cantometrics
According to the Association for Cultural Equity, the custodian of the Alan Lomax Archive, Cantometrics began in 1954 when Alan Lomax wrote to his contemporary William Russell, illustrating his belief that the history of jazz could be defined by its different regional traits. Lomax was compiling a series of world music LPs in Europe and he wrote several letters in this time period describing his dissatisfaction with previous ideas of music theory which he thought limited the dynamic character of music.
The initial focus of Cantometrics was connecting emotions to music theory. For example, Lomax had learned the importance of
songs accompanying physical labor and daily tasks from the recordings he made on Texas farms. The collections housed at the Library of Congress hold letters from Lomax to his contemporaries, like Peter Seeger, where he references motifs of human existence as he heard them sung by Negro field workers in his Delta field work. For Lomax, folk music was defined by the human experiences it represented. Through his work he discovered histories and patterns that formed families. "When we have described the musical styles of humanity and with their families and sub-families, we shall have the principal formative aesthetic currents of human history finally in our view" (Lomax, 1954).
In 1955, Lomax announced the findings of his preliminary work which identified 9 families of music: Pigmy-Bushman (the oldest); Proto-Melanesian (Highland New Guinea, Central Formosa and Borneo, Melanesian forest, Andaman); Melanesian; Australian; Amerindian; Polynesian; Negro-African; Eurasian; and, Old European.
Lomax first publicly proposed the Cantometrics project in 1959 and launched a group project in conjunction with the Anthropology Department at Columbia University to implement his vision. He wanted to establish quantitative data that could illustrate the histories of the musical families and outline the emotional connections and cultures associated with musical forms. The Cross-Cultural Survey of Expressive Style was installed at Columbia in 1962. The study was interdisciplinary and involved linguists, musicians and anthropologists. At the time Lomax had specific intentions, to create a coding system for the musical performance itself that could produce profiles of musical cultures and clearly show the elements that come into play when two families of style cross.
Lomax focused on vocal music in creating the coding system. Ideas for the rating scheme came from Bruno Nettl's survey of primitive music. Stationed in front of a high fidelity playback system, Lomax and his student Victor Grauer recorded their impressions of Lomax's sample of world music. Taking an observational approach, Lomax and Grauer looked for universal traits that consistently differentiated the selected songs. Grauer states” We chose audible markers which we generally
agreed on and were easy to recognize and define and varied regularly in importance from one potential style family to another. We were not aiming to make complete descriptions or to find definitive units of measurement " [but] to portray the outlines of entire performance style traditions throughout the world so that they could be dependably compared to each other and be tied to
equally clear patterns of culture.
These they formulated into a 37-line coding system. The following is an example of a Cantometrics coding sheet:
The initial focus of Cantometrics was connecting emotions to music theory. For example, Lomax had learned the importance of
songs accompanying physical labor and daily tasks from the recordings he made on Texas farms. The collections housed at the Library of Congress hold letters from Lomax to his contemporaries, like Peter Seeger, where he references motifs of human existence as he heard them sung by Negro field workers in his Delta field work. For Lomax, folk music was defined by the human experiences it represented. Through his work he discovered histories and patterns that formed families. "When we have described the musical styles of humanity and with their families and sub-families, we shall have the principal formative aesthetic currents of human history finally in our view" (Lomax, 1954).
In 1955, Lomax announced the findings of his preliminary work which identified 9 families of music: Pigmy-Bushman (the oldest); Proto-Melanesian (Highland New Guinea, Central Formosa and Borneo, Melanesian forest, Andaman); Melanesian; Australian; Amerindian; Polynesian; Negro-African; Eurasian; and, Old European.
Lomax first publicly proposed the Cantometrics project in 1959 and launched a group project in conjunction with the Anthropology Department at Columbia University to implement his vision. He wanted to establish quantitative data that could illustrate the histories of the musical families and outline the emotional connections and cultures associated with musical forms. The Cross-Cultural Survey of Expressive Style was installed at Columbia in 1962. The study was interdisciplinary and involved linguists, musicians and anthropologists. At the time Lomax had specific intentions, to create a coding system for the musical performance itself that could produce profiles of musical cultures and clearly show the elements that come into play when two families of style cross.
Lomax focused on vocal music in creating the coding system. Ideas for the rating scheme came from Bruno Nettl's survey of primitive music. Stationed in front of a high fidelity playback system, Lomax and his student Victor Grauer recorded their impressions of Lomax's sample of world music. Taking an observational approach, Lomax and Grauer looked for universal traits that consistently differentiated the selected songs. Grauer states” We chose audible markers which we generally
agreed on and were easy to recognize and define and varied regularly in importance from one potential style family to another. We were not aiming to make complete descriptions or to find definitive units of measurement " [but] to portray the outlines of entire performance style traditions throughout the world so that they could be dependably compared to each other and be tied to
equally clear patterns of culture.
These they formulated into a 37-line coding system. The following is an example of a Cantometrics coding sheet:
Using 37 criteria of observation, the Cantometrics team analyzed over
4,000 songs – around 10 representative songs from over 400 cultures. Each song
profile they made was recorded on a computer punch-card and loaded onto the
Columbia mainframe. The results of the study were Published in the volume
Folk Song Style and Culture.
Each recording in the sample was analyzed aurally by a pair of research workers who recorded their impressions for each applicable element on a rating scale of 1 to 5.
The results were then compared statistically with the cultural traits of the societies they represented, from which conclusions were drawn about the relationship of singing styles to social norms.
Grauer later wrote about the study, criticizing the wide parameters on which the original study was set, concluding that it was not surprising that the findings confirmed initial hypotheses, or that further conclusions were reached.
Interested in hearing some of the songs Lomax used? The collection of Alan Lomax recordings are being digitized by the Association for Cultural Equity. The following link will take you to a page where you can hear recordings from the Dominican Republic:
http://research.culturalequity.org/get-audio-ix.do?ix=recording&id=10304&id&sortBy=abc
4,000 songs – around 10 representative songs from over 400 cultures. Each song
profile they made was recorded on a computer punch-card and loaded onto the
Columbia mainframe. The results of the study were Published in the volume
Folk Song Style and Culture.
Each recording in the sample was analyzed aurally by a pair of research workers who recorded their impressions for each applicable element on a rating scale of 1 to 5.
The results were then compared statistically with the cultural traits of the societies they represented, from which conclusions were drawn about the relationship of singing styles to social norms.
Grauer later wrote about the study, criticizing the wide parameters on which the original study was set, concluding that it was not surprising that the findings confirmed initial hypotheses, or that further conclusions were reached.
Interested in hearing some of the songs Lomax used? The collection of Alan Lomax recordings are being digitized by the Association for Cultural Equity. The following link will take you to a page where you can hear recordings from the Dominican Republic:
http://research.culturalequity.org/get-audio-ix.do?ix=recording&id=10304&id&sortBy=abc
