Since the end of the eighteenth century we in Sweden have been taught by collectors, and later even by scholars, that folk music is a dying species, threatened by urban culture, schools, communication, or other “bad” gifts from civilization (Dal 1956; Malberg 1971). Levi-Strauss' famous warnings against pseudo-archaism have rung unheard by many collectors whose only interest has been to save music from the “good old times.” But, as Levi-Strauss put it, “A cracked bell, alone surviving the work of time, will never give forth the ring of bygone harmonies” (19:144). Today, in spite of—or perhaps owing to—mass communication, music education, synthesizers, etc., we have a very rich folk music culture in Sweden (Anonymous 1984). There have probably never been so many folk musicians in Sweden as at present, and it is likely that in the future we will hear more and more singing of folk songs and even herding calls!

The discussion considers six strategies used by Filipino populations in the United States in the maintenance of ethnic identity. These strategies are derived from the examination of the overseas Filipino as a generalized category. The study deals with music and music-related activity in the period 1984-1985. It intends to contribute a general typology of strategies for minority maintenance within a majority culture.

The breakdance data in this article is based on dance anthropological fieldwork I carried out in 1984 among a group of breakdancers in Palmerston North, New Zealand. The understanding of identity is drawn primarily from their experiences, which may differ in degree from those of breakdancers elsewhere in New Zealand.

For two years, throughout 1983 and 1984, a sudden change in the attitude towards dancing was shown among pre-teen and teen-age boys in Denmark. This change has also been witnessed in other West European countries within the last few years.

In the mid 1970s, during field research carried out in the villages of Breb and Sîrbi in Maramureş2 (northern Transylvania), I was confronted with a socio-cultural life where rituals and ceremonials centred around birth, puberty, marriage and death had preserved their viability due to the people's belief in their capacity of relating fundamental conceptual values (defining rules of social interaction) to the random present (Karnoouh 1983: 37).

Of the various kinds of singing games played by children, the handclapping game is practised with great vigor by young girls on the schoolyards of Los Angeles, California. This paper looks at five handclapping games representative of a collection made at three locations in the city, from three predominant ethnocultural groups: Afro-American, Euro-American and Latino. The five examples were chosen to illustrate what seem to me to be broader trends in tradition and innovation. The repertoire consists of both old and new games, with the old often modified in some way and the new invented out of a contemporary urban musical environment. For sources, children may turn to television, particularly musical commercials, which they then adapt to the requirements of a handclapping game. In my observation of children's games over a ten year period, I have been intrigued by the relationship between games and sex roles, and what is called “role-modeling,” which appear in the text and the structure of a game.

Until recently, few ethnographies have paid any attention to the music of and participation in musical activities by children and young people. This statement is particularly true of Amerindian peoples. A major aim of my two field trips to Dogrib territory in 1984 was to obtain songs used and maintained by children and to observe the participation of children in the musical events of the communities. Although I did not find many songs that had been used specifically by children, I did record two examples. In addition, contrary to reports I had read on the Ti Dance, the main traditional musical event among the Dogrib, I observed active participation of children and youths, particularly in starting this event.

Music plays a central role in the ceremonies of many native-American groups. Ritual practitioners are often called Singers, and the most important words of the ceremonies are uttered musically. While the music is used in obvious ways—accompanying dance, for instance, or making text audible—a less obvious but much more important function is that of structuring the time-frame of the ritual. This is a particularly necessary function in those ceremonies which last over a period of several days and must therefore sustain over time the experience of transcendence. The purpose of such a ceremony is to effect ritual transformation within a socially regulated framework. In this paper, we will be describing the role of music in the Mescalero Apache girls' rite of passage, an eight-day ritual in which a young pubescent girl is transformed into the female deity of the Apache, Isdzαnadl'esh, and is literally “sung” into womanhood.

The opposition of tradition to innovation is a commonplace in studies of culture. So too is the association of tradition with cultural forms in native environments and with forms that evolve so slowly that they are thought to be unchanging. Through contrast with seemingly unchanging or stable forms, innovation becomes identifiable.

In approaching the study of ethnic music in the urban area researchers have become increasingly concerned with articulating the reciprocal relationships between musical behavior and its socio-cultural context. These issues have led me to examine productions of the kind of Spanish musical theatre known as zarzuela in New York's metropolitan area. Zarzuela's roots go back to 17th century Spain, and despite the genre's incorporation of spoken dialogue, musically it has most often been linked to opera. It soon became apparent that not only is zarzuela defined by its ethnic associations but also that the production of zarzuela is being used to help define Hispanic ethnicity in New York.

A long-standing conception in the history of the study of culture has been the model of two distinct types of traditions interacting with one another but remaining essentially separate. Dichotomies such as folk vs. high or fine art, little vs. great, rural vs. urban, or village vs. court have been used in reference to this distinction. There are a number of problems with such a model, to be sure, but it is not my intention to consider them all here. Rather, I intend to refer to the binary division, because it is so widely held in so many cultures around the world, as popular conception, and to view recent developments within a particular tradition as a response to that conception. The division usually implies a hierarchy. Carriers of what is seen as a lower tradition may be dissatisfied with that status. One response they might choose is to abandon that tradition altogether in favor of a more widely respected one. Another is to modify its practice in such substantial ways that it resembles other more widely respected traditions. But still another response—one which counters the notion of these two types of tradition as separate entities—is to adopt some elements of the other in order to legitimize their own. For musical traditions these elements may include authoritative texts, notation, terminology, theoretical writings, codification, distribution through the media, and formalized transmission in an academic setting.

Bombay Hindi film song is a music genre which has developed since the introduction of synchronized sound film in India in 1930. In this paper I shall survey the development of Bombay Hindi film songs1 in interaction with commercial, technological and institutional systems from 1930 to 1980. The film songs under consideration are those from films classified as commercial rather than art films. I confined my film song examples to the category of commercial films which did not receive financial assistance or a film award from the Government of India. The purpose of the survey is to examine film songs from films regarded as popular among the Indian audience and not those promoted by a government agency.

Endringsprosessar i musikklivet involverer gjerne eit utal aktørar og kontekstfaktorar. I studiet av slike prosessar er det derfor vanlig å legge vekt på dei store linene, utan å gjera omfattanda undersøkingar på individ-nivå. Mot ein slik bakgrunn byr den norske seljefløyte på eit eineståande tilfelle der det er mulig å studere dei individuelle banda mellom den døyande tradisjonen knytt til seterlivet og framveksten av ein ny, skreddarsydd for mediesamfunnet.

Gjennom ein post-enquete våren 1984 vart det samla inn opplysningar om sosiokulturelle bakgrunnsdata og tradisjonsbakgrunn for alle aktive seljefløytespelarar forfattaren visste om, i alt 23 spelarar. Ved å analysere og systematisere opplysningane om korleis kvar spelar har tileigna seg repertoaret sitt, kan ein dele tradisjonsberarane inn i tre grupper: 1) “dei garnie” som heilt ut hadde/har lokale røter i den garnie setertradisjonen, 2) “formidlarane,” som har tileigna seg kunnskapar i vaksen alder gjennom medviten innsats og personlig kontakt med ein eller fleire av dei garnie og formidla denne kunnskapen til 3) “dei unge,” som i tillegg har laert eit repertoar frå lydopptak (massemedia) av dei garnie.

Det syner seg at ei lita gruppe, formidlarane, speler ei viktig rolle i å tolke og formidle den tradisjonelle seljefløyta på ein slik måte at den ynġre generasjon kan laere seg å nytte instrumentet. Og samtidig som det eksisterer band mellom den eldre seljefløyta og instrumentet slik vi møter det i dag, har den yngre generasjon andre forestellingar om seljefløyta enn dei gamle hadde.

I hovudsak representerer formidlarane rett nok ei forsterking av den tradisjonen som går ut frå dei garnie: det skal mye til for å endre inngrodde førestellingar—jamvel slike som ein kan prove er feilakige. Dette gjeld t.d. myten om seljefløyta som eit naturtoneinstrument, som det ikkje finst grunnlag for. Kan hende heng livskrafta til denne myten saman med at han er så naert knytt til nasjonalromantisk tankegods.

På den andre sida fremjar formidlarane også ei nyskaping, den moderne seljefløyta av plast, som på avgjerande vis skil seg frå den tradisjonelle fløyta av bark. Overgangen frå den garnie til den nye seljefløytetradisjonen har såleis karakter av ein endringsprosess, der innovasjon (nyskaping) og revival (gjenoppliving) er viktige, komplementaere drivkrefter.

In the 1920's, approximately half a century after the Meiji Restoration,1 some genres of traditional Japanese art music,2 under the strong influence of western music,3 underwent a series of changes that in retrospect can be seen to mark an epoch-making stage in the history of Japanese traditional music. Developments within the scope of the newly born movement known as “Shin nihon ongaku” (“New Japanese music”)4 or “Shin nihon ongaku undo” (“A movement of new Japanese music”), which was led by the jiuta-sōkyoku player/composer Miyagi Michio (1894/Meiji 27—1956/Shōwa 31), can be considered as the most outstanding of these changes. It is unncessary to restate here in detail that a series of novel and somewhat daring Western-oriented attempts undertaken during the years from the 1920's to the pre-war years under the banner of Shin nihon ongaku contributed to a remarkable development of musical styles, most particularly in the genre of sōkyoku. However, in genres other than sōkyoku, it is also possible to identify a number of musicians deeply concerned with the new Western-oriented trends of Shin nihon ongaku, as well as corresponding attempts at introducing new ideas into the musical style and instruments of their own genres.5 The present paper will focus on the activities of Kineya Sakichi IV (1884/Meiji 17—1945/Shōwa 20), a nagauta shamisen player, making occasional references to Miyagi Michio. The reasons for this are: 1) although Kineya Sakichi's innovations in the genre of nagauta imply that he was a “counterpart” of Miyagi, the differences between these two figures and their achievements have not been sufficiently dealt with from a comparative viewpoint; and 2) a comparison of these musicians and their works will not only enable us to identify differences between the two personalities, but, more importantly, will also lead us to an understanding of the fundamental differences between the two genres of nagauta and sōkyoku, in terms of how these differences were reflected in the outcome of the “Westernization” of the two genres. Investigation of these differences will be made from several perspectives, such as musical styles and organological aspects, and examination will also be made of some social or paramusical conventions peculiar to each genre.