ABSTRACT

Music (sometimes defined as “humanly organized sound”) has its place in these soundscapes: the clarinets at a bar mitzvah celebration and the singing pilgrims described in Wood’s chapter. Other chapters in this section feature musics that are part of the modern urban soundscape, such as the Korean t’ungso flutes and drums played in city parks in northeast China as described by Pease, or the Malian jeli bards (and even our chapter author Lucy Duran) who might loudly “call the horses” by singing “Soliyo” on a Paris street or in an immigration hall, instantly invoking the social mores of the Mande world. To Western readers, the modern concert hall may be a more familiar context for music: the hall creates a space entirely devoted to music, and cut off from all the competing sounds of the outside world. This is where the Kazakh instrumental piece “Aqqu” (White Swan) in Saida Daukeyeva’s chapter is now most commonly heard, although, paradoxically, qyl-qobyz music evokes the natural environment, bringing it into this enclosed urban space.