Musical Artifacts Research Articles

An experimental study of turtle shell rattle production and the implications for archaeofaunal assemblages.

Turtle shell rattles are percussion instruments used by Indigenous peoples of the Americas in ceremonial contexts to keep rhythm. Archaeological investigations in the southeastern United States produced several complete and partial Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina) shell rattles from mortuary contexts dating from the Archaic (ca. 8000–1000 BC) through Mississippian periods (ca. AD 800–1500). Fragmentary turtle remains, some identified as Eastern box turtle, are frequently recovered from non-mortuary contexts. Traditionally, these fragmentary remains are attributed to food waste. Given the archaeological and ethnographic evidence for turtle shell rattles, we need to consider how fragmentary remains might fit into the chaîne opératoire of rattle production. This paper presents the results of an experimental study designed to identify one such chaîne opératoire of rattle production. During this experiment, the data on taphonomic processes such as manufacturing marks, use-wear, and breakage patterns, were recorded. We then tested the taphonomic findings from the experimental study and an object trait list we compiled from known rattle specimens and documentary sources with archaeological turtle remains recovered from non-mortuary contexts at two Mississippian period (ca. AD 1000–1450) sites in Middle Tennessee. Historic indigenous groups are known to have, and still do into the present-day, make and use turtle shell rattles in the region. Ultimately, we determined that “food refuse” should not be the default interpretation of fragmentary box turtle remains, and instead the taphonomic history and contextual associations must be considered in full. The experimental process of crafting turtle shell rattles enhances our understanding of an ancient musical instrument and the success rate of identifying musical artifacts and distinguishing between other modified turtle remains in the archaeological record. This study expands our knowledge of ancient music in North America and prompts re-analysis of curated turtle remains in museums for rattle-related modifications.

Sponsors of Pleasure: Wide Reading Re-imagined Through Social Curation

ABSTRACTThis article moves beyond book-based school ‘wide reading’ to propose constellations of multimodal media, including music videos, fashion parades, literary works, online games and material artefacts, along with associated pedagogies, as sponsors of pleasure. The article, based on empirical research with teachers in an Australian secondary school, proposes how the pleasure teachers experience in textual curation and research during curriculum planning might inform understandings of what reading might be for students. The author also considers the barriers to recognising diverse texts as having merit for study. Featuring Mattel’s Barbie, Kanye West and Andy Warhol, the article demonstrates how curation can inspire a vibrant reading fan culture and asks how teachers and students can negotiate or co-design ‘reading for pleasure’ curricula that make meaningful use of learner desires to seek collaboratively and collate creatively traces of meaning across media. Reading is an inevitable, spontaneous and enjoyable aspect of these practices.

From the document to the work: Ontological reflections on the preservation and restoration of musical artefacts

ABSTRACTThe article highlights the interest of an ontological analysis in addressing issues related to the preservation and restoration of musical works. The latter are considered as artefacts that function aesthetically. Such entities depend on the inscription of a trace, whose durability can be provided in three ways: oral, written and phonographic. The recording can either document a work (or a musical event) or constitute it. A careful consideration of this alternative, in relation to the way in which the artefact was conceived, is useful when one chooses appropriate approaches to the preservation and restoration of musical works.

‘Walking Backwards into the Future’: Music, Museum Culture, and the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition (1889–1890)

In 1889–90 the city of Dunedin staged the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the colony instigated by the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi by indigenous Māori and representatives of the British Crown. In acknowledgement of the bicultural perspective encoded in the Treaty, this article takes a tour of the musical artefacts of the exhibition, including both Māori and Western instruments and musical works, to reveal how colonial identity was forged through museum culture: whereas Māori instruments (taonga puoro) were curated by settlers and exhibited as the curiosities of a supposedly dying race, Western musical instruments and practices were beholden both to narratives of progress and to the rhetoric of the imaginary museum of musical works, inherited from Britain. However, while the framing of music at the exhibition often contradicted Māori perspectives, a closer look at the exhibition of music in New Zealand in 1889–90 reveals unexpected resonance between the two Treaty parties. Moreover, by tracing the afterlife of one of the Māori instruments displayed at the exhibition, this article reveals how Māori have more recently helped to reshape museum culture itself.

Learning from the parallel pathways of Makers to broaden pathways to engineering

BackgroundMakers are a growing community of STEM-minded people who bridge technical and non-technical backgrounds to imagine, build and fabricate engineering systems. Some have engineering training, some do not. This paper presents a study to explore the educational pathways of adult Makers and how they intersect with engineering. This research is guided by the following research questions: (1) What can we learn about the educational pathways of adult Makers through the lens of constructivist grounded theory? and (2) How do the educational pathways of Makers intersect with engineering? This study relied on qualitative interviews, using artifact elicitation interviews and constructivist critical incident technique interviews, of 42 adult Makers.ResultsThrough inductive analysis of a collection of interviews with Makers, a theme emerged where Makers from different educational backgrounds and with different careers (e.g., art, STEM, business) were making artifacts that had similar purposes. We present two cases of parallel pathways, (1) musical artifacts and (2) large-scale interactive artifacts, to demonstrate the multiple, parallel life pathways that Makers take to making their artifacts and the contextual events and activities that are critical to the direction of these pathways.ConclusionsThe stories and life pathways of adult learners engaged in Making can offer valuable insight into how we might identify practices that promote the access and success of a larger and more diverse population of students for engineering. Makers are engaged in activities that embody the Engineer of 2020 (e.g., lifelong learning, creativity, and practical ingenuity). By studying Makers, we can consider the multiplicity of pathways into engineering majors and careers.

Source Study of 20th Century American and British Music Culture

This article considers the peculiarities of audiovisual historical sources in the context of studies of the popular music culture of the US and Great Britain in the twentieth century. The understanding of the peculiarities of audiovisual sources and popular music developed in the fields of audiovisual studies and popular music studies setting the general framework for the source study of audiovisual sources in popular music culture. Considered generally, popular music is a complex of various elements, i.e. lyrics, music form, means of production and recording which are all equal components of popular music. It is important that the analysis of popular music take into account all of these components. Researchers do not only study written sources (scores and transcripts which are not often used in popular music industry), significantly expanding the empirical base of the research, from audio sources and live recordings to musical artifacts (clothes of musicians, musical instruments, and media), and music clubs or recording studios. Accordingly, the specific ‘language’ of audiovisual sources is due to the peculiarities of production (sound recording), presentation (music medium, live concerts) and the distribution of musical products in the cultural industry. Finally, the article points out several stages in the source study of popular music, i.e. the collection of general information about the source (its history; structure; elements of the author’s style; authorship; the features of the record source; socio-cultural context of its creation; reception by contemporaries; forms of distribution); genre characteristics of the source; ‘content’ of the source (lyrics analysis, characteristics of the music form); presentation (artistic design, style of live performance, decor); audience (audience composition, reception).

Creating ties of intimacy through music: The case study of a family as a community music experience

Abstract This article examines and documents the musical life of a family with an 8-year-old child as resembling the concept, the intentions and practices of community music. Through the analysis of semi-structured interviews, sharing of musical artefacts, and written documentations of their daily musical encounters, I seek to provide insights into the functions of music as a means for building community, affective bonding and a sense of shared identity, drawing from Higgins the three broad perspectives through which community music is conceptualized. For the Beckett-Limas, an ethnically diverse family living in New York, music represented an adaptation tool in their living in various countries around the world, and sustained their transitions to different cultures, jobs, climates and communities, strengthening their relationships through moments of informal, spontaneous and communal musical interactions. Looking at family through the lens of community music reveals the extent to which music draws people together and promotes individual and collective well-being.

Digitized Maya music: The creation of a 3D database of Maya musical artifacts

The largest challenge facing the study of ancient Maya music today is the inaccessibility of the instruments, which are housed in the labs of archaeological projects or museums across Mesoamerica. In order to facilitate the study of ancient Maya music, it is necessary to create a database of numerous instruments from the Maya area that transcends geographical and temporal boundaries. This article will discuss how the Maya Music Project is using photogrammetry to create 3D models of musical instruments as a step towards achieving said database. By creating an online database of 3D instruments (www.mayamusicproject.org), the Maya Music Project will allow scholars around the world to study the musical artifacts in detail. This article also serves as a case study demonstrating the usefulness of digital, experimental archaeology to the study of archaeomusicology. Finally, this article will demonstrate how 3D models can be successfully used for public outreach in order to help generate interest in the study of ancient Maya culture.

Scholars, Friends, Plagiarists: The Musician as Author in the Seventeenth Century

This paper treats plagiarism as performance and Angelo Berardi as a virtuoso. Berardi (1636–94), an active composer and musician, is remembered for his half dozen musical writings. Beginning with a discussion of previously lost or unknown writings by Berardi and his mentor Marco Scacchi, I demonstrate that Berardi composed his prose works through a highly self-conscious process of borrowing. More broadly, Berardi's case opens a window onto the construction of musical texts and simultaneously complicates them as straightforward sources of musical information. Musicians used—and appropriated—the written word to craft and project personae in response to epistemological and social disadvantages: theory outranked practice and theorists outranked practitioners. In style, technique, and content Berardi is representative of musician-authors who presented themselves as gentlemen rather than musicians, adopted the style and tone of Italian academies and erudites, and favored more speculative matters (musical science, antiquarianism, friendship, combinatorics), sometimes at the expense of practical ones. They pursued metaphysical and quadrivial questions now disregarded as irrelevant. I argue that, on the contrary, such writings reveal most precisely, at their most “irrelevant” and derivative, a musical and even mental world not quite congruent with current interest in its musical artifacts.

Unsound Sound: On the Ontology of Sound in the Digital Age

This article discusses the change in premise that digitally produced sound brings about and how digital technologies more generally have changed our relationship to the musical artifact, not simply in degree but in kind. It demonstrates how our acoustical conceptions are thoroughly challenged by the digital production of sound and, by questioning the ontological basis for digital sound, turns our understanding of the core term substance upside down.

Voice and Instrument at the Origins of Music

During the summer of 2008, archaeologists uncovered some remnants of musical prehistory in the caves of Hohle Fels, Germany. There, among burnt animal bones and flint-knapping debris, they found fragments of three flutes (Conard, Malina, and Munzel 2009). One was remarkably complete. This delicate instrument, discovered in twelve pieces, had been fashioned from a vultures wing bone. It was thirty-four centimeters long (roughly the length of a piccolo), with several finger holes and a notched mouthpiece (like the Japanese shakuhachi and other end-blown flutes; see Figure 1). The other flutes at the site were less complete but represented more complex manufacturing. They were made from pieces of mammoth tusk that had been split, hollowed out, and then rejoined. Yet headlines about the Hohle Fels flutes focused on neither their present condition nor their refined construction. Instead journalists and scholars emphasized the artifacts' age. These flutes were more than thirty-five thousand years old--the earliest musical instruments then known. (1) Incidentally, one of the earliest examples of figurative art, an ivory sculpture called the "Venus of Hohle Fels," was found less than a meter away from the bone flute (Conard 2009). Together these artifacts give compelling evidence for musical and artistic practices in the Upper Paleolithic Era. Writing and the wheel, by contrast, would not appear until almost thirty thousand years later, during the early Bronze Age (that is, around the fourth millennium BCE). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Of course, such evidence is always incomplete, and these instruments reveal only traces of Paleolithic music making. Their sounds and social functions have not been preserved. They are tokens of a culture that can be reconstructed only provisionally, through a kind of principled speculation. For example, given the flutes' technological sophistication, it is unlikely that they are the first instruments of their kind. Earlier specimens have surely been lost, presumably including instruments made from less durable materials. Indeed, a multidisciplinary review of archaeological evidence for the emergence of music, language, and symbolic behavior concludes that such instruments must, even at around 35,000 years, be several conceptual stages removed from the earliest origins, even of instrumental musical expression, to say nothing of those universal vocal, manual-percussive and dance forms which must have existed independently of--and before--any need for such tools. (d'Errico et al. 2003, 46) "And before." With this aside, the review's twelve coauthors suggest that musicality originated with the body alone, that instrumental play came after singing. This claim is ubiquitous in writings on music and human evolution. Ian Cross (2007, 663), for example, argues that "the use of musical artifacts will have been preceded by the expression of musical capacities by voice and body." The idea has a long history. Charles Darwin himself wrote, "With man song is generally admitted to be the basis or origin of instrumental music" (1871, 2:333). But this idea already appears in the eighteenth century in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's reflections on human and musical origins. This essay critically examines claims for the precedence of voice in musical prehistory, juxtaposing Rousseau and twenty-first-century authors. Though centered on music and evolution, this investigation more generally explores voice-instrument relations and their implications for a philosophy of musical technology--or, more precisely, musical "technics." The term "technics" refers to technical matters in the broadest sense. It is an English equivalent to the German "Technik" or the French "la technique" which, depending on context, may be translated as either "technique" or "technology." Lewis Mumford's (1934) Technics and Civilization, for example, explores the interplay of technology and technique, bringing out continuities between hand tools and machines. …

Corpos sonoros: instrumentos e donos na prática musical dos Kuikuro do alto Xingu

Procuro descrever neste artigo o modo pelo qual uma prática musical instrumental kuikuro repousa sobre a atribuição aos artefatos de uma forma de vitalidade. Os instrumentos musicais (flauta Kagutu, flauta dupla Atanga, clarinete Takwara), ao longo de seu ciclo vital, recobram uma função de mediação no estabelecimento da conexão entre humanos e espíritos. Os humanos fazem oferendas de alimentos e de água aos instrumentos, ao passo que os instrumentos, manipulados pelos músicos rituais, fazem-se portadores da voz dos espíritos. A complexidade de ações rituais em torno dos artefatos musicais é particularmente visível quando observamos o sistema de atribuição de diferentes papéis de “donos” (-oto). Vários tipos de atores rituais intervêm de maneira diferente ao longo das etapas de existência do instrumento, estando eles mesmos submetidos à influência direta do artefato em suas vidas.

Close reading big data: The Echo Nest and the production of (rotten) music metadata

Digital music distribution is increasingly powered by automated mechanisms that continuously capture, sort and analyze large amounts of Web-based data. This paper traces the historical development of music metadata management and its ties to the growing of the field of ‘big data’ knowledge production. In particular, it explores the data catching mechanisms enabled by the Spotify-owned company The Echo Nest, and provides a close reading of parts of the company’s collection and analysis of data regarding musicians. Doing so, it reveals evidence of the ways in which trivial, random, and unintentional data enters into the data steams that power today’s digital music distribution. The presence of such curious data needs to be understood as a central part of contemporary algorithmic knowledge production, and calls for a need to re-conceptualize both (digital) musical artifacts and (digital) musical expertize.

The sound of bronze: Virtual resurrection of a broken medieval bell

Abstract The bell from the church of S. Pedro de Coruche is one rare surviving example of early bells, cast during the 13th century in Europe, which was exhumed from a crypt-ossuary in an archaeological excavation carried out near Lisbon in Portugal. Of particular significance, it is believed to belong to a time period during which bell's profile has evolved noticeably, leading to bells with fine musical qualities and a well-defined sense of pitch. If the bell from Coruche was a tangible piece of evidence for tracing the history of bell casting in Europe, it had however lost all trace of its original sound: indeed the bell was found broken and incomplete and even if it has undergone a restoration process since the archaeological discovery, the use of an adhesive during the reassembly has changed somehow the vibrational properties of the bell structure. To bring back to life the sound of this broken musical artefact, a methodology combining experimental and numerical techniques from materials science and music acoustics is described in this paper. The general approach comprises material characterisation, geometrical measurements, modal analysis and physics-based sound synthesis techniques. By coupling a physical dynamical model of a bell impacted by a clapper with the modal properties of the original bell computed by Finite Element Analysis, realistic time-domain simulations of the Coruche bell dynamics were performed and realistic synthetic sounds were produced. As the original clapper has not survived, parametric computations have been performed to illustrate the changes in bell sounds associated with clappers of different mechanical properties. The overall approach provides insight into the tuning of this medieval bell which can be compared to the modern-type tuning, and reproduce the sound that the bell from Coruche might have had. The strategy developed can be easily adapted to other musical instruments in poor/variable states of preservation, therefore benefiting the importance of such non-renewable cultural resources.

Reidentifying the wood of the Queen Mary and Lamont harps

Identifying the wood of the surviving historical wire-strung harps of Ireland and Highland Scotland has long been an important goal of researchers and instrument-builders. In 1969, microscopic examination of the anatomical features of the wood of two of the earliest surviving harps of this type, the Queen Mary and Lamont of National Museums Scotland, identified all parts of both as European hornbeam (Carpinus betulus). Due to the importance of these two harps as early exemplars, this identification has had far-reaching implications for understanding the construction practices for this type of historical harp. Questions about the identification of the woods of the Queen Mary and Lamont harps have prompted a re-evaluation. In this article, we discuss the observations and evidence that led to our decision to reidentify the wood of both harps, including the use of X-ray computed tomography to test the earlier identification of all wooden members as the same species. A rigorous new identification has been undertaken that addresses the fragile state of the wood and the need to minimize the impact on these important musical artefacts by revising the sampling method and utilizing scanning electron microscopy as an alternative to conventional microscopic examination. The results of our work to date are presented, and the implications for these two harps and for other harps of this type are discussed.

Historical Records, National Constructions: The Contemporary Popular Music Archive

This article examines the contemporary role of archives in relation to the curation and preservation of popular music artifacts, drawing upon interviews with a range of archival institutions and popular music curators in several countries. It explores the current technological, financial, and aesthetic challenges facing curators and archivists in the era of digital abundance. Previous strategies of “collecting everything” are being revised, with more recent strategies of selective narratives of particular national significance. This in turn presents further challenges for institutions that wish to adopt more playful and innovative uses of their material, particularly as pressures mount from the state to increase user/visitor numbers. The article also explores how “the national” is configured in these forms and presentations of popular music and cultural memory, and where archives are situated between the music industries, the state, and popular music fan communities.

Pay no more than 45 copies: The collection legacy of the Crass Record, Reality Asylum (1979)

Abstract This article sets out an auto-ethnographic and theoretical account of the journey of 45 collected author copies of the 1979 Crass Record Reality Asylum. The principle aim in this piece is to document and theoretically situate the production, reception and individual journeys various pressing variations of the record have encountered. The theoretical account is concerned with how and what ways various traditions in semiotics, fan/audience research, critical theory and Derrida’s concept of Hauntology can be deployed in explanatory terms to account for the enigmatic, haunted journey of the recorded musical artefact. The article also captures this collection prior to public display, prior to them being resold as the collectable sixth, ‘haunted’ pressing of the record.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSICAL ARTEFACTS AND PROTOGENESIS OF THE TURKIC CIVILIZATION

The report is dedicated to the archeological musical artefacts found on the territory inhabited by the Turkic nations. The analysis of the artefacts of the Turkic musical culture allows making a conclusion concerning the protogenesis of the Turkic civilisation since the XII century BC.

Metamorphosis Music

Metamorphosis Music Doc. PhDr. Jozef Vereš Abstract The study is focused on breaking signs in the musical artefacts. This issue is demonstrated in music perception of the interval in different periods. Study examines the prevalence of one or several intervals depending on how the perception of music covered a range with its fluctuations over the musical development of the nationalities and their musical taste. Out of the music techniques attention is given to development of vocal polyphony, which again began to consolidate the value of the chord, tonality, harmony. Text deals also with chromatics, atonality, electronic music, unconventional composing technologies aimed to find new ideals of sound, space, place, time, etc. Selected methodological approach provides not only guidance in the musical transformations, but also useful impetus for exploring many other musical attributes. In the second part of the study we have examined the relationship between music listeners and transformation of the creative production forms of musical life and new distribution activities of musical pieces. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/ijmpa.v3n1a10

Análisis de llamas resonadoras de arcilla (Jujuy, Puna septentrional argentina)

In this study we present the results of the analysis carried out on a series of ceramic zoomorphic figurines from the Northern Argentine puna. These are llama-shaped, globular clay whistles without air-ducts or pitch-holes. We undertook an acoustic and morphological analysis of these figurines based on existing knowledge concerning the archaeological study of ancient musical artifacts. This included archaeological methods and techniques, as well as the use of scientific and technological methods. The archaeological investigation included provenance studies and the technological and morphological analysis of the figurines using radiographic and endoscopic methods. Finally, we suggest a number of hypothesis concerning the possible use of these figurines, contextualizing these artifacts within the important herding activity practiced in this area during the late pre-Hispanic period.