Language, music, and emotion in lament poetry. The Embodiment and Performativity of Emotions in Karelian Laments (original) (raw)
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Language as a Linguistic Art - The Expression of Emotion in the Spoken and Written Word
A majority of linguistic research concentrates on the conceptual exchange of information, and as a result the emotional aspects of language are found to be superfluous when observing the characteristics of communication. However, the prosody (or melody) within language becomes increasingly more necessary when observed as poetry or music, and one of the key aims of the present paper is to address the shared characteristics exhibited by the means of communication that exist between primitive language and music.
One Common Thread: The Musical World of Lament
This volume represents a selection of papers delivered at a colloquium on laments sponsored by the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM), The Australian National University (ANU), the National Folklore Conference (NFC) and the National Folk Festival (NFF) on 20–22 April 2011. The title was ‘One Common Thread: A Colloquium on the Musical Expression of Loss and Bereavement’. The program of the colloquium consisted of keynote addresses, paper sessions, roundtable presentations and discussions, concerts and a public forum at the National Folk Festival. A conscious effort was made to include a variety of presentation forms and opportunities for public participation. The concept of laments was deliberately defined broadly as ‘the musical expression of loss and bereavement’ whether or not the traditions represented included self-identified genres of laments. The colloquium brief also included ‘expressions of loss of culture, language, home or country, or personal loss’. Three main themes were identified • loss of place/displacement • personal loss • cultural/language loss. All of the themes are represented in the papers of this volume. The broader context of laments is the musical expression of emotion—a theme that is gathering momentum in international musicological and ethnomusicological circles, prompting the organisation of panels and whole conferences. The editors of this volume are not aware of any previous colloquium of the International Council for Traditional Music on the narrow or wider theme, although a world conference panel was convened in the past on the latter (Vienna, in 2007). And yet, laments are part of the cultural history of a people, especially of oral cultures. Through the private or public outpouring of grief, a healing process is enacted, and positive memories and connections are evoked and passed on through generations in eulogies or panegyric forms. We hope that this volume will contribute to and stimulate the further study of laments and of the wider musical expression of emotion.
Archaeologia Baltica 15: 128–143., 2011
Known the world over, laments are one of the oldest genres of oral ritual poetry. They are usually performed by women during rituals: funerals, weddings or leaving to join the army. Laments are works of a special kind of improvisation; they were created during the process of performance, drawing upon traditional language and motifs. The objective of this article is to open a discussion of relationships between Karelian and Lithuanian lament traditions, as representative examples of Finnic and Baltic traditions, respectively. I focus on representations of 'belief systems' as these are reflected through the poetic features, images and motifs of both Karelian and Lithuanian funeral laments.
Emotion and Cultural Responses to a Poem: Looking through Translations in Three Different Languages
Literature is one of the most suitable means for verbalizing affectivity. According to Widdowson (1998), it expresses the inexpressible and, we add, the most basic human emotions, such as fear, anger, or love. As language is deeply embedded in culture, we question how far different linguistic renderings of the same poem of a canonical author may move readers in two different cultural settings: Brazilian and Ukrainian. To this purpose, we compare three translations of Poe’s “The Lake” into Portuguese, Russian and Ukrainian and check whether the reactions previously obtained from the respondents in these two national settings (see Chesnokova et al. 2016) can be linked to what each translator decided to foreground in the translated version. As indicated by Chesnokova et al. (2016), the reactions of Brazilian and Ukrainian readers to the original English version differed: the former group perceived it under a more negative light than the latter. For instance, Brazilians believed the poem to be darker, lonelier, more mysterious and more solitary than Ukrainians. The responses to the translated versions of the poem in the respondents’ first language also proved to be culture-specific. Brazilian readers reacted to the translation into Portuguese rather negatively when compared with readers of Ukrainian and Russian versions. They found the text darker, more nostalgic and less exciting. The most positive response was elicited by Ukrainian participants who have Russian as their first language: they saw the Russian version as less sad and less melancholic. In contrast, the Ukrainian version read by participants who have this language as their L1 aroused rather negative feelings. These respondents found the translation darker, more mystical and less dreamy when compared to the other versions. The affective differences in reactions were then matched against the translators’ stylistic choices, and we believe that these differences could be attributed to the way language has been used. For example, the Russian version is the only one out of four in which exclamatory sentences have been used three times, thus making the text sound more emotional and positive. On the metaphoric level, in this version, the translator creates the image of night as a queen of dreams that enhances the positive romantic flavour. Unlike the other two translations, the Ukrainian version stands out as having a more negative tone: the original subject (the narrator) is replaced by the word “terror”; the wind mentioned in the original version becomes abrupt and ominous in the translation, and death is personified and literally ‘waits’ for the narrator. These and other stylistic differences will be detailed, supporting the argument that there seems to be a link between the respondents’ reactions and the language in which they read the poem.
Parallelism and Musical Structures in Ingrian and Karelian Oral Poetry
Oral Tradition 31(2): 331–354 , 2018
The focus of this essay is the complex relationship between textual parallelism and performance in historical oral poetry. Since there is no possibility of carrying out any personal ethnographic fieldwork, the main approach to the local categorizations and meanings of singing is to analyze recurrent patterns and combinations of different elements in archival material. This approach relates to discussions about ethnopoetics and textualizing oral poetry. 1 Previously, I have analyzed the local understanding of genres and registers via the analysis of the relationships between poetic texts, melodic structures, singing practices, and performance arenas in archival material relating to one cultural area (Kallio 2013 and 2015). The present essay analyzes relationships between textual parallelism and musical structures in sound recordings from two Finnic singing cultures with related languages and similar poetic forms, but different singing practices. The singers of Ingria and Archangel Karelia had slightly different uses, versions, and interpretations of so-called kalevalaic or Kalevala-metric poems (runo-songs). 2 The singing styles of these poems varied by region, song genre, performance setting, and performer, and these kinds of factors also affected the relationship of textual and musical parallelism. On a general level, the recordings may be divided into four, partly overlapping cases: 1) There is no regular connection between textual parallelism and musical structures. 2) Textual parallelism is highlighted by melodic variation. 3) Patterns of verse repetition are connected to textual parallelism. 4) Textual parallelism and musical structures are mutually coordinated in a way that may even approach regular patterns of two or four verses. The analysis of the relationship of the linguistic (or textual) features and the forms of performance is a task involving both abstract metrics and practical performances. In the case of Kalevala-metric oral poetry, certain forms of performance may affect poetic structures, such as Oral Tradition, 31/2 (2017): 331-354 1 For example, see Hymes (1981); Tedlock (1983) on ethnopoetics; Fine (1984); Honko (1998) on textualization; on epic poetry, see also Foley (1995) and Harvilahti (2003). 2 On the complex connotations of different labels for the Finnic traditions, see Kallio et al. (2017); on the characteristics and differences of Ingrian and Karelian singing, see Siikala (1994 and 2000).
National character and mood of lithuanian ballads
Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 2002
The Lithuanian " b aladés " should be held to be narrative lyrics. Because of a strong lyrical trend in Lithuanian folk poetry, very often they seem to be cases between folksongs and fol kballads. An attempt to explain the untragic nature of part of Lithuanian ballad-sujets is done in the a rticle. The cause could be not only the lyrical mood of folk singers or the lack of epic as well as dr amatic traditions in Lithuanian singing folklore, but on the great part the answer may be found in the medium those foreign sujets got in. In the oldest strata of Lithuanian ballads the role of mythology is of great importance, the archaic conception of death and love. It is the avoidance of rude cruelty in Lithuanian ballads that causes the absence of certain parts; the structure of sujet becomes obscure, and the inner logic of sujet is ruled out. Dramatical manner of performance is present only sometimes, but not always in Lithuanian ballads. The expression of the individual; traditional occasions to perform ballads; some poetical art ificies of Lithuanian ballads; suppositional meaning of some ballads motifs; the classification of Lithuanian ballads as well as their origin is also reviewed shortly in the article.
The crying clarinet: Emotion and music in Parakalamos
2019
Social narratives in Pogoni, Greece are dominated by a sense of pain that is associated with local history. This emotional trope relates directly to cultural expression, especially in terms of music. Traditional music in the village of Parakalamos is recognised locally as music that is full of pain and sorrow and is epitomised by the sound of a ‘crying clarinet’. An instrumental form of lament is central to this tradition. Yet, the pain that this music expresses is experienced as bittersweet. Rather than articulating the raw grief associated with lament in the event of a death, this form of lament is associated with a reflective bittersweet nostalgia. The same musical phrases that characterise lament accompany the dance music of the area. In this context, the sound of the crying clarinet provokes emphatic displays of joy. In the music and dance of Parakalamos, there is no conflict between pain and joy; instead they are recognised as complementary emotions. This thesis considers how ...
(Chapter 9) LAMENT AND LIMINALITY: A MUSICAL-POETIC PROTOTYPE OF EARLY ARTMAKING
Music in Human Experience: Perspectives on a Musical Species, 2022
An ethological and evolutionary interpretation is applied to a widespread musical/poetic ritual practice---the lament. In many if not most human societies the "natural" (biologically predisposed) emotional response to death or loss is transformed into a "cultural" (both learned and improvised) performance. The lament as an artifact is liminal---between nature and culture. It exists (liminally) between speech and song, emotional speech and poetry (that is, between spontaneous outpouring and crafted utterance), the everyday and the spirit world, and---as the lament is meant to be acknowledged and even echoed by others---between private self-expression and public occasion. The lament as described here can be considered as a prototype or model of the origin, nature, and function of what modern societies call "art" or "arts."
2020
Composed in the mid 1870’s, Modest Musorgsky’s song cycle Songs and Dances of Death can be easily placed within the geographically and temporally situated cultural and sociopolitical context of the subject matter of dying that thematically unifies it. The article focuses on the set’s second song, [GA1] titled “Serenade,” seeking to investigate the structural conditions that afford its hermeneutic association with this context. To do so, it borrows its critical apparatus from Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary theory, and particularly the notions of heteroglossia and dialogism, intersected with the concept of markedness, as it has been appropriated to musicology from structural linguistics by Robert Hatten. The analysis demonstrates the song’s heteroglot disposition, evinced by the stylistic opposition of its two comprising sections, the first unmarked and the second marked by readily identifiable tokens of Russianness. In particular, it concentrates on the song’s tonal duality, re-conceptu...