Analytical Approaches to World Musics
ISSN 2158-5296
2021, Volume 9, No. 2
AAWM JOURNAL Volume 9, No. 2 (2021)
Volume 9, No. 2 (2021)
Balinese Gamelan Tuning: The Toth Archives
Wayne Vitale and William Sethares
American ethnomusicologist Andrew Toth spent decades in Bali, studying and documenting music of various styles. One of his most ambitious projects was to measure the precise tunings of every key and gong-chime of 49 gamelan gong kebyar, a popular form of bronze gamelan. However, his death in 2005 at the age of 57 prevented him from publishing a comprehensive analysis of his research. His tuning measurements included representative samples of gamelan from across the island, a treasury of data gathered as part of his multi-decade research with gamelan makers, tuners, and musicians. Seven boxes of his letters, photographs, concert notices, course notes, and computer printouts of tuning frequencies are now stored in the Special Collections & Archives of the Wesleyan University Library. This paper presents a first analysis of this tuning data, which comprises more than 8000 individual frequency measurements (approximately 150 for each of the 49 gamelan, plus five more sets of tuning data we commissioned). We utilize a unique way of visually representing the information, developed by Toth, that displays both the individual intervals of the musical scale as well as the distinctive tunings of the octaves of each scale degree. We call these Toth Plots, and describe in detail how the plots are drawn, now using modern computer graphics, and the kinds of information they help visualize. We have made the raw tuning data available by transcribing it into spreadsheets (machine and human readable), and will post the data in a publicly available location to encourage others to explore it. Based on Toth’s writings and data, we interpret several key tuning concepts relating to regional styles, interval models (such as begbeg-tirus) and octave treatment strategies. We also analyze geographic variations in the tuning measurements, which were taken in seven of the eight regencies of Bali at the time, and trace the evolution of the tuning of five of the gamelan from the 1970s to the present.
Tonal Counterpoint Revisited: From Yorùbá Pop to American Hip-Hop
Aaron Carter-Ényi and David Àiná
“Tonal counterpoint” is a poetic device in the oral improvisatory tradition of oríkì (praise-singing) first documented by Nigerian professor Ọlátúndé O. Ọlátúnjí in a conference paper in 1969 and later included in his book Features of Yorùbá Oral Poetry (1984). Research on tone language poetry and song has increased in recent years, but no scholars outside of Yorùbá Studies have cited this vital work. This article provides new documentation of the continued usage of tonal counterpoint in contemporary indigenous and neo-traditional vocal arts. A phenomenon first noted fifty years ago may be heard and visualized with commentary for the first time through computer-assisted analysis of field recordings. We suggest further research on the extent to which this relatively unknown poetic device is a cross-cultural phenomenon, aesthetic to a wide variety of public speaking and vocal arts, from African praise-singing to Hip-Hop and Spoken Word poetry.
Teerapaun Tanprasert and Joti Rockwell
Thai sakon is a genre of Thai popular music with an international, widely palatable sound and overt stylistic influences from Western pop and rock. This article analyzes some of the most widely marketed and listened-to performances of Thai sakon from the 2010s, showing how the genre is rooted in Thai musical practices in a variety of ways. Analytical exploration of several recordings from this decade reveals aspects of Thai traditional music, both folk and classical, which points toward a view of Thai sakon as more of a hybrid form than a straightforward replication of Western soft rock. Underneath the broadly familiar currency of studio production, rock-pop instrumentation, and transparent diatonicism in Thai sakon, one can hear distinctive approaches to instrumental performance, linguistic-melodic relationships, and vocal expression. Software-assisted music analysis that integrates traditional transcription, spectrograms, fundamental frequency measurements, and an examination of speech tone-melody correlation casts such approaches into relief. Focusing on several selected recordings from the 2010s, we proceed by providing a brief historical context for Thai sakon and considering lyrics that relate to Thai traditions. We then examine aspects of instrumentation including hybridity and translation, compare the tones of the Thai language in lyrics to vocal melodies, and identify traditional Thai vocal practices. The article concludes with thoughts about underlying historical dynamics and ideas for further research.