FELD, Steven. Sound Structure As Social Structure

Sound Structure as Social Structure Author(s): Steven Feld Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1984), pp.
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SYMPOSIUM ON COMPARATIVE SOCIOMUSICOLOGY
SOUND STRUCTURE AS SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Steven Feld n this paper I address two questions: What are the major ways that the classless and generally egalitarianfeaturesof one small-scale society reveal themselves in the structureof organized sounds? What are the majorways that these same featuresreveal themselves in the social organizationand ideology of soundmakers and soundmaking? By providingan overview of these areas I hope of to illuminatesome dimensions a sociology of sound for the Kaluli of Papua nonstratified New Guinea, a traditionally society whereegalitarianfeaturesseem significantto sound structure,and where inequalitiesalso are clearly represented in the distributionof expressive resources for men and women. with merging My concernwith these problemsderivesfrom a preoccupation of the shared meanings of ethnomusicological questions (the cultural study of sounds musical from musical sounds) with sociomusical ones (the study and social organizationof resources,makers, perspectivesof the social structure and occasions). My work of the last few years (Feld 1981, 1982, 1983) attempts and meaningof Kaluli the most salient lessons aboutthe structure to understand sounds and ways they are inseparablefrom the fabric of Kaluli social life and thought, where they are takenfor grantedas everydayrealityby membersof this sound as "un society. My title alludes to a perspectivethat considers structured fait social total," in the sense that sociologists like Durkheim, Mauss, G. H. Mead, and Schutz stress the primacy of symbolic action in an ongoing intersubjectivelifeworld, and the ways engagementin symbolic action continually builds and shapes actors' perceptions and meanings. My title also alludes to anotherpaper, Song structureand social structure, one of Alan Lomax's seminal cantometricreports(Lomax 1962). This reference is meant to locate this paper, and the Kaluli pattern it reports, in a larger comparativeframeworkfor the sociomusicalanalysis of classless and egalitarian societies. In doing so I also want to reconsiderLomax's rationalefor why we shouldcomparesociomusicalsystems, and what we can comparefrom one to the next. For Lomax the "principal message of music concerns a fairly limited and crude set of patterns"(1962:450); as a form of humanbehaviormusic should be
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in each society, yielding stable seen as highly patterned,regular,and redundant structures.Lomax suggestedthat cantometricsprovideprofiles for each of these societal musical norms. Moreover, "these stable structurescorrespondto and representpatternsof interpersonalrelationshipwhich are fundamentalin the various forms of social organization" (1962:449). Or, as he later put it, the "salient featuresof songs are symbols for the key institutionsof society such as the sexual division of laborand the state" (1976:9). Lomax suggestedthat songs identify, represent, or otherwise reinforce the core structuresof society. By comparingdistinct patternsof vocalizing, Lomax attemptedto constructworld stylistic maps, raise questions of evolutionary sequence, and correlate dimensions of performancestyle with basic data on techno-economiccomplexity, mode of production,and social organizationfor a world ethnographicsample. In Lomax's conception comparativeresearch is fundamentalto knowing how propertiesof singing style (musical behavior ratherthan musical content) significantlyco-vary with social institutionsandotherlevels of culturalbehavior. The expectation all along was for highly patternedshapes for each culture, because "singing is viewed as an act of communicative behavior that must if it is to achieve its social ends" of performance conformto a culture'sstandard (Lomax 1976:11). Comparewhat? Lomax comparedsamples of ten songs from four hundred cultures and correlated the codings with social structuraldata profiles from Murdock'scross-cultural surveys and the HumanRelationsArea Files (Murdock 1967,1969). The small samplesize of songs per society was justified by Lomax's belief that each society has highly standardized and highly redundant performance models. "Cantometricsis a study of these standardizedmodels, which describe singing ratherthan song. Therefore, it is not primarilyconcernedwith and completecollections anddescriptions,but with locatingprovableregularities patterns, in the fashion of science" (Lomax 1976:17). Lomax's 37 coding dimensions attemptto factor all significantuniversalelements of song performance style on gradient scales. Lomax's majorreportwas greetedwith mixed enthusiasm.Sample size and time depth, compatibilityof song data with social structural data, psychocultural reductionism,inferentialhistory, readingcorrelationas causation, intracultural and arealvariability,and the extentto which the coding system normalizedraters in ways which constrainthe accuracy of patternjudgement were all causes of critical discussion surroundingthis monumentalwork. Much of the criticism focused on methodand datainterpretation, and not upon Lomax's basic hypotheses about music as a universal public communication of social identity. Whateverone's reactionto Folk Song Style and Culture, the publicationof the cantometricstrainingtapes and coding book (Lomax 1976) must be greeted as a majorevent in the historyof comparativemusical research.Few researchers ever make their methods so available to others, and we should be grateful to
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Lomax for these materials.Over the past few years I have listened to the tapes, learned Lomax's core examples, and tried to apply his parameters to a society and musical system I know well from intensive field research. I began with a sample of about700 Kaluli songs and reducedthis numberto 500 afterremoving single performerrenditionsor other reliabilityproblems. Whatcantometricshas taught me about those 500 songs is that they display so much intracultural variabilityand subtletythat it is virtuallyimpossibleto code a normalizedprofile for them. To constructa typical cantometricprofile what I really need is onl'yten songs, but the problem is, which ten?' How can I maintain the integrity of patternsdiscoverablein largebodies of datawhen the cantometricssystem seems to sacrifice so much significant data in order to objectify a "core pattern?" After wrestling with the trainingtapes (an example of one of my specific problems, with the social organizationof the vocal group, follows), I still feel that Lomax is asking many of the right questions about music and social institutions, but the mechanics of cantometrics crunches them in ways that cannot satisfy the researcher accustomed to intensive field work, in-depth theory. So I go back to the initial question: analysis, and groundedethnographic what? compare My suggestion is true heresy to many committedcomparativists,but I think we need to pioneer a qualitative and intensive comparativesociomusicology, without reified and objectified musical and social structuraltrait lists, without unsituatedlaminationsof variouslycollected and historicallyungrounded materishould take als. Comparative the and sort them sociomusicology tough questions out with the best materials available for detailed comparison:the thorough, situatedcase study. The meaningful long-term,historicallyand ethnographically are be the ones between the most radicallycontextualized to comparisons going case examples, and not between decontextualizedtrait lists. The data needed to begin this kind of comparativesociomusicology are statementsof patternfor single societies, focusing on stylistic integrity, sociomusical coherence, and the role of music in role differentiation.Forthis the best etic inputwill have to be the most thoroughemic data. By this I meanthatbroad meaningfulcomparisonswill have to be basedon accurate,detailed, careful local ethnographicmodels. So to start, the best way to answer Lomax's questions in social organizationis to about the systematicnatureof musical representation in on the the over them field, close, study ground, up long periodsof time, where sound structuresare observably and undeniably socially structured.
A FRAMEWORK
While my firm belief is thatthe basis for comparingthe social life of sounds must be qualitativeand derived from intensive local research,I also believe that
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such comparisonscan be framedin generaldomainsthat do not oversimplifythe culturallyspecific dimensions of every sociomusical reality. I proposethen six broad areas of inquiry into music as a total social fact, into the social life of organized sounds. Each area is meant to open up a related set of socially and musically situated questions that see sound structuresas socially structured, sound organizations as socially organized, meanings of sounds as socially meaningful. For each of the six rubricsI elaboratesome rudimentary questions; the lists are not meant to be exhaustive in any sense. Competence 1. Who can make sounds/music, and who can interpret/usethem? 2. What is the pattern of musical acquisition and learning? of skill and knowledge? What types? How are they 3. Are there stratifications sanctioned, recognized, and maintained? 4. Is musical acquisition assumed to be unproblematic?A necessity? 5. Do ideologies of "talent" determine or constrain acquisition and competence? 6. What is the relationshipbetween competence, skill, and desire for music? 7. What are the differences between productionand reception skills, for individuals, across social groups? Form 1. What are the material musical means and how are they organized into recognizable codes? 2. How are musical means distributedacross settings and participants? 3. What are the preferredaesthetic orderings? 4. Whatare the boundaries of perceivedforms?Whatdoes it meanto be wrong, incorrect,or otherwise marginalfrom the standpointof code flexibility and use? 5. How flexible, arbitrary,elastic, adaptable, open is musical form? How resistantto changes, internalor externalpressures,or otherhistoricalforces? Performance 1. What are the relationships between makers and materials? 2. What is the relationshipbetween individualand collective expressive forms and performancesettings? 3. How are forms coordinatedin performance?How adaptableand elastic is musicalform when manipulated at a single momentin by differentperformers time or over time?
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4. How do cooperativeand competitivesocial relationsemerge in performance? What meanings do these have for performersand audience? 5. How do performances achieve pragmatic (evocative, persuasive, manipulative) ends, if at all? Environment What 1. Whatresourcesdoes the environmentprovide?How are they exploited'? relationshipsexist between resources, exploitation, and the materialmeans and social occasions for performance? 2. Are there co-evolutionary patterns, ecological and aesthetic, linking the environment and sound patterns, materials, situations'? 3. What are the visual-auditory-sensate relationshipsbetween people and environment, and how is this patternrelated to expressive means and ends'? Are these 4. What myths or models scaffold the perceptionof the environment? related or complimentary to conceptions of person, society, expressive resources? 5. What mystical or cosmological associations with the environmentsupport, contradict,or otherwiserelateto the socioeconomiccontextof musicalbeliefs and occasions? Theory 1. What are the sources of authority,wisdom, and legitimacy about sounds and music? Who can know about sound? 2. Is musical knowledge public, private, ritual, esoteric? 3. What dimensions of musical thought are verbalized?Taught verbally?Nonverbally? 4. Is theory necessary? How detached can theory be from practice? What varietiesof knowledge and activitycount as musicalor aesthetictheory'? How is music rationalized? Value and Equality 1. Who values and evaluates sounds'?Who can be valued and evaluated as a maker of sounds? 2. How are expressive resources distributed, specifically among men and women, young and old? How do stratificationsemerge? 3. How do balancesand imbalancesmanifestthemselves in expressive ideology and performance? 4. Do sounds deceive? Mystify? Who? Why? 5. Are sounds secret? Powerful? For whom? Why?
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6. How do musical materials or performancesmark or maintain social differences? How are such differences interpreted?How are they sustained? Broken or ruptured?Accepted or resisted? These questions, and the six domains that head them, are intended as an detailed analyses of approachto integratingthe microscopic, ethnographically musical lives, with an arenaof comparable,general, relevantissues thatwill help us compare sociomusical realities and practices. After a brief orientationto the Kaluli, I summarizethe most salient issues in the six namedareas. By providing key Kaluli metaphorsand concepts for each of these areas, I hope to stay trueto and construction of an emic Kaluli sociology of sound, to the Kaluli articulation a sociomusical coherence system. At the same time, use of this simple comparativegrid will, I hope, make the Kaluli patternmore available to contrast, comparison, and question in terms of the larger issues surroundingclassless, small-scale, relatively egalitarian societies.
THE KALULI PEOPLE
Twelve hundredKaluli people live in the tropical rain forest of the Great PapuanPlateauin the SouthernHighlandsProvinceof PapuaNew Guinea.2On several hundredsquaremiles of rich land, at an altitudeof about two thousand feet, they hunt, fish, gather, and tend land-intensiveswidden gardensthat yield sweet potatoes, taro, pandanus,pumpkin, bananas, and many other fruits and vegetables. Their staple food is sago, processed from wild palms that grow in shallow swamps and creeks branching off of larger river arteries that flow downwardfrom Mt. Bosavi, the collapsed cone of an extinct volcano reaching eight thousand feet (E. L. Schieffelin 1976). Kaluli live in about twenty distinct longhouse communities;in each, most people reside in a single communal house, comprising some fifteen families (sixty to eighty people). Social life for the village is centeredaroundthe house, where primaryface to face interaction occupies most time people are not in their gardens,on the trails, visiting relativesin othercommunities,or stayingat small garden homes or sago camps for major food processing activities. This is a classless society. There are no social or occupationalspecializations, stratifications,or ranks.Thereare no professions, no ascribedor achieved statuses that form the basis for social differentiation.All Kaluli are assumedby their fellows to have equal social potential and endowment, which is theirs to make of as best they can. Adults are responsiblefor getting what they want and need out of daily affairs; assistance throughfriendshipand networksof social relations is of primary importancefor all Kaluli. This is also a generallyegalitariansociety in matterseconomic andpolitical. There are no appointedor elected leaders, spokesmen, chiefs, bosses, control-
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lers, or middlemen. People hunt, gather, garden,and work to producewhat they need, taking care of themselves and their associates throughextensive cooperation in food sharing and labor assistance. There is little inequality in material rewardsfor goods or labor because the goods are the only products;sharingin labor or productioncontinuallypositions people within reciprocitygroups built of upon kin, extendedfamily, or friendshipties. There is also little accumulation and no or valued or roles rewards, highly jobs prestige, automatically goods, rewardedby prestigeor materialobjects. In such a system, egalitarianism refers to a general lack of deference to persons, roles, categories, or groups based on power, position, or material ownership. Additionally, Kaluli seem less sexually polarized than other classless societies at the middle range of techno-economiccomplexity; that is, societies mode of existence with a majoramount which mix some partialhunter-gatherer of herding, fishing, or horticulture.This type of society varies greatly in sexual equality, from hostility to mutualism(Schlegel 1977:5). While Kaluli men and women have differentand often exclusive spheresof daily life (E. L. Schieffelin 1976:122-124; B. B. Schieffelin 1979), the degree of sexual antagonismand animosity widely reportedin the Highlandsof Papua New Guinea (see Brown and Buchbinder1976, M. Strathern1972) is not presentamongthe Kaluli. Many domainsof controland productionare cooperative. Bridewealthnegotiationsand maritalarrangements (usually sister-exchange)are the most obvious arenawhere men can cultivate authorityand make decisions that expressly control women.
PATTERN SOCIOMUSICAL THE KALULI
Competence For Kaluli there is no "music," only sounds, arrangedin categoriesshared to greateror lesser degrees by natural,animal, and humanagents. Knowledgeof these categories is widespread,tacit backgroundfor everyday life in the forest. No hierarchies of sound types are imposed, no rationales constructed for differentiatinghuman-madesounds from those of other sources. It is broadly assumed that every Kaluli must become a competent maker, recognizer, user, of naturaland cultural sound patterns. Not only does physical and interpreter to the rain forest demand and favor acute auditoryperceptualskills; adaptation Kaluli have developed the kind of ideological and aesthetic scaffolds for these skills that humanize them and provide a coherent culturalframeworkfor their acquisition. This is precisely the point of co-evolution: physical imperatives alone do not explain adaptation;societies invent mutually supportiveadaptive strategies linking nature and culture. Acquisition of skill in song, weeping, whooping, cheering, humming,
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drumming,bird call and animal identification,as well as environmentalsound related. Kaluli assume that the acquisitionof recognition, are all fundamentally skill in symbolic modes for expression of sound, as well as the natural of all social beings. In naturally required recognitionof sound, is unproblematic, fact these are very much considered like the acquisition of verbal or gestural competence, requiringsimilaradult input, engagement, interaction,and explicit "showing" instruction(B. B. Schieffelin 1979). While we in the West assume some sort of necessity for symbolic competence in the verbal and gestural modes, we assume no such thing for othervarietiesof symboliccompetence, and thereforeutilize culturallyinvested notions (like "talent") to explain or rationalin awareness,expressive production,and interpretation. ize stratifications Noththe exists Kaluli. ing parallel among A basic Kaluli metaphorembodies the constructionof a culturalideal for competence;this is the notion of "hard." Myth has it that the world was once mushy and soft; alin the goura pigeon and ode:n the scrub turkey together stampedon the ground, "making it hard," so life could flourish. The model for social life recapitulates the model for the world. Infantsare "soft"; their bodies and bones must "harden." A "hard" personis one who is strong, assertive, and not a witch (witches have soft yellow hearts). Childrendo not eat soft, mushy foods until theirbodies and language"harden." "Hardtalk" is grammatical and that the talk one what is in social needed interaction appropriatespeech, gets (Feld and B. B. Schieffelin 1982). When a song "hardens," coalescing poetic and performativestructures,people are moved to tears (Feld 1982:211-212). "Hard" (halaido) then means social competence, physical maturity,verbal competence, sound competence; control of energies, ability to perform, influence outcomes, take controlover one's life, invoke propersocial strategies.It is assumedthatthe acquisitionanddevelopmentof social and intellectualskills is the natural "hardening" process that all Kaluli go through. This central metaphorlinks land, body, maturity,control, vitality, language, aesthetics, and social action. For Kaluli, "hardness" is a core element of personhood. Clearly not all Kaluli desire, develop, or attain uniform or even vaguely identicalcompetenciesin the compositionof songs and poetic texts, the performance of songs or drumming, or funerary weeping. Some men and women compose hundreds of songs in a lifetime, perform often, provide insightful exegesis of texts, and discourse on musical matters in ways that extend far beyond the assumed or recognized abilities of others. Two factors seem importantto interpret correctlythe meaningof this variation.First, the actualspreadof competencies in productionskill is greatly downplayedby Kaluli in relationto the much less stratified competencies in meaningful interpretation.Second, Kaluli assume that differentiationin song performanceand composition are explained by interest and desire, and not by special biological endowment or talent. My remarksto the effect thatcertainpeople seemed to compose, perform,
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or drum more than others were usually met by Kaluli with nonchalantreplies citing the obvious: some garden more than others, some often make netbags, some cook well, othersknow aboutbuildinghouses, and so forth. In sum, Kaluli seem to have no investment in rationalizingdifferences in competence; they simply assume that skills for interpretingand making sounds are naturally acquiredand required,and that with instructionand encouragement,all children will learn to sing and compose as part of their general socialization. Form Most all Kaluli sound expression is vocal, dependenton a strong interplay of poetic and melodic elements. Five types of song exist, one of uniqueinvention (gisalo) and four borrowedfrom neighbors(heyalo, ko:luba, sabio, iwo:). Each of these is organizedby pentatonicprinciples;reductionsto three- and four-tone variantsare common, and there is evidence of melodic convergence paralleling the historyand diffusion of these four styles in the Bosavi area(Feld i.p.). Kaluli compose in three of these five forms (gisalo, heyalo, ko.:luba);the other two styles consist of closed sets (sabio, iwo:). Gisalo is limited to ceremonial and seance occasions and is composed only by men. Heyalo and ko:luba are composed for ceremonies but widely sung during everyday work and leisure activities. Only in the case of heyalo do men and women participateequally as composers. Cutting across these song forms are other varieties and means of sound expression:women's sung-texted-weeping(sa-ye:.lab),and cheering (uwo:lab), men's whooping (ulab), and instrumentaldrumming(ilib) and bamboo jaw's harp playing (uluna). Three other rattle instruments(sologa, seed-pod rattle; degegado, crayfish claw rattle;sob, mussel shell rattle)are used for ceremonial to songs. Only the sologa is used more casually for accompaniaccompaniment ment; additionally it is the only one of these instrumentsused by women. of expressive Beyond a taxonomyof expressive forms, and the distribution means in song, poetics, instruments, and performance, one very significant generalizationcan be made about all Kaluli sound forms: no Kaluli sounds are performedunison. Kaluli know quite well what unison is because missionaries have tried to get them to sing this way for twelve years and churchleadershave been taughtto count "one-two-three" before each song. Aside from church activities (where only the most committed Christianscan actually manage this new form of vocal organization)it is rare to hear anythingapproachingunison sung by Kaluli or emitted from any sound sources in their environment. Kaluli sound preferences,modeled consciously on bird sounds and the rest of the forest environment,involve extensive overlappingand alternation,layering parts and sounds in coordinatednondiscretetextures. In Western musical terms there is much canon and hocket. In cantometricterms, from Lomax's
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characterization of the social organizationof the vocal group (1976:86,177are found:interlock,overlap, andalternation.Interlockis the three 180), patterns term Lomax uses for the social organizationof musical groups with an equality of parts, common among acephalousbands of hunter-gatherers or noncomplex forest societies. Lomax finds thatoverlap is most typical of largersocieties with herd animals and a somewhat more complex production system. He cites alternation of partsas morecharacteristic of societies with clear divisions of parts and productive systems (Lomax 1976:86). Listening to Kaluli songs makes it clear that no one of these three characterizations there seems to be an equal mix of all three. At predominates; the same time, the Kaluli techno-economicpicture does not follow any of the threeLomax cites as typically matchingthese sound types. The maingeneralization for Kaluli social organizationof the vocal group is that interlock, overlap, and alternationare equally salient, precisely to the exclusion of unison forms. Lomax (1976:86) cites unison as "the simplest technique of coordinating effort"; he finds it "resorted to everywhere but most prominent in the performancesof small tribalsocieties, especially among planterswithoutlarge herd animals." While this techno-economic characterizationis closer to Kaluli society than any of the others cited above, Kaluli sound organizationsimply lacks a unison principle altogether. Like the use of "hardness" to characterize a Kaluli ideal of social competence, there is also a metaphorthat draws together the dimensions of which are so important in Kalulisoundmaking interlock,overlap, and alternation This is style. duluguganalan, "lift-up-oversound." Parts, sounds, whetherfew or many, must constantly "lift-up-over" one another; one cannot speak of sounds "leading" or "following" or "starting" or "finishing." Human soundmakingmust stagger in layers, like bird calls, or arch up and over, like waterfalls.The idea is more spatio-acousticthanvisual; Kaluli like all sounds to be dense, compacted,withoutbreaks,pauses, or silences (Feld 1983). Whentwo people sing together, the subtletiesof the shifting lengths of overlap (or, in the case of a leader and a group, the nuances in the alternation)are the locus of aesthetic play and tension. In the forest, sounds constantly shift figure and ground;examples of continually staggered alternationsand overlaps, at times sounding completely interlockedand seamless, are abundant.For Kaluli this is the naturally coherent organizing model for soundmaking, whether human, animal, or environmental:a constant textural densification constructed from "lift-up-over sounds." Performance The performanceof all Kaluli sound expression focuses upon collective texture and coordinationof layered parts. No competitive agendas play out
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the value of layering,juxtaposing, arching, "liftingthroughsong performance; and densifying are conceived as social activity. Even when the up-over," situationinvolves a single voice, the sound is coordinatedwith the surrounding acoustic featuresof the environment;this is particularlyso when Kaluli sing at work. At Kaluli ceremonies composed songs are sung all night long by members of a visiting communityat the longhouse of their hosts. The hosts find the song to be sad and evocative because they concentrateon maps and texts in particular of the forest, places to which the places in the immediate, surrounding images The performance hosts have a sentimentalattachment. usuallyprovokesthe hosts to tears, and to a sung-melodic-weeping performed in polyphony with the ongoing song to which they are responding. The intense grief and sadness experiencedby the hosts resultsfrom theirbeing remindedof the dead who have lived, worked, and sharedmany experienceswith them at the places sequentially mentioned in the song (E. L. Schieffelin 1976, 1979; Feld 1982). It would appearthat this sort of evocation in performancemight create a tremendousfocus on the composer and performerof the song as an individual creator. Indeed, direct social manipulationis involved in composing a song that might move a specific individualto tears. At the same time, these are not the featuresof a song that Kaluli stress;they preferto cast the whole activity into an explicit social and community-widemessage framework,largely throughimagery of land, the central Kaluli metaphorfor the accumulationand meaning of social experience relating, sharing, and being with others in the forest. When Kaluli men sat down with me aftera ceremonyto talk aboutthe songs and their meanings, they always stressed the social rather than individual motivationof song poetics. There is always collective sorrow it seems, because of the underlying assumption that audience members will empathize with whomever is moved to tears. This derives from the feeling of common experiforest commuence among those people who sharea longhouseand surrounding nity. Over and beyond ties of direct close kin, Kaluli feel deeply connected by the places they have lived, gardened,worked,exchanged, and travelledtogether. Soundmakingprovidesno formatfor the assertionof power, dominance,or personalexcellence at the cost of others. The recognitionof skill in composition and performanceis clear, and its pragmaticoutcome is the weeping of the hosts. Despite all this, competition is not a major agenda in the ceremonies, and the provocation involved is not a manipulationfor the sake of power. The Kaluli constructionof a performanceis really activity in concert ratherthan activity involving sequentialsolo performances.Individualityis not played up the way it might be; costumes in fact conceal identities, so only the voice singles out the singer. If "lift-up-over sound" and "hardness" are the central metaphorsfor the form of and competence in soundmaking,then its centralmetaphorfor perform-
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ance is "flow" (e:be:lan). Like a waterwaysituatednext to you in the forest, whose water "flows" beyondperceptualimmediacyalthoughyou know it is still moving at otherlocations, sound must have a physical presenceat its momentof performanceand a staying power that carries it beyond the moment, so that it flows in your mind, and stays with you beyond the boundariesof the immediate event. Performance, like the substance of sound, must be dense, layered, collective, thick in connotationand resonance;this is what makes it "flow." Environment For the Kaluli, the Bosavi tropicalrain forest environmenttakes on several levels of meaningand abstraction.In the most basic sense the environmentis like a tuningfork, providingwell-known signals that markand coordinatedaily life. Space, time, and seasons are marked and interpretedaccording to sounds. Sounds give indexical informationaboutforest height, depth, and distance. The time it takes a sound to travelthroughvariouskinds of bush;the echoes through landformations,waterfalls,and rivers;the layersof birdsoundin the canopyand at forest openings;-all these provide clock and spatial information to the accustomedinhabitant of the rainforest.Daily cycles of birdpresence, migration cycles throughoutthe year, as well as cycles of cicadas and insects are taken by Kaluli as indicatorsof location, season, and time of day. These signals have differentauditoryappearances from the village longhouse, from the forest edge, from the gardens, from the trails, or from forest depths. Ratherthan counting monthsor moons, Kaluliconceive seasons and cycles largely in termsof changes in vegetation, changes in birdpresence, soundsof high and low wateraccumulation, or white water runoff in relation to rainfall. Numerous sounds then are continuallyavailable and interpreted by Kaluli as the clocks of quotidienreality in the forest. At another,clearly relatedlevel, the forest is a model of balance, of plenty, of resources,of deathand life and cyclical regeneration, of birds, animals, plants and watersin mutualdependence. In effect, a model of what is natural,given as normal, predictable;a model for humanlife and a challenge to it, since human relationshipsand society depend on co-existence and managementof the forest, throughmaintenanceand exploitationof its resources. Additionally, it is on this basis that Kaluli explicitly rationalizethe form and performanceof song and human sound with metaphoricideals about the layering of bird calls and insect swells, the flowing of waters, arching of waterfalls, and general relationship between perceptual immediacy and what lies beyond. Anotherlevel of forest-Kalulirelationshipis more mystical. Kaluli believe that two co-extensive realities, one visible, the other a reflection, comprisethe world. In the reflection or mirroredrealm men may appear as wild pigs and women as wild cassowarieshigh on the hills of Bosavi. The dead returnas "gone
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reflections" (ane mama) to the visible, usually in the form of birds in the forest treetops. Thus the immediate village area is surroundedwith the presence, throughvoices and sounds, of friendsand relatives. Because birds sing, whistle, say their names, make a lot of noise, weep, or speak, they provide a simultaas well as a deepersymbolic understanding about neous index of the environment self, place, and time. Beyond these notions-tuning fork, model, mystery-there is also a deeply pleasurable aspect to the way Kaluli approach the forest, which couples a sentimentalitybased on land as mediatorof identity(E. L. Schieffelin 1976:2945) and an outrightenjoymentof the soundscape. Kaluli find the forest good to listen to, and good to sing with as well. Improvisedhuman duets with birds, cicadas, or other forest sounds are not uncommoneveryday events. Sometimes people will find themselves a waterfalljust for the pleasure of singing with a shimmeringaccompaniment.Again, the co-evolutionarytendencies for ecology and aesthetics: Kaluli not only take inspiration from, listen to, and enjoy the forest, but become part of it, which ultimately intensifies their sentiments about it. In sum, the Kaluli relationshipwith the forest is neither antagonisticnor Little destructive,patternsthatare typical among some swiddenhorticulturalists. low no population density, competition for ecological pressure, extremely resources, and constantlyavailablefood (fish, fowl, vegetables) all contributeto easy materialextractionand exploitationof the environment.At the same time, the mystical, pleasurable, and tuning-fork dimensions of the forest-Kaluli relationship reinforce this materialist basis. In all, the forest is a mama, a as mediatedthrough "reflection," or mirrorfor social relationships,particularly the poetic imagery of songs that concern maps, lands and identities (Feld 1982:150-156), as well as through formal structureand singing style. Theory For Kaluli, the theory and concepts of where sounds come from and how they can be organized, and, particularly,what they mean, is not contained in esoteric knowledge or in a body of private lore controlled or circulated by specialists. Myths about human-birdtransformationsexplain the origins of categories of sounds that humans share with each other and with the natural world, namely, weeping, song, poetics, whistling, talking, noise, mimicry. These myths frame the meanings of sounds in terms of the range of social sentiments associated with categories of bird-spirit"reflections." No special occasions are requiredfor their telling, and no constraintsexist on who may tell or hear them. All in fact are quite short and even Kaluli who don't volunteerto narratethem can certainlyrecountthe punchlineor generalpoint to each. These myths are central to the meaning and theory of sounds for Kaluli; the facts of
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theircodificationas mythsand theirqualityas chartersfor social realityspeaksto their collective importance. While the generalsocial outlines linkingsoundsand sentimentsarerevealed in myths, Kaluli theory about sound organizationgoes quite a bit further(Feld 1981). Kaluli are energeticallyverbal about song, composition, and mattersof musical form; to discuss sound they principallyrely on lexical and discourse metaphors.All Kaluli terms for water motion, waterwayparts, and particularly waterfallsare polysemous with the semanticfield of sound. Terms for intervals, contours, and other structural aspects of song form are inventedthis way. Song parts are metaphorizedas bends of waters, or branchingstructuresof trees. A numberof other theoreticalnotions are even less specialized or marked; while myths and musical terminologycode theoreticalideas about what sounds mean and how they are organized, not all Kaluli have much occasion to recite stories or discourse about compositional matters. But all Kaluli know what sounds can mean, what they can bring forth in social occasions, and how they must be interpreted.Kaluli share a cultural logic for organizing their listening experiences, and the extent to which that logic is systematic is the extent to which it must be treated as musical theory, a foundation for Kaluli musical epistemology, or a Kaluli theory of musical interpretation. Like the duality of the cosmos alreadymentioned, Kaluli assume dualities to all expressive forms; the idea is conventionallyexpressed by the notions of "inside" (sa), and "underneath"(hega). Intentionallysymbolic behaviorsare and the act of interpreting not transparent; them is what they must be interpreted, the Kaluli call finding the "inside" or "underneath." Sometimes these meanturnKalulitake is one that ings are quite conventional.Even so, the interpretive assumes concentration, attention, and active listening. Sounds have "insides" and "underneaths"because they often are heardas the reflected images of birds; birds in turn are spirits, and the particularset of emotional and personalassociations with spirits, spirit places, and the like are deeply forceful for Kaluli. Additionally,poetic song texts are cast in a language of "bird sound words" (o:be.: to), and these have various conventional go.'no: and deeply ambiguous "underneaths"which involve a variety of obfuscatory, mystifying, and evocative devices (analyzed in Feld 1982:138-144). In short, Kaluli listeners are not passive participantsin symbolic affairs; they performa kind of active social work based on the interpretiveassumption that there is always a reflected "inside" or "underneath"meaningto sounds. Interpretation is a necessary, active component in the social life of Kaluli sounds, bridging individual competence with realms of theory and epistemology. Kaluli exhibit markeddivergencesin the propensityto verbalizeaboutsong or poetics. Many Kaluli, including both men and women who have composed many songs, simply do not go in for extensive verbalizationabout song. Elder men tend to be the most talkative and intellectually invested in this kind of
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discourse and interpretation,and their enjoyment of this has no doubt been prompted by several years of dialogue with E. L. Schieffelin and myself, althoughI greatlydoubtthatthe kinds of discussions we've had with Kaluliwere absent before our arrivalin Bosavi. Again I would point out that differences in to musicaldiscussionand exegesis derivesostensibly from interest predisposition and personal desire; no traditionalpositions, ascribed social roles, honorific status, or rewards are involved. In short, for Kaluli, theory is not an activity that takes place at a remove from compositional, performative, or interpretive practice. All are deeply associated, and theoretical ideas about musical form are part of the realm of acquired competencies assumed to be essential for Kaluli. Value and Equality Soundmaking is highly valued and considered necessary for survival, expression, and social interactionfor all Kaluli men and women. At the same time thereare obvious inequalitiesin the pragmatic ends these resourcesachieve. Kaluli maintainthat two kinds of structuredsound forms, weeping and song, emerged together in myth (Feld 1982:20-43). These are separate but comof sound for social evocation. Women's funeraryweepplementarystructurings which turns into wept song, is consideredby Kaluli to be the closest sound ing, form to being or becoming a bird, as it expresses immediatesorrows over loss and abandonment. Men's ceremonial gisalo song, which ultimately moves listeners to weeping, is composed and performedas a deliberateprovocationof the fears and emotions of its listeners. Both forms derive from the same source (birdsound)and reachthe same ends, bringingforthdeep emotion aboutloss and abandonmentin the context of village-wide public rituals. Women are highly valued and evaluated as funerary weepers, and men are highly valued and evaluatedfor composing and performingpersuasivegisalo songs. In both cases a reputationmay develop for individual performers, at least in the immediate an event; this sort of reputation circumstancessurrounding does not seem to lead to any marked consequences in terms of social prestige. No such male-female complementarityexists for other Kaluli expressive forms, that is, forms not invented by Kaluli but borrowed by them from neighboring groups. The oldest addition to the ceremonial song repertoireis heyalo; here in fact there is a greatdeal of female compositionalactivity, but the ceremony is the domain of men. Young men often compose quite a numberof songs in the hevalo formatbefore tackling the more poetically and melodically demandinggisalo form. Young men performbut do not compose sabio, a song form from the Lake Kutubuarea to the East, introducedby carriersworking on governmentpatrolsto Bosavi in the 1950s. Ko:lubawas importedinto the Kaluli area in the mid-1960s: men performand compose in this style but there are very
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few compositionsby women, althoughsome women with family ties to the area from which ko:lubaderives know quite a numberof the songs and sing them for work. Iwo.:is a fixed cycle of songs sung the night before killing pigs; it has an explicit women's counterpartcalled kelekeliyoba, sung the morning after the ceremony. These songs also use fixed formulaewith only new placenamesand pig names added by the singers. In terms of instruments,handdrumsand bamboojaw's harpsare relatively recent introductionsto the Bosavi area, althoughthe latter is said to replace a monochordicmouthbow, whose history is uncertain.Both instruments are only takes place beforeor duringceremonialactivity, and availableto men;drumming the jaw's harpis associatedwith the personalrecreation of young men. The drum involves magical constructionsecrets which are kept from women; even though it is not hiddenfrom their sight, women do not touchthe instrument (Feld 1983). Even so, the dimensions of drum secrets seem to be nothing like the secret character of flutes and garamuts reported elsewhere in Papua New Guinea used for ceremonialaccompani(Gourlay 1975). Of the three rattleinstruments one is shared with women while the one used for gisalo, the ment, only (sologa), is considered and not be should touched sob, clearly secret, by women. Women are not aware of the mystical events through which the cane handles (olo: are passed on to Kaluli men from spirit mediums se:se:lo:) of these instruments (E. L. Schieffelin 1976:214). One other major soundmakingresource does return us to a very basic male-femalecomplementarity; these are the matchedpair of demonstrativeand assertivecollective soundscalled ulab, ("says u") and uwo:lab, ("says uwo.:"). For men ulab is a loud group whoop, celebratingthe call of the eagle usulage, a booming UUU! For women, uwo.lab is a raucousgroup cheer, celebratingthe call of the SuperbBird of Paradiseuwo:lo, a screeching U-WO:O:!These two of Kaluli men and women, and the birds are prominentspirit representations group soundmakingusually takes place when men collectively work or prepare for a ceremony, or when women cheer during a ceremony. The complementarydistributionof gisalo and weeping, whooping and cheering speak for the way Kaluli men and women have coordinatedseparate expressive spheres that are relatedand mutuallysignificant in modes of appeal and assertion. At the same time the distributionof instrumental and ceremonial men resources to the Kaluli have and song clearly points way appropriated control new expressive resources. to note the clear inequalitiesin what it is that these Finally, it is important men and women to achieve, symbolically and resources allow expressive of ceremonialsongs For the men, pragmatically. compositionand performance creates a grand social focus around them and their powers of evocation. Ceremonial action of this sort is the height of Kaluli stagecraft, drama, and collective celebration (E. L. Schieffelin 1976:172-196, Feld 1982:163-216).
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Gisalo is the most powerful of these, but hevalo and ko:luba achieve the same effect for men. In all threethe performance may be so moving thata woman will lose her heartto the dancer, wish to elope, and follow him home. Drummingcan contribute to the same social power (Feld 1983). What weeping achieves for women is far less sweeping. It certainlycreates a social focus on women as performers,and thatfocus is significantin validating the role weepers play in articulatingcommunity sentiments. But no persuasive social ends and no long-term changes in social life are effected by weeping; largely it is an intensely aesthetic public display of personal grief. If there is a key Kaluli metaphor that sums up male-female relations generally, and male-female expressive means and ends specifically, it is the rather ambiguous term ko.li, "different." While this was about the most common term I heard men use when speaking of women, or women use when speaking of men, it certainly means different things from the relative vantage points, and can have positive ("different" in the sense of new, exciting, valuable), flat ("different" in the sense of bland, not quite right) or neutral connotations.Kaluli recognize real social difference, but there is often little that is negative or antagonisticin that recognition. At the same time, male ideology clearly casts women's differences in a dangerous light: aversion to menstrual blood and belief that women drain male energy are rationalesfor taboos and other social practices which reproduce beliefs in and actions against female contamination.The tensions and contradictionsfound here parallel the duality of expressive domains, which have both a complementarydimension (songnew reweeping, whooping-cheering) and an overlay of male-appropriated sources. Discussion To roundout the shape of the Kaluli pattern,I organize a summaryaround three questions: (1) How are the obvious egalitarianfeaturesof Kalulilife markedwithin the organizing schemes of Kaluli sound structuresand soundmaking? (2) How is the most obvious form of Kaluli inequality (men over women) markedand resolved within the organizingschemes of Kaluli sound structuresand soundmaking? (3) How does the Kaluli pattern fit into the broader comparative framework of Papua New Guinea societies? . in egalitarian societies the division of labor by sex has led to
complementarity and not female subservience;
. . .
women lost their equal
status when they lost control over the products of their work" (Leacock
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1978a:79, see also Leacock 1978b, 1977). Leacock's examinationof huntereconomics shows thatwomen foragedand furnishedas gathererand horticultural much if not more basic resourcesto hunter-gatherer life thanmen did. Moreover the food to networksof kin as well as nuclearfamilies. Societies they distributed which typically mix hunting and gatheringsubstratawith a dominanthorticulturalpracticepartiallysharein the patternLeacock describes, and presenta wide range of egalitarian tendencies as well as unequal or contradictoryones. Schlegel's (1977) notion that theories of sexual stratificationmust account for relations and ideology as well as person-to-goodsrelations is person-to-person clearly essential if we are to understandsocieties like the Kaluli that are more politically and economically egalitarianthan sexually so. This is also important because Kaluli have the economic resources to produce a surplus far beyond subsistence needs. The theory that stratificationsystematically co-varies with surplushas been recentlydismantledby both Marxistsand non-Marxists,largely in favor of theories that see stratificationmore closely related to population dynamics (Cancian 1976). Given all this, one thing we can clearly predict is that a society like the Kaluli with such a combinationof demographiccharacteristics as low density, easy subsistence, ecological diversity, and economic resources like combined hunting,fishing, sago production,and gardening,will not neatly matchidealized characterizations like "hunter-gatherer," "hortisocial-economic-technological cultural," "peasant," and so forth. Our expectation therefore should be for tendenciesin sociomusicalpracticeas complex, and ambiguousor contradictory well as social organization.This seems to be the case in several regards.On the one hand, the image of deep mutualismand co-aesthetic relationshipwith the forest ecology is reminiscentof hunter-gatherers like the pygmies of the Ituri (summarized,from Turnbull, in Lomax 1962). The general situationfor competence, musical form and performance, environment and theory depicts an emphasison cooperation,complementarity, autonomy,valuingself in relationto othersand to ecology. It is easy to imaginehow these musicalbeliefs, structures, and actions can be coherent within an egalitariansocietal framework,and how they can be locally perceived and sustained within that framework. At the same time there are imbalances in the distributionof expressive resourcesbetween men and women; more significantly, there are differences in the pragmatic ends served by these resources. Men can mystify, impress, persuade, and even win women, but what are women getting from weeping at funerals and singing at work besides personal enjoyment, fulfillment, and general social solidarity?Male-femaleinequalitiesthen are definitely markedin the sphere of musical organization,but to push the qualitativepoint, it also is importantto realize that the form in which they are markeddoes not involve secret instruments stolen from women in mythic times, does not involve deception maintenance, does not involve daily antagonisms, and does not
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involve sanctionsof personalviolence. All of these variants,found elsewhere in Papua New Guinea, are not manifest in the Kaluli situation. A final way to scrutinize the patternof male-female inequalities in the Kaluli patternis to look at the largerPapuaNew Guinea ethnographicsituation througha widespreadsocial institutionwhere inequalitiesare ideologically and to a recentcollection practicallyenacted:male initiationcults. In an introduction of essays on this topic Roger Keesing (1982:7-11) summarizes some of the themes involved in PapuaNew Guineacult activity. These includethe prominent idea that men and women are physically and psychologically different, that the fluids and essences of women are potentiallyif not actuallyharmfulto men, that boys must be subjectedto rigorousinitiationsso thatthey will not be weak, that male homosexualactivity is essential to the ideology of sexual separation and the creation of differentiated men, and that residential separation of males is necessary in order to avoid female contamination. A central feature of many of these cults is secret instruments,particularly flutes. K. A. Gourlayhas devoted a monographto the distribution,symbolism, and meaning of these instruments,showing that the male secrecy surrounding their use is a central component of the deception of women, and a central revelation during the rites.
of secrecyis linkedcloselywith the men'sdeception Maintenance of the womenand themysterious sounds.... Forthose uninitiated youths through givenabout explanations to whomthe secretshave been revealed,emphasisis on maintaining the deception (1975:102).
The Kaluli seem to have practiced (until 1964) an extremely moderate variantof this pattern,without traumatic,violent rituals, or secret flutes; it was called the baiua. In an essay on this institution,E. L. Schieffelin (1982) argues that this was not an initiation cult because there was no formal status change involved and because novices assumed no submissive and dependent role. Nevertheless,
The bauat exhibited the manyfeatures typicalof a maleinitiation program, including seclusion of themembers, ritual aimedat promoting andenhancing male activity growth qualities,and the teachingof secretlore (E. L. Schieffelin1982:156).
The bau a stressed hunting activities, promotion of strength including homosexual intercourseto promotegrowth, long expeditions, and development of knowledge of the forest geography, flora and fauna. The ideological stance influence on men. A man who has had too much to do with women is likely to lose his stamina, become fatigued on the trail" (E. L. Schieffelin 1982:178). Moreover,
toward women was clear: ". . . Kaluli believe that women have a debilitating
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and in particularwomen, the bau a was presentedas a mystically To non-participants, powerful and dangerous institution (ibid:163).
The bau a was in earshotof the village longhouse, so women heardsounds of the men; this was supposedto be tantalizing.While women pretendednot to know any of the secret aspects of what was going on, some in fact knew quite a bit about it (ibid:163). But the bau a "... expressedwhat men liked best about themselves, what they stood for and wanted to be... "(ibid:166).
Forthe youngmen, the baua removes themfromthe margins of socialattention and thrusts themto its center; in theirbestandmostappealing theyemergefromseclusion
cultural image (ibid:194).
In other words, they emerge as controlled, energetic, good hunters, knowledgable about the forest, including the spirits who reside there. They also emerge supplying a large amount of cooked meat to members of their own and the surroundingcommunities, thereby placing them all in their debt. The differences between the bau a and some of the other traumatic separationrites practiced in the Papua New Guinea Highlands is clearly underscoredby societal differences.Complex initiationswith grades, alliances, and the like require large populations. Although the bau a was symbolically and ritually elaborate and complex, it had none of the stratified complexities of graded initiations common for many of the other societies summarized by Keesing (1982) and discussed in the literature. Ecological pressures, root crop intensification, and increasing population density are common in many Papua New Guinea Highlandssocieties. A major shift towardintensivecultivationincreasesthe burdenson women, and seems to be accompaniedin many societies by increasedmale control throughappropriation of the products of women's labor. The Kaluli, by contrast, are low in production,lackingin ecological pressuresand crop intensification.They are not competing for food or territory, and their population size is stable. Men's hunting, clearing and gardening activities seem complementaryto women's gardening and sago-making work. This produces none of the competition necessary for the organizationand maintenanceof a "big man" social system exchanging women and their products. While the bau a shares many surfacefeatureswith initiationcults in Papua New Guinea, it appears to have been a more subdued variantof most of the institutionsdiscussed in the literature issues of male-femalerelations surrounding (Keesing 1982, Allen 1967, Gourlay 1975, Langness 1974, Murphy 1959, A. Strathern1970). Kaluli men seem far more interestedin impressingwomen than in maintaininghostilities with them. Ceremonialsong, costuming and performance, hunting and providing meat for exchange are the activities males most cultivate and use for impressingwomen. These activities are not filled with the
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preoccupations reportedelsewhere:maintainingseparateness,antagonism,keepritual secrets, using secret instrumentswhich are forbiddento women under ing of or murder. Kaluli seem to promote male mystique without penalty rape extensive female deception. The lack of secret instruments,so pivotal promoting to ritualdeception, was replacedby whooping and singing at the bau a; women could hear this from the distance, but its purposewas to excite and impress, not so much to deceive. Here, as in ceremonies, Kaluli men assume an evocative stance toward both women and other men. Toward women that evocation translatesas power throughdifferencewhile towardmen thatevocationtranslates as solidarity and nostalgia.
CONCLUSION
Keil argues that:

The greatforce shapingmusicand its meaning is social inequality as it specifically manifests itselfin fourdirections atonce:Thedominance of somemenoverother men,of menovernature, of menoverwomen, andof somesocieties overothersocieties. Among
those remainingprimitivepeoples who have managedto maintainthe social, natural,and
I assume sexualequalities, that"music"is a vitalpartof thatmaintenance. in Indeed, such societieswhatwe call music-dance-ritual-religion-ecology seem to be fusedinto
nearly one homeostatic system, symbolizing nothing or everthing (1979:1).
The Kaluli seem both to uphold and to contradictthese three statements. First, social inequalityis not the main force shaping music and its meaning for Kaluli. The dominanceof some men over othermen, of men over nature,and of society over other societies is not a majortheme in the content of Kaluli songs, not related to the occasions of their performance,and not related to the social organizationor performancestyles of song makers. At the same time we have seen that social inequalityof men over women is clearly manifestamong Kaluli despite other complementaryand cooperative tendencies. This inequality is sociomusically markedin two ways: differentialexpressive resourcesof men and ends those resourcesmay serve. In all, women, and differentialsocial-pragmatic social inequalityis markedin some dimensionsof Kaluli musical life but not in others; where the markingoccurs, it is neithersystematicnor withoutcontradicof tion, particularly given the prominenceKaluli invest in the complementarity song/weeping and whooping/cheering. Keil's next statementalso has validity for Kaluli, but again, the dictum is less than wholly applicable. Kaluli traditionallydid maintainmany social and naturalequalities, and in their notions of competence, of form, of performance, of theory, and of the environment,many indicationsof equalityand balancecan be found. Indeed, it seems that "music" is a vital part of maintainingthose concepts and those relations with each other and the environment.
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Keil's final statement also makes a lot of sense for the Kaluli: the interpenetrationof the environment with all Kaluli sound recognition and expression really does symbolize everythingin some way: competence ("hardness"), form ("lift-up-oversound"), performance ("flow") are all tied together by theory (in myths of human/birdtransformation).The success of Kaluli soundmakingas a deeply affective and emotional mediumof communicationis grounded in this invented coherence. Moving to the generalfrom the specific, my concernswith comparisonhave in great part been stimulatedby reading Alan Lomax's work and by trying to apply his training tape examples and coding procedures to Kaluli data. I obviously differ from Lomax at the outset in a basic philosophicalmatter:I do not equateexplanationwith normativestatisticalcorrelationsor causal analysis. I am more concernedwith explaining the situatedmeanings of sound patternsin the intersubjectivelycreated world of actors and actions, and I am concerned with the role local ideologies play in constitutingand maintainingthose local, specific sociological models of and for musical realities. I am thereforebiased towardwhat Lomax calls the "narrowfeatures" of both the streamand content of music, while his own focus is on grosser, objectifiableand redundant features of the behavioralstream. At the same time, I have arguedthat it is possible to conceive a set of comparativeresearchquestions that make use of local models and metaphors while at the same time identifying issues that have broader comparativevalue, concerning both the conceptual and materialdimensions of musicality. While these six domains may look more like artifacts of the cultural-ideationalsphere rather than the sociological, I have indicated that culturalconstructsare essential precisely because of the way they lead to and provide local models for social structure (social roles, division of labor, stratification, and differentiation). I have also stressed that there is not a yes/no issue about correlatingsong structure and social structure.Obviously such correlationsare possible, whether in world sample quantitative undertaken termsor small-scale ethnographic ones. The issue is: how do we interpretsuch relationships,and how do we argue for whatthey mean?Lomax's tendencyhas been towardcausalconnectionsbetween social evolution and singing style. He arguesfor causal covariancefrom societal complexityto melodic intervalcomplexity, text precisionand rhythmicfreedom. He argues for causal covariancefrom societal sexual restrictivenessto singing voice nasality, and social cohesion to choral cohesion. The most complete and convincing quantitativereanalysis of cantometric data thus far, by one of Lomax's early statisticalco-workers, uses multivariate techniques to argue for historical diffusionist rather than evolutionary inof cantometric data. Manysong featuresinterpreted terpretations by Lomaxto be correlates of evolutionary process can be explained almost exclusively by regional location(Erickson 1976). If culturehistoryis enough to explain the kind of taxonomic variance Lomax originally found, Erickson insists that:
a widevariation canbe shown Fornearly taxonomy, stylein thecantometric everymajor correlates. on the positedcultural/institutional By contrast,such styles do not often homes.When to be inthe of their ethnohistoric theboundaries theydo, it appears overstep contextof an important eventin history. The attempt to explainsongin termsof some can be unilinear universal processof social evolution-for all thatsuch a dimension
of this most humanof behaviors shown to exist-is to over-simplify our understanding (1976:307).
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Erickson argues that song style is less a causative reflection of social institutionsthan an emblem of social identity. Lomax's early papersalso stress the functional importanceof song style as an indicatorof social identity, thus:
S.
is to givethe theprimary effectof music of viewof itssocialfunction, . from thepoint
listener a feeling of security, for it symbolizes the place where he was born, his earliest childhood satisfactions, his religious experience, his pleasurein communitydoings, his courtshipand his work-any or all of these personalityshapingexperiences (1959:929).
The notion thatthe most general relationshipbetween sound structures and social structuresconcerns identity has strong supportfrom qualitativeresearch, and certainly is a conclusion that could be derived from the Kaluli material, frame the message: this is what we are, where we are, where musical structures who we are. At the same time these musical structuresmore specifically move the listenerto an interpretive plane beyond general messages about identityand boundariesto more explicit Kaluli semanticsof sound. Here is wherethe listener "turns over" the sound organization of singing and poetics to find "'underneaths"aboutbirdand spiritmanifestations,and throughthese, "'insides"of social emotion and world-sense coherence. The Kaluli case makes it clear thatit is difficult and confusingonly to argue from objectified social structuresto musical structures;the result is a net of reifications. Everything that is socially significant and institutionallyreal for Kaluli is not necessarily representedin musical order, occasions, or resources. One cannotdirectlypredictthe shapeof the Kalulimusicalsystem, singing style, or performance fromtheirmode of production and techno-economic organization sociomusical The Kaluli is varied in its resourcesand forms, complexity. system of musicalfeaturesand style thatcan also be fully or and includes manifestations horticulturalists,herders, partially found among societies of hunter-gatherers, even and most societies known to us; Fallers unegalitarian planters, peasants(the 1977). At the same time, it is equally unappealing to reverse the argument, and modes of productionfrom musical forms. Many predictingsocial structures similar surface musical forms are found in societies of widely varying social complexity, although the musical forms have greatly divergent meanings and identitiesin these separatehistoricaland geographicsettings. (Witnessthe use of hocket in the Renaissance.) In short, for all societies with similar techno-
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1984 SEPTEMBER ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,
economic-social featureswe might expect more musical varietythan Lomax has indicated. Conversely, for all similar sound patterns and modes of musical productionwe might expect more social patternsto which they are significantly related. For any given society, everything that is socially salient will not necessarily be musically marked. But for all societies, everything that is be socially marked,albeit in a greatvarietyof musically salient will undoubtedly more than others. some ways, superfluous In a series of recent papers, Judithand Alton Becker have elaboratedsome of the meanings of "coherence" in symbolic systems (A. Becker 1979, J. Becker 1979, J. and A. Becker 1981). They follow KennethBurke, arguingthat the naturallyfelt sense of experience in differentsymbolic modes is deeply tied to world-sense, to the constructionof culturalboundaries,and to whole logical orientationsto living and feeling. A central feature in this coherence building/ and thereby maintainingprocess that sustainssymbol makingand interpretation, human cultures as we know them, is metaphor. "Metaphorsgain power-and even cease being taken as metaphors-as they gain iconicity or 'naturalness'" (Becker and Becker 1981:203). In this paper I have also approached the coherence of Kaluli sound and social order through Kaluli metaphors(which indeed, are not metaphorsto Kaluli, but simply what is real) while also tryingto indicate that, as local sociocultural models, metaphors can and should be comparedfor what they tell us aboutpossible coherences, possible sociomusical realities. It is my hope that a comparativesociomusicology will develop along and social structures, these lines, elaboratingnot correlationsof song structures as social structures. of sound structures but coherences
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Revision of a paper read at the Society for Ethnomusicologyannual meetings, Tallahassee, October 1983 at a session co-organizedby CharlesKeil and myself on Comparative Sociomusicology of Classless and EgalitarianSocieties. Many of the issues discussed here have emerged through conversation with Charlie and been enhanced by our ongoing materialist-idealist dialogue. Comments at the SEM panel from MarinaRoseman, John Blacking, and Tony Seeger were helpful in reformulating my remarks,as were commentsfromSimon Frith,GeorginaBorn, andJody Berlandat the Sociology of Music Conferenceat Trent University in August 1983. 1 am also gratefulto John Shepherdfor inviting me to presenta version of this materialthereamongstsociologists and popular music researchers. For research support 1976-1977 and 1982 1 am grateful to the National Endowmentfor the Arts, the Universityof PennsylvaniaResearchFoundation,the Instituteof Papua New Guinea Studies, the Archives of TraditionalMusic, and the AnthropologyFilm Center. In Kaluli words, the typed symbols /e:/ and /o:/ equal c and 3. Otherletterscarrytheirphoneticvalues; for orthographysee Feld 1982:17-19. NOTES 1. Lomax (1976:16) maintainsthat "Generally, the more songs per culture we analyzed, the clearerthe core style became." This is a difficult statementto evaluate. While it should be obvious
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that largersamples indicateclearerpatterns,the real issue is whetherthe cantometricscales factorout or blur too many significant sociomusical dimensions to begin with, thus insuring that the "core pattern" will be overly simple, and thereby making additional sample data superfluous. 2. I write in an ethnographic presentof the late 1960s to mid-1970s, based on my work and that B. B. Schieffelin. of two co-workers, ethnographerE. L. Schieffelin and linguist-ethnographer Massive changes took place in Bosavi in the 1960s and 1970s; some of these are assessed in termsof culturaldestructionin E. L. Schieffelin 1978. When I returnedto the Kaluli in 1982 I found that evangelical Christianity,so strong by the mid-1970s, had lost much of its appeal. Kaluli tired of waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ after so many years of being told to preparefor an imminent arrival. Some ceremonialism was reinvigorated, but there were new disruptions and changes relatedto outside contact, circulationof cash, and desire (largely throughmission influence) for materialWesterngoods. The changes that have taken place have differentlyaffected the various longhouse communities, and differentialswithin communitiesare also clearly apparent.New forms of exploitationand confusion have spread,andculturalanxietyhas heightened.While this essay does not touch on the implicationsof all this for Kaluli social organization,it is important to note thatnew forms of stratificationare evident: Christianityhas given status and advantage to a small few, cultivated high rewardsfor pastors, introducedcash and social differentiation,and greatly debased traditional personal autonomy for Kaluli.
REFERENCESCITED Allen, M. R. 1967 Male Cults and Secret Initiations in Melanesia. Melbourne:MelbourneUniversityPress. Becker, Alton 1979 "CommunicationAcross Diversity," in A. L. Becker and Aram Yengoyan, eds., The
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Sound Structure as Social Structure Author(s): Steven Feld Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1984), pp.

SYMPOSIUM ON COMPARATIVE SOCIOMUSICOLOGY

SOUND STRUCTURE AS SOCIAL STRUCTURE

SEPTEMBER 1984 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,

SEPTEMBER 1984 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,

AS SOCIALSTRUCTURE FELD:SOUND STRUCTURE

SEPTEMBER 1984 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,

PATTERN SOCIOMUSICAL THE KALULI

SEPTEMBER 1984 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,

SEPTEMBER 1984 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,

SEPTEMBER 1984 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,

FELD: SOUND STRUCTURE AS SOCIAL STRUCTURE

SEPTEMBER 1984 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,

women lost their equal

SEPTEMBER 1984 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,

Keil argues that:

SEPTEMBER 1984 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,

is to givethe theprimary effectof music of viewof itssocialfunction, . from thepoint

1984 SEPTEMBER ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,

FELD: SOUND STRUCTURE AS SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Brown, Paula and Georgeda Buchbinder, eds.,

and Song in Kaluli Expression. Phil-

FELD: SOUND STRUCTURE AS SOCIAL STRUCTURE

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