Folk Music

"Book Description
Publication Date: 1995

The folksongs of Texas's Mexican population pulsate with the lives of folk heroes, gringos, smugglers, generals, jailbirds, and beautiful women. In his cancionero, or songbook, Américo Paredes presents sixty-six of these songs in bilingual text--along with their music, notes on tempo and performance, and discography. Manuel Peña's new foreword situates these songs within the main currents of Mexican American music."

This article offers a microhistorical approach to the shaping of regional cultures during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to show that this process was not only imposed from centres of nationalisation as a complement of national identity, but that it also had to be negotiated with elites in provinces at the periphery. Specifically, the article looks at how the regional songbook of Majorca took shape between 1837 and 1936. In this process of musical regionalisation, the cultural authority of the tourism and colonial discourse about the island was strategically exploited by local musicians to gain some share of power from below in negotiating their own regional identity with nationalising institutions. In this way, the Spanish and Catalan national identities being projected over the island were ultimately decentred and transformed.

This paper develops a geography of voice in order to address the ways in which cultures, regions and nations are imagined, figured and defined. It adopts Connor’s (2000) notion of ‘vocalic space’ as a starting point from which to explore folk song collecting practices in Appalachia. It develops this in relation to Bauman and Briggs (2003) post-colonial critique of the status of language and speech in ethnographic theory. Historically the Appalachian region has received substantial ethnographic cultural study. Working with insights supplied by collecting activities and subsequent writings of two key collectors – Cecil Sharp (1859-1924) and Alan Lomax (1915-2002)– this paper offers a socio-material conception of voice key to its affective politics, whilst examining historical theorisations. These are firstly, derived from folklore and ethnography, later anthropology and sociology and secondly, articulated with regard to geographies of region and nation. These are then considered in relation to geographer James Duncan’s (1980, 1998) critique of the ‘superorganic’ as an explanation of regional cultural distinctiveness. It concludes by arguing that a geography of voice can contribute to critical approaches to regionalism. An understanding of how vocalic spaces are figured and assembled is key to explaining how culture can be translated through levels of abstraction in ways which can marginalise and disenfranchise the very peoples who are the subject of study.

There has been little academic consideration of the life, work and ideas of the BBC radio producer Charles Parker. Where he is remembered it is for his work on the prize-winning series known as the Radio Ballads. Beginning with ‘The Ballad of John Axon’ in 1958 the series addressed the lives and work of working-class people, and was one of the first programmes to use ‘actuality’ incorporating original, spontaneous testimonies. The author values Parker’s work as an expression of the mentalités of welfare-state Britain and that wider project evinced by his colleagues and collaborators that sought to challenge the circumscribed lineaments of class, culture, history, education and language. However, an appreciation of Parker and his role in the process of democratizing the cultural sphere also
lends itself to a critique of the assumptions behind categories such as class, authenticity and experience that proved to be so useful in this moment.

The author of the article wishes to compare Hungarian textual and musical folkloristics at the turn of the 20 th century with regard to changes in fieldwork methodologies. Hungarian folklore studies in the 19 th century preferred text-oriented recording of performances, while by the first half of the 20 th century the need for a performance-centered study of folklore with the help of audio recording emerged. Owing to a fundamental change in the method of folklorecollection, Hungarian folklorists studying folk music and folk dance by the middle of the 20 th century applied the method of participant observation. In the meantime extensive collection gave way to intensive collection focusing on the repertoire of a given local community or of an outstanding performer. In this process Béla Vikár had a distinguished role as he was the first one to use phonograph in collecting folk poetry and folk music in Hungary, besides which, with the help of stenography, he has a remarkable manuscript legacy of folktales and folk customs as well. The approach and objectives of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály differed from those of Vikár's, since for them quantitative considerations were still important, while Vikár's approach borrowed elements from social sciences as well. The breakthrough in this respect was marked with the oeuvre of László Lajtha, a disciple of Bartók, who dealt with vocal and instrumental folk music alike. During five decades Lajtha as a collector shifted paradigms a number of times and on the peak of his folklorist oeuvre he published monographs on the vocal and instrumental musical repertoire of bands and villages. His studies inspired György Martin, dance folklorist as well as the revival folk dance movement in the 1970s. The performer-centred study of narration that Gyula Ortutay elaborated on at the beginning of the 1940s proved to be successful primarily in the study of prose epic genres and it unreflexively followed the method of folk musicologists.

The study of folklore served an important role in the development of South Asian Studies, yet, ironically, folklore was mostly studied in relation to classical Sanskrit texts within academe. The study of vernacular folklore was, on the other hand, relegated to amateurs and collectors, but with the publication of an important volume, tellingly titled Another Harmony (1986), since it revised the folk/classical divide, folklore reentered areal studies with a newer generation of scholars who were interested in a variety of new approaches that went beyond the textual interface. This introduction briefly traces that history then introduces the current set of papers to point out both the problems and prospects of returning to the folkloristic project.

The relationship between ‘folk’ performances and contemporary local/global sociopolitical conditions is intrinsic to the continuity of these genres. Kabigāna (or, ‘song of poets’) is one such ‘folk’ performance genre which in the first half of the twentieth century underwent a striking shift in terms of its content and presentation. Two performers, kabiẏāla Ramesh Sil in Chittagong (Bangladesh) and kabiẏāla Sheikh Gumani Dewan in Mursdhidabad (West Bengal), infused Kabigāna with messages of egalitarianism, anti-capitalism, communism and progressive thought while still retaining the ideas of religious piety. While Sheikh Gumani was well versed in Hindu mythologies and the epic traditions, Ramesh Sil was initiated into the Māijabhāndārī tarikā early in his life. The two performers were even brought face to face in the March 1945 session of the All Bengal Progressive Writers and Artistes’ Convention through a Kabigāna contest. This article explores the regional variants of Kabigāna as practised by Ramesh Sil and Sheikh Gumani in order to understand ‘folk’ performers as local actors within the larger discourse of Leftist progressive thought. By situating both these performers in the decade of the politically turbulent 1940s, I argue how a ‘people’s’ history of performances needs to be reread methodologically by taking individual voices of performers into account as they juxtaposed religious piety, egalitarianism and protest through their virtuosity.
KEYWORDS: Folk performance, virtuosity, egalitarianism, protest, IPTA

This article analyses the economics of paid-for traditional Irish music sessions in Doolin, County Clare in the Republic of Ireland. In part, it takes up Shepherd's recent call for research on the commodification of culture in tourist destinations. It is argued here that 'commodification' should be distinguished from the more general process of 'commercialization'. I suggest that commercialization is simply the build-up of commercial relationships surrounding the production of an activity or an object, while commodification, following Helgasson and Palsson, is the intensive sequestering of that production into the realm of commensurable exchange-values. This clarification has important theoretical and political implications. Theoretically, the distinction bolsters and extends the critique of the notion of 'authenticity' in tourist destinations. In turn, this legitimizes the credibility of commercialized activities if and when productive control remains primarily in the hands of the producers themselves.

This paper examines the four trips that the English folk music collector Cecil Sharp made to Appalachia (1916Appalachia ( -1918 as a case-study through which to explore the relationships between nationhood and place identity. The first parts consider background on the theoretical underpinnings of folk music collection and about Sharp's earlier work. We then investigate how Sharp and his companion Maud Karpeles initially came to collect what they felt were English folk songs, but gradually had to come to terms with Appalachia's culturally heterogeneous folk traditions. This final part draws parallels with Be´la Barto´k's approach to the Hungarian Gypsy tradition.

E: The paper compares rebellious behavior and violence described in folk lyrics of Aus- trian poacher songs and the American „Wild West“ outlaw songs. There are significant differences in the degree and in the importance of violence between these particular folk traditions. Thus, these songs help to understand emotional aspects of the state-building process which are widely neglected by merely macro-sociological accounts. In the context of the Civilizing Theory, the pa- per poses the question why in some cases the myth of the rebel-hero is based on violence like in the American outlaw songs. Other cases know the glorification of non-violent rebellious behavior as well like the Austrian poacher songs which regards violence as dishonorable. These results cause some modifications in the theories of the state-building process because emotions may play a more central role to justify or to de-stabilize power and domination.

D: Dieser Aufsatz vergleicht Rebellentum und den Stellenwert von Gewalt in österreichischen Wildererliedern und amerikanischen „Wild West“ outlaw songs. Es konnten erhebliche Unterschiede im Ausmaß und in der Bedeutung der beschriebenen Gewalt zwischen den beiden Liedtraditionen festgestellt werden. Derartige Lieder helfen damit, emotionale Aspekte von Staatsformierungsprozessen zu verstehen, die reine makrosoziologische Herangehensweisen vermissen. Gerade für die Zivilisationstheorie drängt sich die Frage auf, warummanchmal, wie im US-amerikanischen Fall, der Heldenmythos bloß auf Gewalt beruht, wohingegen er anderswo, wie bei den österreichischen Wildererliedern, auch auf Gewaltlosigkeit zurückgreift und Gewalt sogar als unehrenhaft ansieht. Die Ergebnisse der Studie regen dazu an, Theorien über Staatsformierungsprozesse zu modifizieren, da Emotionen eine zentrale Rolle für Legitimierung oder Destabilisierung von Herrschaft und Macht spielen. The paper compares rebellious behavior and violence described in folk lyrics of Austrian poacher songs and the American „WildWest“ outlaw songs. There are significant differences in the degree and in the importance of violence between these particular folk traditions. Thus, these songs help to understand emotional aspects of the state-building process which are widely neglected by merely macro-sociological accounts. In the context of the Civilizing Theory, the paper poses the question why in some cases themyth of the rebel-hero is based on violence like in the American outlaw songs. Other cases know the glorification of non-violent rebellious behavior as well like the Austrian poacher songs which regards violence as dishonorable. These results cause some modifications in the theories of the state-building process because emotions may play a more central role to justify or to de-stabilize power and domination.

Abstract Today's Swedish folk music community skews generally to the political Left, thanks largely to the 1970s countercultural folk revival. Previous to that revival, however, the concept of ‘folk music’ in Sweden had been shaped by predominantly conservative nationalist forces. Revivalists of the 1970s redefined the genre in their own terms. However, they allowed its core repertoire to remain regulated according to pre-revival standards, according to which modern international influence was anathema. As a consequence, the recently reinvigorated Swedish extreme Right has been able to stake a claim to folk music as part of its anti-immigrant agenda. In this article I analyze the ensuing debates between right- and left-wing claimants on Swedish folk music. I suggest that in failing to reinvest the cultural capital of ‘Swedish folk music’ in alternative forms during the 1970s revival when it had the opportunity, the Left has put itself at a possibly insurmountable disadvantage in those debates.

Women are not known for their political satire, but they do traditionally engage in carnival laughter. During the Soviet period women engaged in political chastushki, which combine both types of humor. These could be either subversive and underground (and could lead to arrest) or official and used for reeducation. In the post-Soviet period, elder rural women demonstrated their attunement to both of these Soviet contexts. The community quality of the chastushka form and its context, the public village forum, held out the promise of safety. Political chastushki helped women construct a social identity with a distinct public voice.

In the 1970s Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) inspired a generation with his songs on anti-materialism, finding self and peace in such classic albums as Tea for the Tillerman (1970, US 3x platinum) and Teaser and the Firecat (1971, US 3x platinum). In December 1977 he converted to Islam, gave up popular music and focussed on humanitarian and educational work, until he returned to popular music in 2006. Meanwhile, Muslims became associated in the West as intolerant and violent. Yusuf has emerged in the last decade as a voice for progressive Muslims. This article explores the continuities in his music from his Cat Stevens days to his comeback and how he has reconciled popular music and his Cat Stevens past with his understanding of Islam. The focus is on his anti-war and pro-peace songs. It argues that his earlier songs are similar in their messages of world peace through love and unity, though less dark than his post-2006 songs. Additionally, his recent songs have a new message that the world must be more inclusive to achieve world peace. This is connected to him being a Muslim in the West and his feeling of exclusion, in an age when many in the West portray all Muslims as extremists. Consequently, in his recent music he reflects his experience as a Muslim, in the same way as his earlier music reflected the counter-culture of that period. Thus he has gone back to his earlier self after adopting a progressive understanding of Islam. Not Started Completed Rejected.

This essay analyzes the role that musical representations have played in the development and expression of regionalist sentiment in Magallanes, Chile, and asserts that residents of Magallanes participated in Cold War—era politics through a distinctively local lens. By examining Magallanes' unique socio-economic development in conjunction with oral histories collected from Magallanes residents, the essay reveals that local music became a medium by which musicians and music listeners expressed regionalist sentiments that became important components of their support for socialist president Salvador Allende and their rejection of the military regime that overthrew Allende in 1973.

Esta investigación analiza el impacto que tuvieron las representaciones musicales en el desarrollo y la comunicación de sentimientos regionales en Magallanes, Chile, y revela que los ciudadanos de Magallanes participaron en la política de la época de la Guerra Fría a través de una distintiva lente local. Al analizar el desarrollo socio-económico de la región y de las historias orales de los residentes, la investigación demuestra que la música de la región se convirtió en un medio por el cual los músicos y los oyentes expresaron sentimientos regionales, que se convirtieron en componentes y apoyos importantes para el presidente socialista Salvador Allende y el rechazo a la dictadura militar que derrocó a Allende en 1973.

This paper reflects on the role of fieldwork in folklore studies and anthropology. By speculating on the fieldwork experience of Ernesto de Martino in Lucania, we consider the figure of the Gramscian Fieldworker commenting on Stephen Olbrys Gencarella’s proposal for a critical folklore studies. An imaginary de Martino, one that never existed, is seen as the precursor for such a figure, built around the scenario of the “end” as depicted by Heidegger and embodying the Gramscian proposition of the Organic Intellectual. The second part of the article grounds such a figure in the author’s ethnographic experience of London, offering an examina- tion of the current state of British multiculturalism through the case of an East London singer-songwriter. A practical example of how to interpret the fieldwork tactic pioneered by an imaginary de Martino in Lucania is presented as a way for social sciences and the humanities to overcome the predilection for text analysis of deconstructionism.

Religious music serves to co-create and carry strategies of theology, authenticity, and behavior. This article examines the history of folk music and folk ideology in creating and maintaining such strategies. I examine several prominent examples of American folk music and Pagan music, articulating their shared historical and theological relationships. Focusing on national- ism, feminism, and populism, I also argue that an ideology of the common ritual year is a prominent shared theme between American folk music and contemporary Paganism. While underscoring the need for greater attention to this area, the article concludes that the legitimization processes at work are similar to other American heritage musics and aspects of American cultural politics.

Speaking from an ethnomusicological standpoint, this paper elaborates on the use of recorded sound and audiovisual material for the purpose of documenting particular musical elements in Serbia, according to the concept of UNESCO intangible cultural heritage. There is a difference between contemporary field recordings for archival purposes, according to the ICH concept, and the employment of already recorded historical legacy. Through the example of music elements from Serbian national register of ICH, this paper will raise the questions of ethnomusicological politics of field recording and digitization of archived historical recordings, as well as analyze the politics of heritage management. Based on ethnomusicological and archival experience, the aim of this paper is to offer a model of application of sound archive for the future, which can effectively contribute to the concept of intangible cultural heritage in Serbia.

This paper introduces the subjunctive as a modality of engaging in musical life, in this instance the contemporary white folk music scene of boeremusiek in South Africa. The genre has repeatedly been portrayed as forever vanishing – a discourse that still characterises contemporary events put up by the largest boeremusiek organisation in South Africa, the Boeremusiekgilde (Boeremusiek Guild). The aim of the paper is to analyse the effects of discourses of nostalgia and salvage on participants' experiences of liveness in the present. It is shown how a deep dissatisfaction for live performance developed throughout the genre's 20th-century history. The repeated framing of present enjoyment in terms of past models of nationalist duty cast the actual actions of participants in the mode of subjunctive possibility, it is argued. As rituals of mourning, boeremusiek events bemoan personal histories fundamentally tainted by political transgression: the loss of intimate spaces of white innocence.

When people are asked about Irish folk music, their first thought usually goes to “Pub drinking songs”, or to the dancers all dressed in green that show rapid dance steps.
However, Irish music is much more: its origins, its development across the centuries and its themes show that this is a fertile field of research and an incredible source of lyrical and musical expression of the Irish population.

The coming of electricity to rural America in the interwar period seemed to offer prospects not just for economic development but also for remaking lives and for social transformation. This paper deals with the expression of such ideas from the folk music of that time, examining the representations of people and place found in 26 songs composed by the folkmusician Woody Guthriefor the Bonneville Power Administration in May 1941. After providing context about rural electrification, this paper surveys Guthrie's early career and the reasons why the Bonneville Power Administration employed him. The next sections of the paper consider Guthrie's Columbia River Song Collection, highlighting two narrative themes within them: migrants' tales and the notion of electrification as a progressive force for both regional and social transformation. The final section relates the contents of the songs to three different standpoints from which Guthrie, as narrator, shaped his songs: folklorist, radical minstrel, and social documentarist.

In the Hungarian folk revival, Hungarian Roma (Gypsies) serve as both privileged informants and exotic Others. The musicians of the revival known as the táncház (dance-house) movement rely heavily on rural Rom musicians, especially those from Transylvania, as authentic sources of traditional Hungarian repertoire and style. Táncház rhetoric centres on the trope of localized authenticity; but the authority wielded by rural Rom musicians, who carry music both between villages and around the world, complicates the fixed boundaries that various powerful stakeholders would place on the tradition. Drawing on media sources and on fieldwork in Hungary and Romania, I examine how authenticity and ‘Gypsiness’ are presented and controlled by the scholars, musicians, and administrators who lead the táncház movement, in particular in the context of camps and workshops dedicated to Hungarian folk music and dance. Organizers often erect clear boundaries of status, genre, and gender roles through such events, which, among other things, address the anxiety raised by Rom musicians’ power in liminal spaces. In addition, I look at how Rom musicians both negotiate with the táncház’s aesthetic of authenticity and challenge it musically. Finally, I discuss how musicians and the crowds that gather to hear and dance to their music together create a carnival atmosphere, breaking down some of the boundaries that organizers work so hard to create. Throughout, I demonstrate that liminality is an extraordinarily pertinent lens through which to view Roma participation in the Hungarian folk music scene.

In this article, musical instruments of the Kazakh Turks and the places where they were performed and the rituals performed were examined. In the tradition of Kazakhs, the places of battle of words of the folk poets, their differences in performing their works, and the melodic words they have spoken are also examined. Kazakhs’ kuys are also a form of melody commonly used in musical performance environments. In the Kazakh Turks, it was explained how the dance of the black jorga was performed and which stage features it had. Music is a society's soul. This melodic soul has many other characteristics of people in their words and melodies like emotion, thought and cultural life. These reflections are also seen in the musical scene examples of the Kazakhs. Cultural, political, economic, people's current feelings and thoughts are expressed with their own tune in their love songs. In the stage performances, national dance figures are displayed and music is performed. These notations present the common cultural values of the people through musical melodies and dance performances. Thus, it seems that the music is one of the important steps in music development and improvement of the community.

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O presente artigo analisa o disco We Shall Overcome. Songs of the "Freedom Riders" and the "Sit-ins", gravado em fevereiro de 1961 pela gravadora Folkways, na cidade de Nova Iorque. Com doze canções, sendo sete no lado A e cinco no lado B, interpretadas pelos grupos The Montgomery Gospel Trio e The Nashville Quartet e pelo cantor Guy Carawan, o disco apresenta uma parte do repertório utilizado durante os eventos relacionados ao movimento pelos direitos civis nos Estados Unidos. Nosso objetivo é compreender de que maneira distintas tradições culturais foram mobilizadas e reformuladas a fim de atenderem as demandas do movimento. Por meio da difusão de canções em diferentes suportes, como livros e discos, diversos artistas e mediadores contribuíram para a consolidação e legitimação de um cânon de canções, parte de uma determinada tradição cultural, que foi mobilizado em prol do mais influente movimento social do país.

Modern Baltic Paganism grew out of nineteenth-and twentieth-century folklore research into the folk music, folklore and traditional ethnic cultures of Latvia and Lithuania. Research into native Latvian daina and Lithuanian daino folk songs with their rustic beauty, symbolic richness, and intriguing linkages to ancient Indo-European cultures and religions generated a new sense of pride and ethnic identity among Latvians and Lithuanians. Spiritually inclined folklorists developed religious movements that recreated rituals and beliefs linked to the dainas and dainos. Repressed during Soviet times, these movements have reemerged and flourished in the post-Soviet period. There can be no doubt that music, which over the centuries has played such a crucial role in the transmission of Latvian and Lithuanian folk traditions including native Pagan religions, will remain front and center in the continuing evolution of modern Baltic Pagan religions in Latvia and Lithuania and beyond.

Although linguistic and musical rhythm have been widely studied by linguists and musicologists alike, there is still a scarcity of quantitative studies that would examine the extent of the relationship between those two domains. A study by Patel et al. (2006) suggests that some characteristic features of a culture’s language are reflected in its instrumental music. The method applied in the study used the normalised pairwise variability index (nPVI), a measure of temporal patterning in speech, introduced by Low (1998) and used primarily for comparing stress­timed and syllable­timed languages (Grabe and Low 2002). By comparing the variability of vocalic duration in recorded speech with nPVI values computed from music notation, Patel et al. concluded that the language rhythm of English and French is mirrored in the music of corresponding English and French classical composers of the 19th c.

Although this interdisciplinary approach has been investigated in recent studies (e.g. McGowan and Levitt 2011), it still brings more questions than answers. Firstly, it is difficult to ascertain whether the method can be applicable to all musical forms, as classical music from the 19th c., a period identified as the age of musical nationalism, limits the scope of the studies. Secondly, relying solely on musical notation means omitting recorded live performances that might carry different rhythmic information. Finally, while English and French represent a stressed­time and a syllable­timed language respectively, the differences found in the study by Patel et al. might not be so evident for other languages or dialects.

The aim of this study is to attest the method used in Patel et al. (2006) by examining a different set of data, focusing on English and Polish rhythm in speech and music. The speech corpus consisted of 20 English and Polish recorded sentences. The music corpus was divided into two categories and consisted of recordings of live performances and musical notation: (1) the classical music category comprised of a selection of 19th c. themes of English and Polish composers (e.g. Elgar’s and Chopin’s), while (2) the folk music category comprised of a set of traditional English and Polish folk songs (Luboff and Stracke 1969). It can be predicted that there will be a similar discrepancy between the nPVI values for Polish and English language and musical rhythm as in the study by Patel et al.. However, the interrelationship between those results is difficult to foresee and might vary from the original experiment. The outcomes of this study will hopefully shed more light on the relationship between language rhythm and musical rhythm and open new paths for future interdisciplinary studies.

Silenced Voices: A Reactionary Streamlined Henry V in The Hollow Crown Perhaps no other play in Shakespeare's oeuvre has been so misunderstood and bowdlerized as Henry V. It is nevertheless one of the most popular of Shakespeare's plays and has been made into several well-known films. The film versions, however, have seen the play streamlined, with the removal or shortening of so-called episodes or "throw-away" scenes with a consequent misrepresentation of the issues of war, patriotism and nationalism. In addition, the minor characters, so key to reaching an understanding of the play in my reading of the work, are often silenced or neglected. I would like to argue that those elements, repeatedly cut from the film versions, actually provide possible alternative readings of the play which turn it from a flag-waving jingoistic celebration of Britain's superiority over France into a profound critique of honour, nationalism and religion used to justify military aggression. I would like to use the latest film version, the final segment from the four-part, critically acclaimed The Hollow Crown series, directed by Thea Sharrock in 2012 as a study in point. Although visually spectacular and brilliantly acted, the film once again butchers the play and thereby neglects much of the subversive details and characters. There are three previous film renderings of the play worthy of note. The first was Laurence Olivier's version from 1944 which he both directed and starred in. The film was unashamedly created as war propaganda and even dedicated to British soldiers fighting in World War II. Deborah Cartmell (96) summarizes the approach succinctly, "Laurence Olivier eliminates half of the play's lines (most notably, episodes which cast doubt on Henry's motives and heroism) and produces the unity which critics had found missing."

Available at http://www.asianetworkexchange.org/articles/10.16995/ane.131/

This paper describes how to teach Zen’s famous Ten Oxherding Pictures through Leonard Cohen’s song “Ballad of the Absent Mare.” It also explains how instructors can contextualize these pictures within the history of Buddhist visual culture and thereby frame Cohen’s adoption of them as a cowboy ballad motif. The essay begins by describing the metaphor of the ox. It then reviews three theories about the origin of the pictures, contextualizing them within the history of Buddhist visual culture. Finally, it provides a PowerPoint presentation that connects each of the Ten Oxherding Pictures to verses of Cohen’s song and offers comments for instructors’ use in class.

"The oldest records indicate that the performance of poetry in Gaelic Ireland was normally accompanied by music, providing a point of continuity with past tradition while bolstering a sense of community in the present. Music would also offer, particularly for poets writing in English from the eighteenth century onwards, a perceived authenticity, a connection with an older tradition perceived as being untarnished by linguistic and cultural division.

While providing an innovative analysis of theoretical work in music and literary studies, this book examines how traditional Irish music, including the related song tradition (primarily in Irish), has influenced, and is apparent in, the work of Irish poets. While looking generally at where this influence is evident historically and in contemporary Irish poetry, this work focuses primarily on the work of six poets, three who write in English and three who write primarily in the Irish language: Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Cathal Ó Searcaigh."

During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, 'lo-fi,' a term suggesting poor sound quality, the opposite of 'hi-fi,' became a characteristic perceived in certain popular-music recordings and eventually emerged as a category within independent or 'indie' popular music. It is typically taken to express the technical and technological deficiencies associated with amateur or 'DIY' musical production, namely at home using cheap recording equipment. However, this thesis rejects the assumption that lo-fi equates to a mode of production and charts it as a construction and a certain aesthetics within popular music discourse, defined as 'a positive appreciation of what are perceived and/or considered normatively interpreted as imperfections in a recording.' I chart the development and manifestation of lo-fi aesthetics, and the ways it focuses on various 'lo-fi effects' such as noise, distortion ('phonographic imperfections') and performance imperfections, in several decades of newspapers, magazines and websites covering popular music in the English-speaking world.
I argue that lo-fi aesthetics is not merely the unmediated, realist authenticity that it is often claimed to be, but one that is also fascinated with the distance from perceived commercial norms of technique and technology (or 'technocracy') that lo-fi effects signify. Lo-fi aesthetics derives from aesthetics of primitivism and realism that extend back long before phonographic imperfections were positively received. I also differentiate between lo-fi aesthetics and aesthetics of noise music, distortion in rock, glitch, punk and cassette culture. An appreciation for recording imperfections and the development of 'lo-fi' as a construction and a category is charted since the 1950s and particularly in the 1980s, 1990s and in the twenty-first century, taking in the reception of artists such as the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Hasil Adkins, the Shaggs, Jandek, Daniel Johnston, Beat Happening, Pavement, Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, Beck, Will Oldham, Ariel Pink and Willis Earl Beal.

It is well known that the pitch of the voice tends to decline over the course of a spoken utterance. showed that there is also a tendency for the pitch range of spoken utterances to shrink as the pitch of the voice declines. Motivated by this work, two studies are reported that test for the existence of "late phrase compression" in music where the interval size tends to decline toward the end of a phrase. A study of 39,863 phrases from notated Germanic folksongs shows the predicted decline in interval size. However, a second study of 10,985 phrases from Chinese folksongs shows a reverse relationship. In fact, the interval behaviors in Chinese and Germanic folksongs provide marked contrasts: Chinese phrases are dominated by relatively large intervals, but begin with small intervals and end with medium-small intervals. Germanic phrases are dominated by relatively medium intervals, but begin with large intervals and end with small intervals. In short, late phrase interval compression is not evident cross-culturally.

It is hard to describe in words both how kulning sounds and how you do it. The starting point for the vocal technique is that you want to be heard and to communicate outdoors with the help of the voice. As it has mainly been women who have traditionally worked on the fäbod (summer grazing pasture with small buildings for people, pets, dairy products, and animal feed), the use of the voice has also evolved according to the strengths and limitations of the female voice.
Technically speaking, you can say that the voice produces a clear, directed sound, without vibrato, both at a high pitch range using a vowel of choice, and when calling, using the voice’s breaking point to change register. The larynx is flexible and relatively high, and there is high sub-glottal pressure under the vocal folds.

This thesis investigates the interaction between perceived rhythm and underlying reference structures in the experience of rhythm in music. The point of departure is that both music performers’ and perceivers’ body motions are relevant to the study of rhythm. Accordingly, in music genres with an intimate relationship to dance, here referred to as music–dance, rhythm needs to be understood in relation to the corresponding dance. The studies included in this thesis investigate rhythm patterns in sound and body motion in two music–dance styles, Brazilian samba and Norwegian telespringar, based on motion capture and sound recordings of professional musicians and dancers.
Both samba and telespringar consist of complex rhythm patterns. Samba is often characterized by so-called systematic microtiming at the sixteenth-note level. This was confirmed in our sound analysis of the samba groove, showing a medium–medium–medium–long duration pattern at the sixteenth-note level. In addition, motion analysis of the percussionist’s heel tapping and the dancer’s steps revealed motion patterns in synchrony with this rhythm pattern.
Telespringar, on the other hand, is often described as featuring a so-called asymmetrical triple meter—that is, the three beats in a measure are of uneven duration. According to previous studies, both the fiddler’s foot stamping and the dancers’ vertical body motions are related to this underlying meter. This relation was confirmed in the motion analysis of a fiddler’s foot stamping, which revealed a very stable long–medium–short duration pattern at the beat level. The dancers’ vertical motion patterns, however, deviated from theories suggesting that the turning points in the dancers’ vertical motion curves correspond to the meter. The thesis therefore suggests an alternative interpretation with regard to the dancers’ vertical motion curves—that it is the shape of the dancers’ vertical motion that corresponds to the underlying beat duration, rather than the turning points that correspond to the underlying beat positions.
The main conclusion is that the underlying sixteenth-note level in samba and the underlying beat level in telespringar should not be understood as deviations from an isochronous pulse of some sort. Instead, they should be understood as inherently (and necessarily) non-isochronous, in and of themselves.

Over the past three decades, klezmer music has undergone a revival and a radical transformation from virtual obscurity to a staple in the European American world music scene. Although the fusion of instrumental and vocal genres under a single musical umbrella is a significant marker of change between the Old World and revived klezmer repertories, the extension of the boundaries of the klezmer repertory to encompass vocal material has largely been overlooked by practitioners and scholars. This article reinstates song in the narrative of the klezmer revival, exploring how and why it has assumed its prominent position. In case studies of three ensembles, song gives insight into the sensibilities of individual musicians and offers a prism through which to consider contemporary klezmer as both an American Jewish heritage music and a world music genre. Reinstating song into the discussion of contemporary klezmer provides a more nuanced account of the global klezmer phenomenon. xxx

According to the conventionally held view, the strathspey or 'strathspey reel' was an eighteenth century innovation instigated by fiddlers of the Speyside region, such as the Browns of Kincardine and the Cummings of Grantown. However, the basic rhythmic characteristics inherent to the strathspey - a series of long and short notes, organised within two or four strong beats per bar - are found in Gaelic songs thought to be much older. Using a range of data from early fiddle collections and transcriptions of twentieth century audio recordings, this paper explores the musical and semantic connections between the strathspey and Gaelic song, suggesting an alternative developmental path for Scotland's national music.

This article explores how and why a particular vision of folk song became widely popular during the early twentieth century. Focusing on Cecil J. Sharp, I show that despite severe criticism from contemporaries his beliefs won out as the dominant paradigm for the understanding of folk music. Interrogating the politics of his theorizing, moreover, I draw out the hitherto neglected imbrications between folk revivalism and fascist ideology. Seen as dialectical tools capable of reforming citizens through the expressive contours of their racial birthright, I argue, collected songs and dances were repurposed in the service of forging a national socialist consciousness.

This chapter pays particular attention to the place of song introductions as an integral feature of public performance. Locating this analysis within the subculture of contemporary folk music, I demonstrate how song introductions can accomplish six important things: (1) provide an interpretive frame for understanding a performance, (2) cast performances in emotive terms, (3) situate performances in the larger context of marketing and sales, (4) contribute to moral entrepreneurial agendas, (5) align the performer's actions, and (6) offer a venue for making disclaimers. By demonstrating how performers accomplish these things, I locate song introductions within the larger context of situating public performances more generally.

Ciaran Carson has established a reputation as one of Ireland's most important poetic voices. However, Carson is also an accomplished musician whose work reflects the liminal borderland that has always existed between Irish music and Irish literature. Music is a prominent theme throughout Carson's work with songs and musical allusions frequently a feature of his poems. While music has influenced Carson's work thematically, it has played a formative role in one of the most distinctive features of his poetry until recently - that is his use of the long line. This paper argues that it is even possible in some of his poems to find comparable metres with those found in forms of traditional Irish music. Carson's use of the long line is part of his attempt to recreate what he has called the urgency of traditional Irish music in his work through an audience-aware poetic that attempts to recreate the immediacy of the live sessions Carson has partaken of as a musician. For Carson, the crucial moments of communication and understanding are those shared between the performer and the audience, an audience that can sometimes include fellow performers. However, this conviction is reflected in understandings of musical events one finds in ethnomusicology, an audience-orientated approach increasingly shared by literary theorists.