Folk Singing Research Articles

Culture, Heritage, Art: Navigating Authenticities in Contemporary Hungarian Folk Singing.

In Hungary, the decline of traditional peasant culture and its heritage has prompted urban revivals, leading to the acceptance of traditional Hungarian folk singing as a performing arts genre. Drawing from a series of in-depth interviews, this study shows how contemporary Hungarian folk singers navigate (define, learn, police) different forms of authenticity within the field of folk music. While we find that objectified authenticity – heritagized classification systems – is the dominant form of symbolic capital, the broader symbolic economy of authenticity is complicated by competing definitions of folk singing as, variously, culture, heritage, and art. Third-person authenticity is more highly regarded, but it is more difficult for contemporary urban folk singers to achieve because they were not socialized in peasant communities. Therefore, they use objectified authenticity such as ‘original recordings’ as a proxy for learning about living folk culture. Although objectified authenticity constrains the agency of artistic expression, it affords discriminatory creativity (choosing one’s own repertoire) and rationalized creativity (adapting traditional material to external values and contexts).

The Gender and Sexuality of Armenia

The Gender and Sexuality of Armenia

A Study on Acceptance Phase of the Foreign Music in Early Korean Modern Folk Music and Its Significance

1960~70년대 미국에서 확산된 저항문화의 영향으로 미국 대중음악계에는 모던포크라는 새로운 장르가 나타났다. 모던포크가수들은 미국의 기존 포크음악 특히 프로테스트 포크(protest folk)의 음악성과 정신을 이어받아 당시 미국사회에 부조리를 비판하고 반전과 평화를 외치는 노래들을 불렀다. 음악적으로도 어쿠스틱 기타 위주의 기존 포크음악의 단조로운 악기편성을 넘어 당시로서는 새로운 사운드로 인식되던 일렉트릭 기타를 도입하는 등 사운드적 변화도 시도되어 ‘모던포크’, ‘포크록’으로 불리며 새로운 장르로 구분되었다. 한국에는 1960년대 후반부터 미국의 모던포크가 유입되었으며 1970년대 한국 대중가요를 대표하는 음악양식으로 자리매김하게 되었다. 하지만 한국의 모던포크는 미국 모던포크 가사에 담겨 있는 저항성을 탈각하고 그 음악적 성향만을 이식하였다. 본 논문에서는 이미 여러 논문에서 연구된 가사 내용에 대한 분석보다는 음악적 측면에서 미국의 모던포크의 한국 유입양상에 주목하였다. 한국의 모던포크 가수들은 미국을 비롯한 해외 각국의 음악을 번안하여 음반을 취입하였는데, 외래음악의 번안을 가장 직관적인 방법의 외래음악 수용사례로 보고 이러한 사실에 주목하여 당시 한국 모던포크가 수용한 다양한 음악양식을 번안가요를 중심으로 분석해 보고 이를 통해 초기 한국 모던포크의 음악적 양상을 파악하였다. 본 논문에서는 1968년부터 1970년대 후반까지의 한국 모던포크가수가 번안한 57곡을 대상으로 장르별, 국가별, 편곡 방향에 따라 분류하여 그 양상을 살펴보았다. 그 결과를 정리해 보면 한국 모던포크에서 번안한 외래음악은 미국의 모던포크음악보다 다른 나라 다른 장르의 음악이 더 많았다는 점, 다른 장르의 음악을 번안한 경우 어쿠스틱 기타 중심의 모던포크 스타일로 편곡을 한 곡이 다수 있었으나 음악적으로는 모던포크라 보기 힘든 곡들 역시 존재했다는 점을 알 수 있었다. 이는 한국의 모던포크가‘포크’라는 장르적 명칭을 가지고 있으나 음악적으로 미국 모던포크의 음악적 정체성에 국한되지 않고 다양한 외래음악을 받아들였다는 것을 의미한다. 한국의 모던포크는 60~70년대 미국문화의 영향아래에서 성장한 당시의 청년들을 중심으로 한국대중음악의 중심장르로 자리 잡을 수 있었다. 1960년대 트로트 위주였던 가요계는 1970년대의 청년문화를 지나면서 다양한 외래음악장르의 영향으로 보다 다변화되었다. 본 논문에서 고찰한 한국 모던포크의 이러한 음악양상은 당시 청년층의 외래음악에 대한 욕구가 투영된 결과로 볼 수 있다. 비록 미국 모던포크의 정체성을 제대로 이해하지 못한 불완전한 수용에 그치고 말았으나 한국의 모던포크는 미국 모던포크 장르에만 집착하고 있었던 것은 아니었다. 초기 한국 모던포크의 번안양상의 다양성은 이후 포크스타일 창작곡으로의 발전을 가져왔다. 한국 모던포크음악에 대한 깊이 있는 이해를 위해서는 번안경향 이후의 창작 포크음악을 포함하여 좀 더 넓은 시야에서 검토할 필요가 있는데 이는 차후 연구과제로 이어가고자 한다.American modern folk music appeared under the influence of a counterculture which spread in the 1960~1970s in America. At the time, modern folk singers criticized the irregularities in American society. Modern folk music was separated into a new genre referred to as folk rock or modern folk, which included a new instrument-the electric guitar. Modern folk music entered Korea in the late 1960s and became the main genre of Korean popular music in the 1970s. However, modern folk music could not be implanted into the Korean consciousness in its original state, as the lyrics of American modern folk music did not contain the theme of resistance. This study considered the acceptance phase of the American modern folk music in Korea in regards to musical aspects without dealing with the lyrical aspects. There were especially many remakes of foreign music-including American music-in Korean modern folk music. This study examined the various genres which were accepted by Korean modern folk music with a focus on the remakes of foreign music which could be seen as the most intuitive examples of the variation. This study additionally examined the musical aspects of 1970s Korean modern folk music. Korean modern folk music established itself as the main genre of Korean popular music with the influx of American culture in the 1970s. The Korean pop scene-which was devoted to teuroteu music-became diverse under the influence of the various foreign musical genres in the 1970s. The Korean modern folk music scene was, however, not obsessed with American folk music as they could not understand the identity of American modern folk music. This study tried to understand the aspects of the foreign music acceptance with a focus on the song remakes which were remade by the early Korean modern folk music scene. While the early Korean modern folk music scene certainly focused on foreign song remakes, many self-created songs appeared followed in later years. Therefore, wider-scale studies-including those on self-created music-will have to be made as a basis for future research in order to understand the intricacies of Korean modern folk music.

Discovery of Repeated Melodic Phrases in Folk Singing Recordings

In music, repetition is a fundamental concept to establish structure and create temporal relationships. Previous approaches to detecting repetition in music recordings have mainly focused on discovering repeated patterns of variable length and instrumentation at arbitrary locations. In this paper, we present a novel method for the discovery of repeated sung phrases in folk music recordings and, in particular, in oral music traditions, where written scores are usually unavailable. At a first stage, a segmentation algorithm partitions automatically generated note-level transcriptions of the singing melody into sections that correspond to the structural unit of a phrase. A clustering algorithm is then used to form clusters of phrases, where each cluster contains instances of the same melodic content. The clustering algorithm operates on the basis of a distance measure between melodic sequences and, to this end, various melodic distance measures are investigated. A detailed evaluation procedure is used to assess the performance of the algorithm on three different European music traditions and the influence of transcription and segmentation errors is investigated. The proposed system is shown to outperform the state-of-the-art in audio-based approaches to repeated phrase discovery for this task.

Place, sound, and tradition: Origin narratives constructing nostalgia in the media representations of female folk singers

This article examines how place, sound, and links to tradition construct nostalgia in the media representations of four female folk singers from Scotland, Ireland, and England. The research material, consisting of both online and print magazine articles, reviews and interviews written about the artists, nostalgizes them and this in turn constructs them authentic as folk singers. Nostalgia in this context is a specific, unified, and even totalizing story about the past which is manifested in the origin narratives of the singers. These origin narratives consist of place, sound, and tradition, meaning the singers’ places of origin, their sound in reference to their voices and performance languages, and their links to the continuum of tradition. The singers studied are represented in the media as creatures of the past, regardless of which era in time they are from. Though the artists themselves see tradition as vibrant and living, and produce music that exhibits that fact, the constraints of the genre norms—both in terms of the genre of music and the genre of music journalism—call for them to be seen as creatures of the nostalgized past, defined by their origin narratives.

James E. K. Parker, Acoustic Jurisprudence

Think of those facing trial at international criminal tribunals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes: generals, political leaders or even heads of state; but folk singers? The case of Simon Bikindi, the Rwandan wedding singer turned folk star, serves as something of an anomaly in the cast of those appearing before international tribunals, and this outlier status has led to significant academic interest in Bikindi’s case. Nevertheless, James E. K. Parker claims to address a gap in legal scholarship by using Bikindi’s case as the backbone in his bold new book ‘Acoustic Jurisprudence: listening to the trial of Simon Bikindi’. Whilst Bikindi’s trial on charges of direct and public incitement to commit genocide has, since its beginning, fascinated the international criminal law community, never before has Bikindi’s case been assessed from the point of the view of the ‘acoustic’, as Parker’s book attempts. Acoustic Jurisprudence borrows liberally from fields as diverse as musicology, philosophy, engineering, anthropology, linguistics and history in its approach to sound. Indeed, one is struck by the scope of reference employed by Parker, ranging from Greek mythology to the technological specification of the microphones used by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), exemplifying the detailed research that pervades this work.

On the Cusp: The Yale College Class of 1960 and a World on the Verge of Change by Daniel Horowitz

Reviewed by: On the Cusp: The Yale College Class of 1960 and a World on the Verge of Change by Daniel Horowitz Daniel Clark On the Cusp: The Yale College Class of 1960 and a World on the Verge of Change by Daniel Horowitz. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015. xxi + 310 pp. Paper $24.95. As a historian with an interest in the history of masculinity and higher education, I came to Daniel Horowitz's On the Cusp with a natural fascination with Yale, both as a preeminent institution and as a special seat in the formation of an ideal manhood that influenced the nation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The continued impact of the ideal "Yale Man" figures prominently in Horowitz's memory as well, if more as a model to rebel against. Horowitz seeks to find some insight into how family, education, and the Yale experience factored into the development of a class sitting in between the staid conformity of the 1950s and the rebellion of the 1960s. Many might first cast a skeptical eye toward yet another retrospective on this generation, and certainly Horowitz's interest centers on trying to understand where the activism and commitment to 1960's style change came from—seemingly more of this generation's self-infatuation. Nevertheless, this is not another study of how great (or horrible) baby boomer movers and shakers were. The book clearly grew out of the Yale class of 1960's fiftieth reunion, its class reunion book, and Horowitz's own self-reflection. While the class produced some incredible leaders (Yale president and Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti, Senator Jack Heinz, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, CIA Director Porter Goss, and several CEOs), what captures Horowitz's imagination is how the traditional, hypermasculine world of Yale nurtured the future liberal scholars and activists of the 1960s (and beyond)—how could Yale have birthed champions of the civil rights movement, modern feminism, and partisans of the liberal culture wars? Horowitz expected to find a "seamless connection between the rebellious stirrings" he felt in the 1950s and what happened in ensuing decades. Instead he found only subtle indicators (253). The book weaves together the style of emotional memoir, oral and intellectual history, and social [End Page 441] analysis all in an attempt to identify how this class was truly transitional, with some reflecting a dawning social consciousness. The first two chapters, "Think Yiddish" and "Dress British," cleverly introduce the reader both to Horowitz's personal tale and to the traditional world of Yale in the 1950s. He details the social aspects of the manly Yale world with the above-ground senior societies like Skull and Bones, the fraternities and a cappella groups (like the Whiffinpoofs), and the necessity of wearing the preppy style—a fun if not highly surprising read, all relayed through the eyes of Horowitz's "outsider" Jewish status. The next five chapters, then, explore what for Horowitz form the markers of how at least some of the class of '60 evidenced their "awakening"—an increasing racial consciousness, greater devotion to academics, alternative notions of masculinity in contrast to Yale tradition (more academic and sensitive to women), and a greater political engagement on social issues. His involvement with a year-long series of speakers and discussions called "Challenge" in his senior year sits as the culminating proof of all this increased consciousness raising and academic questioning. Challenge pulled in an impressive array of speakers from Ayn Rand, William F. Buckley, and Senator Barry Goldwater on the right, to Senator Hubert Humphrey, A. Philip Randolph, and several folk singers on the left, discussing such topics as nuclear arms (in the fall semester) and the "challenges of democracy"—racism, labor problems, and socialism—in the spring. This did not seem like Dink Stover's Yale and did foreshadow a dawning political awareness. For people already acquainted with Yale's history and traditions, the book offers little that is new. Most of the chapters center on the author's own experience, although the generous dose of classmates' stories and life experiences proves illuminating. Personally I found the author's forays into intellectual history (professor's classes...

A Journey of the Vocal Iso(n) by Eno Koço

Reviewed by: A Journey of the Vocal Iso(n) by Eno Koço Ivan Moody A Journey of the Vocal Iso(n). By Eno Koço. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. [xxiv, 195 p. ISBN 9781443870672 (hardcover), £47.99.] Illustrations, music examples, glossary, bibliography, index. This is a remarkable book, simultaneously ambitious and aware of the limitations on what it can achieve. Koço sets out to propose possible connections between the ison (drone) of Byzantine chant and the iso as used in the multipart folk singing of Southern Albania, which is certainly a big undertaking. At the same time, Koço is very clear in his preface and introduction that this study is merely a beginning, an accumulation of scraps of evidence and working hypotheses that may be taken further by future research. He is careful not to re-hash historical arguments concerning the age of the ison in the Byzantine repertoire, though this question hovers in the background constantly. The book is divided into three sections: the first two are entitled “Synthesis” and “Analysis,” and a third comprises three appendices. In the first chapter, Koço necessarily goes into the historical backdrop to the question at hand, situating Albanian culture in relation to the Roman and post-Roman periods and ending with a typically provocative question: “After all, is it not fascinating that these possibly archaic multi-part styles are still preserved and may roughly and symbolically define the ex-Roman Epiri borders?” (p. 12). The question is left in the air, but the second chapter, “Iso-based Multipart Unaccompanied Singing (IMUS) and Some of Its Components,” gives a useful overview of the situation with regard to the singing of Albanian, Greek and Aromanian/Vlach communities, and moves in the direction of answering it. The third and last chapter of the first section, “Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Music,” gives a very simplified overview of Byzantine chant, but unfortunately relies too much on outdated literature (including terminology coined by J. B. Thibaut, articles and books by Egon Wellesz, and Dalia Cohen’s article “Theory and Practice in Liturgical Music of Christian Arabs in Israel” [Studies in Eastern Chant, vol. III (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 1–50]) so that an overly simplistic picture emerges of both the Chrysanthine reform and the way in which Byzantine and Ottoman music might have interacted. It would have been salutary to see references here to more recent Greek scholarship on these matters. On the other hand, the final section of the chapter, which gives a panoramic view of the Arbëresh Byzantine liturgy and the scholarly attention that has been paid to it, is extremely useful, including its references to the work of Nicola Scaldaferri and Girolamo Garofalo. It is the second section, “Analysis,” that contains the real substance of Koço’s work. He lays out his thesis in the following carefully worded paragraph: The iso(n), as a sustained tone component to the chant/song, has evolved and become integrated into both Byzantine monody and the Southwest Balkan oral traditions of multipart pentatonic singing. . . . Such commonality may suggest that the integration and then consolidation of the iso(n) into these two traditions occurred in roughly the same Late Medieval Period. That the use of the drone in both forms of unaccompanied singing may have existed prior to this period should not be entirely ruled out, [End Page 712] however, further investigation is needed as there are no surviving written records which support this. (p. 40) In this and the following two chapters, Koço expands on this thesis and provides a historically contextualized discussion of Greek and Albanian cultural legacies and explanations of the stylistic differences between the various Southwest Balkan IMUS repertories. He also addresses questions of text and metre, and the speculation on whether the use of instrumental drones has a parallel with bell ringing, which is rightly dismissed by Koço as “quite exciting but, in my view, hardly probable” (p. 98). Chapter 7, one of the most valuable in the book, examines Byzantine and related chanting in Albanian communities. Koço discusses Lorenzo Tardo’s views on the early existence of the ison and the...

Ballad-like Parallels in the (Auto)biographies of the Folk Singers

The author of the article aims at seeking individual connections between folk ballads, characterized by peculiar poetics and melodics, and dramatic life experiences of their performers, attributing particular relevance to the keynote narrative of the misery. Rather than approaching ballads as a genre, the author treats them as a certain “register”, which also resonates in other folksongs and folk narratives, likewise being reflected by some circumstances in the life of their performers, such as widowhood, orphanage, singleness, grievance, and general misery. These are certain “ballad-like notes” in the performers’ lives. Therefore, the author views ballads and other folksongs from a special perspective, attempting to “insert” them into the everyday circumstances of the singers, weaving them together with the biographical facts of the performers or taking into consideration other relevant data. In other words, the authors attempts to broaden the scope of the ballad research by including the life stories of the performers, or at least fragments of these stories.However, although such terms as autobiographical narratives or life stories appear in the article, such personal experience narratives as those common in the modern folklore research that have become subject to analysis for several decades already, do not and even cannot emerge in this study. It is precisely because the legacy of all the performers introduced in this article comes from the second half of the 20th century (a little – also from the first half of it). At that time folklore collectors paid little attention to the life stories of the singers or storytellers, normally noting down only the most essential personal information. Only rarely more extensive autobiographical data supplied by the informants themselves are available. The main subject of the current study comprises mostly such fragmented and scarce material, or even separate facts, carefully picked out from the collectors’ remarks, memoires, and (auto) biographies.The folk singers mentioned in this article belong to the generation born approximately at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries, which grew up and learned the folksongs in the period of existence of the first independent Lithuanian Republic. Almost all of them lived in the so-called Vilnius Region, which at that time belonged to Poland. The majority of these performers are inhabitants of the southern part of the Vilnius Region, or Dzūkija.In terms of contextuality, all kinds of data regarding the “actual” context of the folklore pieces are important to their perception. By presenting biographical facts of the singers, the aim is not creating their exhaustive portraits, but rather viewing the folksongs in the light of the certain events from the lives of their performers. The author concludes that experience and memory of those events is able to alter the perception of the ballads. More broadly, this is the possible contemporary context of the ballads that has reached our times, enabling us to understand them better.

INTERACTION OF TRADITIONAL AND CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PEDAGOGY IN THE CASE OF MUSICAL HERITAGE OF NIŠ AND LESKOVAC REGION

The paper points out the necessity and importance of the study and preservation of traditional local vocal practice that finds its way into contemporary music and teaching. Implementation of traditional songs is an important means by which we solve numerous requirements of teaching music. By its application we raise the students and get them to know the traditional way of life, thinking, transmission and preservation of traditional values and specific examples emerged from musical practice. Here are presented the research of not so many authors, who were engaged in collecting, recording and studying folk singing of southeast Serbia, with a focus on the research of traditional songs of Nis and Leskovac area. Also are shown the recent studies (Pamjav et al. 2012; Brown et al. 2014), dealing with the genetic background of people's attitudes toward traditional music. The paper points out the need to preserve authenticity of traditional songs and their performative characteristics (artists of Nis and Leskovac area) but also the need of their application in modified ‘attire’, adjusted and applicable in the music teaching. Application of different genres (children's songs, songs of art music, vocal fragments of instrumental music, etc.) in the process of music education significantly affects the formation of musical taste of pupils/students and contributes to the acquisition of knowledge and skills by applying different forms of work. The essence of the research of traditional music with the use of mentioned educational approaches is introduction to and the preservation of our own musical traditions, and confirmation of the national identity.

ДО ПИТАННЯ РОЗВИТКУ НАРОДНОЇ МАНЕРИ СПІВУ В СУЧАСНІЙ КУЛЬТУРІ УКРАЇНИ

ДО ПИТАННЯ РОЗВИТКУ НАРОДНОЇ МАНЕРИ СПІВУ В СУЧАСНІЙ КУЛЬТУРІ УКРАЇНИ

The Modernization of Isan Folk Performance (Morlum): A Change for Survival

Isan folk performance or Molum is about the folk singing performance narrated by the verse of song composing of words, rhyming with different styles of singing from the beginning of performance to the end of performance. This folk performance has been deep-rooted for many decades in the Northeast Thailand. However, it cannot maintain its traditional styles of performance as it used to be in the past. As for the postmodern era, it is necessary for the owner of Morlum band to adapt his or her performance up-to-date and being attractive to the audience. The question is what modernity in this age is incorporated into this folk performance and which factor is considered as the main factor causing this modernity happen. This paper aims to analyse the modernization of Isan folk performance in the Northeast Thailand. How Isan folk performance adapts itself to the postmodern era to maintain its cultural root will be studied. In this paper, the factors that force this folk performance into modernity will be described as well. The data used in this paper were collected from the four famous Isan folk performances (Morlum troupe) in Northeastern Thailand namely: Rattanasilapa Intathaiyaraj, Rabiab Watasilapa, Prathom Bantheongsilapa, Silapinphuthai. The observation and in-depth interviews of Morlum performers are the key qualitative methods employed in this study. And the modernization theory is proposed as a conceptual framework to analyse the social phenomenon and a new technology incorporated in this folk performance. The findings reveal that All Morlum bands in particular have developed their traditional folk performance into a modern style by incorporating a social phenomenon and new technology into their performances. It has been found that all three main parts of the particular folk performance namely: a luk thung performance, a comedy show and a lumruengtorklorn or 'storytelling' with special rhythmic and melodious music, are modernized in order to attract the audiences and to maintain their folk culture. The modernization incorporated into Isan folk performance can be analysed into many aspects such as the rhythmic and melodious music, the Isan folk songs, the storytelling, the modern stage of performance, the light and sounds, the new high technology of the performance and so on and so forth. The most important factor that forces this folk performance changing to modernization is the financial factor.

Из истории отечественной фольклористики XIX века: от эмпирии к теории

The object of research in this article is the art of folk singing in the works of 19th century folklorists, when the interest in the artistry of the Russian people acquired the characteristics of stability. The authors set for themselves the task of tracing out the evolution of perspectives on folk song performance in the triad of “practice-scholarship-education,” stemming from the temporal factor, relying on professional interests, artistic priorities and predilection of taste of the Russian researchers. While Alexander Serov became the founder of folk music studies in Russia and Vladimir Odoyevsky set the course on enlightenment and education in terms of folklore culture, the practical skills in collecting the folk song legacy were connected with the endeavors of Evgenia Linyova, which already pertains to the beginning of the 20th century. The aim of the article is expressed by the methodological vector: to show how the folkloristic scholarly thought, which had achieved a professional level in the second half of the 19th century, beginning with its sources – the first empirical-theoretical observations and descriptive works, was developed in a successive pattern. Keywords: Russian folk songs, folk song performance, musical folklore studies, works by 19th century folklorists.

Re–Establishing Britishness/Englishness: Representation Through Music in a non–Parliamentary Nation

Folk singers were once principal media sources by which news of national events was disseminated in what became the United Kingdom in 1707. Folk song has since been imbued with significance as a record of political events and socio/cultural change. This folk tradition still exists in the present with folk performers either singing critical narratives of historical events or criticising current politics. This paper discusses the question of national identity in the United Kingdom, particularly from the perspective of English identity. Interviews carried out with leading folk–orientated performers indicate that the question of Englishness is of lesser importance to politicians than the UK being a component of Europe. Moreover, Englishness does not enjoy the political representation experienced by other UK nations, yet it is key to English cultural arts and traditions, particularly in a number of new folk styles that have lead to a third phase of revivalism.

Pedagogical challenges in folk music teaching in higher education: a case study of Hua’er music in China

Recent literature suggests that traditional approaches in folk music education are not necessarily compatible with the pedagogical conventions of formal music education. Whilst several recent studies have tended to define these non-classical-music learning contexts as ‘informal’, the practice of folk music that was recently introduced into Chinese Higher Music Education appears to be much more complex and fluid, at least in its real world setting. This case study presents a detailed example of the teaching and learning of folk singing in contemporary society in Western China. In this particular context, both ‘informal learning’ and ‘formal’ music practices were observed and compared, based on research data collected from four music lessons and subsequent interviews with the participants. Drawing upon the analytical evidence, the research discusses a possible pedagogical model where two apparently contrasting approaches to learning (i.e. a conservatory model vs. traditional folk learning) could coalesce to ensure more effective learning outcomes of traditional folk music in higher education contexts.

Kalyāṇa is Wrecked: The Remaking of a Medieval Capital in Popular Imagination

Perhaps no other pre-modern city has captured the Kannada cultural imagination more than Kalyāṇa. This medieval capital of the Cāḷukyas and the Kālacūris has been re-imagined and re-presented repeatedly by thousands of Kannada authors for the past 800 years. This paper suggests that rather than the heights reached by the city, its decline, captured in the phrase Keṭṭittu Kalyāṇa (Kalyāṇa was wrecked), has been the source of fascination. Kalyāṇa’s decline seems to have been caused by the Śaraṇas (those who seek refuge in Śiva), who seem to have assembled in Kalyāṇa by the middle of the twelfth century and who fought with the Kālacūri kings and the orthodox social groups. This led to the abandoning of the city in the 1160s, as the Śaraṇas themselves fled to different parts of South India. The Vīraśaiva poets use this event as the founding moment of their community. Offering a different perspective, Kannada folk epics, sung by lower caste and untouchable singers, suggest that there was a moral collapse among the Śaiva devotees; thus there is a second sense in which Kalyāṇa was wrecked, this time in the realm of narratives. Both the Vīraśaiva poets and folk singers use Kalyāṇa to produce autonomous cultural imaginations. My intention here is to recognize how Kalyāṇa becomes a radical space, a reference to which allows different social groups to overturn existing social hierarchies and offer alternative social visions.

Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival by Stephen Petrus and Ronald D. Cohen

Reviewed by: Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival by Stephen Petrus and Ronald D. Cohen Rachel Adelstein Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival. By Stephen Petrus and Ronald D. Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. [320p. ISBN 9780190231026 (hardcover), $39.95; (e-book), various.] Illustrations, index. The companion volume to an exhibit of the same name, which ran at the Museum of the City of New York between 17 June and 29 November 2015, Folk City tells the story of the American folk revival of the mid-twentieth century as it happened in New York City. The book’s status as a companion volume is key to understanding its occasionally limited perspective as well as its approach to folk music as both a musical scene and a political movement. Stephen Petrus and Ronald Cohen maintain a tight focus on the folk music scene in New York. With the exception of the sixth chapter, “Political Activism and the Folk Music Revival,” the action of the book takes place in New York City. Performers, music publishers, and performance venues come and go, leaving the city, especially Washington Square Park, as the constant factor. It is the story of a particular musical scene at a particular moment in history. Its intended audience includes educated general readers who are interested either in this particularly musical aspect of New York’s cultural history or in the specific aspects of the American folk revival that centered on New York. After a foreword by Peter Yarrow (of the trio Peter, Paul, and Mary) and a brief preface by John Heller, Folk City’s eight chapters are arranged in an order that recalls its origins in a museum exhibit. The first chapter sets the scene, describing the rough, active, struggling city that greeted Oklahoma-born Woody Guthrie when he arrived in New York in 1940. It also lays out the fundamental paradox of the folk revival, especially as this book portrays it: “while folk songs evoked tradition and were largely rural in origin, New York stood above all for progress, growth, and efficiency, with seemingly barely a moment for the nostalgia, sentimentality, and romance associated with folk music” (p. 21). How did this self-consciously rural genre become so thoroughly associated with, and at home in, the largest city in the United States? Though Petrus and Cohen never answer the question directly, it informs the entire book. The subsequent chapters appear chronologically, recounting the story of folk music in New York City between the 1920s, when New York-based record label executives sent crews to the Deep South to record folk songs to be sold as “hillbilly” or “old-time music,” to the 1980s, showing the continuing life of the folk scene after the revival’s peak. Although each chapter title states a theme, such as “The Village Scene in the Early 1960s” or “Political Activism and the Folk Music Revival,” the narratives within those chapters tend to be weak. There are many illustrations, including photographs of performers and reproductions of record album covers and concert flyers. Petrus and Cohen seem to organize each chapter around its collection of images, devoting a few paragraphs to one illustrated topic related to the theme of the chapter before moving on to the next illustration and the next topic. The effect is much like wandering through an exhibit, looking at the artifacts on display and reading the information cards posted beside them, and then moving on. This museum-like approach to storytelling can be jarring to a reader who opens the book expecting a more traditional narrative structure that can be read [End Page 271] straight through. However, it may also reward a more casual reader who prefers to dip in and out of the book, exploring different segments and stories at leisure. Separate sidebars headed “Recollections” appear scattered throughout the book. These are short, first-person anecdotes about well-known folk performers or venues, usually told by a participant in the New York folk scene who is less well-known today. The authors include other folk singers, performers’ managers, actors, music publishers, and producers. The “Recollections” offer a more intimate look...

Tuning Features of Chinese Folk Song Singing: A Case Study of Hua'er Music

The learning and teaching of different singing styles, such as operatic and Chinese folk singing, was often found to be very challenging in professional music education because of the complexity of varied musical properties and vocalizations. By studying the acoustical and musical parameters of the singing voice, this study identified distinctive tuning characteristics of a particular folk music in China-Hua'er music-to inform the ineffective folk singing practices, which were hampered by the neglect of inherent tuning issues in music. Thirteen unaccompanied folk song examples from four folk singers were digitally audio recorded in a sound studio. Using an analyzing toolkit consisting of Praat, PeakFit, and MS Excel, the fundamental frequencies (F0) of these song examples were extracted into sets of "anchor pitches" mostly used, which were further divided into 253 F0 clusters. The interval structures of anchor pitches within each song were analyzed and then compared across 13 examples providing parameters that indicate the tuning preference of this particular singing style. The data analyses demonstrated that all singers used a tuning pattern consisting of five major anchor pitches suggesting a nonequal-tempered bias in singing. This partly verified the pentatonic scale proposed in previous empirical research but also argued a potential misunderstanding of the studied folk music scale that failed to take intrinsic tuning issues into consideration. This study suggests that, in professional music training, any tuning strategy should be considered in terms of the reference pitch and likely tuning systems. Any accompanying instruments would need to be tuned to match the underlying tuning bias.

The coexistence of older and newer two-part folk singing in the village of Prekonoga (Southeastern Serbia) as an example of bimusicality

This paper deals with two different styles of rural folk singing in Southeastern Serbia which coexisted in the repertoire of a particular folk group. It is interesting that folk singing in the area of Svrljig can be followed through the ethnomusicological publications with music transcriptions from 1931 up to 2011 and it is vital even today. The characteristics of the older two-part singing style typical for this region are explored, as well as those of the newer two-part singing widespread after World War Two. These styles are chronologically compared and specifically presented through the analysis of (personal) field recordings of the group ?Prekonoga? who carried both traditions. This characteristic of the group is considered in relation to the concept of bimusicality.

Moralne odlike ženskih likova u najstarijim pjesmama junačkim - sociološka analiza sadržaja

The study aims to, in terms of the sociology of morality, analyzes the characters of women in the oldest Serbian epic poems using sociological content analysis. The results indicate the social evaluation of moral characteristics of women, moral actions and personal qualities ascribed to women in the oldest epic poems, moral judgment, sanctions and moral imperatives. Also indirectly indicate the former social status of women and the amount of social power which she possesses. One gets the insight into a part of the mores of a given period of time, sometimes inseparable from the moral community and moral beliefs of folk singers. Female characters should provide and respect life. Highly valued marital fidelity of women, as well as honesty, honor, sacrifice and empathy. To religion and ethnicity poets also subjoin moral value. Respect and obedience to authority are implemented in the moral character of women and form an inseparable part, although they are not accurately moral qualities.