ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how meaningfulness and meaning relate in music, and how, structurally and texturally, music may ‘have meaning’ and yet mean far more beyond this meaning. Presenting an exploration of omengeredákl, a type of women’s group chant, and exploring Palauan notions of temporality, I single out “effects of meaning” and “effects of presence” (Gumbrecht 2003), showing how the dynamics arising between them lead to the emergence of a distinctly sonic atmosphere. There is no such thing as binary oppositions in atmospheres.
