I have only twice before had the temerity to speak at a Conference of the IFMC. This will be my third and last time.

I feel I owe my audience an apology because my subject will be the same as on previous occasions and I have little to say that has not already been said many times. But the subject is such an important one that it is good to be constantly reminded of the problems.

For the last two hundred years, in fact ever since the awareness of folk song emerged during the Romantic period, scholars have argued over the definition of folk song. As Goethe said: “Man schreibt so oft den Namen Volkslieder aus und weiss nicht immer ganz deutlich was man sich dabei denken soil.” And if that were true in Goethe's time how much truer is it today when little distinction is drawn by the general public between folk and popular song.

The survival of any type of music in Ghana is dependent upon the extent to which the music is able to satisfy the values the people look for in such music. The values, which may be aesthetic or structural, social or religious, may operate individually or in a simultaneous complexity. In other words the factors that shape and maintain the folk music in Ghana may be found in the music per se, in the artist or in the context of performance.

There are musical norms which the community expect in a musical performance. One such norm is the sound quality. The Ghanaian concept of music (and this may go for other African peoples too) does not unduly discriminate between sounds of definite pitches and sounds of indefinite pitches. It is true that in some situations the emphasis may be on one or the other. However, examples abound in which musical ensembles employ both pitched and unpitched instruments. And both categories of sound are given relatively equal roles in a performance.

It is said that folk song is dead. And if under folk song we understand what Gottfried Herder, the creator of this word, had in mind, then this may be applied at least to large parts of Europe. Herder called folk songs “the true, veritable, characteristic songs of a people,” and made a clear distinction between street ballads, art songs, and the popular products of the educated classes. Even if one sees in real folk song, as did Béla Bartók, only the songs of tradition, that is, those songs transmitted orally among the less educated classes (as especially among the peasantry in former times), and if one acknowledges only that product as being real folk song which adapts a new form when transmitted from generation to generation, then we can well assert that this true folk song no longer exists, at least with us. We should not however think of the peasantry as the sole class who cultivated folk song, as Bartók did. Folk song has flourished at all times, even within the compass of urban civilization. In former times, as today, it was created there and was then picked up and transmitted by the country folk.

At one of the great world crossroads, between the East and the West, six Slav ethnic groups live together in the Federal Republic of Yugoslovia, with its six constituent republics. In recent centuries various foreign powers have crossed swords over this territory, leaving behind imprints of their cultures and civilizations. The conquerers generally settled in the larger population centres, and their cultural influence in these centres was much stronger than in the villages where the greater part of the Yugoslav population lived. Thus the Yugoslav villager was in such areas able to retain more of his traditional cultural forms, such as folk music, song, dance and instruments.

“Lanner welivsomim” is a piyyut (sacred poem) written by the Yemenite poet Sa'adyah, of whom we know nothing more than his name. This piyyut is sung by Yemenites on Saturday nights at the domestic ceremonies marking the close of the Sabbath, and is to be found in the Yemenite diwan (Book of Sacred Poems), in their tiklal (Book of Prayer), and in the Diwan of Hebrew and Arabic Poetry of the Yemenite Jews, edited by A. Z. Idelson and H. Torczyner, Cincinnati 1930.

The greatest problem in any talk on folk dance—whether it be during the meetings of the International Folk Music Council or in any national or international meeting of this kind—is this, namely, that the single term “folk dance” is used to mean different things. More than once I have tried to call attention to this inconsistency and even to remove it—unfortunately with only very little success.

If once more I am speaking about this problem today, I am doing so with no real hope of bringing the matter to a conclusion, or even of being understood by everyone. My purpose is rather once more to bring the problem home to you and to stimulate thinking about the nature of this problem.

In comparison with the most admired scholarly disciplines of the twentieth century Western World, musicology has only tardily formed concepts of its total field, or universe, and of its lowest common denominator. And these concepts, such as they are, have not yet made a dent upon the “excessive historicism” still entrenched in academic fortresses. Meanwhile, the natural and social sciences have advanced from positions of main reliance upon analytical techniques to bold syntheses of universal proportions, while in musicology, even mention of synthesis is not quite respectable. It should not be, but probably is, necessary to point out that except within a universal conceptual frame and in terms of a lowest common denominator, analysis is harzardous.

Lorsque l'avion n'avait pas encore aboli les distances, le Grec qui quittait Athènes pour Vienne ou Paris disait se rendre “en Europe,” soulignant ainsi à bon droit que la Grèce, quoique appartenant géographiquement à l'Europe, participe aussi d'une autre culture, orientale ou tout au moins méditerraneenne.

Nous avons montré ailleurs que la mélodie-type des strophes de distiques rimés était commune à la Grèce et à l'Occident (Baud-Bovy, 1956).

Les chansons narratives nous offrent un autre exemple de cette communauté de répertoire. Leur strophe ne comporte plus quatre sections comme celle des distiques, mais trois sections, correspondant chacune à un hémistiche du vers populaire par excellence des Grecs modernes, le vers dit “politique,” un “grand vers” à césure.

A major characteristic of ethnomusicology is that it deals with bodies of music, or repertories, variously defined. In contrast to the kind of music-historical studies which involve the works of one composer, or which concentrate on important single, individual compositions, ethnomusicological studies deal primarily with corpora of music which originate from one culture, or which are used by one culture for a particular purpose. Thus, the study of a tribal style, or of the style of a functional group of songs or pieces such as ballads or funeral songs, is the central type of publication in this field.

Ordinarily we suppose that an accompaniment to a melody—in folk music as in art music—is provided by a groundwork which is harmonic or rhythmic, or both. This basis holds together the whole of the melody, either by underlining the harmonic (or rhythmic) idea which lies more or less hidden in the melody itself, or by creating the harmonic (or rhythmic) idea, if the melody itself moves in a very free manner.

In some more highly developed styles of folk music, as well as in those of art music, we find this groundwork strengthened and intensified by the heterogeneous sound of a special instrument which stays more or less in the background. The most outstanding example of what I mean is the well known Gipsy band of southeastern Europe with the sounding background of the cimbalom (dulcimer). A similar principle can be seen in the harpsichord of the Baroque orchestra.

The mbira or “thumb piano” is reputed to be the only musical instrument which had its origin in sub-Saharan Africa. It is known in various regions of that continent by numerous names, of which mbira, mbila, sansa, or sensa are perhaps the most common. The instrument consists of a number of forged iron strips of different lengths mounted on a board. One end of each of these metal keys is fixed, in most instruments by insertion between metal bridges. The free ends are plucked, usually by the thumbs and forefingers, whence the name “thumb piano.” Small instruments are played while being held in the palms of the two hands. Larger ones are held on the lap. The board may be placed within an open calabash which acts as a resonator or the metal keys may be mounted on a wooden box rather than a board. The instrument diffused to America with the importation of slaves from Africa and is known in Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.

The Carpathian basin is well suited to the investigation of performing styles in folk dance, because its dance culture is relatively homogeneous despite the variety of peoples, languages and ways of life encountered in this region. This fact invites an investigation of performing styles on a comparative basis. Moreover, the performing styles of one of the most characteristic dance dialects in Central Europe deserve close attention from the viewpoint of the cultural history of Europe as a whole.

The general structure and characteristic features of the dance stock of the Carpathian basin will be here outlined, and comparative references to the neighbouring Balkan dance dialects will help to emphasize the main characteristics of and features peculiar to the area in question.

Les Tchérémisses font partie des petits peuples peu connus de l'Union Soviétique. Ils sont à peine au nombre de 500.000. Ils vivent en majorité au nord du grand coude de la Volga de Kazan à l'intérieur de la République Autonome Mari (Tchérémisse). Mais nous trouvons un groupe à 500 kms. plus à l'Est encore, à la rencontre des fleuves Bïelaïa et Kama, sur le territoire de la Bachkirie d'aujourd'hui. Leur langue est classée parmi les langues finno-ougriennes du sud. Les Tchérémisses sont done ainsi apparentés aux Finnois et, au delà de plusieurs petits peuples, aux Hongrois, aussi. Mais en plus des rapports linguistiques, l'analogie peut aussi etre démontrée dans la musique. C'est d'abord Béla Bartók qui dénonca ce fait au début des années 1920, puis, plus tard Zoltán Kodály exposa en détail la relation tchérémisse-hongroise. L'étude de la musique tchérémisse est depuis lors une partie organique de notre musicologie.

During a mission sponsored by Unesco, I had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with some traditional types and styles of singing in Mongolia. The Mongols have an extraordinarily complex and developed musical tradition, and some of its types are of great interest for ethnomusicologists. I want to present to you two styles of singing which are closely associated with certain types of songs.

The first is called “long chant” and ranks with the most archaic and most developed types of the Mongols. It is a song in stanza form with a free, rubato performance having long sustained notes: just like repercussions, ornamented by fiorituri, and giving the impression of an instrumental style. They are produced by a particular setting of the larynx. But its most impressive feature is its wide range. Some singers extend the compass of songs by using the falsetto extremely vigorously. Thus a voice can range over as many as three octaves.