“That is Why I am Telling this Story”: Musical Analysis as Insight into the Transmission of Knowledge and Performance Practice of a Wapurtarli Song by Warlpiri Women from Yuendumu, Central Australia

Insights into the knowledge, performance, and transmission of songs are pivotal in ensuring the survival of traditional Aboriginal songs. We present the first in-depth musical analysis of a Wapurtarli yawulyu song set sung by Warlpiri women from Yuendumu, Central Australia, recorded in December 2006 with a solo lead singer accompanied by a small group. Our musical analysis reveals that there are various interlocking parts of a song, and this can make it difficult for current generations to learn songs. The context of musical endangerment and the musical analyses presented in our study show that contemporary spaces for learning yawulyu must consider the complex components that come together for a song set to be properly performed.

Makna Simbolik Musik Daak Maraaq dan Daak Hudoq dalam Upacara Hudoq Bahau di Samarinda Kalimantan Timur

The Symbolical Meaning Daak Maraaq Music and Daak Hudoq of Hudoq Bahau Ritual in Samarinda, East Borneo. The ritual of Hudoq is an annual cultural practice performed by Dayak Bahau people in the city of Samarinda. The performance of this ritual consists of some phases in which every phase of it represents the symbolical meaning closely related to the value of the ritual. Those phases are (1) Lemivaa Lalii’; (2) Hudoq Taharii’; (3) Lemivaa Tasam; (4) Hudoq Kawit; and (5) Hudoq Pakoq. Daak Maraaq and Daak Hudoq music and Hudoq dance are performed during the ritual. Daak Maraaq and Daak Hudoq are two different kinds of music, both have a different style of performance, stage of performance, and style of music. Due to its complexity, it becomes especially important to analyze the role of the symbolical meaning of music performed in the ritual of Hudoq. This is a qualitative research within an ethnomusicological approach—music within the cultural perspective—which is done through an analytical descriptive method. The theoretical approach used for this case study is symbolic interpretation and music (transcription) analyses. Despite analyzing the symbolical meaning of Daak Maraaq and Daak Hudoq music, this research is done to provide important information about musical analyses—within the ethnomusicological perspective—of that music. According to the data collected, the ritual of Hudoq has an important role in performing the symbolical meaning of the identical value of ritual, social, and existential meaning for the lives of Dayak Bahau people in Samarinda city, East Borneo.

The Political Force of Musical Actants: Grooves, Pleasures, and Politics in Havana D'Primera's ‘Pasaporte’ Live in Havana

Drawing upon Rancière's argument that aesthetics instigates politics, Latour's rethinking of agency as relational, and Ortiz's work on Afro-Cuban music aesthetics, this article explores how the experience of aesthetic pleasure in Cuban timba grooves makes politics audible and affective in novel ways. Through a combination of ethnographic and musical analyses of Havana D'Primera's performance of ‘Pasaporte’ live at Casa de la Música in 2010, it unpacks the political affordances of call-and-response singing and polyrhythmic timba grooves among participating listeners in Havana. In contrast to the recurrent tendency to exclude musical details from research into the politics of music, this article suggests that engaging grooves and catchy melodies do important political work as musical actants by creating affective communities and new expressions of political critique. The concept of musical actants serves as a lens through which to view these pregnant interactions between rhythmic, melodic, social, and political meanings in time.

Reassessing Lewin on the Promise of Husserl's Phenomenology of Time-Consciousness

In his seminal essay "Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception," David Lewin takes up (and works against) Husserl's phenomenology of inner time-consciousness as a means of developing his own perception-based musical analyses. My aim, in this article, is not only to show that what Lewin adopts as a theory of Husserlian time-consciousness is in direct conflict with the understanding produced by contemporary philosophers associated with the Husserl Archives, but also to argue that a better understanding of Husserlian time-consciousness enables us to imagine the ways in which phenomenological inquiry actually supports Lewin's objectives. First, I clarify the complicated history of Lewin's textual source, Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins, arguing that a failure to take account of the genesis of Husserl's text brings about a concomitant misinterpretation of its philosophical content. Second, I critique Lewin's reduction of retention and protention to present contents of perceptions, demonstrating that this results in an infinite regress (or "recursive" structure, in Lewin's terms), and I show that Husserl himself avoids this by investigating the temporal flow of the subject (i. e., as a structure of transcendental subjectivity). Finally, I argue that the Husserlian framework of timeconsciousness provides a productive way to concern ourselves with the creative acts of music making that Lewin so prizes.

Portmantonality and Babbitt’s Poetics of Double Entendre

This essay presents a theory of musical and verbal double entendre inspired by and applicable to the late-period music of Milton Babbitt. Rather than assuming the appropriateness of any single method (which might tend toward singularity of meaning), a number of approaches are applied to three late works: primarily his Whirled Series (1987), and secondarily his Canonical Form (1983) and Gloss on ’Round Midnight (2001). These are interpreted through various kinds of analysis, not only serial, but also tonal (chordal and voice-leading), associational, pitch-permeational, and form-functional. Connections to Tin-Pan-Alley song lyrics, jazz improvisation, hermeneutics, and Gibsonian affordances are discussed in relation to these musical analyses. All this is done to infer and cultivate connections (represented as a conceptual integration networks) between Babbitt’s extra-theoretic verbal expression and extra-dodecaphonic aspects of his music, connections that suggest an underlying poetics (a tacit motivational philosophy implicitly fueling his creativity) that provides pragmatic benefit to the artistic ambitions of diverse personal identities.

Comparing Timeline Rhythms in Pygmy and Bushmen Music

Combining theories of African rhythm from ethno/musicology and findings from anthropological research and population genetics with musical analyses based on transcriptions and computational phylogenetic techniques, this article compares rhythms used in Pygmy and Bushmen music in an attempt to provide new perspectives on an old debate that these musical cultures may share a common heritage. To do this, the comparative analyses focus on timelines: foundational rhythmic features that provide the structural basis of the music. The findings suggest that Pygmy and Bushmen timelines are interrelated and that most are organised according to the principles of 'rhythmic oddity' and maximal evenness. Generative theory suggests that commonly used rhythmic cells, in particular the 3:2 pattern, form the structural basis of many Pygmy/Bushmen timelines as well as many other timelines featured in African and African-derived musics. Timelines are also multi-purpose musical devices used in various different social contexts and their structure appears to be resilient to radical change. Phylogenetic analysis of timelines provides no clear Pygmy/Bushmen ancestral timeline, although it is possible that foundational rhythms such as the 3:2 pattern may have featured in the music of a common ancestral group.

Musical Analyses of Mordechai Gebirtig's Chosen Pieces

Restoring the memory of the irretrievably lost word of a Jewish community is important for many reasons. To start with, familiarization with the unknown helps with better understanding of the everyday life of Polish Jews, often perceived as a hermetic society, rousing anxiety particularly among those who are totally unfamiliar with Jewish culture and traditions. Secondly, for the young, currently developing Jewish community, it is the way of building their identity by recalling their own historical roots. Gebirtig's creativity is portrayed in this chapter in two inextricably connected aspects: (1) the historical background of musical culture at the turn of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries in Cracow; (2) the perspective of analysis of the musical layers of his pieces. The study emphasizes how the universal language of music is of a crucial importance for building a dialogue based on education, cultivation of memory, and restoration of identity.