Kinds Of Songs Research Articles

Ecological effects on song learning: delayed development is widespread in wild populations of brown-headed cowbirds

The timing and extent of early exposure to conspecific song can have critical influence on subsequent male vocal development in songbirds. Opportunities to memorize local song models may vary among populations depending on local ecological conditions that determine the length of the breeding season. In populations with comparatively short breeding seasons, such as northern or high-elevation populations, restricted access to local songs may delay development in a large proportion of juveniles. Previous studies have described extreme examples of delayed development in high-elevation populations of brown-headed cowbirds, Molothrus ater, in the Sierra Nevada of California, U.S.A. In the current study, we determined that delayed development also occurs in a low-elevation population located at a more northerly latitude than those in the Sierra. We recorded two kinds of songs from yearling and adult males who had been given testosterone (testosterone increased song output but did not change the nature of songs in males' repertoires) soon after being trapped at two adjacent sites in New York state, U.S.A. The average size of ‘perched’ song repertoires of 17 yearlings was significantly smaller than that of 20 local adults (2.8 versus 4.6 types, respectively) and yearlings generally lacked the shared songs typically found in adult repertoires. Only 40% of yearlings trapped at one site produced the correct local dialect ‘flight whistle’ compared with 91.7% of adults. These results strongly suggest that juvenile access to local songs is also restricted in this population and that delayed vocal development is widespread in cowbirds. In addition, these findings indicate that reliance on field recordings may underestimate adult–yearling differences in vocal competency in cowbirds because yearlings that sing readily in nature may not be representative of yearlings in general, a result that may also apply to other songbird species.

Von Falken, Trappen, Eulen und Hirschen. Ein liederlicher Liebeszoo

Starting with some songs of the late middle ages that use the falcon-motif (among other birds), as well as a song about a hunt for a white hart this article leads to a description of a poetics of evocation as central to late medieval love songs. This is a recurrence of evocative and non-discursive modes of speech from early Minnesang, of which the falcon is an 'indicator animal'. Two basically different kinds of songs can be found: ballads, examples of an almost classical genre objectif, and, instead of the absent classical genre subjectif, a lyrical form which tries to achieve general appeal not only by leaving the identity of the speaker completely open, but also by using 'emotional cohesion'. This openness not only makes for a high level of appeal, but also guarantees a wide usage: the songs can be sung by male or female performers or groups before a socially exclusive or inclusive audience.

Women′s badkhones: the Satmar poem sung to a bride

Analysis and exploration of a newly created example of badkhones, a traditional poem sung to a bride, explores language functions and reveals the influences of Hebrew, biblical and vernacular, on the Yiddish used by women in this Hasidic sect. The text, transcribed from a wedding that took place in Israel, reveals the influence of Kabalistic mystical thought on the content of the sung poem. It also provides evidence of language variation by revealing the ways in which both the Hebrew and Yiddish deviate from the standards. This kind of song, badkhones, has traditionally been created by and performed by males. Finding it performed by women in the largely gender-separated context of a wedding uncovers new functions for women in the creative life of Israeli Satmar Hasidim.

Singing the World

Our language is less emotional than its rudimentary forms. There would not have been an initial difference between the act of speaking and the act of singing.... The initial form of language, therefore, would have been a kind of song. Men would have sung their feelings before communicating their thought. Just as writing was at first painting, language at first would have been song.... It is through the exercise of this song that men would have tried out their power of expression. Merleau-Ponty, Consciousness and the Acquisitior of Language I Could this story that Merleau-Ponty recounts possibly be true? It is, for me at least, an appealing story. It is tempting to accept it. But how could its truth ever be established, since it speaks of a time before words, before language as we know it? One must note that the narrative is rendered in the grammar of speculation, phantasy: it is an account only of what would or could have been. Is it then nothing but romantic fable? If it be mere fable, what explains its enduring appeal, not only across many centuries, but also across many different cultures? Could the story convey a certain phenomenological truth-content, in spite of the fact that nothing in empirical history and nothing in the science of linguistics can give it any credibility? If there be a phenomenological truth, what could it be? Could the conception of the be reconfigured as a term of art for a hermeneutical process, a process neither simply a matter of discovery nor merely a matter of invention ex nihilo, a process engaged in eliciting or producing out of our natural linguistic endowment what can only be thought as a virtuality between the facticity of the simply real and the ideality of the purely imaginary? Could the ancient question of the of language be rehabilitated by phenomenology as an experience with languagc an experience of languaging as a bodily felt process? Could the that figures in the narrative be, then, a hermeneutical trope for the reflexive experience, a way of articulating the process of speaking in terms of its deeply felt, bodily felt sense? It would then be a question, perhaps, of making explicit, and thereby retrieving, a bodily felt sense of the languaging process that was once lived-in, but without awareness, and later sublated in subsequent stages of linguistic development: a bodily felt sense that would otherwise have remained forever latent or virtual, buried in an irretrievable past beneath the conventional experience of language. Could the hermeneutical retrieval of this sense of the in and by one's way of speaking make a profound difference in one's speaking-a difference such as to suggest the desirability of hearing the narrative as an allegory for our selfrealization as beings who understand ourselves to be essentially defined by our ability to use language? Before we work with these questions, it is essential that the matter for thought be clearly conceived. What I am proposing involves a certain transposition or displacement of the centuriesold question of the of language. For it is not to be a question of the historical origin, but rather of an origin possible at any moment: an origin that depends, first of all, on contacting one's bodily felt sense of language-the language one is using and the process of bringing experience into language, or rather, the process of letting one's experiencing and languaging articulate their interaction-and then, secondly, letting the attunement, the singing, that is inherent in that sense resonate and reverberate through what comes to language. II Beginning in a time immemorial, it was customary among the Eskimos of East Greenland to settle conflicts within the tribe by contests in singing. According to Adamson Hoebel, Song duels are used to work off grudges and disputes of all orders, save murder ... Singing skill among these Eskimos equals or outranks gross physical prowess. …

An extreme example of delayed vocal development: song learning in a population of wild brown-headed cowbirds

Abstract. To determine whether vocal ontogeny in migratory brown-headed cowbirds, Molothrus ater artemisiae, of the Sierra Nevada was open at the age of 1 year, two kinds of songs were recorded from recently captured birds who had been given testosterone implants. As these birds were held in captivity for only 3-4 days before recordings were begun, their vocalizations reflected the results of learning in the wild. Only two (12·5%) of 16 yearlings ever gave a complete version of the local dialect of the 'flight whistle' song while nine (81·8%) of 11 adults did so. Yearlings had smaller repertoires of the 'perched' song and unlike adults, their repertoires contained song types that were not shared with any other bird. Yearling cowbirds apparently complete their vocal development during their second winter when they learn to match memorized copies of the songs of adult males from the areas where they were trapped as yearlings. These findings are consistent with an explanation for the maintenance of dialects based on social benefits for birds matching the songs of resident adults. Data on five birds recorded as yearlings and as adults are presented to support this hypothesis. Delayed learning in yearlings was predicted because juveniles have little opportunity to hear conspecifics vocalize during their hatching year. The present results offer further evidence for plasticity in the timing of learning and suggest that there may be more variation than was previously thought in the vocal ontogeny of some oscines as a result of delayed opportunity to learn.

Comparison of the mating behaviour between two sympatric species,Nezara antennata andN. viridula (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae), with special reference to sound emission

Mating behaviour and associated songs were compared between 2 sympatric congeneric species,Nezara antennata andN. viridula, between which interspecific mating was known to occur under natural conditions. The fundamental sequence of mating behaviour for these species was the same. Three kinds of songs were recorded from each sex ofN. antennata. ForN. viridula, 4 kinds of male songs and 3 kinds of female songs were recorded. The songs which corresponded with definite behavioural bouts were distinct between these species. Some consideration was made as to why interspecific differences in the songs did not sufficiently engender ethological isolation. In addition, some geographic variations in the songs were shown among Yugoslavian (Cokl et al. 1972), American (Harris et al. 1982) and Japanese populations ofN. viridula. These variations were relatively inconspicuous when compared with the interspecific differences fromN. antennata.

A Kammu Song and Its Structure

There are two structurally different types of songs in Kammu culture. One type is characterized by the fact that each song has its individual melody. This melody consists of a short musical phrase, which is repeated for each new line of words. These lines are often built up of five or seven syllables, and one of the last syllables in each line rhymes with one of the first of the following line. Many children's songs are of this type, as well as the songs of certain ceremonies. The other main type of song consists of orally transmitted poems which are sung to a limited number of melodic formulas. Certain words and certain melodic formulas belong to certain situations. This type includes songs which are sung on festive occasions. It is my aim to describe this kind of song and to present a first step towards a method of analysis of its verbal and musical contents.1

Tango :A poem of exile and the porteño's nostalgia for Buenos Aires

Humberto Costantini was born in Buenos Aires in 1924. He has published six volumes of short stories and three of poetry, and until his exile from Argentina in 1977 was a regular contributor to the Buenos Aire's newspaper Clarin and most of the country's literary magazines. In 1967 and 1970 collections of his stories won the Buenos Aires Municipal Literary Prize, one of the country's most prestigious awards, while a more recent story won the 1979 Casa de las Americas award (given by an international jury in Havana, Cuba). Several of his stories have been dramatised for theatre and cinema. A leading member of the Argentinian Writers' Association, which was well known for its opposition to the military government which took power in March 1976, Costantini received frequent death-threats after the coup. Close friends, also members of the Writers' Association, such as Rodolfo Walsh (see Index on Censorship 5/1977) and Haroldo Conti (Index on Censorship (6/1981), disappeared after abduction by para-military squads. In early 1977, believing that his own arrest was imminent, Humberto Costantini left Buenos Aires for exile in Mexico. He now presents a daily television programme on Mexican television about Latin American writers. The poem we publish here (slightly shortened, with the author's permission) is about exile. It is also about the attitudes and prejudices of that very particular South American character, the porteño male, the cocky but melancholic native of Buenos Aires. Many of the self-mocking references, among them plays on porteño and Mexican slang and ironic quotations from Argentinian tangos, will sadly be lost to the English-language reader. But some explanations can be given. Above all, tango is much more than a dance rhythm or a kind of song. It is an attitude and an ambience which this poem both draws on and mocks. A gringa is a North American woman (a female gringo) and gringuita its diminutive, while che is the characteristic Argentinian interpolation meaning ‘man’. Ahorita is a particularly northern Latin American usage which literally means ‘now’, but in fact is used when the speaker has no intention of acting immediately. Yerba is mate tea, the Argentinian national drink, while a corridor is a Mexican ballad. There are several renderings of Spanish spoken with a Northern American accent: ‘Vamose a comer oonos taquitos’ (vamos a comer unos taquitos) = let's go and eat some tacos; ‘musayo de Antropolgeea’ (museo de antropologia) = museum of anthropology; ‘floores para el bulin’ (flores para el bulin) = flowers for the room (a bulin is literally a ‘love-nest’). Tu tienes que saber means ‘you must know’, no es verdad means ‘is not true’, and El alma que canta (‘The songful soul’) is an Argentinian magazine which publishes lyrics of tangos and other popular songs. There are also many places referred to in the poem, both in Buenos Aires and Mexico City.

The Melody of the Spoken Word: A Study of James Still's Hounds on the Mountain

The Melody ofthe Spoken Word: A Study ofJames Still's Hounds on the Mountain by John Napier Or may the heart's breath on the slender reed Sing bright virelays to match the oriole?— The tulip tree the lyre that one must heed When the dulcimers are gone, when afternoons attend The silver underleaf of poplars in the wind? Sadly enough there is not a great deal of modern poetry that one wishes to go back to and read again as one would go back and play a lasting tune—for the sake of hearing its melody again. A few of Frost's poems, De la Mare's, a few of Yeats's, have this kind of music. But for the most part, even those modern poems that interest us most do so for reasons other than their intrinsic music. The music I am speaking of is found in the finest lyrics of our language. I think of Shakespeare's songs, of Burns, of Herrick, and of Jonson, his master. And I think that such music is notably allied with the melody of the spoken word. It is not the cold impersonal music of the tone poem, but is rather speech on the verge of becoming song—words for setting to music with the tune already implied, as in Thomas Campion's "Follow Your Saint." 56 Several of the poems in Hounds on the Mountain have such implicit melody. "Mountain Dulcimer," with its unique metrical pattern, resembling dipodic verse but made on a pattern of threes instead of twos, has this kind of song: The dulcimer sings from fretted maple throat Of the doe's swift poise, the fox's fleeting step And music of hounds upon the outward slope Stirring the night, drumming the ridge-strewn way, The anvil's strength . . . and the silence after That aches and cries unhushed into the day. From the dulcimer's breast sound hunting horns Strong as clenched hands upon the edge of death, The creak of saddle-bags, of oxen yoke and thongs, Wild turkey's treble, dark sudden flight of crows, Of unshod hoofs . . . and the stillness after, Bitter as salt drenching the tongue of pain: And of the lambs crying, breath of the lark, Long drinks from piggins hard against the lips; And with hoarse singing, raw as hickory shagbark, The foal's anxiety is woven with the straining wedge And the wasp's anger . . . and the quiet after For the carver of maple on a keen blade's edge. The basic pattern, near but not too near to the dance, is used in almost its full range by James Still. He varies the position of the caesura and subdues the regularity of trochaic phrasing until it becomes a kind of chant in "Child in the Hills": Where on these hills are tracks a small foot made, Where rests the echo of his voice calling to the crows In sprouting corn? Here are tall trees his eyes Have measured to their tops, here lies fallow earth Unfurrowed by terracing plows these sleeping years. Here flow the waters of Carr before his darkened door. Or he disciplines it most severely until it achieves its perfection in the elegance of the title poem: Slow the dull fulcrum, slow the arched leanings Of hill on hill and witless lifting of stark eyes To craven stone. White the wet lattice of morning Over dusty drums, and keen the agony of dry roots Questing beneath the earth. 57 Lean as brown straws The hounds of day tread out thickets of darkness, Damp the grasses their bodies have brushed in passing, Thinner than fly-wings, heavier than words in a cavern, Wilder than thoughts creaming the tongue unspoken. Hounds on the mountain . . . Grey and swift spinning the quarry shall turn At the cove's ending, at the slow day's breaking, And lave the violent shadows with her blood. The pattern achieves its perfection as pattern here, but song has been subdued under the stress of intellect. "Child in the Hills" occupies a middle ground between the pure lyric quality of "Mountain Dulcimer" and the more abstract "Hounds on the Mountain." Still's mastery of song...

Male behavior and polygamy in Cisticola juncidis

1. The breeding behavior particularly of the male Cisticola juncidis was studied in 1967 at Chikuma River basin, Nagano prefecture.2. The observation data were obtained by '2-hour observation' between 8-10 a. m.3. The chief behaviors of the male are singing and nest-building.4. The male sings two kinds of song, the air and perch songs, and both the frequency and length of the songs are greater in the air song.5. The male sings through the breeding season from early April to middle September, and the frequency and the length of the songs per hour were 12.9 times and 12 minutes 37 seconds in average respectively.6. The male constructs the outer wall of the nest and the female works for inside lining. One male constructed 20 nests during a breeding season, of which 8 were used by different females.7. The nesting behavior was recorded on 66 days (84.6%) of the 78 days observation between April 25 and September 11. Average 6.6 days were required for construction of one nest.8. The male abandoned the nests which were not used by females and may take their material for construction of a new nest.9. The above two sustained behaviors of the male, the continuous singing and nesting, have definitive roles in functioning its polygomous breeding system, for accepting the females successfully.

Musical memories of Nigeria

Most of the instruments I heard were percussive. There were the ordinary tomtom and drum, and some extraordinary drums carved for juju ceremonial. There were logs of wood hollowed out through a slot, with one “cheek” thinner than the other and thus giving a higher note when struck. Then there was the Ilu or dundun drum. The wooden part is shaped like an hour glass; there is a skin head at each end, the skins being joined together all round by thonging. You hold it under your left arm and strike the upper head with a drumstick curved like a crane’s bill; by squeezing and relaxing the arm pressure on the thongs, you can raise or lower the pitch of the note. The result is an intriguing “pop pop pop” running with great mobility up and down over a range of a full fifth. This instrument is used also as a “talking drum” for conveying messages. Rattles? All sorts. One like a pepper pot containing seeds. One a gourd or calabash covered with a bead net which rattles beautifully when shaken. Or a species of nut shells strung together, which make an almost deafening row. Then there are gongs: round, square or flat, of iron or brass. Every senior Chief has his private band, which plays perpetually; also a bard to sing his praises. There are traditional songs for every occasion: birth, initiation, marriage, death, the propitiation of ancestors, and so on. Cult groups have their own songs; and different kinds of song are sung with a different quality of voice.

Grundtvigs salmer og deres melodier

Grundtvigs salmer og deres melodier

What Kinds of Songs?

What Kinds of Songs?