Analytical Approaches to World Musics
ISSN 2158-5296
2012, Volume 2, No. 1
AAWM JOURNAL Volume 2, No. 1 (2012)
Volume 2, No. 1 (2012)
Formulas and the Building Blocks of ṭhumrī Style—A Study in “Improvised” Music
Chloe Zadeh
In this article, I examine the repeated musical formulas that appear in ṭhumrī performances. Chunks of recurring musical material, my analysis has revealed a large number of different types of formulas in ṭhumrī recordings by a wide variety of musicians from throughout the twentieth century. Here, I propose ways of understanding how and why they occur in ṭhumrī and suggest ways of taking them into account in an analysis of ṭhumrī style. In Parts I and II, I lay some of the theoretical groundwork for my analysis of formulas in ṭhumrī. In Part I, I consider the nature of improvisation in North Indian classical music and begin to explore the significance of musical formulas in ṭhumrī. Attempting to account for their widespread occurrence, I argue that they are a result of the way in which North Indian classical musicians teach, learn and practice ṭhumrī, in preparation for largely improvised performances. In Part II, I explore wider contexts in which to make sense of formulas in North Indian classical music; specifically, I draw attention to parallels with the formulas that appear in other musical traditions, oral poetry and spoken language. In Part III, I take the formulas of ṭhumrī as a starting point for an analysis of ṭhumrī style. Categorizing these formulas into different types, I distinguish, for example, between the precise repetition of memorized musical figures and the repeated use of abstract musical strategies, which produce entirely different musical phrases whenever they appear. I consider the role that formulas play in delineating phrase structure and creating a sense of musical syntax. Finally, I argue that the examination of formulas offers a means of characterizing different ṭhumrī styles.
Julien Jalâl Ed-Dine Weiss: A Novel Proposal for the Middle Eastern Qānūn
Stefan Pohlit
This paper explores a new and ambitious tuning system for the Middle Eastern qānūn, conceived and practiced by the French virtuoso Julien Jalâl Ed-Dine Weiss (b. 1953). Since the invention of mandal-s, movable bridges that enable microtonal alterations during performance, the qānūn has become a major source for tuning and fixation of the Middle Eastern pitch inventory. Whereas Arab qānūn-s are based on “quarter tones”, Turkish instruments divide the octave into 72 notes. All commonly fabricated models, however, have in common that their tuning is based on 12-semitone equal temperament. This does not conform with the Pythagorean tuning on which the heptatonic framework of the qānūn is traditionally based. For that reason, common qānūn models only approximate the interval sizes that have been described throughout the theoretical tradition by means of arithmetic ratios. Equal temperament causes transformations in the tuning of commonly agreed scale degrees and complicates the qānūn’s interaction with both justly tuned and fretless instruments to an audible extent.
As the founder of the internationally acclaimed Al-Kindi ensemble, Weiss has repeatedly criticized this deficiency. Since 1990, he has constructed nine qānūn prototypes with which he performs in diverse regional contexts within the Middle-Eastern tradition. As the outcome of many years of practical experience, Weiss’s qānūn models currently offer the widest range of microtones in strictly just intonation. At the same time, their tuning remains truthful to the theoretical approaches of the major historic treatises. This study explores Weiss’s motivations in regard to the principal developments of the Middle Eastern fundamental scale. The discussion includes those tuning approaches from the recent past that influenced Weiss in the conception of his prototypes: the professional Arab qānūn prior to the 1970s, the frets on Necdet Yaşar’s Turkish tanbūr, and the qānūn of Aleppo that vanished in the 1980s.
Weiss’s approach reveals that the tuning system of the transnational maqām phenomenon has spread to such complexity that its fundamental supply of pitches cannot be thought of except in terms of local variations in a plurality of traditions. His instrumental prototypes may reconcile the diverse scholarly approaches with both practical and theoretical objectives.
CantoCore: A New Cross-Cultural Song Classification Scheme
Patrick E. Savage, Emily Merritt, Tom Rzeszutek, and Steven Brown
Classification of organisms and languages has long provided the foundation for studying biological and cultural history, but there is still no accepted scheme for classifying songs crossculturally. The best candidate, Lomax and Grauer’s “Cantometrics” coding scheme, did not spawn a large following due, in part, to concerns about its reliability. We present here a new classification scheme, called “CantoCore”, that is inspired by Cantometrics but that emphasizes its “core” structural characters rather than the more subjective characters of performance style. Using both schemes to classify the 30 songs from the Cantometrics Consensus Tape, we found that CantoCore appeared to be approximately 80% more reliable than Cantometrics.
Nevertheless, Cantometrics still demonstrated significant reliability for all but its instrumental characters. Future multidisciplinary applications of CantoCore and Cantometrics to the crosscultural study of musical similarity, musical evolution, musical universals, and the relationship between music and culture will provide the true test of each scheme’s value.
A Response to Professor Burnett
David Loeb
Henry Burnett
Formulaic Variation Procedures in Mande Griot (Jeli) Guitar Playing and Improvisation
David Racanelli
In this article, I examine the extensive use of formulas in the guitar playing and improvisation of Mande griots, who are hereditary professional musicians of West Africa. Based upon five years of research as a close participant-observer of griots in New York City, I suggest that musical formulas act as expressions in forms of musical talk (parole) in determining the style (langue) of griot guitar music. As a part of shared discourse amongst griots and their non-griot collaborators, formulas are used to form larger structures or episodes in solos, which characterize improvisation in extended jam sequences. Once primarily a verbal art, diasporic jeliya or the art of the griot in New York City has been constituted as an improvisational instrumental practice by griot and non-griot musicians.