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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 6 page essay offers reflection on two articles, "Song Structure and Social Structure" by Alan Lomax, which concerns ethnomusicology, and "Chapter I/Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture" by Clifford Geertz, which pertains to culture and ethnography. The writer offers summation and analysis. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Page Count:
6 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KL9_khlogeertz.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
a clue as to precisely what music is. Therefore, Lomax proposes that ethnomusicologists should shift the focus of their attention from music, per se, to studying it as a form
of human behavior. Lomax goes on to describe the topic of "cantometrics," is "a system for rating a song performance in a series of qualitative judgments" (Lomax 426-427). Cantometrics eschews
the use of Western-style traditional musical notation and trains students to analyze music in terms of 37 questions (Tilton 370). Each cantometric survey scale encompasses between three to thirteen points
(Lomax 437). Collectively, these questions offer a flexible and practical means of evaluating musical performance. Basically, the point of this article is to demonstrate the utility of the cantometrics instrument,
examination of the article shows that Lomax achieves this goal. After defining cantometrics, Lomax offers a thorough explanation of the cantometrics coding sheet. While the coding sheet is complicated,
Lomax presents a line-by-line breakdown that provides readers with a comprehensive guide for understanding this ethnomusicology instrument. While Lomax admits that the coding system has its failings, and "areas of
vagueness," overall, he argues that cantometrics provide musicologists with the ability to produce "consistent profiles" of music from large cultural areas that share a common history (Lomax 431). The various
music systems profiled in the remainder of the article support this supposition and lead to some fascinating insights into the relationships between these systems. For example, Lomax observes, "African and
Afro-American performance profiles are identical and form a unique pair in our world sample" (Lomax 433). Before discussing specific music systems, Lomax addresses the topic of music acculturation and
this section of the article also includes some fascinating observations. For instance, Africans, after forced transport to the New World, were attracted to the European strophic form and subsequently added
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