Note: After a one year hiatus, PRE took a step into the future by replacing handwritten musical transcriptions and graphics for computerized ones.

articles

Tradition Replacing Tradition in Egyptian Epic Singing: The Creation of a Commercial Image
by Dwight Reynolds

“In many traditional societies around the world, performers of various sorts are socially marginalized. Aspurveyors of music, theater, or dance, as itinerant elements otherwise fixed social pattern, performers are often unofficially, and sometimes officially, disenfranchised. The epic singers of the Egyptian Nile Delta are a clear example of this latter situation - a respected art form transmitted by unrespected performers. The role of these traditional performers is in sharp contrast with that of a handful of singers who were, in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, able to dissociate themselves from the mistrusted qualities of the traditional singers and become commercial stars in the booming cassette industry, thereby achieving a highly ambiguous status as epic singers who were not ‘really’ epic singers.”

The Music of Arab-Americans: Performance Contexts and Musical Transformations
by Anne Rasmussen

“Before the turn of the twentieth century and during its first two decades, when Arabs began to immigrate to America in significant numbers, Arab music occurred only on an informal basis as the responsibility of amateurs. Here I investigate both the experience of musicians and community members during music events as well as the decisions and actions of influential individuals, in order to discover the production, reproduction, and eventual degeneration of a dynamic and formative era in Arab American musical life.”

The Periodization of Modern Arab Music Theory: Continuity and Change in the Definition of Maqamat
by Scott Marcus

“In their writings, modern Arab music theorists have defined the musical modes in a number of different ways. Changes in the way theorists have conceptualized the maqamat suggest that it is best to divide the modern era into three periods: early, middle, and present-day. These changes have not been, however, confined solely to the realm of music theory. New concepts and approaches which appeared in the theoretical works often reflected or affected changes in how musicians thought about the maqamat and even how they performed the maqamat.”

Cultural Authenticity in Egyptian Musical Expression: The Repertory of the Mashayikh
by Virginia Danielson

“During the twentieth century in Egypt, within the context of widespread resistance to the British occupation and the ever-growing support for Egyptian control of economic and political affairs, the concept min al-mashayikh has acquired an important ideological dimension. I will outline the historical connections between Muslim religious expression and grassroots popular culture in Egypt, and briefly mention qualities of musical sounded with the mashayikh and believed to be significantly and distinctively Egyptian.”

Form as Cosmology: an Interpretation of Structure in the Ceremonial Songs of the Pueblo Indians
by Paul Humphries

“Relationships between music and overall cultural systems have been of interest to ethnomusicologistssince the founding of the Society of Ethnomusicology in 1953. In this paper I draw attention to analogous coherences between the musical organization of a particular song genre and the cosmological orientation of the Pueblo Indians of the southwestern United States.”

Gong Forging in Bogor, West Java: The Process Through its Soundscape
by Sue Carole De Vale

“Little attention has been paid to gong making in West Java (Sunda). In the gongsmithy of PakSukarna at Bogor, West Java, as is true elsewhere in Java, each hammer has its own pitch which rings out clearly as its iron head strikes the heated metal being forged and, when used by two, three or foursmiths, they are heard as interlocking melodious patterns. The purpose of this paper, therefore, in addition to pointing out the acoustic phenomenon of the hammers per se, is to use that soundscape to analyze and describe aspects of gong-making process at Bogor.”

reviews

Musical Instruments of Indonesia: An Introductory Handbook
by Margaret J. Kartomi
Foreword by Hugh O’Neill
Melbourne: Indonesian Arts Society, 1985. 60pp. Photographs, drawings, map.
reviewed by David Harnish

La Musique Traditionnelle de l’Azerbayjan et la Science des Muquams
by Jean During
Baden-Baden: Collections d’Etudes Musiclogiques no. 80 (1988). 220 pp. Figures Notes, references, index.
reviewed by John O’Connell