#kaluli

[folkfashion]

Kaluli man, Papua New Guinea, by Jimmy Nelson

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kaluli, jimmy nelson

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kaluli, jimmy nelson

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kaluli, jimmy nelson

[whatijustread]

Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression (Feld)

"Jostling expectancies, getting under the surface, reframing usual thought patterns, and evoking a dramatic response are all at the heart of Kaluli poetics, because composers force their audiences to participate in their creations by making them weep.  They accomplish this at several levels: staging, costuming, singing, dancing, and performance demeanor are each co-essential to the evocation of sadness and weeping in gisalo.  But of all these factors involved, Kaluli most often say that it is the sa-gisalo, the 'words inside gisaloe,' that do the main work of making listeners sentimental and nostalgic to the point of being moved to tears.  The 'words inside gisalo' are moving in this way because they are an impregnated language, one that Kaluli says has 'insides' and 'underneaths.'  The effect produced when these 'insides' and 'underneaths' fully register with the listener is what Kaluli call the halaido domeki, the 'hardening', the climaxing, or culmination of the aesthetic tension of song" (132).

so that now we may begin to think about the sa-gisalo, the "inside" and the "underneath" of the word with relation to what Schmidt argues for the "inside" voice, the interiority of the spiritual subject; and what Douglass says about the sounds he has - interior to him - that he cannot [words don't go there] commit to paper ...

[whatijustread]

Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression (Feld)

"If Kaluli poetic constructs are not made understandable by resorting to a distinction between ordinary and nonordinary language, or referential and expressive functions, what is required to analyze how 'bird sound words' are meaningful in their performed setting?  Kaluli poetic communication must be approached as a simultaneous articulation of formal properties of language, cultural knowledge (general, personal, specific, contextual) of participants, and audience expectation.  Only in this way is it clear why speakers make intentional code choices in order to evoke a shared response.  The interaction of form, content, and performance is what ties crafting strategies together with listening strategies, allowing the composer's intention to be interpreted most directly by those with the most personal, specific, and contextual knowledge of the textual path, and yet more broadly by those whose general and contextual knowledge strongly intersect with the textual themes" (131).

[honey-spider]

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Bosavi: Rainforest Music from Papua New Guinea

This is a funerary song -- the wept singing or sung weeping is performed by Hane. The structure of the song is meant to imitate bird songs -- which are the voices of the dead.  

Want more on wept song? Check out Steven Feld's Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression