representative) with his personal style, we have established certain corresponding structures regarding a few basic analytical parameters: musical form at the macro-level, tonal structure, and harmonic structure. Individual characteristics are to be found in melodic patterns, dynamics, agogics and ornaments, and to a certain extent, in rhythm. Although Perovic is considered to be an ?innovator? among folk musicians, taking a dynamic approach to tradition, he is, however, well received and highly rated in folk music circles, which is proof of his successful communication with his audience. His reputation and influence on other gusle-players makes him a worthy link in the chain of epic tradition. His performance underlines the importance of the connection between traditional music and society, within which he develops his own style according to his capacities and inclinations, although constantly referring to the functional and aesthetic criteria of his cultural environment in which he performs. This is how adopted models are being reshaped by both individual artistic style and the current cultural pattern of a given community. The individual identity (of the musician) is in constant interaction with those of his/her ancestors and contemporaries. The extraordinary, charismatic personalities of a guslar such as Perovic, secure the continuation of the tradition into the future.

Reclaiming the Commons, One Tune at a Time

As a longtime practitioner of Irish traditional music, chiefly on the bouzouki and the button accordion, I teach to a wide range of student skills, aptitudes, and experience, and in a variety of contexts. In such teaching sessions, I focus upon repertoire, performance practice, and lore of the music; but over the years, I have also come to see my teaching as a form of community activism? a way to address passivity, spiritual alienation, and materialism. My teaching procedures arise from within the folk music tradition. Philosophically, I am influenced by concepts developed by theorists and practitioners of social and cultural anthropology and public-sector folklore. No one can work in this field, as I have, without coming to understand that there has long been conflict between commodification and community in the practice and the handing on of traditional music. My personal observations and experiences, the responses to questionnaires I have circulated among students, and other commentary from participants, as well as a diverse scholarly litera ture, suggest that this tension between the music and the marketplace contin ues to be felt today. Yet, I believe strongly that it remains possible both to cre ate human value and to combat social problems?as well as to teach people how to play?by developing strategies that return the inspiration, tools, and practices of making art to individuals in local settings. I further argue that the repertoire, aesthetics, and contextual procedures indigenous to the tradition can serve to elicit and model such strategies. In academic settings, neither the efficacy of indigenous pedagogical techniques nor the quest for abstract philosophical goals is often addressed?but that does not lessen their real and demonstrable significance in pedagogical situations. I arrived at my teaching method through practical experience in several different communities. Only later did I uncover a theoretical, and explicitly philosophical, basis for the way I teach in studies of economics, property rights, anthropology, and in the essays of the poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder. He explicitly connects the survival of vernacular crafts traditions with that of social cultures:

A systematic comparison of different European folk music traditions using self-organizing maps

The relations of six European musical cultures were investigated using self-organizing mapping of the melody contours. The high number of contour types characterizing more than 2 cultures simultaneously led to the supposition of a hypothetical common musical language, and the corresponding contour types were determined using a self-organizing map, being able to “understand” the six cultures in parallel. The analysis showed that significant parts of the common language are represented in the six national cultures, and it exists practically completely in Hungarian and Slovak folk music. The mapping of the melody sections and the contour types of the common language to a multidimensional “melody space” resulted in a clear musical description of the contacts, thus, the hypothesis of an archaic common musical tradition in Europe seems to be worth considering.

Music in Rural New England: Family and Community Life, 1870-1940 (review)

Music in Rural New England: Family and Community Life, 1870-1940. By Jennifer C. Post. (Revisiting New England.) Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2004. [xiv, 313 p. ISBN 1-58465-415-5. $45.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliography, index, compact disc. Jennifer Post's Music in Rural New England: Family and Community Life, 18701940 is a milestone in the literature on America's far northeastern corner. Addressing the need for a historical overview of the region's vernacular music and dance traditions, Post deftly applies ethnographic rigor to the telling of a story whose details offer insightful on a familiar premise: continuity and change. Previous works focusing on New England music have emphasized the region's early psalmody, Boston's musical life, or art music. While a 1953 book, Music and Dance in the New England States, Including Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island & Connecticut, edited by Sigmund Spaeth (New York: Bureau of Musical Research, 1953), is a collection of essays chronicling the folk music and dance traditions of the entire region, Post's book is the first monograph to provide an account of these traditions in northern New England, a sub-region that excludes the urban centers of Hartford and Boston. (Louis Pichierri's Music in New Hampshire, 16231800 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1960], is the most recent work to cover similar geographical territory.) Beginning with a general definition of northern New England, which includes the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, as a distinct and geographical region, Post's book focuses on the Anglo-Celtic musical traditions found in the area, although Quebecois and FrancoAmerican musical practices are briefly acknowledged throughout the text. The types of music Post discusses are those that formed the canon for practitioners of folk music in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The core of this repertoire consists of songs, including ballads, religious songs, social commentary songs, work songs, and local songs, characterized by their incorporation of a community's snared history, knowledge and experience into the songs' text. Dance music, which Post feels [has] been shaped by the location and the residents' willingness to accept influence from a broad spectrum of (p. 76), evolved along a similar trajectory, incorporating the types of nuances and inflections that result from interaction within a geographically isolated area. Befitting a true ethnography, Post supplements her musical analysis with on the two generations of people who made this music during the period under consideration. Chapters devoted to music and gender, family song sharing, and community traditions provide snapshots of both individual and collective sentiment concerning the role music and dance, as forms of entertainment and communication, played in a society that was one of the last to be touched by mainstream media. Post's book thoroughly documents the bibliographic evolution of the region's folk and dance song traditions, transforming the work into a veritable songbook and addressing longstanding questions surrounding the sources of these songs. Northern New England's song repertoire as it existed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a syncretic one, characterized by the ongoing cross-fertilization of local, national and international song forms as practiced by the region's many British, Irish, and Scottish immigrants. As curator of the Helen Hartness Flanders Collection of Folk Music at Middlebury College, Post devotes considerable attention to describing the song collecting efforts of a number of New England residents, including Phillips Barry, Fanny Hardy Eckstorm, Eloise Linscott, and Flanders. The work of these collectors, Post argues, was modeled on that of Francis James Child (1825-1896), who gathered and classified the narrative songs of the British Isles during the nineteenth century. …

Full fat, semi-skimmed or no milk today – creative commons licences and English folk music

Considerable portions of Lessig's writing concern the relationship between intellectual property regimes and music. In Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity he reviews the unequal use of copyright in the reward for writing and performance of music on the radio. In The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World he argues that intellectual property regimes need not be ‘full on’ (full fat) or ‘full off’ but partial (semi-skimmed). These ideas have found form in a more flexible regime of copyright through a series of alternative licensing contracts usually referred to as the Creative Commons licences. After reviewing what is considered to be folk music this paper will analyse the extent to which developments in the English law of copyright are stifling the folk music tradition and consider the extent to which the mechanisms proposed by the Creative Commons licences and the open source movement offer better solutions more suited to the needs of this tradition.

Old Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes (review)

Although fiddling is a vital folk music tradition in America, there are far fewer scholarly books on fiddling than one would expect. There are hundreds of tunebooks available from popular music presses, but generally they are written for players wanting to learn new tunes and provide little in the way of documentation. It is rare to find a tunebook that gives good scholarly descriptions of the tunes and their origins. One example is Samuel P. Bayard's Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982). Bayard transcribed the tunes of living players in western Pennsylvania and documented the history of each tune. Titon follows a similar pattern in documenting the tunes of fiddlers from Kentucky.

Texas Czech folk music and ethnic identity

Drawing on ethnolinguistic fieldwork in the historically Czech Moravian communities of Central Texas, this article explores an intersection between the Texas Czech folk music tradition and the ‘idea’ of language projected into and reflective of the shifting definitions and historically motivated perceptions of ‘Czechness’ and ‘Moravianness’ among the second-to-fourth generation descendants of immigrants from the Moravian region of 19th century Austro-Hungarian Empire (presently a part of the Czech Republic). The cross-fertilization of the ancestral musical tradition with Texas country and western music reflects the process of ethnic redefinition among the generations of Texas Czechs. Where considerable assimilation of the Texas Czech community has eroded once distinct ethnic boundaries, and where the Texas Czech linguistic variety has lost its ground in day-to-day interactions, cultural performances of Texas Czech polka bands help reenact symbolic boundaries of the Texas Czech community in the minds of performers and their audiences and create an environment conducive to heritage language use. Texas Czech folk music thus continues to function as an effective manifestation of the Texas Czech ethnic identity.

The 'liedhafte E-Melodik'

For Hungarian ethnomusicologists it is a well-known idea that the melodic material of medieval plainchant repertory may have left its mark on the folkmusic tradition either in the form of concrete melodies or perhaps even more in the use of melodic models. When firstly Zoltan Kodily drew attention to the possible connection of the two musical fields he still remained at the level of supposition but urged musicologists to investigate more deeply this topic.' His wish was fulfilled by further research: Benjamin Rajeczky, Liszl6 Dobszay, Janka Szendrei, Lajos Vargyas to mention only a few names discussed a great number of instancies where the influence of the liturgical plainchant repertory on folk tradition can be detected even if the number of concrete melodic correspondences proved to be relatively small. Although, it is also a commonplace in the history of research that the medieval musical practice existing outside the frame of the liturgy may also have influenced the late medieval formation of plainchant repertory, we encounter relatively rarely a detailed discussion of this subject based on concrete evidence. In the following, I shall offer a brief survey of a special area of the medieval liturgical plainchant repertory that firstly, belong to a relatively late stage of the history of gregorian monody, secondly traditionally offered a large scope for creative endeavours in every epoch and region and finally, might have incorporated features coming from outside of and alien to traditional gregorian melodic thinking. Furthermore I shall summarize and subject to criticism the opinions of musicologists concerning the melodic style under discussion.

British Folk-Rock; Celtic Rock

In a record review essay that appeared in JAF in the late 1980s, Norm Cohen noted that pervasive eclecticism was defining the spirit of the current folk (1987:214). Unlike folk musicians, he asserted, folk performers do not tend to produce the kind of stylistically consistent music that characterizes a community-based tradition. Although any living folk music tradition will display a surprising range ofinfluences, Cohen's observation regarding the much greater degree of eclecticism in commercial folk music was right on target. Just a few years later, with the explosion of world music (that catch-all term) in the marketplace, we are now offered a broader selection of traditional and tradition-influenced music than ever before. More artists from around the globe are commercially available, of course, but at the same time more Western musicians--many artists among them-are engaging in greater cross-cultural exploration and experimentation. The shift in terminology that seems to be accompanying such expansion is intriguing. Each subgenre in the ever-growing array of newly discovered styles and genuinely new hybrid forms needs to be identified within the industry, whether they are hybrids in the sense of folk-pop-rock meldings or, alternately, uncharted fusions of different ethnic sounds. As Neil Rosenberg has noted elsewhere, the term folk increasingly seems to be falling by the wayside as the descriptive word of choice in revival circles, replaced instead by the aforementioned world music or, in less electrified instances, roots music (1993:21). After all, if folk is equated with acoustic or simple in popular usage, or is associated with merely Anglo-American based styles or protest song, it cannot easily serve as an umbrella term for all of these new and various offer-

Ethnomusicology and Folk Music Research in Denmark

This article examines the study of folk music traditions in Denmark, with an emphasis on collection, research and scholarly publication. Popular writings, use in education and the practice of folk music have been incorporated only sporadically. Geographically, the article covers what is now Denmark as well as the Faroe Islands. Greenland, which like the Faroe Islands has a commonwealth relationship with Denmark, is treated in a separate article. We may distinguish between five main trends in the study of popular song and music traditions. (The characteristic of the music that has been emphasized most is added in parentheses): 1 Ethnomusicology/the history of song (The music in its interaction with its environment. The source material is normally present-day field recordings, but may also be of a more historical nature). 2 Musicology (The music itself). 3 Words/folklore.

Introducing Multicultural/ Multiethnic Music Education To the School Curriculum

Times have changed, students have changed, and so has the face of music education. Now, in addition to teaching the Great Masters, music educators are introducing the folk and popular music traditions of non-West ern societies to students who hail from a diversity of cultural back grounds.

Recycling Indian Film-Songs: Popular Music as a Source of Melodies for North Indian Folk Musicians

In a large number of the folk music traditions across northern India, there is no melodic composition. Musicians who perform the music do not make up new melodies; similarly, composers who create new songs do not compose new melodies. In short, in many genres of North Indian folk music, no one is creating new melodies. That is not to say there there are no new songs. In fact, for many of these same genres, especially entertainment genres, there is a constant need for new songs. A professional singer must begin the new year with a least six to eight new songs so that he can stand in front of last year's audiences with new material.