Describes the social organization of the singing group. Two basic elements of group organization are considered: 1) the prominence of solo or leader part; 2) the type of group organization involved.
Read the Coding Guide for this Line. Listen to each example at least twice. Once you have listened to all the examples, take the Test which follows.
N.W. Europe, S.W. England. An early, tragic form of the folk lyric, “Tavern in the Town,” sung in a N. European performance mode: solo, strophic, and text-laden. Female singer. (Lomax #34, B21) N. America, Southeast U.S. Virginia Mountain courting duet in the form of a débat, a genre of European Medieval origin still heard in 21st-century Europe. Male and female solos with guitar. (Lomax #16, B10) N. America, Southwest U.S. Pueblo, Taos. Social unison is found nearly everywhere but is most frequent in the singing of small, relatively egalitarian indigenous societies in the Americas and Oceania. Male group. (Rhodes #3, A2) S. America, Interior Amazonia. Asháninka. The murmur of independent, individualized parts in this tsantsa (head-shrinking) ritual echoes the rather diffuse, individualistic character of Jivaro society. Female group. (Luzuy, A4) N.W. Europe, Scotland, Hebrides. A waulking (tweed-working) song, performed in alternation between leader and group. Female solo with mixed group. (Lomax #33, B1) C. Europe, Asturias. The danza prima is an example of an ancient, danced form of the ballad in which the dance set the rhythm of the song and prosody of the text. In this Asturian village, men would join hands and in a slow circle dance through the streets while the women sang through the long narrative songs, often of valorous deeds in the Moorish wars. Female leader with mixed group. (Lomax, #24, A6) Caribbean, N. Caribbean. Andros Islanders overlap and interweave parts in a ballad about the loss of the vessel Pretoria in a hurricane. Overlapping of parts is a leading trait of speaking and singing in sub-Saharan Africa. Mixed group and male group. (Charters, B3) W. Asia, Caucasus, Dagestan. A practiced female and male choir perform in the overlapping harmonized tradition of this mountain valley refuge of early civilization. C. Africa, Equatorial Rainforest, Mbuti. The relatively egalitarian, gender-balanced society of the Ituri forest dwellers, the Mbuti hunter-gatherers may represent continuity with one of the earliest human social systems. The Mbuti organize their group singing as a tightly built weave of brief interlocking parts. (Turnbull & Chapman) C. Asia, Kazakhstan. From this ancient pastoral empire comes a song in the bardic tradition of Central Asia and the old civilizations. It is text-laden, precise, ornamented, and strophic, with a tense delivery. Male solo with lute accompaniment. (Former U.S.S.R. #7, 1) S. Europe, Sicily. In Trapani, whose saltworks were manned by slaves in Roman times, salt porters continued an ancient tradition of rhyming about the number of bags they carried. They sing in free rhythm in a wordy, precise, loud, forceful, narrow-voiced, raspy, nasal style. (Lomax #29, B1) E. Europe, Central Russia. A Molokan Sunday school chorus sings a Protestant hymn in the manner of Middle European chorales. It is both explicit and very cohesive—wide-voiced and harmonized and with significant vocal blend. (Pushkarow, A6) E. Asia, Japan. Recorded during a bear totem ceremony of the Paleo-Siberian Ainu, who are a nearly leaderless, unstratified, non-solidary, hunting and fishing culture. A mixed group engages in an individualized, rhythmically free, repetitive, softened, raspy performance, with much glottal ornament and tremolo. (Kondo) N. America, E. Canada. French Canada. Farm girls from a centralized, stratified, non-complementary, non-solidary, mixed farming economy. They sing unaccompanied in the wordy, precise, intermittently raspy and nasal, strophic, metrically regular, and individualized unison style of Western Europe. (Barbeau, B2) E. Europe, Russia. The State Siberian Russian Folk Choir sings an arranged peasant song. This wide-voiced, metrically regular, highly unified polyphonic style—at the same time strophic, wordy, precise, and forceful—is found in the formerly communal agricultural villages of Eastern Europe. (Former U.S.S.R. #5, B1) W. Africa, Senegal. The Wolof, who practice cattle herding and hoe agriculture, sing a West Sudanese praise song in litany form with repeated text, moderately precise enunciation, and some free rhythm and rasp. This type of Sudanese singing is rather individualized and often polyphonic. (Nikiprowetzky #1, A7) Bulgaria, Rhodope. A chain dance involving an entire village is accompanied by a regional variation of the Eastern European chorus: litany in regular meter and highly unified polyphony, with wide intervals, precise enunciation, and some repetition. (Raim & Koenig, B2) C. African, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central Sudanic, Mbuti. Among the Mbuti, men, women, and children behave as equals. This ethos is reflected in the way they organize participation in song and speech, where all parts tend to be equal and brief, inviting maximal inclusion. Mixed group.Which form of Social Organization of the Vocal Group is recorded here?
For each example below, choose the feature that best fits from the following scale.
No singers
Solo
One soloist after another
Social unison
Diffuse/individualized
Simple alternation: leader-group
Simple alternation: group-group
Overlapping alternation: leader-group
Overlapping alternation: group-group
Interlock
Consult the Coding Guide as needed. Note your answers in order to check them against the answer key.
S.E. Europe, Bulgaria, Sofia. This koledo, a type of ancient carolling processional, is performed by a sextet of trained singers whose use of diatonic harmony is probably a 20th-century innovation. Mixed group. (Lloyd #1, B33) Reveal Answer E. Africa, Zambia, Central Bantu. The Nsenga perform a dance song. They are cattle herders and maize planters from a moderately centralized, stratified, gender-balanced society. Female lead and mixed group with drums. (Blacking & Apthorpe, B2) Reveal Answer E. Asia, Japan, Naha-shi, Okinawa. The easternmost representative of the ancient civilizations, with their pattern of irrigation, cities, centralized government, and subordination of women. Two female singers with shamisen (three-stringed lute). (Masu, B15) Reveal AnswerW. Africa, Liberia. The Kpelle are complementary, modestly stratified, cereal agriculturists. The song is for cutting brush, and displays hunter-gatherer influence. (Okie, A2) Reveal Answer Yolngu, Australia, N. Arnhem Land. The Yolngu lived in small, nomadic bands of gatherers held together by the elder male clan heads, whose authority was channeled through elaborate rituals such as this one summoning the souls of departed heroes. Male solo with sticks. (Elkin #1, B6) Reveal AnswerS. America, Interior Amazonia. Asháninka. Iawa are a small, semi-nomadic, diffuse, basically egalitarian, non-solidary, complementary fishing and gardening people. A mixed group sings about fishing magic. (Flornoy, A3) Reveal AnswerE. Africa, Kenya, Nilotes. The Luo are cattle herders and agriculturalists living in small villages. Here the singer likens the chief to a rock in a lake that stops the fish from passing, thus feeding his people. Male solo with mixed group and stamping with leg bells. (Tracey #2, (TR-167), B7) Reveal AnswerOceania, Polynesia. Cook Islanders live by horticulture and ocean fishing. Their cohesive, somewhat stratified, gender-balanced culture is reflected in the integrated performances of choreographed song-dances, which they sing with forceful, wide voices. Male group and female group. (Beckett) Reveal Answer S.E. Europe, Balkans. Montenegro was a land of mountain herders and small farmers living on the edge of empire. Although stratified, their society is basically cohesive and complementary at the local level. In this dance song, village girls challenge the young men to seize them. Male group and female group. (Kennedy #1, A22) Reveal Answer W. Europe, Spain, Castile. The individualistic wheat farmers and shepherds of Spain created innumerable ballads. This is an embellished rendition of an old romance (ballad) about a daughter of the emperor of Rome. Male and female solos. (Lomax #25, B9) Reveal Answer S. Asia, India, Benares. A Hindi religious folk song about Krishna and his love for the milkmaid Radha, sung by an Indian male village chorus. (Danielou #2, A2) Reveal Answer S. Africa. A Shona Karanga boy singing to his mbira, a handheld idiophone made of tuned iron strips and plucked with both thumbs. The Shona were originally agriculturalists and kept cattle. Their nation numbers over nine million. (Tracey 1951) Reveal Answer S. Europe, Sardinia, N. Sardinia. The shepherds of the mountainous Barbagia region preserve traces of antique culture, including a unique variety of overtone singing called su tenore in which a rhythmic baaing is sounded by the chorus. Male solo with male group. (Nataletti 1951) Reveal Answer C. Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Bantu. The Topoke of North Congo Basin are a modestly centralized, complementary tribe of forest gardeners. A group of women perform the mourning rites for the dead, each voicing her lament. (Camps, B3) Reveal Answer S. Europe, N.E. Italy. Friuli. On the foothills of the Italian Alps one finds a choral tradition like those in Austria and the Tyrol. A group of villagers improvises one of a string of brief melodies called villanelle, in the melodic and harmonic modes that underpin European classical music. (Lomax & Carpitella, field record) Reveal Answer E. Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Bantu. A Topoke song celebrating a young mother’s return to the community from the isolation hut in which her baby has been born. Female group. (Camps, A4) Reveal Answer W. Asia, Caucasus. Georgia. Until recently, the mountain-locked Caucasus retained many of its oldest musical traditions, including canonic, contrapuntal polyphony with a yodeled leader’s part—another example of an ancient style still found among African hunter-gatherers. (Former U.S.S.R. #1, C1) Reveal Answer E. Africa, Kenya, Highland Bantu. A group of Meru villagers, mountain herders and agriculturalists who are organized into small chiefdoms, perform a dance song about a cattle raid. Male solo, with female group and male group. (Tracey #2 (TR 153), A6) Reveal AnswerLine 1 Test Answers: 1) Social unison. 2) Overlapping alternation: leader-group. 3) One soloist after another. 4) Interlock. 5) Solo. 6) Diffuse/individualized. 7) Simple alternation: leader-group. 8) Overlapping alternation: group-group. 9) Simple alternation: group-group. 10) One soloist after another. 11) Simple alternation: leader-group. 12) Solo. 13) Overlapping alternation: leader-group. 14) Diffuse/individualized. 15) Social unison. 16) Simple alternation: group-group. 17) Interlock. 18) Overlapping alternation: group-group.