Song Sung Research Articles

Radio Syntheses

Radio Syntheses Marinetti's experiments with recorded sound begin in 1914 with a series of recordings of poetic recitations carried out in a London recording studio. His interest in the medium of radio dates back to Futurism's beginnings but starts carrying over into the realm of practice in the mid to late 1920s. During his 1926 tour of South America, Marinetti makes repeated appearances on Brazilian and Argentine radio stations. These are followed by sixteen years of active collaboration with the Italian national radio (the EIAR), founded in 1928, which involve everything from declaiming aeropoems, to serving as a live action commentator of major events like the August 1932 return from the United States of Italo Balbo's flying squadron, to hosting a regularly broadcast radio bulletin on the activities of the futurist movement. In 1931, he participates in an important debate on radio and radio drama organized by the review Il convegno (12.7–8), along with Massimo Bontempelli, Silvio d'Amico, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia. At the end of the same year he and Mino Somenzi publish their manifesto Il teatro aereo radiotelevisivo, followed by the publication in September 1932 of Il manifesto della radio futurista, co-authored with Pino Masnata. The following five radio syntheses date from this period of intense reflection on the expressive potential of radio, even though they were only published ten years later in Autori e scrittori 6.8 (Aug. 1941), accompanied by a reprinting of the second manifesto and by eight other radio syntheses by Masnata. [End Page 415] An Acoustical Landscape, and: Drama of distances, and: Silences speak among themselves, and: Battle of Rhythms, and: Building a Silence Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Jeffrey Schnapp Translated by Jeffrey T. Schnapp An Acoustical Landscape The whistle of a blackbird envious of the fire's crackle ended up putting out the water's whispery gossip 10 seconds of lapping. 1 second of crackling. 8 seconds of lapping. 1 second of crackling. 5 seconds of lapping. 1 second of crackling. 19 seconds of lapping. 1 second of crackling. 25 seconds of lapping. 1 second of crackling. 35 seconds of lapping. 6 seconds of blackbird whistling. [End Page 416] Drama of distances 11 seconds a military march in Rome. 11 seconds a tango being danced in Santos. 11 seconds of Japanese religious music being played in Tokyo. 11 seconds of a lively rustic dance in the Varese countryside. 11 seconds of a boxing match in New York. 11 seconds of street noise in Milan. 11 seconds of a Neapolitan love song sung in the Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro. [End Page 417] Silences speak among themselves 15 seconds of pure silence. A flute's do re mi. 8 seconds of pure silence. A flute's do re mi. 29 seconds of pure silence. A piano's sol. A trumpet's do. 40 seconds of pure silence. A trumpet's do. An infant's wah wah. 11 seconds of pure silence. An eleven year old girl's stupefied ooooh. [End Page 418] Battle of Rhythms A prudent and patient slowness expressed by means of the tap tap tap of water drops first cut off then killed off by A flying elasticity composed of arpeggios of piano notes first cut off then killed off by A loud ringing of an electric doorbell first cut off and then killed off by A three minute long silence first cut off and then killed off by A toiling key in lock tat rum ta trac followed by A one minute long silence. [End Page 419] Building a Silence 1. Build a wall on the left with a drum roll (one half minute) 2. Build a wall on the right with trumpeting – shouting – auto tram a squealing of capital (one half minute) 3. Build a floor with the gurgling of water in pipes (one half minute) 4. Build a ceiling terrace with the chip chip srschip of sparrows and swallows (20 seconds) [End Page 420] Copyright © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press Copyright © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press

The Effect of Background Music and Song Texts on the Emotional Understanding of Children with Autism

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of background music and song texts to teach emotional understanding to children with autism. Participants were 12 students (mean age 11.5 years) with a primary diagnosis of autism who were attending schools in Japan. Each participant was taught four emotions to decode and encode: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear by the counterbalanced treatment-order. The treatment consisted of the four conditions: (a) no contact control (NCC)--no purposeful teaching of the selected emotion, (b) contact control (CC)--teaching the selected emotion using verbal instructions alone, (c) background music (BM)--teaching the selected emotion by verbal instructions with background music representing the emotion, and singing songs (SS)--teaching the selected emotion by singing specially composed songs about the emotion. Participants were given a pretest and a posttest and received 8 individual sessions between these tests. The results indicated that all participants improved significantly in their understanding of the four selected emotions. Background music was significantly more effective than the other three conditions in improving participants' emotional understanding. The findings suggest that background music can be an effective tool to increase emotional understanding in children with autism, which is crucial to their social interactions.

Whale song

Whale song

Musical activities in pre-school institutions (case of Nicosia)

This study has been carried out in order to investigate the musical activities and musical problems in pre-school institutions in Nicosia. Since the study aims to describe the present situation as it exists, it adopted a qualitative survey (Karasar, 1994a) and the data was collected through interviews which were held with pre-school teachers. Interview is the technique in which the data is collected by verbal communication (Karasar, 1994a). The questions of the interview have been prepared after searching the related literature and by consulting to the professionals of the field. The collected data has been analyzed and interpreted by the researcher. The research group of the study consisted of 23 teachers from the public kindergartens in Nicosia.One of the most striking findings of the study was that; none of the six schools have got separate music rooms and only one has a full-time music teacher. Also in this study it has been revealed that most of the classes haven’t got any music areas and the teachers stated that in case of need, they shared the musical instruments of the school with the other teachers. However, in the schools that have no separate music rooms, teachers have to prepare music areas in their classes (Omeroglu & Others, 2003). The shared instruments were: organs, drums, tambourines, maracas, accordions, cymbals, finger cymbals, castanets, triangles and xylophones. Also, in addition to these instruments guiro tone blocks and stir xylophones were the shared instruments in only one school. Some of the teachers stated that they had music areas in their classes and they used musical instruments in these areas such as: maracas made by children themselves, wooden/plastic maracas, triangles, xylophones, finger cymbals, castanets, drums, hand bells, cymbals and claves.The study has also revealed that pre-school teachers have used music frequently as a tool for teaching other subjects despite the fact that they rarely gave musical education to students. The activities that the teachers have been using were: teaching a new song related to the main theme of the topic, getting the children to listen to sound effects related to the unit, using music to teach the local traditional culture, for recognizing and expressing emotions and in concept teaching.The music based activities that are used by the teachers included: teaching songs, getting children to listen to music, rhythm exercises, dramatizing songs, teaching how to play instruments (mostly rhythm instruments), introducing musical instruments (mostly rhythm instruments), teaching simple dance sequences (ront), listening and recognizing the sounds, making simple rhythm instruments and doing creative dance activities. Also working with choirs, making musical stories and having the children transfer their hearings into drawings were activities rarely used.Another important finding was that, even though most teachers could play a musical instrument, only a few used these instruments while the children sang songs. Most of the teachers can play the flute, some of them can play the organ and a few of them can play the melodica and accordion. Also, it has been revealed that cassettes, CD's, books related to nursery rhymes and songs, CD players, TVs or DVD players and internet are materials that the teachers have benefited from in their musical activities. Only a few teachers used computers, masks, puppets, magazines and materials suitable for drama.The problems related to music that teachers had stated were; having no separate music rooms and full-time music teachers, teachers’ considering themselves insufficient in playing a musical instrument and finally the shortage of musical instruments and materials. Due to the fact that teachers consider themselves insufficient in playing musical instruments, it is thought that they are reluctant to do the activities based on music itself. And also, they complained of having problems of using music in social, cognitive, psychomotor and other activities.

Stickiness of the blues: Chronicity of depression

Byline: G. Swaminath You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent their making a nest in your hair Chinese Proverb Song Sung Blue Depression is an important global public-health issue. This is because of the relatively high lifetime prevalence ranging from 2 to 15% and also because it is associated with substantial disability.[sup] [1] After the development of the metric Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) as a measure of non-fatal outcomes of many diseases, depression came to be considered a disease with significant burden. The basic concept was that the years lost due to the disease would be added to the Years Lived with the Disability (YLD) due to the disease itself.[sup] [2] Rated the fourth leading cause of disease burden in 2000, depression accounted for 4*4% of total disability adjusted life years (DALYs).[sup] [3] It is also responsible for the greatest proportion of disease burden attributable to non-fatal health outcomes, accounting for almost 12% of total years lived with disability worldwide. [sup] [1] Without treatment, depression has the tendency to assume a chronic course, be recurrent, and over time to be associated with increasing disability.[sup] [4] Early detection, proper management with proactive follow-up could reduce the socio economic burden of depression, and help rationalise health care rather than ration it.[sup] [5] In comparison with other chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma, angina and arthritis in terms of decrement in health status, depression impairs health status to a substantially greater degree [sup] [3] . A significant number of patients with chronic diseases have comorbid depression. The presence of depression and its treatment is clearly related to the outcome of these chronic diseases. In addition, comorbidity with depression significantly worsens the health state of people with chronic diseases. Interestingly, comorbid depression worsened health status in chronic diseases when compared with the health status in the chronic diseases either singly or in combination, but without depression.[sup] [3] This puts depression on par, if not higher than other chronic diseases in damaging health, so health care providers should carefully note the presence of depression in view of the marked health effects.[sup] [3] This caution has been reiterated in an National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) research paper on comorbidity: Finding ways to improve detection and treatment of depression in the primary-care setting is an important NIMH research priority.[sup] [6] A Medicine for Melancholy Though depression responds excellently to pharmacologic and behavioral treatments, both individually and in combination, it remains, stigmatized, under-recognized, and under-treated in primary care settings.[sup] [4] Depression lasts for a median of eight weeks (mean 16 weeks), with only 5% not responding within a year[sup] [7] owing to the increased frequency of spontaneous remission, the sensitivity of depressed patients to treatment as well as the encouraging effects of being in treatment.[sup] [4] After improvement 50% relapse within one year and most within two years. Of those patients who have one episode of major depression, 50-85% will go on to have a second episode, and 80-90% of those who have second episode will go on to have third one.[sup] [8] A 15 year follow up study showed that a fifth of depressives recovered and remained continuously well, three fifths recovered but had further episodes and a further fifth either committed suicide or were always incapacitated.[sup] [7] Depression is a chronic recurrent disorder; with single depressive episodes (ICD-10 F32) being surprisingly rare and most people with depressive illness meeting the criteria for recurrent depressive disorder (ICD-10 F33).[sup] [9] However, people seldom seek help for their first attack of depression and the first treated episode is often the third or fourth actual episode. …

INDIVIDUAL VARIATION AND LEK-BASED VOCAL DISTINCTIVENESS IN SONGS OF THE SCREAMING PIHA (LIPAUGUS VOCIFERANS), A SUBOSCINE SONGBIRD

One long-standing ornithological paradigm holds that song learning in oscine songbirds has a cultural component, whereas suboscine songbirds inherit songs genetically. Recent studies reveal that suboscine song may be more variable and complex than previously realized. Several suboscine species show marked individual variation in their songs—variation that may play a role in individual recognition and neighbor–stranger discrimination—and a few suboscine species show indications of song learning. We investigated individual variation in the vocalizations of a suboscine passerine, the Screaming Piha (Lipaugus vociferans), from recordings of 26 males at four lek sites along the Tambopata River in Peru. Male Screaming Piha songs consist of quiet introductory syllables followed by two explosively loud syllables that sound like an emphatic pee haw. We used three complementary methods to examine variation in song characteristics. Spectrogram cross-correlation revealed significant consistency within individual males and variability among males. Analysis of fine structural characteristics revealed that all measured song features were significantly less variable within individuals than among individuals. Canonical discriminant analysis based on these 13 song features correctly classified 93.2% of songs by individual and 76.4% of songs by lek site. Our results indicate that there is sufficient consistency in song features within males and sufficient variation among males for identification of individuals on the basis of songs and, to a lesser extent, that song features vary with the lek site of the singer. We conclude that Screaming Pihas sing songs that are individually distinctive and bear a lek signature.

Korean Folk Music in Your Curriculum

www.mej.sagepub.com Not so many years ago, most of the music taught in classrooms in the United States originated in America or Europe. In recent years, there has been an explosion of multicultural materials for use by the general music educator: African, Latino, and South Asian musical resources immediately come to mind as readily available. American students can drum authentic African rhythms, play Javanese gamelan or Caribbean pan, partner in Japanese hand-clapping games, and sing songs from places as diverse as Polynesia and Poland. Music catalogs offer a veritable smorgasbord from which to select music from various cultures to whet our students' musical appetites. However, in my search for Korean music, I found few examples available for classroom use. In fact, in the master index of songs of a major music textbook publisher, there were only nine examples of Korean music out of a total of ninety-seven entries under the category Asia: East and Southeast.

A developmental approach to voice science

Vocal development had been studied mostly with a focus on speaking, and only rarely, on singing. Traditional theories on singing development are often based on wrong premises, e.g. eurocentrism, and reliable analyses of singing are missing or selective. A new theory ‐ inspired by the principles of Piaget's theory ‐, and a new methodology ‐ based on acoustic measures ‐ are proposed. The voice starts to organise at birth, and gradually adapts to the cultural surrounding and its conventions concerning language, music, and social rules. Vocal and musical behaviour are highly adaptive and constructive, and concern two symbolic systems: music and language. The child develops the voice by playing and imitating. The development proceeds from sensorimotor activities towards more and more conscious actions and thoughts. In order to study children's singing, computer aided programs were devised to analyse and represent pitch, timing, pitch qualities, and syllables. This method yields complex configurations of these parameters describing children's song singing. Detailed descriptions allow to reconstruct the strategies children apply to invent or learn new songs. The empirical results from children at various ages demonstrate that the focus on the analysis of the organisation of the vocal expression is a promising research strategy.

If Asked to Predict the Weather

If Asked to Predict the Weather Diane Reid (bio) I’d say, Sonny,a high of forty-five degrees. Sixteen, he can’t help shuddering as she slides by, not a whit of surplus flesh flouncing from her sometime thong. I think of Noah’s flood, of the song sung when the waters parted for the Israelites, of scythes, and a scattering of sheaves. His body has betrayed him and he dares not turn sideways, for he knows his mother has observed. [End Page 166] Down by the float, she removes her one-piece, whips it round her finger in some maddening gyre. The snout between his legs rises, as if to spring through his hips, sniff a rib, emerge back of the jaw— that ancient crunch of leaves, the chuckle of water as the men dive in. [End Page 167] Diane Reid Diane Reid lives near Fredericton, where she reviews for the Canada East dailies and collects memorabilia for Alden Nowlan House. First broadcast on cbc Radio One, her poetry has appeared in Arc, Atlantis, The Common Sky: Canadian Writers Against the War, The Fiddlehead, Grain, The Malahat Review, Our Times, and Qwerty. Copyright © 2009 Association of Canadian College and University Teachers

The influence of different tutor types on song learning in a natural bird population

Male Savannah sparrows, Passerculus sandwichensis, sing a single, individually distinctive song their entire life, which they presumably learn from other males in the same population. We took advantage of a strongly philopatric, known-age and known-parentage island population to examine the influence of five tutor types on song learning: a bird's social father, genetic father, natal neighbours, older breeding-year neighbours and 1-year-old breeding-year neighbours. Of 57 males banded as nestlings, there was wide variation in the tutor type with the greatest influence on song learning. Based on pairwise visual comparisons of spectrograms of all co-occurring males plus quantitative measures of similarity of digitized songs, only 12% of males sang songs that were most strongly influenced by their social father, as inferred by overall similarity of entire songs. About 45% of males were the product of extrapair paternity, but no male sang a song that was most similar to his genetic (versus social) father. Thirty-five per cent of males produced songs that were most similar to those of natal neighbours, 26% sang songs most like older breeding-year neighbours and 26% sang songs most like 1-year-old breeding-year neighbours. Neither a male's body condition at fledging nor his fledging date was related to tutor type, and tutors did not differ from nontutors in morphology, longevity or reproductive success. Savannah sparrows apparently draw upon a wide set of models heard in both their hatching and their breeding years, incorporating specific song elements into their own song rather than copying in its entirety any particular tutor's song.

How Does Hanoi Rock? The Way to Rock and Roll in Vietnam

How Does Hanoi Rock?The Way to Rock and Roll in Vietnam Jason Gibbs (bio) The origins of rock music are nearly coincident with Vietnam's 1954 partitioning; Elvis Presley's first single was reaching the radio airwaves as the French agreed to withdraw from Indochina (James 1989, 122). Not long afterward, American advisors and military personnel were arriving in South Vietnam bringing the latest American popular music with them. Rock was the music of the Cold War and was an often unwitting combatant in a larger ideological war. In the West it was seen both as an enemy from within and as an expression of freedom and peace. The Soviet block dreaded it because of its possible ability to focus youth and their rebellion. These confusions of cultural and ideological viewpoints have influenced the reception of rock music in Vietnam. From 1954 there was an embargo on all Western entertainment in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and its capitol, Hanoi. Rock entered Vietnam through Saigon, the capital of the Republic of Vietnam—better known as South Vietnam. Though subject to the scrutiny of a society at war, it was not subject to heavy censorship and was even incorporated into the propaganda engine of the southern state. After the fall of Saigon and the reunification of Vietnam in 1975, the victorious Communists banned the South's music including rock. Nevertheless, rock remained a part of Saigon's collective memory and its influence traveled north to Hanoi. Although it has always been a minority taste, rock has long found a devoted audience among Vietnam's elite youth attending private schools and universities. In this paper I trace the development of rock music in Vietnam, starting with its origins in the South and a similar evolution in the North. For the past decade, rock has been enjoying a resurgence in Vietnam despite being viewed with suspicion by Vietnam's communist government who have characterized it as a neo-colonial poison. Vietnam's contemporary rock musicians have tried to adapt rock music to local conditions making this music part of a wider struggle between the local and global occurring in Vietnam today. This paper provides a history of Vietnam's encounter with rock in order to provide the context for today's developments. [End Page 5] Rock in South Vietnam The earliest rock music in Vietnam was performed, often by Filipino bands, to entertain Americans and other foreigners in Saigon's nightclubs. These groups provided tutelage to the first Vietnamese musicians who eventually joined them playing in bars and dancehalls. A second stage of Vietnamese rock was a style of music known as action music (kíchnhạc). At the outset these were American and French pop and rock songs sung and played by Vietnamese bands. Beginning in the early 1960s, Vietnamese songwriters began to write Vietnamese language songs using dance rhythms like mashed potato, watusi, a go go, and especially the twist, all then current dance rhythms of rock'n'roll. These rhythms were integrated into the existing variety show and dancehall repertoire. Since the late 1940s, Vietnam's urban music markets had been organized into a Tin Pan Alley—like division of labor. Songwriters, publishers, radio and dance orchestras, arrangers, and singers all played roles in the creation, performance, and promotion of popular music. Songwriters used rock'n'roll and rhythm and blues styles to broaden their creative pallet. The twist in particular, and dancing in general, was at the vortex of South Vietnam's culture wars through the Ngô Ðình presidency (1954–1963). It was condemned and banned as an affront to morality through the energies of Madame Nhu ( Xuân), the president's sister-in-law (New York Times, "Saigon Regime Bans Songs for Twisting," April 2, 1963). The communist National Liberation Front similarly condemned the Americans for "training" Vietnam's teenagers to twist ("Liberation Radio Scores South Viet-Nam's First International Rock Music Festival Held to Benefit Families of Killed Soldiers" 1971). Owing to its drive and upbeat quality, rock'n'roll and rhythm and blues were also incorporated into the music of the Southern regime's psychological-warfare program. Action music was used...

‘Violent’ femininity: Women rugby players and gender negotiation

Synopsis This article examines the role violence plays in the construction of feminine identity in one British community. Examining the experiences of a women's rugby team, the Jesters, I argue that the role of violence in the creation and policing of gender identities is not unproblematic. The role of violence in gender identification is briefly discussed, with particular attention paid to the embodied nature of gender identities. This is linked to a discussion of the Jesters broader social context as violent and masculine. The Jesters are positioned as fully integrated violent actors within this context, who are able to use violence or aggression to assert their presence and redefine femininity. Analysis then turns to a verse in a song sung by the team which positions the women as victims of rape. Two possible interpretations are offered. One positions the women as having internalised existing gender norms of women as victims of violence, and rape as legitimate discipline for women performing unacceptable identities. An alternative interpretation suggests that by publicly acknowledging the occurrence of sexual assault in the community, they reverse the dynamic by symbolically ‘unmanning’ as rapists the men of Bordertown, an interpretation which fits well with the wider discourses and performances of the Jesters.

Homeward Bound or Housebound?

Homeward Bound or Housebound?

Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai in Conversation

Although many battles remain for queer people in India, newly confident gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities have emerged over the past decade. Meanwhile, Indian publishing houses – who nearly a decade ago maintained a stony silence when it came to sexuality – are eager to print books on queer lives. To understand these changes in attitude, it is important to scrutinise how sexuality is being written about in fiction, popular writing and the Indian academy. What are publishers willing to print, and what are bookstores willing to stock? To discuss these issues, I caught up with Saleem Kidwai and Ruth Vanita on a breezy New Delhi evening in September 2006. Saleem Kidwai taught Indian medieval history for nearly twenty years at the University of Delhi. He has long been associated with the gay rights movement in India, helping to establish some of the earliest gay support spaces in Delhi. Kidwai is also a scholar of Urdu literature and has translated the famous ghazal singer Malika Pukhraj's autobiography, entitled Song Sung True, into English. Kidwai is based in Lucknow. Ruth Vanita is the author of Love's Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West (Penguin, 2006) and is currently Professor of Liberal Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Montana. She taught at Delhi University for many years, where she was founding co-editor of Manushi women's magazine from 1978 to 1990. Her other publications include Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination (1996), editing Queering India (2002) and the English translation of a Hindi novel by Rajendra Yadav, Strangers on the Roof (1994). Her collected essays, Gandhi's Tiger and Sita's smile, came out recently. Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai have been key figures in engineering the current trend of openness towards writing on same-sex desire in India and co-edited the groundbreaking book Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). Spanning many centuries of Indian history and numerous linguistic traditions, the volume brings together diverse texts that uncover stories of same-sex love. This text has been seminal in beginning the shift to queer-positive representations in Indian writing and shatters the myth that homosexuality is traditionally not a part of subcontinental culture and history.

Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition, and: Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature (review)

Reviewed by: Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition, and: Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature Kathy M'Closkey (bio) Simon J. Bronner . Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2002. 283 pp. Karen E. Beardslee . Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001. 202 pp. Simon Bronner's Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of an American Tradition incorporates seventeen essays that span over a century—from the Gilded Age to the present—by authors whose works engendered key debates on the role of the folk in creating nation-hood. The book begins with a lengthy introduction titled "In Search of the American Tradition," that provides crucial context to situate the articles he has chosen to illustrate or contest the dominant theme. Bronner's exceptional introduction comprises twenty-five per cent of the book and provides an appropriate framework that positions folklore studies and debates within a historical context and surveys the treatment of the subject by folk-and American-studies scholars. His essay is followed by a very useful section suggesting further reading on the role of folklore in the creation of an American tradition. This short chapter is divided into several categories that include a list of major American journals that feature the intellectual history of American folklore studies, pertinent encyclopaedias and dictionaries, sources that provide a general introduction to the subject, and intellectual and cultural histories of the topic. Bronner juxtaposes pairs of essays from the same period that reflect differing perspectives on how "folklore" should be defined, studied, and interpreted in explicating the formation of an American tradition. Each essay opens with his commentary situating the author's work within a broader context. Far from [End Page 135] reflecting a benign traditional past shared by rural communities, folklore—its concepts and purpose—has engendered heated discussion. The essays chosen by Bronner engage in debates on a number of issues, including the query: does America have any ballads (Lomax 1915)? In light of definitions drawn from English and Scottish contexts, the answer is "no." Yet, by describing the "authors" and locales of folksongs, the book expands the formal definitions drawn from European contexts to include songs sung by miners, lumberjacks, sailors and soldiers, field hands, cowboys, and factory workers that illustrate the rich diversity of American lore. Much of the research on folklore during the Gilded Age was a form of salvage ethnology. William Wells Newell (1889) organized the American Folklore Society in 1888 for the purpose of gathering the "fast-vanishing remains of folk-lore in America." The organization sponsored local chapters in ten American cities and in Montre´al, Quebec. Not surprisingly, one of the first groups to garner attention was made up of "American Negroes." Alice Mabel Bacon (1893–4), daughter of a white abolitionist, spearheaded the campaign at Hampton Institute to organize folklore study groups. She edited Southern Workman and encouraged African Americans to interpret their own past and future. However, Bacon perceived the collection of their lore as a means to measure their advancement from an undeveloped to a civilized state. Thus Bacon's essay and several others reveal contemporary attitudes, especially in relation to Natives and African Americans as living primitives reflecting lower stages of humanity long surpassed by European Americans. Two essays focus on women and folklore. Fanny Bergen, in an essay on quilts as "emblems of women's tradition"(1894), suggests that uniquely American quilts are equivalent to European tapestries. Like her contemporaries, who were apologists for the comparative recentness of American works, Bergen repositioned quilts within an art historical framework that typically expunged the local context of creation. During the Renaissance, tapestries were the only textiles that were referred to as "art" because they were designed by artists. All other textiles were perceived as "crafts." [End Page 136] Bergen was trying to elevate the status of quilts. However, in so doing she ignored important differences from tapestries. Quilts are far more intimate expressive forms because they link makers and their families to their local environments and histories...

Pitch and Timing in the Songs of Deaf Children With Cochlear Implants

Congenitally deaf children (5–10 years) who use cochlear implants and hearing children of comparable age sang songs from memory. Analyses of their performances revealed timing similarities in the songs of deaf and hearing children but substantial differences in pitch patterning. Whereas hearing children accurately reproduced the relative pitch patterns of the songs they sang, deaf children did not. Deaf children’s pitch range was considerably smaller than that of hearing children, and their pitch changes were unrelated to the direction of pitch change in the target songs. For child implant users, the power and pleasure of music may arise primarily from its rhythm.

Editorial

Editorial Estelle R. Jorgensen In The Educated Imagination, Northrop Frye asks us to imagine ourselves castaway on an uninhabited island in a southern sea. Beyond physical survival, and even the trappings of social life should we be joined by others, we might also come to dwell in a spiritual and imagined world expressed through such arts as poetry, dance, and music enacted through rituals and intertwined with myths. The stuff of this other reality that goes beyond the phenomenal world to express imaginative thought is especially characteristic of human beings. When we think of the arts, notwithstanding evidence of elephants and apes that paint or draw and cats and dogs that match or recognize particular musical pitches, we think especially of our own humanity. And should we be left on this island long enough, the world we create is likely to be imagined as well as physical. What are likely to be the characteristics of this imagined world? Among them, we might expect it to be ethical in the sense of being associated with wider expectations of morality as the community establishes itself over time. We imagine, for example, parents teaching their children particular stories, poems, songs, and dances in the hope of cultivating the kinds of characteristics and dispositions that would make them good citizens of this community. Even though the music might not be explicitly ethical, nevertheless, musical practices have ethical valency in terms of excluding or including certain persons and valuing particular things. We might even think of establishing laws to govern conduct and the particular rights of specific people to be involved in making and taking music in certain ways. This imagined world is also likely to be spiritual in the sense that it provides people with a sense of transcendence and imminence, of wonder, awe, mystery, [End Page 99] and reverence for whatever lies beyond the phenomenal world and a greater sense of self-awareness, understanding, and consciousness of what lies within oneself. As such, the arts allow one to engage important existential questions: "Who am I?" "Where have I come from?" and "Where am I going?" that point outside oneself while also coming to a more profound sense of oneself. It is not that the arts explain these things so much that they present, enact, and clarify them for our understanding. Change is another quality we expect to encounter in this imagined world. Over time, change may transpire at differing rates, degrees, and in various respects. Were we not to constrict and restrain these artistic expressions, we might expect eventually to encounter a diversity of expression despite efforts to contain them within the frames of public expectations. And were sufficient time to pass, we might observe gradual changes and transformations in the norms and manifestations of these artistic creations. Further, we would expect artistic imagination to be performative, that is, accomplished physically through such means as dancing to music, reciting of poems, singing of songs, playing of instruments, telling of stories, enacting of dramas, wearing of costumes, and painting of bodies. Rituals may also be created in which these imaginative expressions come together. We might expect certain people to have special affinity with particular arts and develop them to high levels of virtuosity while others may be content to watch, listen, and participate in artistic rituals as spectators and auditors and encourage those who may be in the limelight for a while. The physical enactment of imagination and its expression in artistic constructions would likely provide times of special delight and entertainment, serve to mark the social life of the community, and give voice to occasions of sorrow, joy, celebration, and the ordinary lived lives of individuals. Writers in this issue deal with these matters specifically regarding music education. David Carr argues for the ethical connections with music and its role in "cultivating moral and spiritual virtue." Marja Heimonen links legal rights to music education and its aim to "create a more humane society in the spirit of ethical care for others." Anthony Palmer focuses on the experience of transcendence in his ongoing investigation of the spiritual dimensions of music education. Contra notions of control, containment, and the fear that breeds them, Randall Allsup...

100 Years of School Law

history of Phi Delta Kappa International in its first 100 years reflects changes that were taking place in schools and in society at large during that time. Mr. Zirkel looks at how events of this period shaped evolution of school law. It usually takes 100 years to make a law, and then, after it's done its work, it usually takes 100 years to be rid of it. --Henry Ward Beecher AS PART OF centennial celebration of Phi Delta Kappa International, in January 2006 Kappan, Donovan Walling traced history of organization from its founding as three education societies in 1906-09 to present. Here I delineate parallel developments in school law in United States, divided into three approximate periods as defined by landmark dates from PDK's history. I. FOUNDING PHASE initial phase of PDK's history included founding of three education societies in 1906-09, their amalgamation in 1910, and publication of first issue of Kappan in 1916. This period was also essentially founding phase of school law. first school law texts appeared just before and after turn of century, and they reflected relative recency of compulsory education laws and earlier world of institutionalizing common schools and their legal boundaries. While these texts tend to tout enormous amount of litigation in school matters, (1) content of this case law shows an era very different from today in both quantity and quality of litigation. For example, in 1892 Irwin Taylor's text ended with a synopsis of school statutes in each state, but bulk of book consisted of alphabetical entries describing nearly 5,000 cases in courts--a clearly inflated estimate. Consider this excerpt from entry Women Voters, which synthesizes court decisions in Kansas and Illinois: Art. 2, [sections] 23 of Kas. Constitution, which provides that The legislature in providing for formation and regulation of schools, shall make no distinction between rights of males and females, does not confer upon females right to vote for school officers. Ill. Act 1891, authorizing women to vote for superintendent of schools, is unconstitutional in that regard. (2) Next, C. W. Bardeen's 1897 manual ascribes great importance to a decision of New York Department of Public Instruction that interpreted state's education code as, among other things, reserving exclusive authority to teachers for the method of imparting instruction ..., assign[ing] seats to scholars, [and] regulat[ing] order in which recitations of classes, pursuing different studies taught in school, are to be held. (3) My personal favorite, though, is this excerpt from a 1907 compilation of school laws by Pennsylvania's state superintendent of public instruction, setting forth one of basic duties of school boards: [T]he boards of school directors ... of each school district of this Commonwealth ... are hereby required at least once during each full school term ... to have taken out, removed and hauled away all excrement and waste matter from every out-house or water closet connected with or standing upon premises of every public school-house in Commonwealth. (4) Harvey Vorhees' 1916 text reminds us that application of establishment clause of First Amendment to states, including their public schools, is quite a recent development. More specifically, at time of his text, Vorhees observed that prevailing weight of judicial authority was that reading of Bible, repeating of Lord's Prayer, and singing of religious songs are lawful. (5) Similarly, Harry Trusler's rather scholarly compendium in 1927 observed that separate but equal applies to public schools for colored children and that school boards may refuse to employ a married woman as a teacher. …

Duet duels: sex differences in song matching in duetting eastern whipbirds

The dynamics of vocal duels between rival male songbirds have been the subject of intense investigation over the last few decades. However, countersinging interactions between females and duetting birds have received considerably less attention. We compared patterns of song type matching in male and female eastern whipbirds, Psophodes olivaceus, using playback experiments to simulate intrusion by solo singing and duetting intruders. Eastern whipbirds sing a repertoire of sex-specific solo song types, which they combine nonrandomly to form specific duet types, initiated exclusively by the male. During playbacks, individuals could sing either a song type that matched the song type of a same-sex rival or one that fitted the song type of their partner. We found markedly different patterns of song type matching between the sexes. Both male and female eastern whipbirds matched the songs of same-sex intruders during solo singing song duels. However, when forming a duet, females selected a song type that fitted the song of their partner in preference to matching the song type of a female rival, whereas males preferentially matched a rival. We suggest that these sex differences in song type matching behaviour are the result of different strategies of mate and territory defence. Rather than being a purely cooperative signal, duets may be the result of sexual conflicts, with females forced to defend their position within the partnership, either by showing commitment to their partner or by deterring female rivals through display of their pair bond status.

Some Uncataloged Musical Resources in the Harvard Theatre Collection with a Handlist for the Bound Music Volumes

The Harvard Theatre Collection includes a wide range of musical resources, of which the bound music volumes are a small selection.1 The bound music collection generally complements other materials available through the Theatre Collection, including music and early publications related to minstrel shows, early American musical theater, songs from plays performed on American and English stages, and operatic works. Other Theatre Collection holdings of interest to music librarians and historians include a collection of materials relating to John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and the John Milton Ward collections which include materials gathered by other well-known collectors: Kurt Ganzl's operetta collection and Richard Macnutt's collection of librettos. Guides to the collections include the library staff's 1998 Sheet Music Shelflist (compiled for internal purposes), which itemizes multiple collections of sheet music, primarily from the nineteenth century, grouped and sorted by different categories including composer, title, airs, and songsters. This article will briefly consider the materials found in the bound music collection and suggest possible directions for further research related to them, concluding with the handlist and, in an appendix, various indexes for locating material by characteristics such as composer, dramatic production, or place of publication.2 OVERVIEW OF THE BOUND MUSIC COLLECTION Numbered XXXI in the 1998 Sheet Music Shelflist, the collection of bound music comes from a variety of sources. Some volumes were given directly to the Theatre Collection, other volumes came from Houghton Library or were removed from the old Music Library.3 Approximately one quarter of the nearly four hundred volumes were numbered using a previous system. The older numbers have been maintained where present; all other volumes have been assigned temporary numbers. Some volumes are of interest individually, while larger groups of volumes are worthy of consideration for what they can tell us about the history of music publishing in the United States, and the history of musical taste and reception, particularly of European opera-or at least of its hit arias and themes-by American musicians. Many of these collectors of operatic repertoire were women whose performances were probably presented privately, and thus are not documented by newspaper reports or concert programs. In addition to piano and vocal music, the collection contains nineteenth-century music for flute and harp, instruments also popular with nonprofessional performers. Some Volumes of Interest Doubtless the best-known volumes from the bound music collection are the three Martha Custis Albums, containing piano and vocal music published by Alexander Reinagle in Philadelphia, manuscript copies of opera music by Giovanni Paisiello and Domenico Cimarosa, and miscellaneous songsheets dating from the end of the eighteenth century. ' The collection also includes two English volumes of roughly the same date (Tawa 69 and Lowerre 274) that contain copies of significant selections of late-eighteenth-century London theater music published by Longman & Broderip. Tawa 69 includes songs sung at Vauxhall Gardens by composers including Tommaso Giordani, James Hook, William Jackson, and Thomas Linley. Lowerre 274, unfortunately somewhat dilapidated, contains several printed collections from the 1770s, of which the most valuable is a copy of Thomas Arne's The Syren: A New Collection of Favorite Songs Sung by Mrs. Farrell at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden and at Ranelagh . . . the Whole Composed by Dr. Arne (London: Longman & Broderip, [1777]). Many other collections feature popular works by later generations of London theater composers, including Charles E. Horn, Henry Rowley Bishop, and William Glover. The wide-ranging influence of eighteenth-century Italian opera is represented by Lowerre 31: Domenico Corri's A Select Collection of the Most Admired Songs, Duetts &c. …