nonJI/nonET: MUSICAL MANIFESTATIONS OF ANIMAL AND/OR BIRD SYMBOLISM

THE MUSICAL MANIFESTATIONS OF ANIMAL
AND/OR BIRD SYMBOLISM IN SUYÁ, KALULI, MBUTI
AND TEMIAR RAINFOREST SOCIETIES

The tropical rainforests of the world are geographically located around
the periphery of the equator, and predominate in the great Amazonian and
Congolese river basins of the American and African continents, as well as in regions
of South East Asia and the Pacific Islands.  It is a picturesquely vibrant
environment with a biological diversity that encompasses fifty percent of the
world’s entire species of plants, animals, insets and microorganisms.  In
essence, this forest ecology is theoretically composed of four principal layers, and
collectively presents an organic vista of giant trees towering over a dense
canopy, which accordingly casts a shadow on the dark understory existing above
the forest floor.  The climate of this unique ecosystem  is auspiciously
maintained at a temperature of between twenty and thirty degrees Celsius, and
exceptionally nourished and invigorated by torrential rains possible of reproducing
five centimetres of rain an hour, or the equivalent of one thousand
centimetres per year (with a worldwide annual average of two hundred and thirty-four
centimetres).
Cultural diversity is also in abundance, and the four distinct rainforest
societies that will be analyzed in this paper within a predominantly
musically physiological paradigm (the Suyá of Brazil, Kaluli of Papua New Guinea,
Mbuti of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Temiar of Malaysia) represent but
only some of its transcendent allure, but will nevertheless provide an insight
into the enchanting world of the people of the forest and their musical forms
of expression.  In spite of the obvious physical distances between these
geographically unconnected societies, one of the principal factors that accommodates
a pedagogic point of unity is their unique environment, which not only
provides subsistence with a combination of agricultural, hunting, gathering and
fishing practices, and comparable systems of social organization and artistic
expression,  but additionally endows them with the totality of their philosophical
belief system.

THE SUYÁ OF BRAZIL

Along the shores of the Suiá-missu River, and within the periphery of the
Xingu National Park that is situated in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil,
live the Suyá Indians in a circular village with a population barely surpassing
the centesimal mark.
The Suyá musical repertoire includes seasonal and ceremonial songs, but
no sociopolitical or philosophical justification for love songs, protest songs
or lullabies.  The act of singing is an integral part of social and economic
reproduction, and the aesthetic value of song is ascertained from the
collective perspective, hence greater the participation, greater the ‘beauty’ of
song.  The Suyá concept of person (involving the components of physical body,
social identity and spirit) is manifested through song, and with the ultimate goal
of achieving a certain cosmological balance.   Songs also provide the link
between humans and animals, thereby legitimizing the perceptible spiritual
reality of mythology.  “Songs made the events recounted in the myths real to every
member of the society.  Myths described transformations; in certain ceremonies
people experienced them,” explains Anthony Seeger in Why Suyá Sing: A musical
anthropology of an Amazonian people.
Suyá vocal art forms include instruction (sarén), speech (kapérni),
invocation (sangére) and song (ngére).  Instruction refers to any kind of verbal
guidance, recounting of myth, and ceremonial public addresses, whereas speech
alternatively refers to everyday conversation, and utterances expressing
jealousy, anger and social virtue.  Invocations are within the domain of the ritual
specialists, and is a recited verbal form practiced by both men and women as a
curative treatment.  There are two main song genres, one being akia (shout
songs), which are individual songs performed either in singularity or
simultaneous plurality by males,’ and the other ngére (unison songs), being collective
songs.  The socio-musicological role of women restricted to that of
‘non-singing’ ceremonial assistant and participant observer, apart from minor Suyá and
Upper Xingu originated female genres.  The act of singing is accompanied by a
variety of rattles constructed either out of animal hooves, fruit pits, gourds,
brass shotgun shells or small metal bells, and made to sound by characteristic
dance movements that mimic the animal kingdom (namely mice and deer).
The power to originate songs is believed to materialize in a person after
a long period of illness, brought on by the angry actions of a jealous witch,
who misappropriates that person’s spirit (megaron) for not having imparted
the expected amount of comestible offerings to that witch.  The spirit is hence
transferred to the dominion of a certain entity (associated with the item in
question, honey equals bees, et cetera), and its loss initially causing grave
illness, although later enabling the person to transcend linguistic barriers
with the natural world and acquire songs.  One Suyá man describes the experience
thus, “I was walking in the forest and a tree said to me, ‘Friend’.  I said,
‘Yes?’  The tree said, ‘Where are you going?’ and I replied, ‘Nowhere in
particular’.  The tree said, ‘Let’s sing’ and I saw all of the trees singing
and they were all singing akia and other types of songs.”  These become known
as the ‘songs from men without spirits’ (me katodn kïdi), who are effectually
ritual specialists that have experienced an incomplete metamorphosis.  The
other two origins of songs are ‘songs in myths’, with a notable source of partly
human, partly animal beings (from transformation myths of long ago,
celebrated today within the ‘Savannah Deer’, ‘Wild Pig’ and ‘Enemy Child’
ceremonies), and ‘foreign songs’ adopted from non-Suyá visitors of the village, which
additionally transmit external energies of power and knowledge onto the
community.
The akia genre is the most remarkable of Suyá musical expression, and a
song form that has no regional ethnomusicological association.  In the cyclical
process of ceremonial life, and its many rites of passage, a male will
acquire repertoire with the occurrence of every event.  These include songs of his
father, mother’s brother and grandfather, as well as of other men (regardless
of being alive or dead).  The performance of akia is either a solo affair or a
collective ‘synchronous assault of the airwaves’ by a group of men singing
his own akia at the same time (a Suyá concept called aimen-twa-wid-ngre or
‘together each sings his own’).
One of the notable settings of the akia and ngére genres is the Mouse
Ceremony, which is a two-week long ‘marathon’ celebrating a boy’s initiation
into his name set, and in direct response to the myth of ‘The Mouse that Gave the
Woman Corn’ (which tells the tale of how the Suyá used to eat rotten wood
until the mouse told them about corn), but without a directly associated mythical
transformation originated repertoire.  The men’s symbolic departure from
their natal household in the final day of the Mouse Ceremony, and their singing of
individual shout songs for their sisters and mothers is an important
philosophical aspect of Suyá culture.  The men wear ‘mouse capes’, sing ‘mouse
songs’, at times actually behave like mice, and once symbolically transformed into
mice, the power of the metamorphosis is the guiding force of the name givers,
and subsequently of the boy’s initiation into his name set.  At the conclusion
of the ceremony the women emerge with hunting arrows to pierce their
brother’s capes, symbolically killing the mice, and hence transforming them back into
men.

ADRIAN PERTOUT
'Mixdown' Monthly ~ Issue #73, May 3, 2000
BEAT MAGAZINE PTY LTD
All rights reserved. All text, graphics and sound files on this page are
copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law.
Copyright © 2000 by Adrian Pertout.

THE KALULI OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

The Kaluli people or Bosavi kalu ‘Bosavi people’ (being the
self-denomination that is shared between four culturally identical but linguistically
distinct subgroups) coexist in twenty longhouse communities (with each one made up
of groups of fifteen families numbering a total of sixty to eighty people),
and inhabit the Melanesian rainforests north of Mount Bosavi, on the Great
Papuan Plateau in the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea.
For the Kaluli, the substance of musical expression is entirely
metaphorically derived from their Papua New Guinean forest environment, with bird
sounds providing the principal inspiration for the scalar archetypes, water sounds
the structural components, and mythology the rationalist theorem.  At the core
of aesthetic consolidation with the natural and spiritual world is the raison
d’être for the notion of dulugu ganalan or ‘lift-up-over sounding’, which is
essentially the discernibly audible overlapping, alternating, and
interlocking quality of the ‘Kaluli groove’.  The greater significance of the forest’s
symbolic importance is intensified by the belief that it is the home of ane
mama or ‘gone reflections’ spirits of the Kaluli dead, which are in active
communication with the living world through bird song.
Out of the six vocal genres in existence (gisalo, koluba, sabio, iwo,
heyalo and kelekeliyoba), gisalo represents a Kaluli men’s innovation, and is
performed only during particular ceremonies and seances.  The only other two
forms that appropriate composition include heyalo and koluba, which are in
comparison genres designated to be sung within the social contexts of work and
leisure, as well as ceremonial.  Other forms include women’s sung texted weeping
(sa-yelab) and cheering (uwolab), men’s whooping (ulab), instrumental drumming
(ilib) and bamboo Jew’s harp playing (uluna).  The components that additionally
yield rhythmic vitality to Kaluli ceremonial singing include the sologa
(seedpod rattle), degegado (crayfish claw rattle) and sob (mussel shell rattle).
To understand the Kaluli methodology of composition and performance it is
essential to firstly understand the impetus that breathes within this
culture’s bona fide metaphysical relationship with birds.  The presence of
sentimentality may be illustrated within the myth of ‘The Boy who Became a Muni Bird’,
because this is the spiritual connection that evokes strong emotions in
performance.  In the social setting of the traditional all night ceremonies (held at
the host longhouse), guest composers and performers use the gisalo idiom to
draw feelings of nostalgia, reflection and sentimentality from the host. 
Spirit medium seances have similar ambitions, although in this context visiting
spirits sing gisalo songs through the mouths of mediums, conveying the expression
of spirit beings and place names in the text to generate the characteristic
‘melodically patterned’ weeping from the audience that symbolizes the call of
the muni bird.
The archetypal scalar pattern of gisalo also literally being a
transcription of the euphonious call of the muni bird (the beautiful fruitdove,
Ptilinopus pulchellus) further signifies that ‘song’ is in essence the symbolic
marriage between the melodic pattern of birds with the talk pattern of birds. 
Standard melodies or gisalo kotogodo are additionally created from these muni bird
tones (often for the purpose of inaugurating the amateur composer) and
combined with textual material to form a gisalo song.  Steven Feld,
ethnomusicologist and author of Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in
Kaluli Expression notes, “As I learned about the symbolism of the weeping and
singing voice I was taught about their intimate connection to rainforest birds.”
The complex structure of songs is characterized by the physiological
impression of the melodic element of song (gisalo) representing ‘bird sounds’
(obe gono) and the textual element (Sa-gisalo or ‘words inside gisalo’)
representing ‘bird sound words’ (obe gono to).  A refined perspective of this
ideology elucidates the Kaluli notion of molan or ‘one sings’ (which usually means
the vocalization of either both text and melody or simply melody alone) and its
cosmological extension of sa-molan or ‘one sings inside’, which means
‘singing inside one’s head’ or in other words to ‘compose song’.  These concepts
of duality that clearly surround the artistry of Kaluli song reveal that
because melodic appropriation is derived from nature, it is perceived to come from
‘outside and around’, whereas textual invention which is derived from grey
matter is dissimilarly perceived to come from ‘inside and down’.
There are nine principal terms in the Kaluli terminology of melodic
intervals and contours of gisalo, with the two main intervals being sa (descending
minor 3rd, and also the word for waterfall) and gese (descending major 2nd,
and an extraction of gesema, with the connotation of ‘make one feel sorrow or
pity’).  These intervals are evident in the call of the muni bird, hence also in
gisalo and sa-yelab (melodic weeping), and all nomenclature (with but the one
exception of gese) is based on waterfall phenomena.  In performance, the gulu
or ‘flow’ of gisalo has a rhythmic pulse of about one hundred and twenty
beats per minute, which symbolically encapsulates the harmonious synchrony that
exists between the Kaluli and their natural environment, and represented in
this ‘song and dance’ context by the dancer’s ‘wokwele (Giant Cuckoodove)
bird-derived’ up and down movements, and waterfall sound and motion.

ADRIAN PERTOUT
'Mixdown' Monthly ~ Issue #75, July 5, 2000
BEAT MAGAZINE PTY LTD
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copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law.
Copyright © 2000 by Adrian Pertout.

THE MBUTI OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

In the northeast corner of the Congo, and within the political boundary
of the Democratic Republic of Congo is the Ituri forest, home of the Mbuti
pygmies, who in small bands or hunting groups observe a nomadic existence.
The Mbuti musical synopsis is thematically intertwined with socially
concerted absoluteness that it almost delineates a perfect reflection of the Mbuti
psyche.  “Mbuti music is highly interactive.  The very musical structure and form
and the singing techniques of singing reproduce, almost exactly, the patterns
of cooperation required in whatever aspect of real life that particular kind
of song relates to,” explains Colin Turnbull in The Mbuti Pygmies: Change and
Adaptation.  The importance of song is vividly expressed in Mbuti legends, and
there is a very general, although specific consensus that song is not only
‘beautiful’, but also ‘good’ and ‘powerful’, because song ultimately presents
the means of abating akami ‘noise’ (also meaning conflict) and restoring
ekimi ‘silence’ or ‘peace’ in their forest environment.  The youth are
considered pure (in view of their exclusion from the adult role of hunter-gatherer,
therefore ‘killers of animals’), and so they are designated the role of
politician, lawmaker and judge.  This social status is further elevated by the fact
that being the better singers and dancers, youthfulness also means being
naturally better equipped to communicate with the spirit of the forest.  The legend
of ‘The Bird with the Most Beautiful Song’ illustrates well the aesthetical
significance of ‘beauty of voice’, because when the father kills ‘the bird with
the most beautiful song in the forest’ (annoyed at being asked to feed it on
‘three’ occasions by his son), with the bird he kills the song, and with the
song he consequently kills himself.
The four major modes of music in Mbuti life include hunting and gathering
songs, as well as the sacred ceremonial genres of the men’s molimo (performed
to alleviate sickness, bad hunting or death) and the women’s elima (performed
to consecrate all rites of passage of a woman), with the additional only solo
form of women’s lullaby. The men’s religious songs are often accompanied
rhythmically by banja (clapsticks, either struck together or split at the ends to
be played on a log), and hunting and gathering songs (especially honey songs)
alternatively by ngbenbe (clapsticks, stripped of bark), with the occasional
inclusion of externally appropriated membranophones. The molimo trumpet is
considered as a sacred object of the molimo ceremony, and makata (tuned sticks,
discarded after their use) belong to the tradition of the Bantu village nkumbi
initiation ceremony, whereas the flute (end-blown reed or cane notched
aerophone), lukembi (10-key lamellaphone or mbira) and musical bow have a secular
recreational standing.
The songs of the Mbuti pygmies are constructed around pentatonic and
quasipentatonic melodic frameworks of notably descending contours that are given
life with a harmonic idiosyncrasy based on fourths and fifths, multi-part
vocalization, polyrhythmic aptitude and improvisational propagation.  Textual
material is unimportant, with the ‘importance’ and ‘power’ of the song entirely
based on the constraints of sound.  “Mbuti sing using four basic vowel sounds
(ee, eh, oh, oo).  They also use effects achieved by holding the nose, or
singing from the throat or the stomach,” explains Colin Turnbull in the liner notes
of Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Rainforest.  In the actual performance context,
the antiphonal singing techniques of the female-led songs of the elima
initiation ceremony, and the hocket singing techniques utilized in the canonic
hunting songs further illustrate both the sound of the music, and the affinity
between songs and the patterns of cooperation manifested within the social
structure.
The Mbuti, referred to as BaMbuti (the generic term for all pygmies of
the Ituri forest) by the Bantu and Sudanic villagers that surround their forest
environment, represent one of two major groups of pygmies that inhabit the
Congo basin, and although participate in some of the village ceremonies to
appease the socio-economic relationship with the villagers, their own sacred rituals
are reserved for the forest.  The most important of these is the molimo,
which may be characterized in its two existing forms of the molimo mangbo or
‘great’ molimo that is usually brought about by the event of death (but may also
include adult disputes, bad hunting, illicit flirtation or adultery) is where
the elders, adults and youth sing every night for at least a month, and the
molimo made or ‘lesser’ molimo that is brought about by everyday akami ‘noise’
(or conflict) in the camp.  The faith in the great power of the molimo is
embodied in the ideology that here is an opportunity to resolve problems directly
with the ‘supreme being’ (the spirit of the forest conceptualized as virtually
the panacea), and that once song becomes sanctified with the combined force
of the unmarried (and also pure) youth’s voices and the molimo trumpet, song
then has the ability to communicate with the forest and therefore ‘wake up the
forest’ to ultimately have ekimi ‘peace’ restored.  The youth duplicate the
angry sounds of leopards and elephants (and if necessary the actions), and
sleepless night after sleepless night they echo the songs of the adults, and when
song achieves the kind of attributes capable of reaching the spirit of the
forest, peace is finally reconstituted.  In an article titled Liminality: A
Synthesis of Subjective and Objective Experience Colin Turnbull notes, “The Mbuti
would say that those who do not recognize spirit have merely forgotten (or never
knew) how to reach it: ‘they do not know how to sing.’  Other cultures have
other ways of making contact with spirit, but for the Mbuti their prime,
supreme way, is song.”

ADRIAN PERTOUT
'Mixdown' Monthly ~ Issue #84, April 4, 2001
BEAT MAGAZINE PTY LTD
All rights reserved. All text, graphics and sound files on this page are
copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law.
Copyright © 2001 by Adrian Pertout.

THE TEMIAR OF MALAYSIA

Twelve thousand Temiar (belonging to the Senoi ethnic division of the
Orang Asli aboriginal peoples of the Malay Peninsula) live in villages of between
twenty-five and one hundred and fifty people along the five major rivers of
Malaysia.
The Temiar believe that all entities (being human, animal, plant or
landform) have bounded souls, governed by everyday waking life, health and safety,
which can be emancipated as unbound spirit, governed by dreams, trance,
illness, singing ceremonies and death.  “The souls of all entities are dialectically
differentiated into upper and lower portions.  Humans have head- and
heart-souls; plants have leaf- and root-souls; mountains have summit- and underground-
or cave-souls,” explains Marina Roseman in an article titled The Social
Structuring of Sound: The Temiar of Peninsular Malaysia.  The benevolent and
malevolent nature of these opposing forces thus creates an environment that is both
positive and negative, and one that the Temiar attempt to control through
dream and trance.  A result of this interactive cosmological viewpoint is the
communicative link between human and non-human entities, which is directly
responsible for their musical and therapeutic benefaction.
The majority of Temiar music is vocal, which is accompanied by
bamboo-tube stampers (gooh), and on occasions either by one or two single-headed drums
(barano and batak), and/or a small hand-held gong, and is a prominent feature
of night ceremonies.  Instrumental forms alternatively dominate the day (a
disruption of this cosmic order perceived to bring illness and death to the
community), and the instruments utilized include the pensool (nose flute), siooy
(mouth-blown flute), gengoon (metal Jew’s harp), rangon rangon (palm Jew’s harp)
and karab (two-stringed bamboo-tube zither).  The bamboo instruments are
reserved for women (notable are the bamboo-tube stampers that accompany all
singing with their distinctive duple rhythm), while the Jew’s harps for men, with
the flutes in the dominion of either gender.
The acquisition of all Temiar vocal repertoire is perpetuated within the
dream paradigm, and in a process that involves the unbound head-soul (rawaay)
spirit of the dreamer meeting with the upper- or lower-portion souls of
entities (such as trees, river rapids, tigers and deceased humans), who upon
declaring to become their spiritguide (gonig) bestow songs upon them.  In the
ceremonial performance setting that follows, the spiritual link effectually
transforms the dreamer into a medium of the spiritguide, acquiring its voice, vision
and knowledge, hence the adeptness as healer.  The melodies of the nose flute
and end-blown flute repertoires are directly procured from these songs, with
those of the Jew’s harps and zither alternatively mimicking the sounds of the
natural forest environment (birdcalls, insect sounds, et cetera).  “Temiar
singing and religion receive inspiration and constant regeneration from interactions
with the essences of mountains, rivers, fruits, creatures of the tropical
rainforest,” explains Marina Roseman.
This unique ability to receive songs from spiritguides (and therefore the
ability to present the spiritguides through the performance of these songs)
is considered to render a person with halaa or ‘adeptness’.  Women are less
likely to attain the status of halaa, although are an essential component of the
performance of songs, and feature prominently within the social sphere as
midwives.  “Halaa adeptness enables an individual to diagnose and treat
illness,” notes Marina Roseman.  Greater the quantity and period of song acquisition,
greater the halaa, with the procurement of the revered tiger spiritguide
crystallize the social standing of halaa manuu or ‘larger’ medium.  Adeptness may
be also acquired from other mediums, and close relations are often initiated
as mediums, in a ceremonial process that involves the reception of
ministrations (parenlub).  In the spiritually dynamic event of parenlub, the medium’s
entire repertoire is transmitted from the spiritguide into the head- and
heart-soul of the person with the aid of kahyek (a cool spiritual liquid).  Marina
Roseman explains, “The cool spiritual liquid kahyek combines the essence of
foliage (sap), rivers, rain, and dew-valuing water and coolness.  Kahyek is the
liquid form of the upper-portion souls of nonhuman entities; but when unbound and
flowing in the contexts of trance, singing-sessions, and curing, this cool
spiritual liquid can be transferred and infused into humans.”  A person that
circumvents parenlub is not considered a medium, and additionally the act of
singing dream songs of other people is not considered as possessing halaa, because
these songs are decreed as to bar-is ii or ‘without substance’.
The therapeutic nature of Temiar music and its incontrovertible emphasis
on the hypothesis of non or ‘path’ is highlighted in the course of
singing/trance-dancing ceremonies.  In the same way that survival in the jungle is
perceived to be dependent on the ability to ‘negotiate the path’ (an aptitude
equated with the possession of all necessary universal knowledge), survival in the
settlement is also perceived to be governed by similar cosmology, therefore
leading to the philosophical deduction that considers illness to be the result
of a person’s detached head-soul getting lost or waylaid.  Temiar mediums sing
during curing ceremonies, and the melodic and textual material utilized in
these songs are a bestowal of spirit guides in dreams.  In the performance
context of these ‘dream songs’ the women’s chorus repeat the medium’s phrases,
which metaphorically represents ‘following the path described by the spiritguide
through the medium’.  According to Marina Roseman in Healing Sounds from the
Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine, “Songs are paths that link
mediums, female chorus members, trance-dancers, and patients with spirits of the
jungle and settlement.”

ADRIAN PERTOUT
'Mixdown' Monthly ~ Issue #85, May 2, 2001
BEAT MAGAZINE PTY LTD
All rights reserved. All text, graphics and sound files on this page are
copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law.
Copyright © 2000 by Adrian Pertout.

“The land is one great, wild, untidy, luxuriant hothouse, made by Nature
for herself …How great would be the desire in every admirer of Nature to
behold, if such were possible, the scenery of another planet!… Yet to every person
… it may truly be said, … that the glories of another world are opened to
him,” wrote Charles Darwin a century and a half ago about his first experience
with the tropical rainforest.   In 1950, fifteen percent of the earth was adorned
by rainforest, and in the following twenty-five years this figure was pruned
to bequeath half.  This legacy foreshadows the grim reality that five
quinquenniums on (2000 A.D.) the remaining amount of that original forest is estimated
to be no more than seven percent, and depredation at this scale ensures a
continuum of the present daily extinction of fifty species of plants and animals.
‘Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World’ proposes (in the words
of Adrian Malone) that, “All societies survive by manipulating nature, but
while tribal cultures seek harmony with nature, Western societies try to control
it, often with devastating consequences.”  While the deeper sentiments
involved in this ongoing desecration of the land is expressed by a Cape York
aboriginal elder thus, “The land is mother to all of us, white and black, and how you
feel if somebody cut your mother in pieces, in front of you, how you feel?”
What of the people of the forest (the Suyá of Brazil, Kaluli of Papua New
Guinea, Mbuti of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Temiar of Malaysia) and
their future perpetuation within this impending fatal precipice?  The memory of
these four cultural dinosaurs will be cherished…

ADRIAN PERTOUT
All rights reserved. All text, graphics and sound files on this page are
copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law.
Copyright © 2001 by Adrian Pertout.

Bibliography
Books
Feld, Steven.  Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in
Kaluli Expression.  2nd ed.  Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.

Hobley, L. F.  Tropical Forests of the World.  London: Macmillan, 1984.

Newman, Arnold.  Tropical Rainforest: A World Survey of our Most Valuable and
Endangered Habitat with a Blueprint for its Survival.  New York Facts On
Life, 1990.

Nichol, John.  The Mighty Rainforest.  London: David & Charles, 1990.

Odum, Eugene P.  “Ecosystems.” The New Encyclopaedia Britannica:
Macropaedia.  15th ed.  Vol. 17.  Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1989.  979-983.

Roseman, Marina.  Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music
and Medicine.  Berkeley: U of California Press, 1993
.
- - - .  “Inversion and Conjecture: Male and Female Performance Among the
Temiar of Peninsular Malaysia.”  Women and Music in Cross-cultural Perspective. 
Ed. Ellen Koskoff.  Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 1989.  131-149.

Schieffelin, Edward L.  The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the
Dancers.  St. Lucia, Qld.: U of Queensland Press, 1997.

Seeger, Anthony.  “Sing for your Sister: The Structure and Performance of
Suyá Akia.”  Eds. Norma McLeod, and Marcia Herndon.  The Ethnography of Musical
Performance.  Norwood: Norwood Editions, 1980.  269-304.

- - - .  Why Suyá Sing: A musical anthropology of an Amazonian people. 
Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1987.
Snaden, James N.  “Brazil.”  The Macmillan Family Encyclopedia.  5th ed. 
Vol.3.  London: Macmillan, 1984.  459-464.

Turnbull, Colin.  “Liminality: A Synthesis of Subjective and Objective
Experience.”  Eds. Richard Schechner, and Willa Appel.  By Means of Performance:
Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual.  Cambridge: Cambridge U Press,
1990.  50-81

- - -.  The Forest People.  London: Pimlico, 1993.

- - -.  The Mbuti Pygmies: Change and Adaptation.  New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1983.

Wachtel, Paul Spencer, Justin Kenrick, and Theodore Macdonald Jr.  “Forests
and People.”  Rainforests: The Illustrated Library of the Earth.  Sydney:
Reader’s Digest Press, 1993.  82-115.

Discography
Feld, Steven.  Voices of the Rainforest.  Rykodisc, 1991.

Roseman, Marina.  Dream Songs and Healing Sounds in the Rainforests of
Malaysia.  Smithsonian/Folkways, 1995.

Seeger, Anthony.  Why Suyá Sing: A musical anthropology of an Amazonian
people.  Audiocassette.  Cambridge U Press, 1987.

Turnbull, Colin.  Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Rainforest. 
Smithsonian/Folkways, 1992.

Internet Resources
Feld, Steven.  “From Ethnomusicology to Echo-Muse-Ecology: Reading R. Murray
Schafer in the Papua New Guinea Rainforest.”  The Soundscape Newsletter 8
(Jun. 1994): n. pag. University of Oregon College of Education.  World Forum for
Acoustic Ecology.  Online.  Internet.  Available HTTP:
http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/FCJWFAESndScapeSelect#Feld  6 Jun. 1998.

“Hunter-gatherers of the forests of Central Africa.”  The Ituri Forest
Peoples Fund.  Online.  Internet.  Available HTTP:
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/psych/Morelli/pygmy.html  13 Jun. 1998.

“Rainforest Biome: Rainforests are in Danger!”  Missouri Botanical Garden. 
MBGnet: What’s It Like Where You Live?  Online.  Internet.  Available HTTP:
http://www.mobot.org/MBGnet/vb/rforest/indexhtm  5 Jun. 1998.

Roberts, David.  “The Suyá Sing and Dance and Fight for a Culture in Peril:
When We Stop Singing, We will Really be Finished.”  Smithsonian Magazine (May
1996): n. pag. Online.  Internet.  Available HTTP:
http://smithsonianmag.con/smithsonian/issues96/may96/suya.html  7 Jun. 1998.

Stewart, Kilton.  “Dream Theory in Malaya.” (17 Jun. 1996).  Dr. Alexander
Randall.  Sweet Dreams from Dr-Dream.  Online.  Internet.  Available HTTP:
 http://www.dr-dream.com/kilton.htm.  11 Jun. 1998.

Film and Video Recordings
An Ecology of Mind.  Dir. Michael Grant.  Prods. Michael Grant, and Richard
Meech.  Videocassette.  Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World.  A
co-production of Biniman, Adrian Malone, BBC-TV, and KCET in Association with The
Global Television Network, 1992.

Maps
Baker, Denis.  “Location of the Ituri Forest.”  Colin Turnbull.  The Forest
People.  Map.  London: Pimlico, 1993.  15.
Essner, Janis.  “The Great Papuan Plateau.”  Steven Feld.  Sound and
Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression.  2nd ed.  Map. 
Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.  8.
“Malay Peninsular, The.”  Marina Roseman.  Healing Sounds from the Malaysian
Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine.  Map.  Berkeley: U of California
Press, 1993.  3.
“[Mato Grosso], Brazil.”  The Macmillan Family Encyclopedia.  5th ed.  Vol.
3.  Map.  London: Macmillan, 1984.  460.
“Tropical Forests of the World.”  L. F. Hobley.  Tropical Forests of the
World.  Map.  London: Macmillan, 1984.  4.

Periodicals
Feld, Steven.  “Aesthetic as Iconicity of Style (Uptown Title); or, (Downtown
Title) ‘Lift-up-over Sounding’: Getting into the Kaluli Groove.”  Yearbook
for Traditional Music 20 (1988): 109-150.

- - - .  “‘Flow Like a Waterfall’: The Metaphors of Kaluli Musical Theory.”
Yearbook for Traditional Music 13 (1981): 227
.
- - - .  “Sound Structure as Social Structure.”  Ethnomusicology 38.3
(1984): 383-409.

Roseman, Marina.  “The Social Structuring of Sound: The Temiar of Peninsular
Malaysia.”  Ethnomusicology 38.3 (1984): 411-445.

---
Hanuman Zhang, musical mad scientist (no, I don't wanna take over the world,
just the sound spectrum...)

"What strange risk of hearing can bring sound to music - a hearing whose
obligation awakens a sensibility so new that it is forever a unique, new-born,
anti-death surprise, created now and now and now. .. a hearing whose moment
in time is always daybreak." - Lucia Dlugoszewski

"The wonderousness of the human mind is too great to be transferred into
music only by 7 or 12 elements of tone steps in one octave." - shakuhachi master
Masayuki Koga

"There's a rabbinical tradition that the music in heaven will be microtonal"
-annotative interpretation of Schottenstein Tehillim, 92:4, the verse being:
"Upon a ten-stringed * instrument and upon lyre, with singing accompanied by
harp." [* utilizing new tones]

NADA BRAHMA - Sanskrit, "sound [is the] Godhead"

"God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of himself." -Thomas
Merton

LILA - Sanskrit, "divine play/sport/whimsy" - "the universe is what happens
when God wants to play" - "joyous exercise of spontaneity involved in the art
of creation"

"Welcome and explore and inquire into everything, new or old, that comes
your way, and then build your own music on whatever your inner life has been able
to take in and offer you back again." - Henry Cowell

"...improvisation is about change, about flux rather than stasis. ...
improvisation is about a constant change." - Steve Beresford

improvisation: "a process of liberation, a working around the assumptions
that define our civilization, and the results are open-ended." - John Berndt