Songs of the Empty Place


Book Description

For 31 months between 1979 and 1995, James F. Weiner conducted anthropological research amongst the Foi people in Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. This book contains the transcriptions, translations, and descriptions of the songs he recorded. The texts of women’s sago songs (obedobora), men’s ceremonial songs (sorohabora), and women’s sorohabora are included. Men turn the prosaic content of womenís sago songs into their ownsorohabora songs, which are performed the night following large-scale inter-community pig kills, called dawa. While women sing sago songs by themselves, men sing their ceremonial songs in groups of paired men. Women also have their own ceremonial versions of such songs. The songs are memorial in intent; they are designed to commemorate the lives of men who are no longer living. Most commonly they do so by naming the places the deceased inhabited during his lifetime. These song texts and translations are introduced by Weiner. Ethnomusicologist Don Niles then brings together information about each type of song and considers these Foi genres in relation to those of neighbouring groups, highlighting aspects of regional performance styles. Consideration is also given to the poetic devices used in Papua New Guinea songs. Eighteen recordings illustrating the Foi genres discussed in this book are available for download. It remains uncertain how such songs may be affected by the major oil extraction project that has been undertaken in the region for more than two decades. This book will interest students of anthropology, ethnomusicology, linguistics, verbal art, aesthetics, and cultural heritage.




The Lexical Typology of Semantic Shifts


Book Description

The volume focuses on semantic shifts and motivation patterns in the lexicon. Its key feature is its lexico-typological orientation, i.e. a heavy emphasis on systematic cross-linguistic comparison. The book presents current theoretical and methodological trends in the study of semantic shifts and motivational patters based on an abundance of empirical findings across genetically, areally and typologically diverse languages.







BLL


Book Description




The Papuan Languages of New Guinea


Book Description

This introduction to the descriptive and historical linguistics of the Papuan languages of New Guinea provide an accessible account of one of the richest and most diverse linguistic situations in the world. The Papuan languages number over 700 (or 20 per cent of the world's total) in more than sixty language families. Less than a quarter of the individual languages have yet been adequately documented, and in this sense William Foley's book might be considered premature. However, in the search for language universals and generalisations in linguistic typology, it would be foolhardy to neglect the information that is available. In this respect alone, the present volume, systematically organised on mainly typology principles, is particularly timely and useful. In addition, the processes of linguistic diffusion are present in New Guinea to an extent probably paralleled elsewhere on the globe. The Papuan Languages of New Guinea will be of interest not only to general and comparative linguists and to typologists, but also to sociolinguists and anthropologists for the information it provides on the social dynamics of language content.




Ciné Ethnography


Book Description

One of the most influential figures in documentary and ethnographic filmmaking, Jean Rouch has made more than one hundred films in West Africa and France. In such acclaimed works as Jaguar, The Lion Hunters, and Cocorico, Monsieur Poulet, Rouch has explored racism, colonialism, African modernity, religious ritual, and music. He pioneered numerous film techniques and technologies, and in the process inspired generations of filmmakers, from New Wave directors, who emulated his cinema verite style, to today's documentarians. Cine-Ethnography is a long-overdue English-language resource that collects Rouch's key writings, interviews, and other materials that distill his thinking on filmmaking, ethnography, and his own career. Editor Steven Feld opens with a concise overview of Rouch's career, highlighting the themes found throughout his work. In the four essays that follow, Rouch discusses the ethnographic film as a genre, the history of African cinema, his experiences of filmmaking among the Songhay, and the intertwined histories of French colonialism, anthropology, and cinema. And in four interviews, Rouch thoughtfully reflects on each of his films, as well as his artistic, intellectual, and political concerns. Cine-Ethnography also contains an annotated transcript of Chronicle of a Summer--one of Rouch's most important works--along with commentary by the filmmakers, and concludes with a complete, annotated filmography and a bibliography. The most thorough resource on Rouch available in any language, Cine-Ethnography makes clear this remarkable and still vital filmmaker's major role in the history of documentary cinema.




Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra


Book Description

The distinguished scholar Steven Feld shaped the field of the anthropology of sound and music. In this new work, he looks at the vernacular cosmopolitanism of a group of jazz players in Ghana, including some who have traveled widely, played with American jazz greats, and blended Coltrane with local instruments and philosophy. He describes their cosmopolitan outlook as an accoustemology, a way of knowing the world through sound. Feld combines memoir, biography, ethnography, and history, telling a story of diasporic intimacy and dialogue that contests both American nationalist and Afrocentric narrations of jazz history.




Music and Globalization


Book Description

The musical heritage of slavery : from Creolization to "world music" / Denis-Constant Martin My life in the bush of ghosts : "world music" and the commodification of religious experience / Steven Feld A place in the world : globalization, music, and cultural identity in contemporary Vanuatu / Philip Hayward Musicality and environmentalism in the rediscovery of Eldorado : an anthropology of the Raoni-Sting encounter / Rafael Jose? de Menezes Bastos "Beautiful blue" : Rara?muri violin music in a cross-border space / Daniel Noveck World music producers and the cuban frontier / Ariana Hernandez-Reguant Trovador of the Black Atlantic : Laba Sosseh and the Africanization of Afro-Cuban music / Richard M. Shain Slave ship on the infosea : contaminating the system of circulation / Barbara Browning World music of today / Timothy D. Taylor The promise of world music : strategies for non-essentialist listening / Bob W. White. Rethinking globalization through music / Bob W. White 1: Structured encounters The musical heritage of slavery : from Creolization to "world music" / Denis-Constant Martin My life in the bush of ghosts : "world music" and the commodification of religious experience / Steven Feld A place in the world : globalization, music, and cultural identity in contemporary Vanuatu / Philip Hayward Musicality and environmentalism in the rediscovery of Eldorado : an anthropology of the Raoni-Sting encounter / Rafael Jose? de Menezes Bastos 2: Mediated encounters "Beautiful blue" : Rara?muri violin music in a cross-border space / Daniel Noveck World music producers and the cuban frontier / Ariana Hernandez-Reguant Trovador of the Black Atlantic : Laba Sosseh and the Africanization of Afro-Cuban music / Richard M. Shain 3: Imagined encounters Slave ship on the infosea : contaminating the system of circulation / Barbara Browning World music of today / Timothy D. Taylor The promise of world music : strategies for non-essentialist listening / Bob W. White.




Bright Balkan Morning


Book Description

CD contains: Market Day in Jumaya -- Afternoon at Mahala Café -- At home in Mahala -- At church, Sunday, December 31 -- Pre-New Year's parties in Serres -- Parties for the new year in Sohos -- Taverna party at Nikisiani -- The road home.