In this section, you can find programs or conference reports of the yearly seminars. Sometimes the abstracts are available, too.
Please note deadline for abstracts: 17 March 2011
CALL FOR PAPERS
ESEM XXVII: Taking Part
The twenty-seventh European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM) will take place from 15 to 19 September 2011 in Aberdeen, Scotland (UK), hosted by the Elphinstone Institute of the University of Aberdeen.
Conference theme
‘Taking Part’ is an aspect of music making in most cultures. This conference will focus on the theme of participation, investigating performance from many different perspectives – ethnological, sociological, psychological, cosmological, as well as musical – and consider communities, groups, families, and individuals in their roles as music makers. While we need to analyse what exactly is going on musicologically within a performance, we also need to examine what is going on emotionally, physiologically, and aesthetically, for the participants, to get to the core of meaning and function. An obvious case study in the UK might be the growing phenomenon of community/folk choirs. By adopting an ethnographic approach the researcher comes to understand their role and performance milieux, how the music is made, what characterises it, and how individuals express their identity through the choirs.
Sessions will be built around themes, with presentations grouped as far as possible in ways that facilitate discussion and debate. The following list of themes and topics is indicative only:
Free Papers
We will also consider including selected free papers in order to allow dissemination of important recent achievements in the field. However, abstracts related to the main theme will have priority.
The John Blacking Memorial Lecture – a regular feature of ESEM meetings – will be presented by Professor Anthony Seeger, University of California at Los Angeles.
Format
ESEM is a seminar rather than a conference: we host collegial meetings open to researchers from all over the world in which participants can gather to share ideas and discuss recent work in ethnomusicology in an informal setting. In order to do this, we may need to limit the number of paper presentations (which must not exceed 20 minutes in length), but nonetheless we do all we can to support those who wish to attend. We welcome proposals for complete panels (of up to 90 minutes). We shall also consider the presentation of research in the form of posters and a limited number of evening video projections.
Proposals should be submitted in the form of a 300-word abstract by email, in an attachment including your full name and contact details, to conference organiser Ian Russell at ESEM@abdn.ac.uk by 17 March 2011.
A draft programme will be announced in April 2011 and conference registration will open.
Programme committee
Martin Clayton (Durham University)
Ursula Hemetek (University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna)
Ian Russell (University of Aberdeen)
Budapest, 22–26 September 2010
MTA Zenetudományi Intézet (Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences),
Bartók Hall, Budapest (Castle district, post code 1014)
street Táncsics M. no. 7
Musical traditions: Discovery, Inquiry, Interpretation and Application
The theme of ESEM XXVI will be musical traditions. First of all we ask, what methods exist for identifying and documenting musical traditions? What distinguishes a set of musical practices as a ‘tradition’, and how can its boundaries be set in an age of global travel and communication?
Ethnomusicologists have applied a wide range of techniques over many decades for the documentation of musical traditions: what do scholars in different parts of the world, particularly Europe, now consider to be the basic or the ideal methods? How have new technologies changed these norms, especially in the age of digital audio and video and the internet? How does application of methods depend on the local reality being studied? Can one model fit all, and help to facilitate comparative studies?
And what analytical or interpretative goals lie behind the collection of information about musical traditions? Is modern ethnomusicology concerned largely with the application of theory derived from other fields concerned with social and cultural theory, or is a space still to be found for the systematic investigation of a musical corpus or of musical processes? Are the latter still conceptualised within a comparative frame of reference?
Finally, to what ends might our investigations be applied? Do European ethnomusicologists still think in terms of the preservation of traditions, perceiving a threat to musical diversity? How do we conceptualise our relationship with musicians: as objective scholars, documenting and analysing cultural practices, or as partners helping particular communities to find a voice in the local and global media and to themselves strengthen their traditions?
We welcome scholarly proposals for individual papers and panels, but also proposals for poster presentations.
Abstracts of up to 300 words for individual (20-minute) papers and for posters should be sent by e-mail to Pál Richter [richter@zti.hu]. In the case of panel proposals (for three or four speakers) we ask for a short description of the panel topic as well as for individual abstracts by the panel participants.
Abstracts must have reached us by 15 April. The Programme Committee will make its formal decisions known by 1 May.
Possibilities exist for early acceptance of papers for those who need to rely on this for grant applications (please indicate need for urgent reply when you submit your abstract).
The official language of the meeting is English.
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XXVI EUROPEAN SEMINAR IN ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
“Musical traditions: Discovery, Inquiry, Interpretation and Application”
Institute for Musicology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest
22-25 September 2010
PROGRAMME
(DRAFT)
Wednesday, 22 September
8.30 – 9.30 Arrival, registration
9.30 – 10.00 Opening
10.00 – 13.00 Discovery –Theory of Tradition and Research
Chair: Dan Lundberg
Tradition as Generative Process: Implications for European/Euro-American Fiddling
Colin Quigley (USA)
The Irish music-session and rule following as a social practice
Ilwoo Park
11.00 – 11.30 Coffee break
Paradigm as a question of life and death (of tradition)
Zuzana Jurková (Czech Republic)
A Blank Field of Musical Traditions? (Re-)Constructing Ethnomusicology in Contemporary Switzerland
Sarah Ross and Britta Sweers (Switzerland)
Creativity of songwriter and continuity of tradition. Me and historical others
Austė Nakienė (Lithuania)
13.00 – 14.00 Lunch
14.00 – 17.00 Discovery – Altering Tradition
Chair: Frank Kouwenhoven
Lithuanian Anthems in Search of ‘the Law of Conservation of Tradition’
Ausra Zickiene (Lithuania)
The origin, development and disappearance of tradition: brass brands in Lithuania
Rūta Žarskienė (Lithuania)
Musical Traditions of Mazovia Region (Central Poland). Historical relict or alive tradition?
Jacek Jackowski (Poland)
15.30 – 16.00 Coffee break
Guggenmusik – imported Carnival Music in Southwest Germany
Florian Ball
Re-entering the field after 25 years: Changing traditions?
Ursula Hemetek (Austria)
17.00 – 18.00 “Shamanic Music” – film and CD presentation (Hoppál Mihály– Sipos János)
20.00 Informal gathering
Thursday, 23 September
9.00 – 11.00 Discovery – Special Aspects of Musical Tradition
Chair: Ewa Dahlig-Turek
Gypsy string ensembles in Central Slovakia and their music performance
Jana Ambrózová (Slovakia)
Vocal and/or instrumental music? Remarks to performance style of village- and town gypsy musicians
Tari, Lujza (Hungary)
The musical tradition of Lutherans from Cieszyn Silesia. Subject and methods of researches
Arleta Nawrocka-Wysocka (Poland)
Women in Polish music tradition
Teresa Nowak (Poland)
11.00 – 11.30 Coffee break
11.30 – 13.00 Inquiry – Tradition and Its Research: Interactions, methods, Options #1
Chair: Ursula Hemetek
A Folk Music Research Series from Bartók to Our Days – The Music of the Karachay People
Sipos, János (Hungary)
Automatic motive identification in 25 folksong corpora
Juhász, Zoltán (Hungary)
Re-contextualizing music and its performance out of Seljuk epochs by means of poetic and iconic sources – some methodological aspects
Dorit M. Klebe (Germany)
13.00 – 14.00 Lunch
14.00 – 16.00 Inquiry – Tradition and Its Research: Interactions, Methods, Options #2
Chair: Gerda Lechleitner
Cultural Capital and the Music Archive
Ilana Webster-Kogen (UK)
The objective ethnomusicologist – an unattainable ideal?
Bjørn Aksdal (Norway)
Song Patterns and Sung Designs: the Invention of Tradition among Amazonian Indians as a
Response to Researchers' Inquiries.
Bernd Brabec de Mori (Austria)
The body behind the researcher: embodied understanding of musical traditions
Alexandra Balandina
16.00 – 16.30 Coffee break
16.30 – 17.30 John Blacking Memorial Lecture
Chair:
17.45 – ESEM General Assembly
Friday, 24 September
9.30 – 12.30 Application – “Applied Ethnomusicology”, Media, Education
Chair: Tari, Lujza
‘New Tradition’ vs Tradition. Radio Festival and Its Impact on Polish Folk Music
Ewa Dahlig-Turek (Poland)
Approaching Balkan musical traditions in Austria. The Austrian Sandy Lopicic Orkestar
and beyond
Anja Brunner (Austria)
Vocal training ‘in tradition’: Ethnomusicological methods at work
Rytis Ambrazevičius (Lithuania)
11.00 – 11.30 Coffee break
Traditional music at the beginning of the 21st century
Lázár, Katalin (Hungary)
New Channels for Renewal of Tradition – Folk Music in the University Education
Richter, Pál (Hungary)
12.30 – 13.30 Lunch
14.00 – 20.00 Visit in Szentendre Open Air Museum (Skanzen) – Conference Dinner
Saturday, 25 September
9.00 – 13.00 Interpretation – Promoted, Created, and “Invented” Tradition, National Identity
Chair: Martin. R. L. Clayton
Can archives contribute to establishing traditions?
Gerda Lechleitner (Austria)
The Ethnomusicologist as Inventor of Musical Tradition – An Israeli Case Study
Shai Burstyn (Israel)
Finnish kantele. The creation of a tradition and myth in the 18th and 19th centuries
Erkki Pekkilä (Finland)
Problems Concerning the Protection of Musical Traditions in the Age of Global Communications
Manana Shilakadze (Georgia)
11.00 – 11.30 Coffee Break
The Musical Culture of Poland’s Lithuanian Minority Twenty Five Years Later
Sławomira Żerańska-Kominek (Poland)
Sounds of Bordering and Mobility: Beltinci Folklore Festival
Dr Ana Hofman (Slovenia)
Chasing the tradition: Gusle and the Serbian immigrants to Melbourne, Australia
Miroslav (‘Mika’) Stojisavljević (Australia)
13.00 – 14.00 Lunch
14.00 Close
CALL FOR PAPERS
update: conference website: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/esem
ESEM XXV: Performance
The twenty-fifth European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM) will take place from 18 to 22 September 2009 in Milton Keynes (UK), hosted by the Open University.
Conference theme
Performance has long been a topic of interest to ethnomusicologists, who have focused on perspectives such as the nature and boundaries of performance events, the relationship of musical and dance performance to other rituals, and the relationships between musical performance and the formation of social identities. In the context of recent moves within musicology to embrace the study of performance, and rapid growth in the use of empirical methodologies in this regard, this seminar aims to investigate the current state of ethnomusicological thinking on performance. How have ethnomusicologists – particularly, but not exclusively, working within European intellectual traditions – framed this topic, both theoretically and methodologically? How have ideas flowed to and from cognate disciplines such as anthropology, psychology and performance studies? What lessons does current ethnomusicology have for those disciplines, and for musicology itself?
Sessions will be built around themes, with presentations grouped as far as possible in ways that facilitate discussion and debate. The following list of themes and topics is indicative only:
Free Papers
We will also consider including selected free papers in order to allow dissemination of important recent achievements in the field. However, abstracts related to the main theme will have priority.
The John Blacking Memorial Lecture – a regular feature of ESEM meetings – will be presented by Professor Richard Widdess (SOAS)
Format
ESEM is a seminar rather than a conference: we host collegial meetings open to researchers from all over the world in which participants can gather to share ideas and discuss recent work in ethnomusicology in an informal setting. In order to do this, we may need to limit the number of paper presentations (which should not exceed 20 minutes in length), but nonetheless we do all we can to support those who wish to attend (for instance, by welcoming poster presentations). We also welcome proposals for complete panels (of up to 90 minutes). We shall also consider the presentation of research in the form of posters and a limited number of evening video projections.
Proposals should be submitted in the form of a 300-word abstract by email, in an attachment including your full name and contact details, to conference organisers Martin Clayton and Laura Leante at esem2009@open.ac.uk
Deadline: 1 March 2009
A draft programme will be announced in April 2009.
Programme committee
Martin Clayton (Open University)
Laura Leante (Open University)
Tina K. Ramnarine (Royal Holloway)
Giovanni Giuriati (Sapienza. Università di Roma)
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ESEM XXIV
Warsaw, September 17-21
Thursday, September 18
9.00-9.30 Opening
9.30-11.00 Music Traditions in Totalitarian Systems 1
11.30-13.00 Music Traditions in Totalitarian Systems 2
14.00-15.30 Comparative Musicology Revisited 1
16.00-17.30 On The Borders of Ethnomusicology: Methods and Techniques 1
18.00-19.00 Film
Domenico Di Virgilio, Hands at work
Friday, September 19
9.00-10.30 Music Traditions in Totalitarian Systems 3 (panel)
11.00-12.30 Comparative Musicology Revisited 2
13.30-15.00 On The Borders of Ethnomusicology: Methods and Techniques 2
15.30-16.30 John Blacking Memorial Lecture - Giovanni Giuriati
Introduction: Anna Czekanowska
Saturday, September 20
9.00-10.30 Free papers
11.00-12.30 Comparative Musicology Revisited 3
13.30-15.00 Music Traditions in Totalitarian Systems 4
15.30-17.00 On The Borders of Ethnomusicology: Methods and Techniques 3
17.15-18.30 Music Traditions in Totalitarian Systems 5
19.30 Reception + music (Institute of Arts, Polish Academy of Sciences)
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XXIII Conference Lisbon, Portugal, 11 – 13 October, 2007
Instituto de Etnomusicologia - Centro de Estudos de Música e Dança
Universidade Nova de Lisboa - Campus de Campolide
PROGRAM Thursday, October 11
9:30 – 11:00 Panel 1: European Ethnomusicological Archives in the 21st Century: Strategies, Challenges, Threats
Chair: Lars Christian Koch (Germany)
11:30 – 12:30 Panel 2: “Three Tales of a City”: Immigrant Scenarios in Vienna
Chair: Ursula Hemetek (Austria)
14:00 – 15:30 Panel 3: Music and Diasporic Communities in Lisbon
Chair: Susana Sardo (Portugal)
16:00 – 18:30 Paper Session 1: Music Making and the Construction of Identities: Romani, Albanian and Jewish Diasporas in Europe
Chair: Ewa Dahlig-Turek (Poland)
19:00 – 20:15 Film: Bernard Lortat-Jacob and Hélène Delaporte (France), Chant d’un pays perdu.
Friday, October 12
9:00 – 10:30 Panel 4: The Crying Gatekeeper: Cultural Heritage and the Role of the Archivist
Chair: Dan Lundberg (Sweden)
11:00 – 13:00 Paper Session 2: Music and Dance in Portugal and the Lusophone World: Post-Colonial Trajectories, Transnationalism and the Performance of Identity
Chair: Rafael de Menezes Bastos (Brazil)
14:30 – 15:30 Poster Session
15:30 – 16:30 Paper Session 3: Creativity, Experience, and Meaning in Performance
Chair: Maria de São José Corte-Real
17:00 – 18:00 John Blacking Memorial Lecture: Philip Bohlman (USA), Herder’s Cid and the Epic of Modern Europe
Dinner at a Fado restaurant
Saturday, October 13
9:00 – 10:30 Paper Session 6: Audiovisual Archives in the XXIst Century: Ethics, Social Relevance, Dissemination
Chair: Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco
11:00 – 12:30 Paper Session 4: Music and Dance in Portugal and Spain: Revitalization, Transculturation and the Construction of Identities and Sociability Networks
Chair: João Soeiro de Carvalho (Portugal)
14:00 – 16:00 Paper Session 7: Transcultural Processes, Expressive Behavior and the Construction of Identities in the Lusophone and Hispanic Worlds
Chair: Enrique Câmara (Spain)
17:00 – 18:00 Paper Session 9: Musical Cultures in Diaspora: Public Institutions, Documentation Strategies, and the Construction of Identities
Chair: Barbara Allagayer-Kaufman
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XXIII ESEM - European Seminar in Ethnomusicology
Lisbon, October 11 – 13, 2007
The
XXIII Conference of the European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM)
was organized by INET-MD, from 11th
to
13th
October,
at the
Rectory of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Founded in 1981 by John
Blacking, ESEM is the most important European association of
Ethnomusicology gathering ethnomusicologists from several parts of
the globe.
The largest scientific meeting in the domain of Ethnomusicology
ever organized in Portugal, it gathered 130 participants and 50
papers around the conferences themes:
Music
and Dance in Diasporic Communities in Europe
Europe
is home to myriad diasporic communities, both historical and
recently constituted. Since the second half of the twentieth
century, the dissolution of Europe’s imperial hegemony, the
fall of the Soviet Union, and the establishment of the European
Union have stimulated the transnational movement of capital, labour
and culture. From Africa, Asia, and the Americas, or from countries
within Europe, migrants have formed diasporic communities that
reconfigured urban spaces and sounds. The understanding of this new
European reality poses a challenge for ethnomusicological inquiry.
How do music, dance and ritual contribute to the formation of
diasporic communities, to the interaction between them, to their
integration in the host society, and to the maintenance of ties
with their communities of origin? How does music and dance
performance embody, negotiate or contest identities within this
framework? What is the role of global cultural industries in the
production and dissemination of music in and of diasporic
communities?
Audiovisual
Archives in the 21st Century
Sound
archives played a central role in the establishment of
Ethnomusicology as a scholarly discipline. Since the founding of
the first sound archives in Vienna and Berlin over one hundred
years ago, archives have been established in many parts of the
world. However, much still needs to be done to safeguard the
world’s audiovisual heritage and to uncover archives’
contents to the users worldwide. Audiovisual archiving in the 21st
century faces a great many challenges. We need to contribute
meaningfully to ongoing discussions about potential solutions and
strategies in this field. We must consider both the positive and
negative impact that new technologies may have on such issues as
preservation, dissemination, organizational structure,
sustainability, ethics, copyright and networking.
Music
and Dance in Post-Colonial Portugal and Spain
Thursday, 7 September
09.00-10.30 Session 1
Chair: Ewa Dahlig-Turek
- Jan Sverre KNUDSEN, Norway - What makes ethnicity matter?
- Pirkko MOISALA, Finland - Constructed people, place, and music transmission.
- Eva FOCK, Denmark - Djembe or darbuka? Cultural diversity in Scandinavian music schools.
- Ursula HEMETEK, Austria - Minorities’ Music "Going Mainstream" Mechanisms, Purposes and Consequences – A Case Study from Austria.
11.00-12.30 Session 2
Chair: Gunnar Ternhag
- Anna CZEKANOWSKA, Poland - Towards Historical Research of Durable Value. On the Contribution of Polish Explorers to the Study of Siberian Culture.
- Galina SYTCHENKO, Russia - Prospects of a study of intonational cultures of ethnic minorities.
- Katalin LÁZÁR, Hungary - Why and how to preserve the music of Finno-Ugrian peoples living in Russia?
- Slawomira ZERAŃSKA-KOMINEK, Poland - A Musical Dialogue with Nature. Orphic Motifs in the Kalevala.
13.30 -14.00 Poster session 1: Current research and projects in the form of poster presentations.
14.30-15.30 Session 3
Chair: Frank Kouwenhoven
John Blacking Memorial Lecture
Professor Beverly DIAMOND, Memorial University of New Foundland, Canada
Music and the Project of Modern Indigeneity.
16.00-17.30 Session 4
Chair: Olle Edström
17.45-19.00 Session 5
Chair:Giovanni Giuriati
- Elena SHISHKINA-FISHER, Russia - Musical and folklore heritage of the Volga germans today: Archives, expeditions, festivals and conferences
- Britta SWEERS & Bernd CLAUSEN, Germany - Representing minority cultures within the public: Changes and conflicts
20:30 Video session
Friday, 8 September
09.00 -10.30 Session 6
Chair: Ursula Hemetek
- Olle EDSTRÖM, Sweden - Continuity and Change: Jokkmokk 30 years later
- Ola GRAFF, Norway - The relation between sami yoik songs and nature
- Krister STOOR, Sweden - As Long as the World Shall Exist, an Old Man Yoiks the Pite River
10.30-11.00 Coffee break 11.00-12.30 Session 7
Chair: Hans-Hinrich Thedens
- Auste NAKIENE, Lithuania - Samogitia and Ancient Prussia on Internet
- Taive SÄRG, Estonia - Identity markers in South-Estonian popular music: The manifestation of being ethnically different
- Zhanna PÄRTLAS, Estonia - Some interethnic parallels in Setu traditional vocal polyphony
- Frank KOUWENHOVEN, The Netherlands - The limits of ethnic pride: a musical case study from China
13.30 -14.00 Poster session 2 Current research and projects in the form of poster presentations.
14.00-15.30 Workshop – panel discussion, "I sing who I am"
Chair: Dan Lundberg
A discussion between musicians and scholars:Ola GRAFF, Ursula HEMETEK, Inga JUUSO, Krister MALM, Pirkko MOISALA, Jörgen STENBERG, Krister STOOR, Per Niila STÅLKA
19.00 Public concert in the church of Jokkmokk
Introduction: Per Niila Stålka
Performers: Stålka Pieti, Inga Juuso, Jörgen Stenberg, Krister Stoor, Pieraš-Per-Ánne Ristin
09.00 -10.30 Session 8
Chair: Britta Sweers
- Jarkko NIEMI, Finland - Selkup singing style in the context of the musical styles of the Uralic Western Siberia.
- Erkki PEKKILÄ, Finland - When folk and elite cultures meet: Armas Launis’ Sami opera ’Aslak Hetta’.
- Timo LEISIÖ, Finland - Music Grammar of the North Sami Yoik in Circumpolar Perspective. Introduction to a New Theory.
11.00-12.30 Session 9
Chair: Ewa Fock
- Gerda LECHLEITNER, Austria - Intangible heritage: a discourse of the performer-researcher-archivist relationship
- Marko JOUSTE, Finland - The Characteristics of the Regional Sámi Music Cultures in Finland before 1970
- Susanne ZIEGLER, Germany - Historical Sound Recordings of Sami music in the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv
- Tina K. RAMNARINE, Great Britain - Musical ‘calibrations’ through an exploration of Carnival arts in museum spaces
13.30 -14.00 Poster session 3 Current research and projects in the form of poster presentations.
14.00-15.30 Session 10Chair: Pirkko Moisala
- Anna PLAKHOVA, Russia - Traditional music as a factor of national self-identification of the Korean community in modern Russia.
- Marin Marian BĂLAŞA, Rumania - Glimpses from the recent development of musical racism in Romania
- Triinu OJAMAA, Estonia - An attempt to modernize traditional music: a Khanty case
- André-Marie DESPRINGRE, France - Four different patterns of administering musical ethnicity in three French departments
XXI EUROPEAN SEMINAR IN ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
KÖLN, 24 – 28 AUGUST 2005
Wednesday, August 24
16.00 JOHN BLACKING MEMORIAL LECTURE
Robert GÜNTHER (Germany)
The Anthropology of Hearing and Listening: Prolegomena to a Theory of Music Perception and Understanding
Thursday, August 25
9.00 - 11.00 Session 1: Hidden Voices? - European Traditions of Ethnomusicology
11.30 - 13.00 Session 2: Hidden Voices? - European Traditions of Ethnomusicology
14.30 - 16.00 Session 3: Hidden Voices? - European Traditions of Ethnomusicology
16.30 - 18.00 Session 4: Hidden Voices? - European Traditions of Ethnomusicology
18.15 - 20.00 Video session
Friday, August 26
9.00 - 11.00 Session 5: Hidden Voices? - European Traditions of Ethnomusicology
11.30 - 13.00 Panel 1: Glossing Over Rhythmic Style and Musical Identity: The Case of Polish Dance Rhythms in Poland and Scandinavia, Part III
Bjørn AKSDAL (Norway), Ewa DAHLIG-TUREK (Poland), Dan LUNDBERG (Sweden), Rebecca SAGER (U.S.A.)
14.30 - 15.30 Panel 2: Analytical Approaches to Unmetered Rhythm: Case Studies of North Indian alap
Udo WILL (U.S.A.), Martin CLAYTON (United Kingdom)
16.00 - 17.30 Session 6: Sounding the “Sacred”: Concepts of Metaphysical Qualities of Music
18.00 - 19.30 Session 7: Sounding the “Sacred”: Concepts of Metaphysical Qualities of Music
Saturday, August 27
9.00 - 11.00 Session 8: Sounding the “Sacred”: Concepts of Metaphysical Qualities of Music
11.30 - 13.30 Session 9: Sounding the “Sacred”: Concepts of Metaphysical Qualities of Music
15.00 - 17.00 Session 10: Sounding the “Sacred”: Concepts of Metaphysical Qualities of Music
The following poster presentations will be accessible during the seminar:
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XX European Seminar In Ethnomusicology (ESEM) 2004
Venice – Fondazione Giorgio Cini
September 29 – October 3
Thursday, September 30
9.00 Welcoming remarks by the Secretary General of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Prof. Pasquale GAGLIARDI
9.15-11.00 Session 1. Sonic forms between speech and song
11.30-13.00 Session 2. Sonic forms between speech and song
14.30.-16.30 Session 3. Sonic forms between speech and song
17.00-19.00 Session 4. Sonic forms between speech and song
21.00 Concert of tarantelle and tammurriate
in cooperation with the Fondazione Teatro La Fenice Tarantella di Montemarano (Avellino), Tammurriate di Somma Vesuviana (Paranza d’O’Gnundo – in collaborazione con il ‘Museo Etnomusicale dei Gigli di Nola’)
Friday, October 1
9.00-11.00 Session 5. Sonic forms between speech and song
11.30-13.00 Session 6. Sonic forms between speech and song
14.30-16.30 Session 7. Visual ethnomusicology, and multimediality
17.00-19.00 Session 8. Visual ethnomusicology, and multimediality
21.00 Session 9. Projection and discussion of video materials
Saturday morning, October 2
9.00-10.30 Session 10. Visual ethnomusicology, and multimediality
10.30-11.00 Visual ethnomusicology and multimediality: Final discussion
11.30-13.00 Session 11. Posters
15.00-16-00 Panel session: Glossing over Rhythmic Style and Musical Identity: The Case of Polish Dance Rhythms in Poland and Scandinavia. Part 2
Bjoern AKSDAL (Norway), Ewa DAHLIG-TUREK (Poland), Dan LUNDBERG (Sweden), Rebecca SAGER (USA)
16.30-18.00 John Blacking Memorial Lecture
Jean-Jacques NATTIEZ
La recherche des universaux est-elle incompatibile avec l’étude des spécificités culturelles ?
Sunday, October 3
9.00-11.00 Session 12. Sonic forms between speech and song
11.30-13.00 Session 13. Sonic forms between speech and song
14.30-16.30 Session 14 Free papers
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XIXth European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM) Vienna - Gablitz, September 17-21
Institute Of Musicology Of The University Of Vienna
Society Of Friends Of The Institute Of Musicology Of The University Of Vienna
Conference Program
Thursday, September 18
9:45 - 10:00: Opening of the XIXth European Seminar in Ethnomusicology
10:00 - 11:30: Session 1: Music to be seen: On the impact of visualisation
Chair: Rüdiger Schumacher (Germany)
11:45 - 12:30 Session 2: Music to be seen: On the impact of visualisation
Chair: Frank Kouwenhoven (The Netherlands)
Panel Session: "Why (not) change tune? - Continuity and change in Chinese and Estonian folk song, and the continued importance of music transcriptions as research tools”
Antoinet SCHIMMELPENNINCK (The Netherlands), Taive SÄRG (Estonia)
14:00 - 15:30 Session 3: Folk - Popular - World Music(s): Changing perspectives in European ethnomusicology
Chair: Krister Malm (Sweden)
15:45 - 16:45 Session 4: Folk - Popular - World Music(s): Changing perspectives in European ethnomusicology
Chair: Dan LUNDBERG (Sweden)
Panel Session: "Fundamental processes in localization of music. Examples: African rap/reggae - Swedish 'bonnjazz' - The nyckelharpa reaches Belgium”
Krister MALM (Sweden), Gunnar TERNHAG (Sweden)
17:00 - 18:30 Session 5: Folk - Popular - World Music(s): Changing perspectives in European ethnomusicology
Chair: Amnon Shiloah (Israel)
18:30 Departure to "Heuriger Hirt", Kahlenbergerdorf - Reception by the Niederösterreichische Landesregierung (Landeshauptmann Dr. Erwin Pröll) Neue Wiener Concert-Schrammeln feat. Peter Havlicek
Friday, September 19
9:00 - 10:30 Session 6: Folk - Popular - World Music(s): Changing perspectives in European ethnomusicology
Chair: Anna Czekanowska (Poland)
10:45 - 12:15 Session 7: Folk - Popular - World Music(s): Changing perspectives in European ethnomusicology
Chair: Ursula HEMETEK (Austria)
Panel Session: "Gypsy musicians as the innovators in traditional music?"
Marin MARIAN-BĂLAŞA (Romania), Christiane FENNESZ-JUHASZ (Austria), Svanibor PETTAN (Slovenia)
14:00 - 15:30 Session 8: Folk - Popular - World Music(s): Changing perspectives in European ethnomusicology
Chair: Ursula Hemetek (Austria)
15:45 - 16:45 Session 9: Folk - Popular - World Music(s): Changing perspectives in European ethnomusicology
Chair: Ewa Dahlig (Poland)
17:00 - 18:30: Session 10: Folk - Popular - World Music(s): Changing perspectives in European ethnomusicology
Chair: Svanibor Pettan (Slovenia)
Saturday, September 20
9:00 - 10:30 Session 11: Music to be seen: On the impact of visualisation
Chair: Rimantas Astrauskas (Lithuania)
10:45 - 12:15: Session 12: Music to be seen: On the impact of visualisation
Chair: Regine ALLGAYER-KAUFMANN (Austria)
Panel Session: "From the innocent to the exploring eye. Transcription on the defensive"
Martin CLAYTON (United Kingdom), Gerd GRUPE (Austria), Gerda LECHLEITNER (Austria)
14:00 - 15:00 Session 13: Music to be seen: On the impact of visualisation
Chair: Giorgio Adamo (Italy)
15:15 - 16:15: Session 14: Music to be seen: On the impact of visualisation
Chair: Franz Födermayr (Austria)
16:30 - 17:30 John Blacking Memorial Lecture
Chair: Giovanni Giuriati (Italy)
20:30 "Hungarian Dance House" at Gablitz:
Ensemble Gajdos (Music), Zoltán Gémesi (Instructor), Fritz Oberhofer (Introduction)
Sunday, September 21
9:00 - 10:00 Poster Session
10:00 - 11:30 Session 15: Music to be seen: On the impact of visualisation
Chair: Regine Allgayer-Kaufmann (Austria)
11:45 - 12:45 Session 16: Music to be seen: On the impact of visualisation
Panel Session: "Glossing over rhythmic style and musical identity: The case of polish dance rhythms and western notation”
Rebecca SAGER (USA), Bjørn AKSDAL (Norway), Ewa DAHLIG-TUREK (Poland), Dan LUNDBERG (Sweden)
12:45 - 13:15 Final Discussion and Closing Ceremony
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XVIIIth European Seminar in Ethnomusicology
25-29 September
Druskininkai (Lithuania)
Program
Thursday, September 26
10.00: Opening of the XVIIIth E.S.E.M.
10.15: Session 1: The Baltic Area as an Object of Ethnomusicological Research.
12.00: Session 2: The Baltic Area as an Object of Ethnomusicological Research.
15.00: Session 3: New Approaches in Ethnomusicology.
16.45: Session 4: New Approaches in Ethnomusicology.
Panel session: “Woman, Music, Ritual”
Razia SULTANOVA (London), Estelle AMYDELA-BRETEQUE (Paris), Takako INOUE (Saitama), Tanya MERCHANT (Los Angeles), Yoshiko OKAZAKI (Tokyo), Il Woo PARK (Seoul), Ruta ZARSKIENE (Vilnius).
18.45: Video Session and CORD meeting
Friday, September 27
9.00 Session 5: The Baltic Area as an Object of Ethnomusicological Research.
10.45 Session 6: The Baltic Area as an Object of Ethnomusicological Research.
14.00 Session 7: New Approaches in Ethnomusicology.
15.30 Session 8: New Approaches in Ethnomusicology.
Panel session: An Innovative Methodology for the Study of African Scales: Cognitive and Technical Aspects
Simha AROM, Natalie FERNANDO, Fabrice MARANDOLA (Paris)
17.30 Session 9: New Approaches in Ethnomusicology.
Panel session: Dividing or Unifying? On the Relation of Cognitive and Interpretive Anthropological Approach in Ethnomusicology
Udo WILL (Columbus), Rüdiger SCHUMACHER (Cologne).
Saturday, September 28
9.00 Session 10: Free papers.
11.15 Session 11: New Approaches in Ethnomusicology.
Panel session: Ethnomusicology on Time: Digital Technology, Entrainment Analysis and Field Research Design
Martin CLAYTON (Milton Keynes), Yusef PROGLER (Dubai), Rebecca SAGER (Austin), Udo WILL (Columbus)
14.00 Session 12: New Approaches in Ethnomusicology.
Panel session: Acoustical Analysis of Traditional Music
Rytis AMBRAZEVICIUS (Vilnius), Daiva VYCINIENE (Vilnius), Jan ROOS (Tartu), Rimantas ASTRAUSKAS (Vilnius)
15.30 The John Blacking Memorial Lecture.
Roderyk LANGE Dance and Scholarship
20.00 Farewell evening. Concert of Lithuanian traditional music.
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XVII ESEM 5-9 September 2001
Rauland, Norway
Thursday September 6th
10.00 Opening ESEM 2001 -
Udo Will (President of ESEM)
Arvid Gjengedal (Rector of Telemark University College)
Frode Nyvold (Chair of conference)
10.30-13.30 Session I Colloquy: Musical instruments - construction and cultural significance in a comparative perspective.
Theme: Musical instruments in changing contexts, i.e. the migration and globalization of local musical instruments, and the adaptability of traditional instruments to a new media situation.
Chair: Ewa Dahlig (Poland)
15.00-15.30 Concert Austbø hotel
Excursion to Møsvatn - Concert in Hovden church
Dinner Rauland Academy - Social gathering with music and dance at Rauland Academy
Friday September 7th
09.00-12.30 Session II: Open theme: Structure, style and performance in traditional music and the problem of continuity and change
Chair: Britta Sweers (Germany)
Chair: Susanne Fürniss (France)
13.30-17.00 Session III
Chair: Martin Clayton (England)
Chair: Udo Will (France)
17.15-18.45 Session IV: Open theme: Free papers
Chair: Jan-Petter Blom (Norway)
21.00-22.00 Concert at Rauland Academy: Janosi ensemble (Hungary)
Social gathering with music and dance at Rauland Academy
Saturday September 8th
09.30-13.00 Session V: Open theme: The social construction of tradition (part I: panel session)
Chair: Jeremy Montagu (England)
Panel session I (Sigbjørn APELAND e.a., Norway)
How we built «our» music - the construction of the concept Norwegian folk music.
11.00 Panel session II: In time with the music: The concept of entrainment and its significance for ethnomusicology.
Chair: Rüdiger Schumacher (Germany)
Martin CLAYTON e.a., England
15.00-15.30 Poster session
16.00-17.15 John Blacking Memorial Lecture
Chair: Dan Lundberg (Sweden)
Jan LING (Gothenburg, Sweden): Is world music the Viennese classicism of our time?
21.00-22.00 Concert at Rauland Academy: Gabriel FLIFLET and Ole HAMRE (Norway)
Social gathering with music and dance at Rauland Academy
Sunday September 9th
10.00-13.00 Session VI: Open theme: The social construction of tradition (part II)
12.00 Session VI, cont.
Chair: Giovanni Giuriati (Italy)
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16th ESEM John Blacking's Legacy
7-10 September The Queen's University of Belfast
Peter Froggatt Centre
7 September
Exhibition: The Life and Work of John Blacking (Visitors Centre, open daily 9.00am - 5.00pm)
Session I.A (2.00 - 3.30) Localising the Global, Globalising the Local
Chair: Louise Meintjes (Duke)
Session I.B (2.00 - 3.30) Film Presentation
Chair: John BAILY (Goldsmiths)
John Blacking (1980) "Domba: a personal record of Venda initiation rites, songs and dances”
Plenary Session (4.00 - 6.00) Venda Music, Past, Present and Future
Chair: Ruediger Schumacher (Colon)
Ruediger SCHUMACHER (Colonge), Hastings DONNAN (Queen's), Suzel Ana REILY (Queen's), Suzel Ana REILY (Queen's)
Session John Blacking's Representation of Venda Music and Music-Making
Workshop and Film Presentation (8.00 - 9.30)
Workshop of African Music (Ethnomusicology Performance Room)
Introduction: Henry STOBART (Royal Holloway)
Andrew TRACEY (International Library of African Music)
Film Presentation
Chair: Veronica Doubleday (Brighton)
Rosemary JOSEPH (Oxford): "Umemulo: Zulu Girls' Nubility Rites" (1 hour)
8 September
Session II.A (8.30 - 10.30): Political Uses of Music
Chair: Tong Soon Lee (Durham)
Session II.B Music, Man and Culture
Chair: Kevin Dawe (Open University, Belfast)
Session III.A (11.00 - 1.00) Experiencing Self and Other
Chair: Peggy Deusenberry (Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dance)
Session III.B Music, Ideology and Cultural Policy
Chair: Martin Clayton (Open University)
Session IV.A (2.00 - 3.30) Music in Diaspora
Chair: Tina Ramnarine (Queen's)
Session IV.B Communication in Music and Dance
Chair: Anna Czekanowska (Poland)
Session IV.C Film Presentation:
Chair: Britta Sweers (Hamburg)
Jaco KRUGER (Potchefstroom)
Session V.A (4.00 - 6.00): Music, Instruments and the Body
Chair: Udo Will (Versonnex)
Discussant: Jesoash Hirshberg (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
Session V.B The Ethnography of Music and Music-Making
Chair: C Bithell (Bangor)
9 September
The John Blacking Memorial Concert (8.00 - 10.00)
Session VI.A (8.30 - 10.30): Children and Music
Chair: André-Marie Despringer (LACITO-CRNS)
Chair: Jeremy Montagu (Oxford)
Session VII (11.00 - 1.00) The Politics of Ethnography in African Musics
Chair: Malcolm Floyd (Winchester)
Session VII.B Workshop: Songs by Children and for Children (Ethnomusicology Performance Room)
Introduction: Sara LANIER (Queen's)
Patricia CAMPBELL (Washington) and Chooi-Theng LEW (Washington)
Session VIII.A (2.00 - 3.30) Political Implications of Musical Performance
Chair: Jan Fairley (BBC)
Session VIII.B Political Implications of Musical Performance
Chair: Micheal O'Suilleabhain (Limerick)
Session VIII.C Changing Times, Changing Sounds
Chair: Mark Trewin (Edinburgh)
The John Blacking Memorial Lecture (4.00 - 5.15)
Chair: George Bain, V. C. (Queen's)
Paul BERLINER (Northwestern)
Singaround (Staff Common Room, Upper Lounge, 9.30 onwards)
10 September
Session IX.A (8.30 - 10.30) Dance and the Body
Chair: Stephen Cotrell (Goldsmiths)
Iren KERTESZ-WILKINSON (London): Body Politics: The Dance of the Hungarian Roma
Helena WULFF (Stockholm): Experiencing the Ballet Body: Pleasure, Pain, Power
Frank HALL (Indiana)
Desi WILKINSON (Limerick): Entrez dans la Danse
Session IX.B Music, Nationalism and Identity
Chair: Suzel Ana Reily (Queen's)
Ewa DAHLIG (Warsaw): Nation-al-ism and Music
Jan SMACZNY (Queen's):Czechness in the Classical Repertoire: Constructions and Misconceptions
Inok PAEK: Experiencing Tradition: Musicians and Music-Making in Korea
Carol PEGG (Cambridge): Expressions of Identity in Mongolian Biy, Garuda and Tsam dancing
Session X.A (11.00 - 1.00) Music, Performance and Experience
Chair: Fiona Magowan (Adelaide)
Session X.B Music Education and Applied Ethnomusicology
Chair: Bonnie Wade (Berkeley)
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XV European Seminar in Ethnomusicology
12-15 November 1999
and
British Forum For Ethnomusicology
13 november 1999
Programme and Abstracts
SOAS, London
Friday, November 12
17.00 John Blacking Memorial LectureChair: Udo Will
Gerhard KUBIK (Austria): Age-sets, initiation and masked performances in the eastern Angolan culture area. Analysis of audio-visual field-documents 1965-1987.
Saturday, November 13
CHANGING SOUNDSCAPES AND CONTINUITY OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
(Joint one-day conference with the British Forum for Ethnomusicology)
9.30 – 11.00 Round table
Coordinator: Francesco Giannattasio
Simha AROM (France):A conservative point of view
Jean Michel BEAUDET (France):An old way for ethnomusicology of tomorrow: making ethnomusicology by listening to the musicians
Ramon PELINSKI (Spain):Ethnomusicology in the postmodern age: new rhetorics of cultural representation
Ruediger SCHUMACHER (Germany) Crazy for Pure Products? Continuity and Change in Ethnomusicology
14.30 – 16.00Jonathan STOCK (UK): Value Judgements--Ethnomusicology, Musical Worth and Music Criticism
Chair: David Hughes
Sunday, November 14
MUSIC and SPACE
9.00 – 10.30
Chair: Giovanni Giuriati
Bernard LORTAT-JACOB (France): Chant ? ou champ de conquete ?
Amatzia BAR-YOSEF (Israel): Musical Time and Space Concept: a Cross-cultural Model of Structural Analogy
Razia SULTANOVA (UK): Female Rites as a Musical Performance in Uzbekistan
11.00 – 12.30
Chair: Anna Czekanowska
14.30 – 16.00
Chair: Frank Kouvenhoven
16.30 – 18.00
Chair Bernard Lortat-Jacob
Monday, November 15
9.00 – 10.30
Chair: Martin Clayton
11.00 – 12.30
Chair: Jeremy Montagu
14.30 – 16.00
Chair: Richard Widdess
Amatzia Bar-Yosef (The Musicology Department Tel-Aviv University, Israel): Musical time organisation and space concept: A cross-cultural model of structural analogy
A primary assumption of this paper (which is supported by concrete evidence) is that every culture has a particular space concept manifested on the one hand in its cosmological beliefs and on the other hand in the way spatial objects, such as towns, buildings, gardens, theater stages and pictures are shaped.
Several ethnomusicological works (e.g. Seeger 1980, Becker and Becker 1981) have pointed to culture-conditioned structural patterns that are shaped by space or time concepts and musical structure. The present paper further explores this idea by presenting a model of cross-cultural analogy between musical time organization and space concept, based on comparison between three very different musical cultures: Middle Eastern Arabic music, Western tonal musci, and Central Javanese gamelan music.
It is argued that (a) the main structural characteristics of the time organizations and the space concept can be analyzed by using analogous notions, and (b) from the analyses an analgoy between the musical organizations and the space concepts emerges. That is, in each of the three cultures the muscial time organization and the space concept, are structurally based on the same schema. Application of the model to a few other cultures is also suggested.
Jean-Michel Beaudet (Universite Paris X - Nanterre):Musical movement - choreographic movement: An Amazonian ethnography.
Sonic production of social-cosmic space, or spatial production of social-cosmic time – the aim of this preliminary study is to draw some descriptive lines about the relationships between music and dance.
The relationships between movement and sound make up a very wide field of study, already pointed out by choreographers and composers, ethnomusicologists (Blacking, Baily...) ethnochoreologists (Gulcher, Van Zile,.....) and anthropologists (Hugh Jones...).
The analysis focuses here on the relationships themselves between music and dance – and not only on dance or on music – trying to show how these relationships may produce and express feelings, meaning and knowledge.
General methodological tools associated with Amazonian examples propose not to presuppose any general casual heirarchy between music and dance and to view these links as completely as possible, that is not to focus on the rhythmic correlations but to look equally to dynamic structures.
Giuseppina Colicci (Italy): Sound map of a ritual: The Madonna di Custonaci, Erice and Custonacie in west Sicily
The processional routes of the ritual of the Madonna di Custonaci are connected with the territory. The maps of the religious procession reveal aspects of a complex ritual rich in sound and devotional expressions. The new technologies are used to "represent" the ritual with its sound and visual expressions tied to the geography of the territory.
Different maps representing three different events with different sound are used for a mulimedia excerpt of ritual.
ABSTRACT
Anna Czekanowska (Poland): How Best to Approach the Truth: A Reflection for the End of the Century
The basic idea of this contribution is to confront the different approaches which have developed in ethnomusicology during the last century; concentrating on an analysis of the different kinds of sources, methods and the topics which have achieved dominent position.
The annual calender is clearly the number one topic in Eastern and Southern Slavonic ethnology and folkloristic studies. The author of this paper has contributed to this field of study by discovering the principle of the traditional folk calenders as a result of an analysis of the published and non-published folk songs, collections, and comparative analysis of early calenders. The latter has revealed that this principle has its roots in the liturgy of the Eastern Church and is related to the classical concept of octoechos (a different melody for each week). According to this principle it is possible to divide the repertory of the whole year into cycles marked by the feasts and Sundays with particular dedications. The most prevalent are the feasts of the Patron Saints who probably replaced the former demons e.g. St George replaced Jaryllo, Saint John the Kupala.
The scholars and interpreters from Russia and the Balkans were formerly not interested in this kind of relationship. The situation has changed in the last decade as a consequence of the contemporary renaissance of christianity - especially of the Russian Orthodox Church. This influenced the interpretation of folk calender.
From my field experience I consider local terminology indicating the manner of performance and the ritual appeals, to be of greater interest. It has been confirmed by the confrontation of the written and spoken (field interviews) and by the inclusion of the sound material.
Thanks to these confrontations, the instrumental aspects of communication and the emotional engagement of the performers and perceivers has been revealed. It helped to establish the hierarchy of particular events. Through participant observation it aso became clear that certain rites (funeral ceremonies) are the most important and that religion does not play an important role in those cases.
Audio-visual documentation helped to explore the spontaneous reactions and the impact of improvisation. It became clear that the laments, the shouts and the laughter uncover more than the discourse about it.
The folk ballad is one of the classic topics of folkloristic and philological studies dating back to the 18th century. Thanks to the studies of recent decades not only the difference between Western and East-European ballads has been revealed. These differences have also been related to the different mentality of the bearers of the West and East European traditions. It had become clear that a logical sequence of consecutive events with an evident stress on value judgement is crucial to the structure of the Western ballad, whereas for its Eastern-European counterpart, family events and tendency to contest human fate are the most important. East Eruopean people prefer to stress their limited conviction with the possiblity of definite solutions believing that "everything will end as usual".
The difference between Eastern and Western way of thinking does not exlude the possibility of their co-existence. The ballad is very popular in the repertory of the Youth Ensembles which applies both to European and Western variants of this genre. The young people admire the elements of drama and nostalgia transmitted by ballad while remaining sufficiently distant from reality. But most important for young people is ballad’s fairytale rhythm which evokes the feeling of stability. Young people like fairy tales, although they often introduce their beloved ‘world beat’ which they interpret as "the pulse of their generation".
One of the new experiences of contemporary research is the possiblity to work with people who are fully aware of their own tradition and who consciously maintain their folk legacy; people who actually understand the ongoing contemporary processes. Contemporary scholars are also privileged to deal with more advanced equipment and methods which help to penetrate the human mind resulting in a better understanding of the transformational processes of people’s conciousness.
Nevertheless, one has to remain sceptical to the credibility of their own conclusions. Indeed we should know that the apparantly incomplete sources of the ‘olden days’ often gave one an excellent vision of culture under study. The vital culture obtained in its natural context was the perfect inspiratoin for scholars and even more for the artists who were priviliged to document it.
Ingrid Gjertsen (The Grieg Academy Department of Music, University of Bergen, Norway): Music and space in Lutheran folk song practice in Norway - Cultural and musical implications.
1) Presentation of milieu and song tradition:
This special religious movement has its roots in the German Lutheran pietism. In Norway the pietism first of all became a folk movement is not so much an official church movement. The folk song tradition in Norway went into its strongest and most creative period during this movement, which started up in the last part of the 18th century. The song style is melismatic, slowly, by the singers characterised as "text declamation". The song is an integating part of the special piety in this religious movement.
2) The term "space":
I want to define the word in two diferent ways.
• The inside space, corresponding to the singers word "the heart".
• The outside space, the performing situation and physical place of the performance.
The inside and outside space have great influence on each other.
3) A song and a story, two very typical examples from this milieu, give the basis of the idea of the two spaces:
• The Christmas song "Mitt hjerte alltid vanker" (text: Brorson), a song about "my heart" as the room of the birth of Christ)
• The song creates silence. A lot of storires in this tradition are about singers creating deep silence by singing.
4) Cultural implications:
The influence from Christian mystisism on the religious ideals in this milieu is clear. The ideals of this piety also are reflected in the songs. Some of the ideals are: the heart as the centre of the personality (of knowledge, feelings, faith, religious experience), the longing for God and the unity between God and man (uniomystica), the individualism, the humility, the silence and the paradox ("sorrowful but always joyful").
5) The performing situation:
Traditionally the song is without any musical instruments. The place of singing does not include performing from the stage or a physical performer - listener relation. The performing is something they have in common. Even during solo singing it is so, the singer is a part of the meeting, placed together with the other ones. The song is a prayer, communication between the single person the God, and the situation has a meditative character. The song is directed to one single point which they have in common. The introverted quality in the way of singing creates a situation of concentration and silences both in the "inside" - and "outside" space. The balance between the two spaces is very important in the performing situation.
6) Analytical tools:
The song belongs to the religious tradition and practice as a whole and I want to use the meaning of the word "sound" as "way of singing".
How to study this out of the above point of view? One way could be comparative studies. Although the origin of this religious song tradition are not to be found in the Gregorian chant, they two have something in common:
• The cultic aspect - the Gregorian chant as well as the song of this tradition belongs to the cultic situation and has a function there.
• The orality - the Gregorian chant is constructed out of different variants of oral song traditions in the religious cult.
Here the comparitive studies can be relevant at following points:
• the relationship text - melody.
• the melismatic style.
• melodic form - repetitions of melody groups and fixed melody formulas.
• intervals and melody movement.
• the use of central tones.
• the rhythm as organic and not as matematic rhythm.
Jehoash Hirshberg and Roni Granot (Hebrew University, Jerusalem): From a case study of a cognitive research: Durational units in the responsorial singing of the Karaite Jews
Since the establishment of the etic-emic dichotomy, ethnomusicology has always hovered between the poles of detailed case studies on the one hand and their application to universal physiological and psychological aspects on the other.
This invariably involved team work and interdisciplinary approaches and the use of laboratory techniques. The responsorial singing of Karaite Jew,s a small and ancient religious branch of Judaism, reveals a interesting case of cantor-congregation interaction in the durational parameter. Four renditions of a psalmodic chapter in festive holiday services in Jerusalem have been analyzed through the melograph of the Hebrew University, revealing a systematic inverse relationship between half verses, that is the slower the cantor the faster the congregation and vice versa.
The absolute duration of each verse revealed a correlation with the concept of natural time units (Fraisse: The Psychology of Time), thus raising the question whether the Karaite practice represents an ingrained communal habit or a universal sense of duration.
ABSTRACT
Christina Jaremko-Porter (University of Edinburgh)
Changing Soundscapes and Continuity of Ethnomusicology: Latvian Ethnomusicology Since 1991
After achieving independence Latvians have seen many changes in the organization of their scholarly institutions. The influx of emigres, for example is a major factor that has influenced research. Awareness of Latvian "folk" culture may have been heightened by the election in May of an emigree folk-song scholar as president.
Without doubt nationalism has supported "applied ethnomusicology" – the application of research to the practice of traditional music – which was active also in the Soviet period. Having had an opportunity of participation in its work, I will focus on the role of the Ethnographic Open-Air Museum in both collecting instruments and staging musical performances. In surveying the work of other contemporary Latvian ethnomusicolgists I am particularly interested in whether their view of the "ethnomusicological past" encompasses urban musical traditions, such as every day church music or amateur choir activities.
Maria
Antonia Juan (Spain): Ceremonial
Dances in the Catalan
Society
Ethnomusicology as any other expression of human culture, is subject to the changes of the society. If we accept that ethnomusicology as a whole is the interaction of music and society, then term, concept, aims and methods have a very wide field to work on.
I will try to share with you some reflections coming from my work on ceremonial living dances in a small rural region in North Catalonia. The origin of these dances was the renewal of responisibilities of some local confraries, which were in charge of good rich families in 19th century. In later 19th century, early 20th century, these responsibilities passed onto the popular class and nowadays are danced by middle class families with roots, of at last one generation old on that villages. Changes in these dances are sometimes important and they are apparently celebrated as a search of the authenticity coming from ancient times, in other dances changes are less evident but both are effective and real.
In my opinion EM can be very useful if by its methods we can understand better - through the dance - the society as it is and it’s structure and how it moves through the time etc and which benefits are those given nowadays by the dance to that society, hence the existence of the dance
Frank Kouwenhoven (European foundation for Chinese music research, The Netherlands)
Love songs and temple festivals in northwest China
This report is based on field work on hua’er (love songs sung in dialogue form in eastern Qinghai and southern Gansu in China, summer 1998).
Research was carried out in co-operation with Antoinet Schimmelpenninck. A total of seven love song festivals were visited in the course of several months. These festivals are annual gatherings of young people, usualy on remote mountain tops. The singing invariably takes place in the vicinity of temples (or former temple sites) and is intended either as amusement or as a vehicle for courtship. In may cases, the aim for singers is to find a sex partner. Hua’er singing as a social activity is only accepted in the context of local temple festivals. It is considered improper when heard in (or close to) inhabitated areas.
Connections between temple festivals and the simultaneous love song festivals are hardly ever discussed in Chinese studies. We found many relationships, textual and musical (between the buddhist chants sung in the temples and the love songs heard outside) as well as in terms of function.
Older generation villagers (specifically women) visit the temples to pray for off-spring for the younger generation, while the dialogue singing outside the temple walls offers the very platform for creating off-spring among younger people. Remarkably enough, most relationships arising rfom love song singing happen to be extra-marital and are indeed expected to be extra-marital. The fact has caused embarrassment among local researchers, who are generally not prepared to commit such information on paper.
And how is the situation solved with extra-marital children born from these activities?
This introduction to an amazing northern Chinese folk song tradition will be illustrated with slides, some brief sound recordings and video fragments of temple chants and love song dialogues.
Katalin Kovalcsik (Hungary):Folklore musicians, revivalists and "electronic gypsies", classification of stage performers and musics in Southwest Hungarian Boyash Gypsy communities
In the Southwest-Hungarian rural Boyash Gypsy communities speaking Romanian and Hungarian – where I am currently researching – three groups of gypsy stage performers and musics are differentiated.
The folklore musicians are recognized as representives of gypsy folk culture. Today, they mainly live in large towns or the capital, their gypsy folksong arrangements and own compositions in popular style turning them into fashion dictators, as it were. The revivalists are groups of young poeple who perform at rural events the folksongs of their own communities and the songs learnt from folklore ensembles. The third group includes the musician at large dances or balls, called "electronic gypsies" for their synthesizers and amplifiers who add to their basic repertory of internatinal pop music the fashionable pieces of folklore musicians when there is local demand for it.
My paper aims to demonstrate that today in these communities the traditional and popular musics are completley intertwined in stage performance. Also the popular categorization of the three kinds of musicians is incidental, since part of the musicians wish to make a living by music making, hence they adapt their repertory and performing style to the local expectations.
Bernard Lortat-Jacob (CNRS Paris): Chant? Ou champ de conquete?
Dans nombre de musiques de tradition orale, l’espace musical n’est pas un lieu consacre (comme l’est, par exemple, une salle de concert), mais un espace ouvert a l’initiative musicale. Bien souvent, on fait de la musique moins pour le plaisir de produire des sons que pour signifier aux oreilles de tous qu’on est en train de s’approprier cet espace. Il s’agit d’espaces rituels (exemples concernant la petite societe de chanteurs de Castelsardo, Sardaigne) et/ou profane (exemples de Sardaigne et egalement de Roumaine).
On verra comment ce
jeu d’appropriation spatial interfere dans la performance et le system
musical lui-meme (le registre et l’expressivite en tout premier lieu) et,
plus largement, comment il est ethnologiquement significant.
Sara Manasseh (Kingston University, Surrey): The need for continutiy in a changing soundscape: Iraqi-Jewish religious song in Israel
Responses to collisions with other cultural soundscapes are varied: from complete change with the adoption of the new soundscape, to a conscious attempt to preserve the culture’s own heritage.
It is almost half a century since the majority of Iraqi Jews experienced an abrupt transition from life within an eastern Arab culture to the officially western culture of modern Israel.
I will examine contemporary response in Iraqi-Israeli Jewish religious songs, arising out of my preliminary fieldwork in this area. In addtion to religio-musical dialogue with other (eastern and western) Jewish maintaining their own religious soundworld, including repertoire, melodies and Hebrew pronunciation. A number of issues arise out of such case studies: change and continutity, identity, diaspora, gender, methods of transmission, nostalgia and music as therapy.
With the vast resources now available at the end of the 20th century, "traditional" fieldwork methods employing one-to-one interviews may now be augmented by the use of e-mail and telephone, and as ethnomusicolgoists we often complement our own fieldwork recordings with commerically produced audio-visual materials as part of our data bank.
Poised at the crossroads of the 20th and 21st centuries we seem to have a bewildering array of research options available from the "traditional" fieldwork ethnomusicologist to modern day "armchair ethnomusicologists" surfing the world-wide web.
Dr Lauden Nooshin (Department of Performing Arts Brunel University, UK): From prayers at dawn to techno in the park: Iran’s changing soundscapes
As an Islamic society, Iran is a country in which the separate domains of "public" and "private" spaces are cultural categories which underpin much social activity. In particular, appropriate behaviour in public is controlled both by deep-rooted social codes and by legislation, and this includes the types of music considered suitable for public listening.
For the last twenty years the government has attempted to control both the public and private consumption of music and in theory only certain types of music are allowed. Any music to be heard in public has to be approved by the Vezaarat-e Ershaad (Ministry of Islamic Guidance), including music for broadcast and commercial sales of cassettes and CDs.
But it has been difficult to exercise the same kind of constraint on private listening, particularly with the flourishing black market in cassettes from abroad, the preponderence of satellite dishes (officially illegal, unofficially tolerate) as well as access to the international "space" of the internet.
Since many of the laws pertaining to music are simply not enforceable in the private domain, officials often choose to exercise discretion and turn a blind eye to what many regard as inevitable.
In the two years since the landslide election victory of President Khatami in May 1997 there has been a great liberalisation in all walks of life and much less hostile environment for music, despite the continued opposition of more fundamental sectors. When I visited Iran in August 1997 I was struck by the range of music to be heard in public, music which would have been banned only a few years ago.
Musicians are taking the initiative and using every opportunity to challenge the boundaries of what is permissable in public. Moreover, the government is even taking a pro-active role in this respect, promoting more "popular" types of music and thus attempting to establish control over music which until recently would have been inconceivable on national radio and television, music which self-consciously attempts to subvert and attract listeners away from black market recordings of Euro-American pop music and Iranian pop music in "exile".
This paper will report back from my recent fieldtrip, focusing in particular on the changing soundscapes of pulic spaces, the place of music in the ongoing debate over acceptable public behaviour and the impact of all of this on indivduals’ musical experiences.
John Morgan O’Connell (University of LImerick): A space in time: Learning a lesson in Turkish music history
Vocal instruction in Turkish art music has undergone a profound transformation during the 20th century. After the foundation of the Turkish Repulic (1923), Turkish vocalists were obliged to abandon the didactic methods associated with their Ottoamn past and to adopt, instead, a conservatory system of voal instruction: a system which conformed to the westernising interests of the new republican elite.
While this transformation did not go unchallenged, the legacey of these reforms is evident today in Trukish musical institutions. That is a legacy which encourages musical literacy over traditional methods of oral transmission (knows as me?k) and a legacy which promotes western techniques of vocal production as an integral part of the didactic process.
Conceived as a modernising break with tradition, the new system of vocal instruction is consistent with a larger series of revolutionary reforms; reforms which embrace many aspects of Turkish life and reforms which attempt to change the Turkish present by making a consicous break with the Turkish past.
In this paper I will show how glimpses of this past persist at the interpretative fringes of a conservatory lesson. Adopting an hermeneutic approach to historical ethnography, I will demonstrate how my experience of learning Turkish vocal performance not only exposes in theory the western biases of the current system but also discloses in practice the continuation of an older predagogic system.
By reflecting upon my experience of the key structural elements of the lesson, Iwill provide an alternative interpretation of Turkish music history: an interpretation in which ‘the present flows smoothly out of the past’ (Toren 1998: 696) and an interpretation which avoids the cataclysmic bifurcation of Turkish historiography in to pre-modern (Ottoman) and modern (Republican) periods. In short, I will locate a space in time by learning a lesson in Turkish music history.
Il-woo Park (Korea):The Concept of Space in Irish Traditional Fiddle Playing
Irish traditional fiddle playing has a long history as phenomenon of musical performance regarding spatial arrangements. The wide range of video recordings, which were collected between 1993-1996 in the two counties, Clare and Galway (the west of Ireland) during fieldwork, provide an opportunity to investigate properly this from the aspects of spatial concept.
Fiddle playing takes place not only in time, but also in space which is operated by the players themselves within the existent social environment. The role of body posture, for instance, in fiddle playing explores the range of options available to the players as they utilise available spaces during the performance.
Such an utilisation of space is not seen merely as a spatial phenomenon, but it develps the concept of expressed space, through bodily movement, and a view of space which has its origin in the body. It also develops a view of space as it is experienced by the palyer and which is expressed with a set of culturally and socialy developed meanings. This idea is developed by Merleau-Ponty’s "embodied space" (Phenomenology of Perception, 1962) a space origin in the existing body in real situations.
This paper will address the following issues: the way in which Irish fiddle playing takes place in different kinds of spaces (i.e. in the kitchen, in public houses or on stage); the way in which the body posture relates and represents the various performance sites; how these spaces are accessible to the analyst if it is personal experience to each other.
Loraine Schneider (Century Fellow, Ethnomusicology, The University of Chicago): Stolen spaces, Sacred songs: Coptic liturgy in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is a city of sacred memories in search of space, of holy shrines and disrupted borders. Recent study and world attention has focused on Jerusalem as a city divided between Jews and Muslims, but a much longer, equally heated and divisive conflict has raged for centuries between Christian population, the Copts (the original Orthodox Church of Egypt) actively vie for and secure spaces in these holy sites through liturgical ritual.
Sound is a powerful tool manipulated in Jerusalem’s sacred and secular spaces. It challenges and transgresses the invisible but very real boundaries between ethnic and religious groups in the city. For Christians, these spaces and borders are performed daily and seasonally through processions and pilgrimages; in Jerusalem, worship itself becomes an act of pilgrimage as celebrants move fom place to place throughout the day. The contested spaces of the shrines become mapped and remapped through these ‘stational liturgies’. Liturgy in these contexts is often an assertion of self through ritual, and sonic (and physical) clashes frequently erupt between the many groups sharing the sites. But musically marking out, contesting, and defending the edges of their territories through music and ritual movement, the Copts are able to assert their presence, simultaneioulsy perpetuating their spatial rights.
My paper will first explore the use of sound in the contested spaces of Jerusalem, and will provide a brief and general overview of the history behind the present "status quo agreement" in the Christian holy places.
Second, the paper will address the Copts in Jerusalem and their liturgical practices. This background will in turn inform the main portion of the essay, in which I will discuss how the musical and sonic aspects of Coptic ceremonies affirm Coptic identity and territorial rights in disputed sacred areas. The examples are based on my 1998-1999 fieldwork in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and include Christmas, Epiphany and weekday advent and Lenten masses in the Holy Sepulchre.
In each of these (very different) services, the Copts use of instruments, types of chant, and kinds of musical procession, varies according to the spatial/sonic conflict of the particular holy place and offers insight into theunique musical nature of Jerusalem worship and pilgrimage.
Very little has been written on coptic liturgy and even less on Jerusalem’s diverse Christian musical culture. The ethnomusicological and socio-political issues behind the performance of Coptic liturgy in Jerusalem carry musicological, transnational and interdisciplinary relevance.
Dana Rappoport (France):Singing without being together: Juxtaposed music for an invisible public (Sulawesi, Indonesia)
In Indonesia (Toraja, South Sulawesi), polymusic - juxtaposed music - is performed during major ceremonies. Several groups play at the same time but not in a single tempo. From an aesthetic point of view, the resulting sound is homogenous. Like offerings of food, offerings of music determine a ceremony’s effectiveness. From a social point of view, polymusic dramatises the segmentation of village and family life. The existance of ritual polymusic indicates that music is neither a pastime nor an entertainment, it is an instrument of power in the service of regional and family heirarchies.
Ruth Rosenfelder (City University, London): May I sing now? Perceptions of women’s private and public performances in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities of London
Within the essentially patriarchal Jewish tradition, control of ritual practice such as synagogue service is a male preserve which still remains in orthodox and ultra-orthodox worship. Women may be present, albeit in a non-participatory role, and seating is arranged to ensure that men and women do not sit together. While communal singing occurs throughout the service women often vocalise sotto voice since the sound of a woman’s voice is regarded as a prohibited distraction to men at prayer. The issue is referred to askol isha (heb. ‘woman’s voice’). Distancing the sound of women’s voices is just one of a number of reasons for seperating men from women, which may be traced back to the Bible and Temple service.
For members of ultra-orthodox communities, the division between men and women extends into daily life, where any gathering outside the home is segregated. Included in the socio-religious laws of modesty is an extension of synagogal practice, where a man may not hear a woman sing at any time. However, conditions for the injunction are not clearly defined. For example, there is a consensus that the prohibition does not apply to the privacy of the home and the voice of an immediate family member. Nevertheless, the definition of ‘immediate’ family is open to interpretation, as is ‘private’ listening. The developement within the home, compounds confusion, since they allow ‘public’ performance within a ‘private space’.
These and other issues relating to kol isha is such as women’s ensemble, singing and instrumental performance, are examined in a series of interviews conducted with men and women of the ultra-orthodox community in London. The form of investigation, using Robson’s options of research procedure, is dictated by the sensitive and amorphous nature of the material, based as it is on belief and practice.
The paper discusses the principles that guided the project, as well as informants’ descriptions of the effects of absence as well as presence of sound.
Aside from the inquiry into the acoustics of specific performance spaces (like concert halls or churches) space as an important musical "parameter" usually has been neglected in general musical research as well as in the specific methodolgy of ethnomusicological documentation. However, "space" proves to be an important factor both in indigenous concepts of music and in conditions or actual performance practice.
In my contribution I want to present an exemplary outline of some basic traits of space and place and its importance and meaning in Balinese music:
1) The meaning of space as expressed in Balinese written musical theory, for example in the well known treatise Aji Ghurnia.
2) The conditions and implications of space in actual musical performance as an integral part of a ngrorasin, an important purification ritual of the soul in Balinese religious life.
Razia Sultanova (Goldsmith’s College, UK):Female rites as a musical performance in Uzbekistan
Modern Uzbekistan has a widely spread female tradition of setting rituals according to each "rite of passage" (Van Gennep, 1960). In that area only, specially chosen Muslim women (Otin-Oy) are responsible for conducting these rituals. But not only Muslim tradition characteristises that area. In some particular local regions of Uzbekistan (south western areas Qashqadarya and Surhandarya) not Muslim but traces of pre-Islamic culture like Zorasstrizm has survived.
In a Muslim country like Uzbekistan women are usually identified with their domestic domain. No wonder that female activity has developed in limited home space, including all kinds of rituals. The study of existing scope of female rituals in modern Uzbekistan, reflecting the Muslim calendar and other traditions could help to investigate their space and value in daily life.
Ritual is art enhancing and reflecting beliefs and also social concerns as well as mythology, music and dance. Their variation over time and space could be really productive in a study of how female activity in Uzbekistan relates to other signifcant categories such as the national identity understanding, along with the essence of female being.
Selina Thielemann (Germany)
"Haveli samgita: Music, Space and Ritual in the Vaisnava temples of North India"
In the Hindu tradition, spacial arrangement plays a significant role for the auspiciousness of ritual undertakings.
Many ancient temples are constructed according to the rules of vastu-sastra the science of building which takes into consideration the effects of the elements of nature. The implications ofvastu affect not only the building itself, but all components and aspects linked with it. Thus, traditional temple architecture prescribes accurately the respective spaces for the various kinds of ritual, including music which is perormed as a ritual activity.
The temple complexes and compounds are characterized by the presence of different types of music and sound in different locations within: in the inner sanctuary, in the courtyard, by the gate in the open space etc. Every building has its own inherent svara, (note) and the experienced musician will match the main note of his song with the inherent svara of the building to make his musical rendition more effective, and thereby more auspicious in context of the temple environment.
The North Indian tradition of Vaisnava music which is known as ‘haveli samgita’,, literally ‘music of the haveeli-type temples’, implies the association of sound and space already in its name. Unlike the orthodox Hindu temple, the haveli is a sanctuary constructed in the form of a large mansion ,which gives the abode of the deity the intimacy of a private house.
Haveli samgita, the musical practice of the Vallabhite Vaisnava haveli temples, consists of the rendition of music and song to accompany every single ritual act throughout the day. The concrete spacial arrangement for the performance is determined by the respective ritual acts performed at the time of the musical rendition and it affects aspects such as the position of the main singer and the accompanist, the space within the temple in which the musicians have to sit, or the arrangement of specific effects related to space in combination with certain musical performances. Thus, some of the larger havelis have different platforms and side lanes reserved for musical performances at different times of the day, and the accurate observation of the prescribed spacial arrangement is essential for the music to acquire its motivating effect on the ritual - the principal function of music in the religious practice.
The present paper intends to exemplify the relationship between music and space on the basis of the haveli samgita practice and under consideration of a variety of aspects in which this relation becomes reflected including the spacial component of the music itself.
Domenico Di Virgilio (Italy):Aspects of space – music relationships in folk–singing from Central Italy
The paper I present underlines few aspects of the relationship between space and folk-music those aspects I came across during my research work on vocal music in Abruzzo, Central Italy.
In some cases the impact the space had on musical performance is clearly perceivable in terms of acoustic results, as this space/environment influences the timbre and the vocal style.
But the relationship between space and folk-music is a reciprocal one: the music/sound too has an impact on the space and changes it as in rituals and ceremonies.
We face according to my own experience a close continuous relatinship, beginning with the very use of terms like ‘canti all’aria’ (open air singing, for some work songs) and the sonic aspects of which can be examined and shown by means of acoustical analysis.
I will illustrate:
• The ways the singers relate to each other or to musical insturments playing accompaniment.
• Examples of singing in close and open environment.
• Interrelation between symbolic and sonic level, as in the case of religious ceremonies and pilgrimages.
• Cultural determined division of the space, as in some church singing
Dr Richard Widdess (UK): Spatial concepts and musical form in a Nepalese stick-dance
The festival of Gai-jatra is held annually in the towns of the Kathmandu Valley to commemorate the departed. It features a stick-dance performed in procession through the streets. Such festivals function on many levels: is there a specifically musical level and if so how does it relate to other levels?
Analysis of the music of the stick-dance suggests a surface relationship with the actual configuration of urban space in which it is performed, and a deeper parallel with traditional concepts of the structure of sacred space.
Iren Kertesz Wilkinson (UK): Study of Roma (gypsy/sinti/traveller) music and ethnomusicological theories
The Roma, Sinti and Travellers, etc. form a very heterogeneous social group, with many subgroups living in diverse societies across the world. Their cultural manifestations are a correspondingly colourful mosaic that incorporates elements both of the dominant societies in which they live as well as of their own "gypsiness".
This complex ambiguity is creatively reflected in their musical pracitices which are themselves subject to change in a field of constant cultural interactions of both Roma and Gaje influences.
This paper will domonstrate aspects of this process in the context of the musical performances of two Hungarian Roma groups, the musician and Vlach gypsies. Received academic as well as general opinion tends to differentiate these two Roma groups on the basis of inadequately and rarely questioned historical, musical and linguistic data, generally underplaying the importance of similarities they have to another, whilst in case of the musician gypsies, over-emphasising the relationship to Hungarian society.
Closer examination shows that the Roma have been viewed through the ideological mind set that gave rise to the concept of "national cultures". The main attributes of this approach include:
1) A preoccupation with a single origin.
2) Use of common language
3) The myth of communally shared a set of ideas and values.
4) Performance of a uniform repertoire of music and dance
5) Association with a geographically fixed territory of ethnicity.
Any group failing to fit this criteria is assigned to the category of the absolutely different other onto it becomes possible to project either an exotic "glamour of difference" or the role of dangerous invader, amongst many other negative stereotypes. Accordingly the musician Roma are dismissed as "assimilated" having no autonomous culture of their own whilst theVlach Gypsies are given the role of the exotic with a very different, specific culture of their own.
As essentialst and absolutist ideas of total homogeneity and complete difference come under increasing attack, gypsy music studies – like studies of diaspora cultures in general – have a lot to offer. It is becoming even more evident that any adequate theoretical framework and anyalysis must take account of a wide range of ideas dealing with notions like cultural interaction and interconnections; the possiblity and necessity of creating and re-creating coherent identity within the social space of others; and some transnational persepective alongside individual and local views, etc. All which have important bearings on any musical performance, its meanings and aesthetic values.
XIIIth ESEM
Jyväskylä (Finland)
XIIIth ESEM 1997 takes place from 15-19 October, 1997 at.
Welcome to the ESEM Seminar which will be held at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland from October 15 to 19, 1997. The Organizer of this Seminar is the Department of Music, University of Jyväskylä in cooperation with the Finnish Society of Ethnomusicology and ESEM (European Seminar in Ethnomusicology). Jyväskylä Congresses of the University of Jyväskylä is responsible for the practical arrangements of the Seminar. VENUE The venue of the Seminar is Jyväskylä, the capital of Central Finland, a lively university town with 75 000 inhabitants. The city is located in the heart of one of the beautiful Finnish lake districts, on Lake Paijanne, about 300 km north of the capital, Helsinki. The seminar will take place on the University Campus.
THEMES
Ethnicities form musical groups, draw boundaries and define cultural identities. Study of minority music has always been at the core of ethnomusicological research, and this subject has often led to important methodological development and discoveries in ethnomusicological theory. There is wide range of music that may be viewed within this theme: traditional music, contemporary popular music and classical. Both moving ethnicities (emigration and Diaspora) as well as old high cultures and tribal music can be presented. In the study of minority music ethnography and musical analysis have been the main methods for decades, but are these applied to the strategies of ethnic cultures in multi-cultural urban settings? Definitions of music and different genres have to be questioned, since several styles and viewpoints can be included in the analysis of music such as enculturation and education. Distribution, reproduction, and institutionalisation of music brings factors of musical change and cultural processes in general into analysis: media, financial matters, ideology, and technology in respect to the minority music. One of the key terms may be cultural identity, which is constructed with powerful help of music making within ethnic occasions.
Are there similarities in the studies of minority culture in the different parts of the world, in spite of regional, cultural, and chronological leaps (between "traditional" and "postmodern" times) as well as those factors mentioned above? 1. Methodology: ethnography, musical analysis 2. Strategies in the process of constructing identities 3. Multicultural (& urban) settings 4. Media, financial matters, ideology, technology & ethnicities 5. Definitions of Music 6. Wide range of music studied: popular music - traditional - classical 7. Continuity & change (dynamic matters) 8. Enculturation & education 9. Moving ethnicities, old nations 10. Modern / post-modern times, contemporary culture.
Shamanism
Shamanism in all its various forms has attracted growing interest from ethnomusicologists from all over Europe. The opening of post-communist societies has given new possibilities for researchers to become familiar with cultures, where shamanism is still a living part of everyday life. Shamanism has had a central role especially among Saami people in some of Scandinavian countries (Finland, Sweden and Norway). A Shaman was a person who stored and transferred values and beliefs of the society for the next generation, a healer, seer, and the person who took out social pressures of the society. Shamanism is not only a phenomenon of Northern and Eastern countries - Western cultures have included many shamanistic features as well, especially within the Celtic tradition.
Shamanism offers an excellent possibility for ethnomusicologists studying music as culture, to get to know better a phenomenon which is on the extreme border of human behaviour.
New technology and ethnomusicology
What will be the role of traditional ethnomusicological methods, for example field work, in the future? In what way will modern technology change research topics of ethnomusicologists? Do we choose topics which we are able to study with the aid of modern technology and neglect other topics as "out of date"? New methods for cultural communication and new platforms of musical activities have emerged in new media. Ethnomusicologists among others might be interested in the future role of Internet? Would it be possible and would it make sense to do "field work" on the Internet, where several new types of music subcultures exist.
Applying modern technology opens new and fascinating possibilities for fieldwork using discursive methods, as well as for publishing results in multimedia format. Researchers are able to analyze material during field work and to get immediate feed back during discussions about the results with "informants". What is the safest way to preserve the huge amount of music, text and other ethnomusicological data for next generations? Storing technology is developing rapidly, but are new formats safer than the older ones, such as tapes and records.
Besides of new research questions and problems new technology offers methods which allure us to go back to old topics discussed by Ilmari Krohn, Oswald Koller, Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly among others: What is the best method for systematization of melodies?
Regional and free papers
Participants who do not find themselves familiar with the main themes of the Seminar may submit papers about other topics. The organizers are especially interested in papers about regional - Finnish and Scandinavian - topics.
SEMINAR FORMAT The themes will be rewoven in keynote lectures, paper sessions and poster sessions.
OFFICIAL LANGUAGE The official languages of the Seminar are English, German and French. All pointed material will be in English. However, the abstracts will be pointed in the submitted language. Please note that no interpretation will be provided.
Proceedings ESEM97
Papers from the ESEM meeting in Jyväskylä have been published - with support from the Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology, Helsinki - in two volumes of the Finnish Yearbook of Ethnomusicology, Vol.10 (1998) and Vol.11 (1999).
Vol.10 (1998)
Vol.11 (1999)
Volume copies can be ordered directly from the Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology.
ISSN 0783-6821
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Xth ESEM OXFORD (UK) 1994
--- CONFERENCE REPORT ---
by Wim van Zanten, Leiden University
The Xth seminar was held in the music-room of the Faculty of Music, Oxford University, from 29 August to 2 September 1994, and was organised by Gwen and Jeremy Montagu. The programme chairman was John Baily. The set-up was uncomplicated, and I found this to be one of the most pleasant of such events of the past few years. The schedule for the papers was disciplined, for having 30 presentations meant there were no parallel sessions, there was enough time for discussion afterwards, and with 60 or 70 participants it was a group process. Moreover, there was plenty of time to talk to each other after the official programme. The themes were (I) Musical instruments and the human body (John Baily as chairman, 12 papers) (2) Vocal performance and its social contexts (Peter Cooke, 12 papers) (3) Emotional expression, affective expression : from the tingle-factor to possession (Ir?n Kert?sz-Wilkinson, 6 papers). The themes were each well introduced by their chairmen. There had been a selection of the papers offered, but it was shown again how difficult it may be to direct a paper to a particular theme. Setting themes is useful in making people think about their contributions at an early stage, and may help to focus subsequent discussions. I rather like the "odd ones out" who cannot be accommodated easily in the given themes, and if accepted they stand a chance to have some costs paid by their institution. I was very pleased with the overall quality of the papers and discussions.
Most papers were allowed 30 mns for presentation (20 mns) and discussion. One session was only one hour, with four 10 mn papers and 20 mns general discussion. This worked very well indeed because the speakers kept to the tight schedule and, so to speak, restricted themselves to making just one point. By contrast, a session of 75 mns, with 3 papers of 15 mns, followed by a discussion of half an hour, did not work so well because the topics were too divergent and the treatment by each speaker was over-elaborate. Here, a separate discussion on each paper may have worked better. Nevertheless, the experiment with different lengths of papers was most instructive, and should be followed-up.
Tuning vegetables
In my report on the 1991 Geneva ESEM (van Zanten 1992:133) I said I found some contributions from the former Soviet Union rather weak: no attempt at theory, lack of social context, and local musicians' concepts ignored. Oxford was very much better. The contributions of Nadia Joulanova (Perm) on 'Pan-flutes with Komi-Permiaks: Life of instrument and person', and Katya Dorokhova (Moscow) on 'Lamentations in the Russian folk tradition' exemplified well-presented and interesting research. Joulanova explained how 3 to 5 separate (unbound) panpipes were made and played by women in the Urals. She cited comments : "That woman plays as if she can have five men during one night". and the sexual symbolism was clear in the video showing the construction of the pipes (hollow stems from a sort of tall "broccoli"), which were "eaten" to be tuned. On Dorokhova's video a woman sang a lament at her son's grave. Some reaction turned on whether to film people in distress, one person saying audio recordings would be more "in place". Katya explained she filmed only
after consultation, that it was agreed in advance, and she had a good rapport with the woman (as well, there exist professional mourners).
Agni Spohr-Rassidakis (Zürich) presented an interesting paper on ' "Emotion" and female singing in Crete' in which she discussed ballads, laments and songs used for rituals. The women, not the men, are asked to express emotion in public, and when they do, they rather try to maintain the tradition than express themselves personally. Cretan women declare that laments are not "sung", but "said". Musical aspects become more important in the songs for rituals.
Remarkable papers from Australia I found the contributions of Udo Will (France/Australia), on 'Structures of frequency organisation in Central Australian Aboriginal vocal music', and Catherine Ellis (Australia) on 'The "Two Women" series from Central Australia' to be remarkable. Will argued, by means of acoustic analysis, that in this music the difference between two tones is determined by the absolute difference in Hertz (cps) and not by a ratio of frequencies (an interval in Cents). Ellis had accurately measured the pitch of songs used in a particular ritual (sung unaccompanied). She did this twice, with a gap of four years, and found almost exactly the same series of frequencies. The pitch of the songs rose when a new phase of the ritual began. It was not a technical question of singing (as happens with Western choirs, rising or dropping in pitch), but a systematic relation between the pitch of the songs and the different parts of the ritual.
There were two more papers on the analysis of sound. Giovanni Giuriati (from Rome) showed what a number of bassoon players did at the opening of Strawinsky's Sacre du printempts on a very detailed scale, having used a Melograph. The present author tried to relate the precisely-determined sonic characteristics of several vocal genres in West Java to social characteristics of the performers and the performing situation. It appeared that an almost purely "intensity-vibrato" only occurs in genres greatly influenced by Islamic culture (in Java).
As bad as divorce
Iren Kertesz-Wilkinson's (London) paper was 'Xatjares? Do you understand it/feel it?', about the solution of a problem at the beginning of her fieldwork. It was to be on Gypsy music in Hungary. The local (Hungarian) police did not understand how a non-Gypsy could have any interest in the Gypsies. They accused Ir?n of being a part of some wheeler-dealing. Ir?n's presentation analysed the evening when these problems were "discussed" and emotionally resolved in singing and dancing. She had video fragments of how the parties came to an agreement to live together again, and that she (Ir?n) could now start her fieldwork.
In his paper 'I don't want to sing with Salvatore any more', Bernard Lortat-Jacob (Paris) also portrayed a situation where music and its organisation expresses ways in which people interact. Here, it was about groups of men in Sardinia who sing ensemble. The groups should be very cohesive, with the men eating, drinking and singing together - and of these forms of social interaction, singing is the most intimate. Not wanting to sing with Salvatore was as bad as divorce.
Anna Czekanowska delivered the 3rd John Blacking Memorial Lecture, which she called 'John Blacking. the ideal musical man'. Personal memories were her starting point. Anna spoke of the influence of Blacking on the development of ethnomusicology in Poland. In the 1970s, people were acquainted mostly with the approaches of Lomax and Merriam. Then Blacking showed them his methodology. "John Blacking was a structuralist, but, unlike us, he based his views on empirical research”
The printed version of the 1st JBML, given by John Baily, was presented to all participants at Oxford (cf. Baily 1994).
Satisfaction with this seminar was expressed at the final business meeting. The ESEM membership list had been culled, and hstood at about 225 paying members, who would all receive INFO and other communications The financial situation was slightly better but still not solid. Vice-President Anne Caufriez (Bruxelles) presented a report indicating that the EU may subsidise ESEM at about 8000 ECU (= c. US$11 .000), but nothing was yet in writing (subsequently, 4.000 ECU have been received as a "first slice"). Plans for the XIth ESEM (published in INFO-23) were discussed, and 'music and nationalism' was dropped as a theme. Wim van Zanten was elected Chairman for the Holland ESEM 1995, and he expressed his gratitude to Frank Kouwenhoven, who will join in with the organisation. Possible venues for 1996 were put in order of preference : (I) Helsinki, (2) Jerusalem, and (3) Toulouse. Thessaloniki is a candidate for 1997. Publication of the proceedings of X.ESEM.OXON.94 on computer disquette(s) was then discussed, with Peter Cooke of Edinburgh as editor-compiler. It could be supplemented by a photocopied booklet containing illustrations and/or a cassette tape.
REFERENCES BAILY, John, 1994. John Blacking : Dialogue with the ancestors. London: Goldsmiths College (University of London). ISBN 0901 542 75X / 20pp. ZANTEN, Wim van, 1992: "8th European Seminar in Ethnomusicology. Geneva, 23rd - 25th September, 1991";The World of Music 34 (l):132-5.
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The proceedings of this conference, X.ESEM.OXON.94, which had been compiled and edited by Peter Cooke, Edinburgh, were available on the Internet. The page has been closed.
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