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Lomax, Alan. Selected writings, P. 217As a first guess, then, one may view the function of song style as a reinforcement of thosenorms of social interaction which are adaptive. I shall define the good, in behavioral terms,as the structure of adaptive interaction norms. The beautiful, then, will be defined as theappropriate, matching communication structure which reinforces these adaptive norms.

The good and the beautiful, in this view, are two sides of the same coin, both to bediscovered in the structure of observed behavior in culture. This hypothesis must then betested cross-culturally and within a scalar, evolutionary framework on a number of songstructures. Esthetics will, in this approach, become a study of the suitable in its dynamicrelationship to the development of man. The special province of folklore will then becomesocial esthetics: only in traditional tales, songs, dance, and design patterns does thereexist such dependable evidence of the activity of man in choosing symbolic systemssuitable to his economic and social condition.(...)Once painting lived on the body, sculpture was something which was used and handled,architecture was the result of cooperative labor, and literature was recited or danced. Incivilization, all these arts have become representational and a dirty problem for thebehavioral sciences. On the contrary, song and dance are acts that may be recordedanywhere as performed, and then studied as events which structure the relations ofhuman actors in cultural context. Such structures may be compared to more everydaybehaviors. From the pairs of song performance and social interaction, a series of stable,symbolic functions can be established.All communication rests upon the redundancy principle and may be rated by the degree ofredundancy. Speech and song are produced by the same organs., conform to the same

linguistic regularities (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) and use the same given communicationmodespitch, stress, duration, speed, timbre, segmentation, meter, melody, volume,register, social ordering,P. 218etc. All these features are treated far more repetitively and formally in song than in speech.Indeed, song, where redundancy appears at all or most levels simultaneously, may beboth recognized and defined as the most redundant form of vocal communication.The high redundancy level of song has many consequences. Song is essentially louderand more arresting than speech. It shouts across social space and across human time as

well, since its formal patterns are both emphatic and easy to remember. In song, groups ofpeople easily phonate together and in coordinationa very rare speech event which addsto the social weight of the statement. Song, like other forms of folklore, establishes andmaintains group consensus about a multitude of human concerns across time.This highly redundant form of phonation most often appears in ritual contextsfuneralsand weddings, religious, initiation, and political ceremonies, and the like, where thecontinuity of a culture is reinforced or reinstated for the entire communityor in situationswhere formal interpersonal relations prevail, such as work, courtship, and dancing. Songthus seems to function principally as a way of organizing group behavior and groupresponse in public situations. It seems to be a group, rather than a o, communication. Theserenade alerts the neighbors to a young mans sexual interest in a young woman. Thesung soliloquy, except in the case of very young children, always seems to be drawn fromthe public musical tradition. This private singing probably serves to alleviate the pain of


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isolation by reminding the singer of his most pleasant, or anxiety-filled, or everyday socialrelationships.In terms of cantometric measurement, at least, sung performance varies less by functionthan by culture area. In simple culture one usually finds only one or two basic performancemodels which are employed again and again for many functional categories. Theseinteraction models for the singing group seem to mirror the norms of interpersonal

behavior that are basic in a culture region. Song transmits this normative informationefficiently because of its multi-level redundancy and formality. Thus, three essential symbolfunctions reach their peak in song: speed, total recall, and summation. A familiar melody orfragment thereof heard out of context can recapture the whole of a culture pattern. Most ofthis information in song goes on the air from a good recording. Thus the potential of anarchive of field recordings as a body of objective data about the social process ispotentially unsurpassed. The problem of cantometric research was to begin to locate thechannels in song recorded performance which transmitted information about socialP. 219norms. Cantometric research began with some guesses about where indicators of culturalstructure were located in song performance:A. About social orderingin the social organization of the performing group.B. About information flowin the information rate of the performance.C. About important role modelsin the vocal stance employed.P. 247Cantometrics is a system for rating a song performance in a series of qualitativejudgments; one day it may be a way of using song as an indicator of social and

psychological pattern in a culture. Cantometrics takes into account the phenomenadescribed by European music notationmelody, rhythm, harmony, interval size, etcbut itlooks beyond these European basics at many other factors present in and (as far as wecould tell by intensive listening) generic to the song style of other areas. These factorsinclude the size and social structure of the music- making group; the location and role ofleadership in the music-making group; the type and the degree of integration in the music-making group; the type and the degree of melodic, rhythmic, and vocal embellishment in asung performance; and the qualities of the singing voice normally effected by the chosensingers in a culture. Since these features of a performance are judged by our system in asummary fashion, we also looked at the purely musical traits at a similar level. Forexample, rhythm was rated, not in terms of the precise meter that occurred in a selection,

but in terms of levels of increasing complexityfrom the simple one-beat rhythm, oftenfound among Amerindians, to the free, almost meterless rhythms common to muchOriental singing. In addition, however, we looked at the type of rhythmic organization ofboth the singing and instrumental groups, here again rating the sample in terms ofincreasing levels of integration, from simple unison to complex counterpoint. Thus ourrating system, for rhythm, quickly summarizes in four judgments much of the informationthat would be obtainable from painstaking notation and analysis of hundreds of examplesby normal methods of music notation.Cantometrics does not depend, except at one or two levels, upon formal musical analysis,but is limited, I believe, to those features of a sung performance which are available andimportant to a normal listener anywhere. Using the cantometrics system, a trainedobserver can make the same series of defined observations about any song that he hears,whether recorded or live.


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P. 248THE CODING SHEETThe cantometric coding book now ready for publication runs to more than fifty pages andthus can be only summarized here. Therefore, in what follows, each rating scale, which is

fully defined in the coding book, is explained in the briefest terms. An exception is Line 1,with which this article is particularly concerned. Unless otherwise stated, Point 1 in eachline stands for the nonoccurrence of a trait, and the line itself, reading from left to right, is ascale from nonoccurrence to maximal occurrence of a trait. Figure 1 [not included]reproduces a sample cantometric coding sheet, coded for a lament recorded by MargaretMead and Theodore Schwartz in Manus, New Guinea. A line-by-line explanation of thecoding system follows.(1) Organization of the Vocal Group, rated in terms of increasing group dominance andintegration. This line asks the question: Is the performance a solo by a leader (L) with apassive audience (N) and the resultant situation that of the leader completely dominatingthe group (L over N), or is the group (N) in some way active in relation to the leader (L)?Point 2 indicates complete leader dominance (e.g., Orient, Western Europe). Points 3 and4 represent other solo singing situations (e.g., Southern Spain). Points 5 and 6 denotesimple unison singing in which leader and group sing the same material in the same wayand in concert (e.g., Amerindian and many other primitive peoples). In 5 (L/ N), the leaderis dominant more than 50 percent of the time, whereas the reverse relationship prevails in6 (N/L). Point 7 represents the situation in which both L and N are active in singing thesame melodic material, but one part slightly trails the other and often adds small melodicor rhythmic variations (e.g., Oriental choruses, Watusi). Point 8 (L+N) is noted when Lsings a phrase and then N separately repeats it. Point 9 (N+N) is indicated when N sings aphrase and another part of the chorus (N) repeats it. Points 10, 11, and 12 denote what we

term interlocked relationships, i.e., when a part of a singing group overlaps another orperforms a supportive function for the other (e.g., Negro Africa). L (N, in 10, indicates aninterlocked relationship between L and N in which L is dominant; N (L, in 11, indicates asimilar relationship with N dominant; N (N, in 12, denotes a similar relationship betweentwo groups. Point 13 (W) indicates complete interlocking (e.g., Pygmy hocketing style,European contrapuntal choir).(2) Relation of Orchestra to Singers. Point 1 denotes absence of orchestra oraccompaniment. Point 2 indicates a simple accompanying relation by one to threeinstruments; Point 3, the same with a larger orchestra; Point 4, the same with a dominantbig orchestra. Point 5 indicates a big orchestra alone. Points 8 and 9 denote the trailingrelationship with a small and a big orchestra; Points 12 and 13, the interlocked relationship

with a small and a large orchestra.(3) Organization of the Orchestra, rated in terms of increasing group dominance from leftto right, as in Line 1.(4) Type of Vocal Organization. Point 1: no singer. Point 2: monophony. Point 3: unisonsinging. Point 4: heterophony. Point 5: polyphony, i.e., any consistent use of part singing,no matter how simple.(5) Tonal Blend: Voices. This line rates voice blending in the chorus from none tohomogeneous to well integrated.(6) Rhythmic Blend: Voice. This line rates the rhythmic integration of the chorus in fivedegrees, from poorly to well integrated.(7) Type of Orchestral Organization. Rated as in Line 4.(8) Tonal Blend: Orchestra. Rated as in Line 5.(9) Rhythmic Blend: Orchestra. Rated as in Line 6.


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(10)Words to Nonsense. This line rates the relative importance of meaningful words asagainst nonsense syllables (including vocal segregates) in a sung text. Point 1: wordsimportant and dominant. Point 2: words less important. Point 3: words with somenonsense. Point 4: nonsense more important than words. Point 5: nonsense only.(11) Over-all Rhythm of the Vocal Part, rated in increasing degrees of metrical complexity.Point 3: one-beat rhythm. Point 5 and 6: simple meters such as 2/4 or 3/4. Points 8 and 9:

complex meters such as 7/8. Point 11: irregular meter. Point 13: no consistent meter. (12) Linking Rhythm of the Vocal Group, rated in terms of increasingly complex integration.Point 3: unison. Point 5: heterophony. Point 7: accompanying rhythm. Point 9: polyrhythm.Point 11: polymeter. Point 13: rhythmic counterpoint.(13) Over-all Rhythm of the Orchestra. Rated as in Line 11.(14) Linking Rhythm of the Orchestra. Rated as in Line 12.(15) Melodic Shape. Point 1: arched. Point 2: terraced. Point 3: undulating.Point 4: descending.(16)Melodic Form, rated from through-composed (1), through fiveincreasingly simple types of strophe (2 to 6) and five increasingly simple types of litany (7to 12), to Point 13, which represents the special type of litany typical of much Pygmysinging.(17) Phrase Length. The length of the basic musical ideas which make up a melody israted in five points, from extremely long to extremely short phrases. Complex strophes aregenerally composed of long phrases, litanies of short phrases.(18) Number of Phrases in a Melody, rated from left to right in eight degrees, from eight ormore phrases to one or two in each melodic section.(19) Position of the Final, rated in five degrees from left to right, from the final on thelowest note to the final on the highest note of the scale used in a given tune.(20) Over-all Range, rated in five degrees, from a second to two octaves or more.(21) Average Width of Intervals, rated in five degrees, from dominance of narrow intervals

(microtones) to dominance of wide intervals (fourths and fifths).

(22) Type of Polyphony, rated in six degrees of increasing complexity from none tocounterpoint.(23) Embellishment. The degree of melodic ornamentation is rated in five degrees from leftto right, from highly ornamented to virtual absence of ornament.(24) Tempo, rated in six degrees, from very slow to very fast. Point 9, the center point(walking pace), has about sixteen beats per minute. Point 13 was not used.(25) Volume of Singing, rated in five degrees, from very soft to very loud. (26) Rubato:Voice. The degree of rubato (rhythmic freedom) which affects the overall vocal rhythm(Line 11) is rated in four degrees from left toright, from very great to none.(27) Rubato: Orchestra. Rated as in Line 26.(28) Glissando (voice gliding between notes), rated in four degrees from leftto right, from maximum to none.(29) Melisma (two or more notes per syllable), rated in three degrees, fromgreat to none.(30) Tremulo (voice quavering), rated in three degrees, from great to none. (31) GlottalShake. Rated as in Line 30.(32) Register(s) most commonly used, rated in five levels, from very high tovery low.(33) Vocal Width normally used by the singer, rated in five degrees, from verynarrow and squeezed to very open and relaxed (the yodel).(34) Nasality. The amount of nasalization characteristic of a singer is ratedin five degrees, from very great to none.(35) Raspiness (any type of harsh, throaty voice quality), rated in five


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degrees, from very great to none.(36) Accent. The forcefulness of the singing attack is rated in five degrees,from very forceful to very relaxed.(37)Consonant Enunciation. The precision of enunciation of sungconsonants is rated in five degrees, from very precise to very slurred.P. 252MUSICAL ACCULTURATIONThe usefulness of Cantometrics is, perhaps, most quickly apparent in relation to thetroubling problems of musical acculturation. The American folklore school, led by GeorgePullen Jackson (1943), studied the available musical scores and concluded that most so-called Negro melodies were variants of old European tunes. Africanists, such as MelvilleHerskovits (1941), pointed to the survival of African musical habits and institutions in theNew World. A comparison of the cantometric profiles of song performance from NegroAfrica and from a wide sampling of Afro-American groups provides the answer to thisapparent paradox (see Figure 2) [not included].In most respects the African and Afro-American performance profiles are identical andform a unique pair in our world sample. The social organization of the musical group, thedegree of integration of the musical group, the layout of the rhythm, the levels ofembellishment, and the voice quality sets conform to the same ratings in both Negro Africaand Negro communities in the New World. These paired profiles differ from each otherprincipally at the level where Jackson discovered Western European influence, i.e., in

Lines 16 and 17, which deal with melodic form and phrase length. The African profilecodes 10 (simple litany) on Line 16 and 10 (short phrases) on Line 17. The Afro-Americanprofile codes 2 to 12 on Line 16, which means that American Negroes sing every type ofstrophe as well as every type of litany; it also codes 7 and 10 (phrases of medium length

as well as short phrases) on Line 17.

The cause for this shift of emphasis in the Afro-American profile seems clear. Perhaps themost prominent and powerful trait of Western European folk song is its attachment to thestrophic melodic form, composed of phrases of medium length. It has exploited this traitpair (2 to 6 plus 7) to develop a body of melodies unmatched in the world for number andvariety. It appears, then, that Negro singers, coming to the New World, were impressed bythe European strophic form and added it to their musical resources, meanwhile keepingtheir own system more or less intact in other respects. As melody makers, they retainedtheir interest in the litany, short-phrase form but learned how to use and to create melodiesin the potent European style.For another example of musical acculturation, we may look at modern Polynesian song.

One of the most notable traits of old Polynesian music is the choral performance in perfecttonal and rhythmic unison of long and complex texts, where every syllable is clearlyenunciated. In some areas, a rudimentary form of polyphony occurs: one of the voice partsrises in pitch and maintains this level while the chorus continues to sing at the originalpitch, thus creating a simple drone harmony.Shortly after contact with European explorers and missionaries, this older style wassubmerged by an acculturated choral style, which most Polynesians mastered. Theyastonished, delighted, and sometimes horrified European observers by choralperformances in perfectly blended and often extremely banal Western European harmony.Indeed, a casually organized group of Polynesians could soon sing in the Europeanharmonized style more skillfully than most Westerners. Recordings of these performancesbecame popular hits in Europe and America, and today this Euro-Polynesian style isspreading into Indonesia, South Asia, and even aboriginal Australia.


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The cantometric coding system provides a basis for understanding this historicaldevelopment. In both Western Europe and Polynesia, text is of paramount importance.European singers, however, perform mostly in solo. Choral singing is rare in this area, and,when it occurs, it is badly integrated unison. In order to organize a polyphonic chorus,Western Europeans must be drilled to pronounce, attack, and accent each syllabletogether and in one manner. This ability to chant in perfect unison, which is a precondition

for effective Western European harmonic singing, is a normal Polynesian cultureP. 254In an earlier paper (Lomax 1960), it was suggested that an older choralizing, well-integrated singing style has survived in mountain areas, on islands, and, in general, on thefringes of Western Europe, largely sub- merged by the more modern and familiar solo-ballad style of folk song. Cantometric study has strongly confirmed and sharpened thishypothesis. We have found that, in those areas where people sing naturally in wellblended choruses and sometimes in harmony, melodies tend to be in litany form, metricalpattern is more complex, melodic embellishment is less important, and voices are lowerpitched, wider, more relaxed, less nasal, and raspy. In other words, the stylistic profilecharacteristic of this Old European area strongly resembles the model of simpler Africansong styles.There are also choral-litany song types embedded in the repertoire of modern WesternEuropean folk song, notably the sea chanties of Britain, various types of work songs,childrens game songs, and certain survivals of pagan ceremonial such as the Christmasand May carols of England. All of these song types integrate, strengthen, and direct groupactivity in various ways. With the exception of the childrens games, however, all thesefunctional song types seem to be survivals that are passing out along with the activitiesand the forms of social organization that supported them. In our society only the children

know how to organize and dramatize their feelings in the ancient, collective fashion. Thatthe need for such song types still exists among adult Westerners is evidenced by therecent popularity of highly charged, choral-litany song patterns, rooted in erotic danceforms and created by Afro-Americans. This summary exposition indicates how stylisticmodels maintain and renew themselves, by working hand-in-hand with history, to weakenor support functionally based song types.Enough has been said to indicate the general nature and usefulness of the cantometricsystem. It looks at a level of musical activity which is highly patterned, resistant to change,and superordinate over function. The remainder of the paper will relate certain levels ofsong performance structure to social structure.! Ver a 259 - referencia sobre Loyola!!!!The leading singer commands and dominates his listeners during his performance. Hisassociation with his audience is, in sociological terms, one of exclusive authority, aprincipal model for conduct in Western European culture (see Parsons, 1949:43, 140147,178179, 286295). When a doctor or a lawyer takes over a case, his authority is absolutefor the duration of the relationship. The same unspoken pact joins boss and worker, priestand penitent, officer and soldier, parent and child. Dominance-subordination, with a deepsense of moral obligation, is the fundamental form of role-taking in the Protestant West.Our cooperative enterprises are organized in terms of an assemblage of experts, each onetemporarily subordinating his separate, specialized, and exclusive function to an agreed-upon goal. Workers on belt lines cooperate in this way to produce automobiles for Ford orbombers of Lockheed, just as instrumentalists combine to make the big symphonic


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sounds. Ultimately, this leader-follower pattern is rooted in the past, e.g., in the Europeanconcept of lifelong fealty to the king or the lord. Ignatius Loyola inculcated the sameprinciple in his teaching of the Jesuits: In the hands of my superior, I must be a soft wax, athing...a corpse which has neither intelligence nor will.P. 271Choreometrics: A Method for the Study of Cross-cultural Pattern in FilmAlan Lomax, Irmgard Bartenieff, Forrestine PaulayAlthough human beings always have been prime subjects for the cameraman, socialscientists have, on the whole, been the last to recognize the research potential of films.Film can provide the data for a systematic world ethnography and for the systematic studyof social interaction, but until recently it has been little used for these purposes. Excellentcollections of films do exist, such as those in the Muse de lHomme and in the Institut frden Wissenschaftlichen Film at Gttingen, but their function in science has beenillustrative and supplementary rather than central and hypothesis- producing. Even thecollection of film has been neglected by those whose studies it might best serve.P. 277The Laban Effort/Shape system was the source of some of the measures used in theChoreometric system. Among the fifty features observed, two or three have emerged asthe most potent classifiers and organizers in the Choreometrics rating system: 1) bodyattitudethe dynamic postural base line for all activity (lines 711, Dynamics CodingSheet), 2) the parts, or zones, of the body most frequently articulated (lines 1 and 2,Dynamics Coding Sheet), 3) the geometry or dimensionality of the movement that results(lines 2027, Dynamics Coding Sheet). These three easily observed features are sufficientto characterize the regional source of any stretch of filmed movement.P. 290The mapping of the generative loci of human song is made far more significant by thediscovery that each one has nourished a performance style which matches its socialstructure.Our survey had drawn on the codified information of ethnography about political andeconomic systems, social mores, and many other features of culture from a representativesample of our song cultures; thus we could study the ways that society and song variedtogether cross-culturally. Our finding, backed by strong statistical evidence, is that aframework of performance traits varies directly with a framework of social traits, as follows:1.The information load of singing increases with socioeconomic complexity.2. Complexity of ornament and orchestral organization increases with social stratification.3. Choral vocal blend increases with community solidarity.4. Vocal tension increases with the severity of the sexual mores.5. Use of polyphony increases with male/female complementarity.P. 291Factor analysis of the data had two outcomes. The first was a set of culture regions thatcould be arranged in a stair-stepped evolutionary ordersee the bottom row of Figure 1[not included]. The second result was to group the seventy-one measures into fourteenhomogenous structural factors, clustered into two polar sets(1) differentiative and (2)integrative. Figure 1 shows how these two principal centroids in human behavior relate tocultural evolution. The evolutionary arrange ment of the geographic factors along the


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horizontal axis provides a time scale from gathering to irrigation agriculture. The verticalaxis allows us to measure the rise and fall of the two main socio- communication factorsalong this evolutionary scale.Differentiation, the factor combining measures of productivity, articulation of information,stratification, embellishment and the like, rises steadily along the evolutionary scale. Infact, this seems to be the evolutionary vector in culture, though it isnt by any means the

only component of social change. Fourteen other independent and semi-dependent factorshave also been identified. However, the specially close relationship of the elements ofsocial complexity expressed in this diagram testifies that economic productivity,administrative systems, and communicative systems have evolved together in increasingdifferentiation across all human time, with steadily progressive steps from the simplegatherers to our own industrial age.Integration clusters the measures for level of social solidarity, the complexity of integration,the complementary relationship of men and women in social and productive activities andthe variables that indicate tension between the sexesalong with performance variablesthat score level of concert, the degree of vocal tension, and the presence ofcomplementary parts in music. This factor describes the bonds that link team membersand the character of the teams and relationships which carry on the adaptive andproductive work of society. Its core is male-female complementarity in work and inperformance. Where such complementarity is high, as with Pygmies, for instance,polyphonizing is constant. Thus, integration is at its peak right at the beginning of thehuman series, where the collecting activity of women provided more than 50 percent of thefood of the community. This relationship changed in full hunting and fishing societies wheremen took over the main subsistence tasks. Then the feminine contribution to publicperformances diminished and the integration variable fell to a low level. It rose again to apeak in the gardening societies of the tropics where a complementary work relationshipusually was to be discovered alongside chorally-unified polyphony. The level of integration

dropped in complex agricultures where, because of the importance of the plough and oflarge domesticated animals, males tended to dominate food producing, and, byconsequence, societal activities. Thus, this indicator of the character and level ofintegration in work, song, and dance teams varies in an orderly way over against themeasure of social progress.Human evolution can thus be viewed in terms of (1) increasing levels of socio-technicalcomplexity and (2) cyclic changes in community plans for integrating its sexual andproductive teams. Each stage of human progress produces a fresh and unique relationshipbetween the two central variables, differentiation and integration. Each new combination isa witness to the endless potential of cultural adaptation.P. 293Each stage of human culture is thus productive of a unique set of social and aestheticsolutions to mans problems of social adjustment.Practical men, especially if they have an engineering degree, often regard theseexpressive systems as doomed and valueless. Yet, wherever the principle of culturalequity is applied so that these worrisome musical systems are given a chance to grow,they can rise again.I cite a few examples known to me: the renascence of Romanian panpipe music when thenew Socialist regime gave the last master of the panpipe a chair in music at the RomanianAcademy of Music; the revival of the five- string banjo in my own country, when I induced atalented young man named Peter Seeger to take up its popularization as his lifes work;the magnificent recrudescence of the many-faceted carnival in Trinidad as a result of thework of a devoted committee of folklorists backed by the Premier. These and many other


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instances that might be cited from America and elsewhere show that any of the folktraditions can revive and can nourish important values if given proper administrative care.But, it is argued, as the world is industrialized, folk and tribal culture must go down thedrain. This view holds that all cultures must be industrialized and that this means the endof cultural variety. Industry, however, is not an absolute good. Recently we have learnedthat industry can destroy the natural

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