ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a range of music that villager or visiting ethnomusicologist alike might encounter on a single day in the village of Buklavu in the mid-2000s. With these various sounds in mind, it’s now timely to reflect more theoretically on what this set of usages tell us about the study of music in daily life. In Buklavu and beyond, moments of special musical activity are part of, and are woven into and provide respite from, established daily routines. After lunch, and particularly in the summer months, there’s some quiet in Buklavu, as many take a short siesta. It’s a moment when a Bunun mother might soothe her infant with soft, comforting singing. In the evenings after work, when the forest was dark, and when waiting onsite some days to clear the weeds that inevitably sprang up around the newly planted saplings, the work teams typically occupied themselves by singing together and making up new songs.
