Mixdown Monthly Beat Magazine

THE MUSICAL MANIFESTATIONS OF ANIMAL
AND/OR BIRD SYMBOLISM IN SUYÁ, KALULI, MBUTI
AND TEMIAR RAINFOREST SOCIETIES

The tropical rainforests of the world are geographically located around the periphery of the equator, and predominate in the great Amazonian and Congolese river basins of the American and African continents, as well as in regions of South East Asia and the Pacific Islands.  It is a picturesquely vibrant environment with a biological diversity that encompasses fifty percent of the world’s entire species of plants, animals, insets and microorganisms.  In essence, this forest ecology is theoretically composed of four principal layers, and collectively presents an organic vista of giant trees towering over a dense canopy, which accordingly casts a shadow on the dark understory existing above the forest floor.  The climate of this unique ecosystem  is auspiciously maintained at a temperature of between twenty and thirty degrees Celsius, and exceptionally nourished and invigorated by torrential rains possible of reproducing five centimetres of rain an hour, or the equivalent of one thousand centimetres per year (with a worldwide annual average of two hundred and thirty-four centimetres).

Cultural diversity is also in abundance, and the four distinct rainforest societies that will be analyzed in this paper within a predominantly musically physiological paradigm (the Suyá of Brazil, Kaluli of Papua New Guinea, Mbuti of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Temiar of Malaysia) represent but only some of its transcendent allure, but will nevertheless provide an insight into the enchanting world of the people of the forest and their musical forms of expression.  In spite of the obvious physical distances between these geographically unconnected societies, one of the principal factors that accommodates a pedagogic point of unity is their unique environment, which not only provides subsistence with a combination of agricultural, hunting, gathering and fishing practices, and comparable systems of social organization and artistic expression,  but additionally endows them with the totality of their philosophical belief system.

Horizontal Marker

THE SUYÁ OF BRAZIL

Along the shores of the Suiá-missu River, and within the periphery of the Xingu National Park that is situated in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, live the Suyá Indians in a circular village with a population barely surpassing the centesimal mark.

The Suyá musical repertoire includes seasonal and ceremonial songs, but no sociopolitical or philosophical justification for love songs, protest songs or lullabies.  The act of singing is an integral part of social and economic reproduction, and the aesthetic value of song is ascertained from the collective perspective, hence greater the participation, greater the ‘beauty’ of song.  The Suyá concept of person (involving the components of physical body, social identity and spirit) is manifested through song, and with the ultimate goal of achieving a certain cosmological balance.   Songs also provide the link between humans and animals, thereby legitimizing the perceptible spiritual reality of mythology.  “Songs made the events recounted in the myths real to every member of the society.  Myths described transformations; in certain ceremonies people experienced them,” explains Anthony Seeger in Why Suyá Sing: A musical anthropology of an Amazonian people.

Suyá vocal art forms include instruction (sarén), speech (kapérni), invocation (sangére) and song (ngére).  Instruction refers to any kind of verbal guidance, recounting of myth, and ceremonial public addresses, whereas speech alternatively refers to everyday conversation, and utterances expressing jealousy, anger and social virtue.  Invocations are within the domain of the ritual specialists, and is a recited verbal form practiced by both men and women as a curative treatment.  There are two main song genres, one being akia (shout songs), which are individual songs performed either in singularity or simultaneous plurality by males,’ and the other ngére (unison songs), being collective songs.  The socio-musicological role of women restricted to that of ‘non-singing’ ceremonial assistant and participant observer, apart from minor Suyá and Upper Xingu originated female genres.  The act of singing is accompanied by a variety of rattles constructed either out of animal hooves, fruit pits, gourds, brass shotgun shells or small metal bells, and made to sound by characteristic dance movements that mimic the animal kingdom (namely mice and deer).

The power to originate songs is believed to materialize in a person after a long period of illness, brought on by the angry actions of a jealous witch, who misappropriates that person’s spirit (megaron) for not having imparted the expected amount of comestible offerings to that witch.  The spirit is hence transferred to the dominion of a certain entity (associated with the item in question, honey equals bees, et cetera), and its loss initially causing grave illness, although later enabling the person to transcend linguistic barriers with the natural world and acquire songs.  One Suyá man describes the experience thus, “I was walking in the forest and a tree said to me, ‘Friend’.  I said, ‘Yes?’  The tree said, ‘Where are you going?’ and I replied, ‘Nowhere in particular’.  The tree said, ‘Let’s sing’ and I saw all of the trees singing and they were all singing akia and other types of songs.”  These become known as the ‘songs from men without spirits’ (me katodn kïdi), who are effectually ritual specialists that have experienced an incomplete metamorphosis.  The other two origins of songs are ‘songs in myths’, with a notable source of partly human, partly animal beings (from transformation myths of long ago, celebrated today within the ‘Savannah Deer’, ‘Wild Pig’ and ‘Enemy Child’ ceremonies), and ‘foreign songs’ adopted from non-Suyá visitors of the village, which additionally transmit external energies of power and knowledge onto the community.

The akia genre is the most remarkable of Suyá musical expression, and a song form that has no regional ethnomusicological association.  In the cyclical process of ceremonial life, and its many rites of passage, a male will acquire repertoire with the occurrence of every event.  These include songs of his father, mother’s brother and grandfather, as well as of other men (regardless of being alive or dead).  The performance of akia is either a solo affair or a collective ‘synchronous assault of the airwaves’ by a group of men singing his own akia at the same time (a Suyá concept called aimen-twa-wid-ngre or ‘together each sings his own’).

One of the notable settings of the akia and ngére genres is the Mouse Ceremony, which is a two-week long ‘marathon’ celebrating a boy’s initiation into his name set, and in direct response to the myth of ‘The Mouse that Gave the Woman Corn’ (which tells the tale of how the Suyá used to eat rotten wood until the mouse told them about corn), but without a directly associated mythical transformation originated repertoire.  The men’s symbolic departure from their natal household in the final day of the Mouse Ceremony, and their singing of individual shout songs for their sisters and mothers is an important philosophical aspect of Suyá culture.  The men wear ‘mouse capes’, sing ‘mouse songs’, at times actually behave like mice, and once symbolically transformed into mice, the power of the metamorphosis is the guiding force of the name givers, and subsequently of the boy’s initiation into his name set.  At the conclusion of the ceremony the women emerge with hunting arrows to pierce their brother’s capes, symbolically killing the mice, and hence transforming them back into men.

ANDRIÁN PERTOUT

'Mixdown' Monthly ~ Issue #73, May 3, 2000

BEAT MAGAZINE PTY LTD

All rights reserved. All text, graphics and sound files on this page are copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law. Copyright © 2000 by Andrián Pertout.

Horizontal Marker

THE KALULI OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

The Kaluli people or Bosavi kalu ‘Bosavi people’ (being the self-denomination that is shared between four culturally identical but linguistically distinct subgroups) coexist in twenty longhouse communities (with each one made up of groups of fifteen families numbering a total of sixty to eighty people), and inhabit the Melanesian rainforests north of Mount Bosavi, on the Great Papuan Plateau in the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea.

For the Kaluli, the substance of musical expression is entirely metaphorically derived from their Papua New Guinean forest environment, with bird sounds providing the principal inspiration for the scalar archetypes, water sounds the structural components, and mythology the rationalist theorem.  At the core of aesthetic consolidation with the natural and spiritual world is the raison d’être for the notion of dulugu ganalan or ‘lift-up-over sounding’, which is essentially the discernibly audible overlapping, alternating, and interlocking quality of the ‘Kaluli groove’.  The greater significance of the forest’s symbolic importance is intensified by the belief that it is the home of ane mama or ‘gone reflections’ spirits of the Kaluli dead, which are in active communication with the living world through bird song.

Out of the six vocal genres in existence (gisalo, koluba, sabio, iwo, heyalo and kelekeliyoba), gisalo represents a Kaluli men’s innovation, and is performed only during particular ceremonies and seances.  The only other two forms that appropriate composition include heyalo and koluba, which are in comparison genres designated to be sung within the social contexts of work and leisure, as well as ceremonial.  Other forms include women’s sung texted weeping (sa-yelab) and cheering (uwolab), men’s whooping (ulab), instrumental drumming (ilib) and bamboo Jew’s harp playing (uluna).  The components that additionally yield rhythmic vitality to Kaluli ceremonial singing include the sologa (seedpod rattle), degegado (crayfish claw rattle) and sob (mussel shell rattle).

To understand the Kaluli methodology of composition and performance it is essential to firstly understand the impetus that breathes within this culture’s bona fide metaphysical relationship with birds.  The presence of sentimentality may be illustrated within the myth of ‘The Boy who Became a Muni Bird’, because this is the spiritual connection that evokes strong emotions in performance.  In the social setting of the traditional all night ceremonies (held at the host longhouse), guest composers and performers use the gisalo idiom to draw feelings of nostalgia, reflection and sentimentality from the host.  Spirit medium seances have similar ambitions, although in this context visiting spirits sing gisalo songs through the mouths of mediums, conveying the expression of spirit beings and place names in the text to generate the characteristic ‘melodically patterned’ weeping from the audience that symbolizes the call of the muni bird.

The archetypal scalar pattern of gisalo also literally being a transcription of the euphonious call of the muni bird (the beautiful fruitdove, Ptilinopus pulchellus) further signifies that ‘song’ is in essence the symbolic marriage between the melodic pattern of birds with the talk pattern of birds.  Standard melodies or gisalo kotogodo are additionally created from these muni bird tones (often for the purpose of inaugurating the amateur composer) and combined with textual material to form a gisalo song.  Steven Feld, ethnomusicologist and author of Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression notes, “As I learned about the symbolism of the weeping and singing voice I was taught about their intimate connection to rainforest birds.”

The complex structure of songs is characterized by the physiological impression of the melodic element of song (gisalo) representing ‘bird sounds’ (obe gono) and the textual element (Sa-gisalo or ‘words inside gisalo’) representing ‘bird sound words’ (obe gono to).  A refined perspective of this ideology elucidates the Kaluli notion of molan or ‘one sings’ (which usually means the vocalization of either both text and melody or simply melody alone) and its cosmological extension of sa-molan or ‘one sings inside’, which means ‘singing inside one’s head’ or in other words to ‘compose song’.  These concepts of duality that clearly surround the artistry of Kaluli song reveal that because melodic appropriation is derived from nature, it is perceived to come from ‘outside and around’, whereas textual invention which is derived from grey matter is dissimilarly perceived to come from ‘inside and down’.

There are nine principal terms in the Kaluli terminology of melodic intervals and contours of gisalo, with the two main intervals being sa (descending minor 3rd, and also the word for waterfall) and gese (descending major 2nd, and an extraction of gesema, with the connotation of ‘make one feel sorrow or pity’).  These intervals are evident in the call of the muni bird, hence also in gisalo and sa-yelab (melodic weeping), and all nomenclature (with but the one exception of gese) is based on waterfall phenomena.  In performance, the gulu or ‘flow’ of gisalo has a rhythmic pulse of about one hundred and twenty beats per minute, which symbolically encapsulates the harmonious synchrony that exists between the Kaluli and their natural environment, and represented in this ‘song and dance’ context by the dancer’s ‘wokwele (Giant Cuckoodove) bird-derived’ up and down movements, and waterfall sound and motion.

ANDRIÁN PERTOUT

'Mixdown' Monthly ~ Issue #75, July 5, 2000

BEAT MAGAZINE PTY LTD

All rights reserved. All text, graphics and sound files on this page are copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law. Copyright © 2000 by Andrián Pertout.

Horizontal Marker

THE MBUTI OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

In the northeast corner of the Congo, and within the political boundary of the Democratic Republic of Congo is the Ituri forest, home of the Mbuti pygmies, who in small bands or hunting groups observe a nomadic existence.

The Mbuti musical synopsis is thematically intertwined with socially concerted absoluteness that it almost delineates a perfect reflection of the Mbuti psyche.  “Mbuti music is highly interactive.  The very musical structure and form and the singing techniques of singing reproduce, almost exactly, the patterns of cooperation required in whatever aspect of real life that particular kind of song relates to,” explains Colin Turnbull in The Mbuti Pygmies: Change and Adaptation.  The importance of song is vividly expressed in Mbuti legends, and there is a very general, although specific consensus that song is not only ‘beautiful’, but also ‘good’ and ‘powerful’, because song ultimately presents the means of abating akami ‘noise’ (also meaning conflict) and restoring ekimi ‘silence’ or ‘peace’ in their forest environment.  The youth are considered pure (in view of their exclusion from the adult role of hunter-gatherer, therefore ‘killers of animals’), and so they are designated the role of politician, lawmaker and judge.  This social status is further elevated by the fact that being the better singers and dancers, youthfulness also means being naturally better equipped to communicate with the spirit of the forest.  The legend of ‘The Bird with the Most Beautiful Song’ illustrates well the aesthetical significance of ‘beauty of voice’, because when the father kills ‘the bird with the most beautiful song in the forest’ (annoyed at being asked to feed it on ‘three’ occasions by his son), with the bird he kills the song, and with the song he consequently kills himself.

The four major modes of music in Mbuti life include hunting and gathering songs, as well as the sacred ceremonial genres of the men’s molimo (performed to alleviate sickness, bad hunting or death) and the women’s elima (performed to consecrate all rites of passage of a woman), with the additional only solo form of women’s lullaby. The men’s religious songs are often accompanied rhythmically by banja (clapsticks, either struck together or split at the ends to be played on a log), and hunting and gathering songs (especially honey songs) alternatively by ngbenbe (clapsticks, stripped of bark), with the occasional inclusion of externally appropriated membranophones. The molimo trumpet is considered as a sacred object of the molimo ceremony, and makata (tuned sticks, discarded after their use) belong to the tradition of the Bantu village nkumbi initiation ceremony, whereas the flute (end-blown reed or cane notched aerophone), lukembi (10-key lamellaphone or mbira) and musical bow have a secular recreational standing.

The songs of the Mbuti pygmies are constructed around pentatonic and quasipentatonic melodic frameworks of notably descending contours that are given life with a harmonic idiosyncrasy based on fourths and fifths, multi-part vocalization, polyrhythmic aptitude and improvisational propagation.  Textual material is unimportant, with the ‘importance’ and ‘power’ of the song entirely based on the constraints of sound.  “Mbuti sing using four basic vowel sounds (ee, eh, oh, oo).  They also use effects achieved by holding the nose, or singing from the throat or the stomach,” explains Colin Turnbull in the liner notes of Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Rainforest.  In the actual performance context, the antiphonal singing techniques of the female-led songs of the elima initiation ceremony, and the hocket singing techniques utilized in the canonic hunting songs further illustrate both the sound of the music, and the affinity between songs and the patterns of cooperation manifested within the social structure.

The Mbuti, referred to as BaMbuti (the generic term for all pygmies of the Ituri forest) by the Bantu and Sudanic villagers that surround their forest environment, represent one of two major groups of pygmies that inhabit the Congo basin, and although participate in some of the village ceremonies to appease the socio-economic relationship with the villagers, their own sacred rituals are reserved for the forest.  The most important of these is the molimo, which may be characterized in its two existing forms of the molimo mangbo or ‘great’ molimo that is usually brought about by the event of death (but may also include adult disputes, bad hunting, illicit flirtation or adultery) is where the elders, adults and youth sing every night for at least a month, and the molimo made or ‘lesser’ molimo that is brought about by everyday akami ‘noise’ (or conflict) in the camp.  The faith in the great power of the molimo is embodied in the ideology that here is an opportunity to resolve problems directly with the ‘supreme being’ (the spirit of the forest conceptualized as virtually the panacea), and that once song becomes sanctified with the combined force of the unmarried (and also pure) youth’s voices and the molimo trumpet, song then has the ability to communicate with the forest and therefore ‘wake up the forest’ to ultimately have ekimi ‘peace’ restored.  The youth duplicate the angry sounds of leopards and elephants (and if necessary the actions), and sleepless night after sleepless night they echo the songs of the adults, and when song achieves the kind of attributes capable of reaching the spirit of the forest, peace is finally reconstituted.  In an article titled Liminality: A Synthesis of Subjective and Objective Experience Colin Turnbull notes, “The Mbuti would say that those who do not recognize spirit have merely forgotten (or never knew) how to reach it: ‘they do not know how to sing.’  Other cultures have other ways of making contact with spirit, but for the Mbuti their prime, supreme way, is song.”

ANDRIÁN PERTOUT

'Mixdown' Monthly ~ Issue #84, April 4, 2001

BEAT MAGAZINE PTY LTD

All rights reserved. All text, graphics and sound files on this page are copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law. Copyright © 2001 by Andrián Pertout.

Horizontal Marker

THE TEMIAR OF MALAYSIA

Twelve thousand Temiar (belonging to the Senoi ethnic division of the Orang Asli aboriginal peoples of the Malay Peninsula) live in villages of between twenty-five and one hundred and fifty people along the five major rivers of Malaysia.

The Temiar believe that all entities (being human, animal, plant or landform) have bounded souls, governed by everyday waking life, health and safety, which can be emancipated as unbound spirit, governed by dreams, trance, illness, singing ceremonies and death.  “The souls of all entities are dialectically differentiated into upper and lower portions.  Humans have head- and heart-souls; plants have leaf- and root-souls; mountains have summit- and underground- or cave-souls,” explains Marina Roseman in an article titled The Social Structuring of Sound: The Temiar of Peninsular Malaysia.  The benevolent and malevolent nature of these opposing forces thus creates an environment that is both positive and negative, and one that the Temiar attempt to control through dream and trance.  A result of this interactive cosmological viewpoint is the communicative link between human and non-human entities, which is directly responsible for their musical and therapeutic benefaction.

The majority of Temiar music is vocal, which is accompanied by bamboo-tube stampers (gooh), and on occasions either by one or two single-headed drums (barano and batak), and/or a small hand-held gong, and is a prominent feature of night ceremonies.  Instrumental forms alternatively dominate the day (a disruption of this cosmic order perceived to bring illness and death to the community), and the instruments utilized include the pensool (nose flute), siooy (mouth-blown flute), gengoon (metal Jew’s harp), rangon rangon (palm Jew’s harp) and karab (two-stringed bamboo-tube zither).  The bamboo instruments are reserved for women (notable are the bamboo-tube stampers that accompany all singing with their distinctive duple rhythm), while the Jew’s harps for men, with the flutes in the dominion of either gender.

The acquisition of all Temiar vocal repertoire is perpetuated within the dream paradigm, and in a process that involves the unbound head-soul (rawaay) spirit of the dreamer meeting with the upper- or lower-portion souls of entities (such as trees, river rapids, tigers and deceased humans), who upon declaring to become their spiritguide (gonig) bestow songs upon them.  In the ceremonial performance setting that follows, the spiritual link effectually transforms the dreamer into a medium of the spiritguide, acquiring its voice, vision and knowledge, hence the adeptness as healer.  The melodies of the nose flute and end-blown flute repertoires are directly procured from these songs, with those of the Jew’s harps and zither alternatively mimicking the sounds of the natural forest environment (birdcalls, insect sounds, et cetera).  “Temiar singing and religion receive inspiration and constant regeneration from interactions with the essences of mountains, rivers, fruits, creatures of the tropical rainforest,” explains Marina Roseman.

This unique ability to receive songs from spiritguides (and therefore the ability to present the spiritguides through the performance of these songs) is considered to render a person with halaa or ‘adeptness’.  Women are less likely to attain the status of halaa, although are an essential component of the performance of songs, and feature prominently within the social sphere as midwives.  “Halaa adeptness enables an individual to diagnose and treat illness,” notes Marina Roseman.  Greater the quantity and period of song acquisition, greater the halaa, with the procurement of the revered tiger spiritguide crystallize the social standing of halaa manuu or ‘larger’ medium.  Adeptness may be also acquired from other mediums, and close relations are often initiated as mediums, in a ceremonial process that involves the reception of ministrations (parenlub).  In the spiritually dynamic event of parenlub, the medium’s entire repertoire is transmitted from the spiritguide into the head- and heart-soul of the person with the aid of kahyek (a cool spiritual liquid).  Marina Roseman explains, “The cool spiritual liquid kahyek combines the essence of foliage (sap), rivers, rain, and dew-valuing water and coolness.  Kahyek is the liquid form of the upper-portion souls of nonhuman entities; but when unbound and flowing in the contexts of trance, singing-sessions, and curing, this cool spiritual liquid can be transferred and infused into humans.”  A person that circumvents parenlub is not considered a medium, and additionally the act of singing dream songs of other people is not considered as possessing halaa, because these songs are decreed as to bar-is ii or ‘without substance’.

The therapeutic nature of Temiar music and its incontrovertible emphasis on the hypothesis of non or ‘path’ is highlighted in the course of singing/trance-dancing ceremonies.  In the same way that survival in the jungle is perceived to be dependent on the ability to ‘negotiate the path’ (an aptitude equated with the possession of all necessary universal knowledge), survival in the settlement is also perceived to be governed by similar cosmology, therefore leading to the philosophical deduction that considers illness to be the result of a person’s detached head-soul getting lost or waylaid.  Temiar mediums sing during curing ceremonies, and the melodic and textual material utilized in these songs are a bestowal of spirit guides in dreams.  In the performance context of these ‘dream songs’ the women’s chorus repeat the medium’s phrases, which metaphorically represents ‘following the path described by the spiritguide through the medium’.  According to Marina Roseman in Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine, “Songs are paths that link mediums, female chorus members, trance-dancers, and patients with spirits of the jungle and settlement.”

ANDRIÁN PERTOUT

'Mixdown' Monthly ~ Issue #85, May 2, 2001

BEAT MAGAZINE PTY LTD

All rights reserved. All text, graphics and sound files on this page are copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law. Copyright © 2000 by Andrián Pertout.

Horizontal Marker

“The land is one great, wild, untidy, luxuriant hothouse, made by Nature for herself …How great would be the desire in every admirer of Nature to behold, if such were possible, the scenery of another planet!… Yet to every person … it may truly be said, … that the glories of another world are opened to him,” wrote Charles Darwin a century and a half ago about his first experience with the tropical rainforest.   In 1950, fifteen percent of the earth was adorned by rainforest, and in the following twenty-five years this figure was pruned to bequeath half.  This legacy foreshadows the grim reality that five quinquenniums on (2000 A.D.) the remaining amount of that original forest is estimated to be no more than seven percent, and depredation at this scale ensures a continuum of the present daily extinction of fifty species of plants and animals.

‘Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World’ proposes (in the words of Andrián Malone) that, “All societies survive by manipulating nature, but while tribal cultures seek harmony with nature, Western societies try to control it, often with devastating consequences.”  While the deeper sentiments involved in this ongoing desecration of the land is expressed by a Cape York aboriginal elder thus, “The land is mother to all of us, white and black, and how you feel if somebody cut your mother in pieces, in front of you, how you feel?”

What of the people of the forest (the Suyá of Brazil, Kaluli of Papua New Guinea, Mbuti of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Temiar of Malaysia) and their future perpetuation within this impending fatal precipice?  The memory of these four cultural dinosaurs will be cherished…

ANDRIÁN PERTOUT

All rights reserved. All text, graphics and sound files on this page are copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law. Copyright © 2001 by Andrián Pertout.

Horizontal Marker

Bibliography

Books

Feld, Steven.  Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression.  2nd ed.  Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.

Hobley, L. F.  Tropical Forests of the World.  London: Macmillan, 1984.

Newman, Arnold.  Tropical Rainforest: A World Survey of our Most Valuable and Endangered Habitat with a Blueprint for its Survival.  New York Facts On Life, 1990.

Nichol, John.  The Mighty Rainforest.  London: David & Charles, 1990.

Odum, Eugene P.  “Ecosystems.” The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia.  15th ed.  Vol. 17.  Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1989.  979-983.

Roseman, Marina.  Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine.  Berkeley: U of California Press, 1993.

- - - .  “Inversion and Conjecture: Male and Female Performance Among the Temiar of Peninsular Malaysia.”  Women and Music in Cross-cultural Perspective.  Ed. Ellen Koskoff.  Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 1989.  131-149.

Schieffelin, Edward L.  The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers.  St. Lucia, Qld.: U of Queensland Press, 1997.

Seeger, Anthony.  “Sing for your Sister: The Structure and Performance of Suyá Akia.”  Eds. Norma McLeod, and Marcia Herndon.  The Ethnography of Musical Performance.  Norwood: Norwood Editions, 1980.  269-304.

- - - .  Why Suyá Sing: A musical anthropology of an Amazonian people.  Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1987.

Snaden, James N.  “Brazil.”  The Macmillan Family Encyclopedia.  5th ed.  Vol.3.  London: Macmillan, 1984.  459-464.

Turnbull, Colin.  “Liminality: A Synthesis of Subjective and Objective Experience.”  Eds. Richard Schechner, and Willa Appel.  By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual.  Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1990.  50-81

- - -.  The Forest People.  London: Pimlico, 1993.

- - -.  The Mbuti Pygmies: Change and Adaptation.  New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983.

Wachtel, Paul Spencer, Justin Kenrick, and Theodore Macdonald Jr.  “Forests and People.”  Rainforests: The Illustrated Library of the Earth.  Sydney: Reader’s Digest Press, 1993.  82-115.

Discography

Feld, Steven.  Voices of the Rainforest.  Rykodisc, 1991.

Roseman, Marina.  Dream Songs and Healing Sounds in the Rainforests of Malaysia.  Smithsonian/Folkways, 1995.

Seeger, Anthony.  Why Suyá Sing: A musical anthropology of an Amazonian people.  Audiocassette.  Cambridge U Press, 1987.

Turnbull, Colin.  Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Rainforest.  Smithsonian/Folkways, 1992.

Internet Resources

Feld, Steven.  “From Ethnomusicology to Echo-Muse-Ecology: Reading R. Murray Schafer in the Papua New Guinea Rainforest.”  The Soundscape Newsletter 8 (Jun. 1994): n. pag. University of Oregon College of Education.  World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.  Online.  Internet.  Available HTTP: http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/FCJWFAESndScapeSelect#Feld  6 Jun. 1998.

“Hunter-gatherers of the forests of Central Africa.”  The Ituri Forest Peoples Fund.  Online.  Internet.  Available HTTP: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/psych/Morelli/pygmy.html  13 Jun. 1998.

“Rainforest Biome: Rainforests are in Danger!”  Missouri Botanical Garden.  MBGnet: What’s It Like Where You Live?  Online.  Internet.  Available HTTP: http://www.mobot.org/MBGnet/vb/rforest/indexhtm  5 Jun. 1998.

Roberts, David.  “The Suyá Sing and Dance and Fight for a Culture in Peril: When We Stop Singing, We will Really be Finished.”  Smithsonian Magazine (May 1996): n. pag. Online.  Internet.  Available HTTP: http://smithsonianmag.con/smithsonian/issues96/may96/suya.html  7 Jun. 1998.

Stewart, Kilton.  “Dream Theory in Malaya.” (17 Jun. 1996).  Dr. Alexander Randall.  Sweet Dreams from Dr-Dream.  Online.  Internet.  Available HTTP:
 http://www.dr-dream.com/kilton.htm.  11 Jun. 1998.

Film and Video Recordings

An Ecology of Mind.  Dir. Michael Grant.  Prods. Michael Grant, and Richard Meech.  Videocassette.  Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World.  A co-production of Biniman, Andrián Malone, BBC-TV, and KCET in Association with The Global Television Network, 1992.

Maps

Baker, Denis.  “Location of the Ituri Forest.”  Colin Turnbull.  The Forest People.  Map.  London: Pimlico, 1993.  15.

Essner, Janis.  “The Great Papuan Plateau.”  Steven Feld.  Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression.  2nd ed.  Map.  Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.  8.

“Malay Peninsular, The.”  Marina Roseman.  Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine.  Map.  Berkeley: U of California Press, 1993.  3.

“[Mato Grosso], Brazil.”  The Macmillan Family Encyclopedia.  5th ed.  Vol. 3.  Map.  London: Macmillan, 1984.  460.

“Tropical Forests of the World.”  L. F. Hobley.  Tropical Forests of the World.  Map.  London: Macmillan, 1984.  4.

Periodicals

Feld, Steven.  “Aesthetic as Iconicity of Style (Uptown Title); or, (Downtown Title) ‘Lift-up-over Sounding’: Getting into the Kaluli Groove.”  Yearbook for Traditional Music 20 (1988): 109-150.

- - - .  “‘Flow Like a Waterfall’: The Metaphors of Kaluli Musical Theory.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 13 (1981): 227.

- - - .  “Sound Structure as Social Structure.”  Ethnomusicology 38.3 (1984): 383-409.

Roseman, Marina.  “The Social Structuring of Sound: The Temiar of Peninsular Malaysia.”  Ethnomusicology 38.3 (1984): 411-445.

Andrián Pertout's Home Page