On connaît les plastiques et les figures célèbres gravées dans les parois de l'époque paléolithique, c'est-à-dire créées pendant le dernier stade de la période glaciaire environ vingt cinq à dix mille ans avant Jésus-Christ. Elles nous prouvent combien on se trompe en préjugeant que l'art des ces temps ne s'élève pas au-dessus d'un niveau tout à fait primitif. Les hommes qui nous ont laissé de telles oeuvres ont-ils developpé également la musique?

Les peintures en Espagne de Test et en Afrique du nord datent d'une époque plus récente que l'art francocantabrique, mais malgré de grandes différences quelques traits principaux du style leur sont communs. Les groupes dont il s'agit n'étaient plus des chasseurs de niveau assez bas tuant le gibier de tout près à l'aide de pierres, de massues ou de lances primitives mais des chasseurs plus évolués se servant des flèches et de javelots pour atteindre le bison, le renne et d'autres grosses bêtes. Ils chassaient dans les vastes steppes et tiraient à longue distance.

L'un des genres les plus étudiés du folklore musical universel est depuis longtemps celui des chants de pâtres, dont les Suisses passent pour détenir les plus beaux spécimens, le “ranz des vaches” en français, le “Kuhreihen” en allemand.

De plus grands connaisseurs que moi ont disserté de ce genre, et l'on pourrait se demander ce qu'il reste à en dire.

Les ethnographes, en effet, ont bien vu la relation existant entre les chants de pâtres et certains modes de vie économique, l'élevage et l'agriculture au stade pré- machiniste. En Europe occidentale on a bien mis en relief l'association intime entre les chants de pâtres et le système de la vaine pâture.

The idea of comparing Indian songs with those of Siberia and China as a means of discovering the origin of the former occurred to me only recently, that is since 1920, though abundance of materials has been at hand for years. Nearly 1,000 native songs of British Columbia and Alaska have been recorded for the National Museum of Canada since 1912, and many others are preserved in the collections of the United States and Germany. Many ancient Chinese and Japanese songs have been marketed by the phonograph companies. In addition, over 100 Siberian songs were collected by the Russian exile, Jochelson, for the Jesup Expedition more than sixty years ago and the records were stored at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I had duplicates made of these for our National Museum, and I understand that the original Edison phonograph records are now preserved at Indiana University.

In 1912 some sixty songs of the Salish tribe of British Columbia Indians, living on the Upper Thompson and Lillooet Rivers, were recorded on Edison cylinders for the National Museum of Canada, under the direction of Dr. Marius Barbeau. Fifteen of these, which I transcribed five years ago at Dr. Barbeau's request, are here used to demonstrate some of the characteristics of Salish songs.

The aspects of the songs concerning which it has proved worth while to compile statistics are their phrase-structure, scale-structure, interval-structure, use of percussion, start- and end-exclamations and extraneous cries; of these the first three, concerning aspects of structure, are the most important.

The Hopis are the westernmost of the Pueblo Indian tribes. Their reservation is located in an arid and rather isolated section of north-eastern Arizona. Here their villages are distributed among the southern spurs of the great Black Mesa, a tableland stretching many miles to the north. The eleven villages on the reservation form three clusters. Moving from east to west, these groups of villages are known as First Mesa, Second Mesa, and Third Mesa.

The old village of Oraibi, on Third Mesa, was first settled in the thirteenth century and is thus the oldest continuously occupied site in the United States. In the first decade of this century Oraibi was the scene of a political struggle between a progressive faction wishing to adopt certain of the white man's ways and a conservative group who opposed this path. In the Hopi language the word Hopi signifies “the peaceful people.”

The origin of the Bon-Odori, or Bon Dance, is described in the Ullambana Sutra of Buddhist scripture. It tells how Mauggallana (sometimes spelled Maudgalyana, and in the Japanese language called Mokuren), one of the ten disciples of Buddha, became aware of his mother's suffering in the inferno of the dead. He tried to relieve her hunger by offering her rice, but when she brought it to her lips it turned to fire. Mauggallana went to the Buddha for help and was advised for his mother's sake to give food-offerings to the bhikus (priests), on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when they returned from the mountains after their long meditation during the rainy season. The spontaneous dance of joy following his mother's release from the torment of hell was the first Bon Dance. This ritual offering and festive celebration became an annual event.

The dictionary to which the title refers is the Explanation of the Written Characters (Shuo Wên Chieh Tzŭ), compiled by Hsü Shên of the Later Han Dynasty, and dating from about 100 A.D. It would be wrong to suppose that this dictionary mirrors the Chinese spoken language of the first century, for one of the author's objects was to provide ready access to archaic words. Nevertheless, the dictionary presents us with a vocabulary, albeit a literary vocabulary, at a point in time; and it seemed profitable to work through it in search of terms relating to music, musical instruments, and dance. In the course of this search, a fourth category of entries relevant to the field of interest was discovered, that of sounds. At the end of the search, more than two hundred items had been noted, many of which were interrelated. They could be re-classified in various ways; and from the collection as a whole there emerges not only a picture of the world of music of a Chinese scholar of the first century, but a more general picture of the world of natural sounds, of the classification of sounds, and of the place of musical sounds in this classification.

Studies of the musical instruments of Africa by Kirby, Wachsmann, Maquet, Solderberg and others, have demonstrated that, in addition to drums, examples of all the main classes of musical instruments are to be found in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to drums, there is a wide variety of idiophones (including xylophones), as well as various types of lutes, zithers, flutes, etc.

In spite of this variety, there appears to be a widespread tendency to use these instruments not in large heterogeneous ensembles, but in homogeneous ensembles, or in limited combinations in which one type of instrument predominates. There are, for example, ensembles of drums or xylophones, ensembles of flutes or trumpets, or ensembles in which these are combined with “secondary” instruments—usually of a percussive nature. Here and there a flute, a fiddle or a lute may be found in a secondary role in an ensemble, with the function of providing particular effects or enriching the texture of the music.

If the music of Mauritania has inspired only limited study till now it is because of its elusiveness. We know it to be governed by strict rules, though uncodified. The existence of parallel yet diverse traditions complicates detailed analysis. It should be remembered that Mauritania covers an area almost twice that of France. Long distances and poor communications—further aggravated by the rigours of the climate—have encouraged the growth of local artistic peculiarities.

Nevertheless, and in spite of this regional diversity, it is possible to perceive a certain basic national music. This derives from obedience to the same fundamental rules, and the use of a common fund of melodic patterns, carried down through the ages and recognizable beneath their sundry local modifications. The imperviousness of Mauritanian music to neighbouring influence adds further justification to a study of it as a single art-source.

The study of the different rhythms that Venezuelan negroes beat on their drums is at present in an analytical and classificatory phase. The Folklore Institute of the Education Department of Caracas possesses a comprehensive record of these rhythms, gradually built up from 1940 to the present. It is unlikely that types of rhythms other than those recorded here remain to be found in Venezuela.

The principal toques (rhythmic sounds from a drum), and songs accompanied by drums (known as golpes in most places where they have been found), have different distinguishing popular names. In the central zone, Barlovento, towards Eastern Venezuela, there are the golpes of the so-called “round drum,” and of the “big drum” or tambor mina. Further west, in the coastal zone of the Federal District, in the State of Aragua, and in parts of Carabobo, there are other golpes, the names of which derive from the lyrics, for example: El Alabado (The Sainted One); El Macizón; María Estaba Lavando (Mary Was Washing), etc. There is also another type of golpe, used only during religious processions, namely the sangueo, played in the central states of Aragua, Carabobo and Yaracuy.

The principal immigrant group in Ellis County, Kansas, is the so-called German-Russians. In 1763 Catherine the Great of Russia issued a manifesto designed to stimulate German colonization in the Volga region. By 1768 these people had founded 104 colonies along the banks of the Volga and Karaman rivers. Those who later emigrated to Ellis County came from nineteen of these villages. The first group of emigrants came to Topeka in 1875, and immigration to the United States ended in 1878.

As they had done in Russia, the German-Russian people retained their customs and traditions in their new environment. They continued speaking German, and by no means all learned English; even today among the third generation there are a few who speak German more fluently than English. A recent collection has brought together more than a hundred of their folk songs.

Invective, ridicule, and insult are not uncommon ingredients in folk songs, and since songs containing these elements usually make us laugh, we speak of them as satirical. Sometimes the satire springs from a strong sense of social injustice, as it did with singers like Aunt Molly Jackson and Woody Guthrie. More commonly it arises from personal motives, such as a desire to annoy. This is a progress report on local songs—particularly those attributed to Larry Gorman—in Maine, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

This paper began as the somewhat casual assembly of songs about Noah as a consequence of a much more extended survey of Aarne-Thompson Tale Type 825, The Devil in the Ark, and other folk expansions of the Flood story. Close work with the songs has shown a totally unexpected result far beyond that of the theme chosen. A book has evolved which promises to provide a new, or at least intensified, method for attacking the long-neglected problem of classification and analysis of the non-narrative folk song.

The centre of interest is some forty English and American folk-song entities, a few of them narrative, but the great bulk lyrical, with all the inferable fluidity of that adjective. Such a thematic approach also has discovered some fifteen or more literary versions, including such names as Chesterton, Kipling, Kenneth Grahame, and the Freemason tradition, and an equal number of non-English songs: Sorbian and Ukrainian, German and Swedish, French, Latin, and a sixteenth-century macaronic poem.

La tradition populaire, dans les régions maritimes, reflète l'influence de son milieu naturel. On recueille sur les côtes, et particulièrement, dans les îles, des chansons relatives à des voyages en mer, à des naufrages, à des combats.

En France, j'ai remarqué la présence de complaintes maritimes dans les îles de Noirmoutier et d'Yeu, et sur le littoral vendéen; il en a été composé une à Noirmoutier, à la fin du XIXème siècle, à l'occasion du naufrage d'un trois-mâts norvégien. Pascal Poirier constatait, en 1928, la persistance de cette tradition en Acadie, lorsqu'il cite une complainte composée vers 1868 par un illettré de l'île Saint-Jean, sur le naufrage de trois frères péris en mer.

From the early years of this century, the islands of the Hebrides have provided us, through the work of a very small number of collectors, with a stream of folk songs of great beauty and interest.

Now, from the small island of Vatersay at the southern end of the island chain, comes a find as exciting as any yet discovered, in the form of over 460 songs, many of them not previously known to us, from the lips of a single singer, by name Nan Mackinnon or, to give her her Gaelic patronymic, Nan Eachainn Fhionnlaigh. Credit for the initial discovery in 1952 of this treasure-hoard must go to Donald Macpherson of Barra. Further work of recording, transcription and documentation of her repertoire has fallen to me and to my colleague James Ross, formerly of the School of Scottish Studies. Much of the importance of the find lies in the fact that these songs are the direct inheritance of an older island community, that of the Isle of Mingulay, now uninhabited.

Une des questions qui préoccupent beaucoup, à l'heure actuelle, les folkloristes roumains est celle des variantes folkloriques contemporaines.

Nous n'étudions pas le folklore comme un produit géologique, comme une roche pétrifiée une fois pour toutes, mais comme un phénomène social et historique en continuelle transformation. Le folklore en tant que forme de la conscience seciale est apparu par nécessité sociale, en remplissant à chaque époque historique une fonction sociale donnée. Chaque peuple, chaque génération a créé, modelé, transformé son folklore selon les conditions sociales et historiques, selon son profil moral et ses besoins spirituels.