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The UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive Report (a.k.a. "the EAR") is an informal discussion of ethnomusicology and archives at UCLA and beyond. It is issued four times a year, in the Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer quarters. Contributions from readers are welcome and should be sent to the Editor, John Vallier: archive@arts.ucla.edu - Copyright Regents UC, 2006. |
Volume 6, Number 1 - Fall 2005
Table of Contents
Archive Hours for Winter 2006
From January 9, 2006, through March 24, 2006, the Archive will be open Monday through Friday, 10 AM to 4 PM. If you can't make it to the Archive during one of these times, drop us a line at archive@arts.ucla.edu to schedule an appointment.
Radio Show: Call for Participation
Our Archive radio show, "Sounds from the Vaults of the Ethnomusicology Archive" will air--as it did last quarter--on Thursdays from 10 AM to 12 PM. If you want to pitch an idea for the show drop us a line at archive "at" arts.ucla.edu. We are always looking to promote student talent. Perhaps you are an ethnomusicology student who wants to promote your band. Maybe you are back from a research trip, or possibly you are interested in getting acquainted with what it takes to DJ. Whatever it is, we want to hear from you.
A bit about the show: we spin tunes pulled from the Archive's tens-of-thousands of recordings. Sounds range from traditional rabab music of Afghanistan to hyper-glossy Japanese pop. You can "tune in" to the streaming show by 1) going to http://www.uclaradio.com/, 2) clicking "Listen Now!", and 3) choosing your preferred media player (usually Windows Media for PC and Quicktime for Mac).
In Focus: Robert Brown Collection
Robert Brown (1927-2005) received his doctorate in ethnomusicology from UCLA in 1965. Brown was the founder of the world music/ethnomusicology program at Wesleyan University where he worked from 1961 to 1971. He was a Professor of Music at San Diego State University from 1979 until his retirement in 1992. Brown was also the President of the Center for World Music and owner of Flower Mountain, a center for traditional Balinese performing arts in Payangan, Bali.
The Robert Brown Collection (Call number 1964.01) contains materials relating to his dissertation, "The Mrdanga: A Study of Drumming in South India" (1965). The Collection, which was digitized as part of an NEH grant in 1999, consists of some 200 reel to reel tapes and supporting documentation of mrdanga (mridangam) lessons and solos, Kandyan drumming, Khyal sung by Nasir Hussein Khan, Shanai performed by Bismillah Khan, Folk songs from Maharajah College in Mysore, Jente varese in Raga Mayamalava goula and Tala Adi, Classical Tamil poetry, and much, much more. A finding aid for the collection can found here.
Below is the abstract of Robert Brown’s dissertation:
The mrdanga, a barrel-shaped drum, with two opposite heads, is used for solo playing and as the main instrument of accompaniment in the art music of South India. In diversity of sound and refinement of technique it is one of the most highly developed drums in the world of music. The India tala system is the most elaborate and comprehensive structural organization of rhythm that has been evolved, and the drum performs within the framework of the metrical cycles of the various talas. Four talas, eight, seven, five and three counts in length, are the most important in present-day South Indian, or Carnatic, music, and a musician who can perform in all four of them can transfer his rhythmic patters to others talas by a process of permutation and combination. The study is an analysis of instrumental technique based on 152 beginning lessons in the four main talas.
The mrdanga has composite heads of three layers at each end. Some of the layers have a circular portion removed from the center through which tuning paste may be applied to one of the skins. Because of its construction, the drum can produce a clear musical pitch and a variety of different timbres through the manipulation of the palms and fingers of both hands. The relationship of the twelve main strokes used in the lessons, and the twenty-nine solkattus, or spoken drum syllables, that may symbolize the sounds that they produce are analyzed, along with their organization in phrase patterns of varying length and construction.
The drummer’s musical vocabulary consists of certain sounds that are used in a more independent or isolated way than others, but mainly of short phrases in great variety that can be combined in different ways to form larger formal structures. The performer mentally categorizes the phrases according to germinal source patterns. Cadential forms are an important classification, in the two main types, mora and korvai.
By means of an oral tradition, a mrdanga player learns a large stock of structural patterns of different types, as well as the method of their creation. He is thereby prepared for his role as soloist and accompanist in the tradition of continuous improvisation that is the essence of mrdanga performance technique. |
Archive Recording Review
In this installment of the EAR you will find a review by Dr. Sam Parnes (PhD Ethnomusicology, UCLA). If you are interested in reviewing Archive recordings for the EAR please contact us for more information.
Title: Music! 100 recordings, 100 years of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, 1900-2000. Published/distributed: Mainz, Germany : Wergo, p2000. Publisher number: SM 1701 2 Wergo. SM 1702 2 Wergo. SM 1703 2 Wergo. SM 1704 2 Wergo. Physical description: 4 sound discs : digital ; 4 3/4 in. Call Number: ARCD 617-620.
CD 2: Monophonic Tape Recordings 1951-74
This compact disc consists of seven selections from Asia, three from Oceania, ten from Africa, two from South America, and six from Europe. One vocal trio, five vocal duets, twelve solos, half of which are instrumental, and nine ensembles are the recording’s contents. Of the ensembles, three are instrumental, one mixed, and the others vocal. Three of the vocal ensembles have instrumental accompaniment, while three vocal solos are accompanied, in every case by chordophones. While playing a flute, a Northwest Chinese Uigur performer from time to time sang a drone. There should have been some selections from North America, and some ensemble pieces from Asia.
The twenty-five collectors are comprised of nine ethnologists, ten ethnomusicologists, five musicologists, two composers, two historians, two undetermined, and one physician, sociologist, and jazz musician. The contributions of practically all of them are in the German language, but Habib Touma, an Israeli composer and ethnomusicologist, collected ud music from his native Nazareth. The notes for the CD consist of essays, including contributions, either written or translated into English, by twelve of the collectors. The informants were mostly commoners, but the Zulu princess composer Magogo kaDinuzulu accompanied her singing with a large musical bow. The mayor of Rugovo, Kosovo, and two members of his family sang a historical song.
Noteworthy is an initiation song/dance, and two instrumental solos. The ethnologist Gerd Koch was the first individual to record music from the Santa Cruz archipelago in Melanesia, when in 1967 he collected the initiation chorus. His essay describes three instruments played by the hands, and a kettledrum strapped over the back and played by the foot–very unique! He was not clear what the handheld instruments were, but they sound like shell rattles. The Uigurs, a Turkic people, rendered two instrumental solos: the flute piece already referred to, and the other for an instrument bearing two strings. Dieter Christensen and Kurt Reinhard collected this music from migrants in a labor camp in Istanbul in 1955. Previously the music was practically never performed outside their native China.
Some music or traditions died out or were modified since they were collected. In Japan, the guild of blind women, known as goze, generally sang epics and accompanied themselves on the shamisen. In 1964, Eta Harich-Schneider recorded Sugimoto Kikue, who the government declared a national treasure. The last goze retired in 1977. I previously mentioned the cylinder of a Yangzi boatsong, a repertoire that died out with the coming of motorcraft. In Uganda, motors replaced manpower in Lake Victoria in the 1950s. In 1970, some of the male singers still recalled the repertoire. The example in question consisted of a leader and a eight-member chorus. The other example from the same fieldtrip to Uganda came from a ritual rendered in order to neutralize newborn twins, considered potentially dangerous. Shunned by Catholics and beyond the financial means of most individuals, this tradition died out in the 1950s. The duduk flute, still common in Central Asia, was by 1956 becoming increasingly rare in Turkey. A wind band performs a zweifacher, a Bavarian dance with alternating duple and triple meters. An older instrumentation seldom used today, including C and F clarinets, is heard in this CD.
By this period under consideration, the recordings were of excellent quality, but four of the twenty-eight selections were slightly flawed. Wind marred a small part of the Santa Cruz Island initiation dance. The collector Gerd Koch tried, but failed, to match the sound recording with a silent film. Overmodulation plagued sections of the Southern Ethiopian hunting songs. The ethnologists Meinhard Schuster and Otto Zerries recorded Venezuelan Waika Indians with a wire tape machine that was more suited for speech than for music. Their entire repertoire falls between speech and song.
Reviewed by Dr. Sam Parnes
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