Tbilisi Ivane Javakhishvili State University Institute of Classical, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
International Research Centre of Traditional Polyphony
Joseph Jordania
WHO ASKED THE FIRST QUESTION?
The Origins of Human Choral Singing,
Intelligence, Language and Speech
Logos 2006 2
To the memory of Valeri Pavlovich Alexeev and Malkhaz Abdushelishvili
© Programm “Logos”, 2006 © Joseph Jordania, 2006
ISSBN 99940-31-81-3
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University 13 Chavchavadze ave. 0179 Tbilisi, Geogria
Tel.: (+995 32) 22 11 81/ 25 02 58 Fax: (+995 32) 22 11 81 E-mail: [email protected]
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Contents Foreword and acknowledgements 8 ======PART I World Styles of Traditional Polyphony 22 ======Foreword 22 Question of terminology and classification 23 Vocal Polyphony in Africa 30 Sub-Saharan Africa (Rhythm; Unity of singing and dancing; Tone languages and polyphony; Characteristics of sub-Saharan polyphony 31 East Africa 36 Central Africa 37 South Africa 39 West Africa 41 Madagascar 43 North Africa 44 Sahara 45 Conclusions 46 Vocal Polyphony in Europe 47 Vocal Polyphony in Eastern Europe 49 Russia 49 Polyphonic traditions of minorities of Russian Federation 54 North Caucasian minorities (Abkhazians; Adighis, Balkarians and Karachaevis; Ossetians; Chechens and Ingushes, Dagestan) 55 The Volga-Ural region minorities of Russian Federation (Mordva; Komi; Mari; Udmurtia; Tatarstan; Bashkiria; Chuvashia) 62 North European minorities of Russian Federation 67 Jews and Rom 67 Ukraine 68 Belarus 72 Georgia (vocal polyphony in Georgia; General and regional characteristics; East Georgia; West Georgia; Improvisation in western Georgian polyphonic songs; Traditional polyphony in Svaneti; Religious music; Urban music; Scale system; Melody in polyphony; Singing men and singing women; Conclusions) 74 Balkans 105 Romania 105 Bulgaria 106 Serbia 108 Montenegro 109 Bosnia and Herzegovina 110 Croatia 111 Slovenia 112 Macedonia 113 Albania 114 4
Greece 116 Vocal Polyphony in North Europe 118 Baltic region 118 Lithuania 119 Latvia 123 Estonia 124 Finland 125 Iceland 126 England 128 Wales 129 Scotland and Ireland 130 Sweden 130 Denmark and Norway 130 Vocal Polyphony in Central Europe 131 Poland 131 Slovakia 131 Czech 132 Germany 132 Austria 133 Switzerland 134 Belgium and Holland 135 Vocal Polyphony in Western Europe 135 France (Breton, Corsica) 135 Portugal 137 Spain (and Basques) 137 Italy (Sicily, Sardinia) 139 Conclusions 142 Vocal Polyphony is Asia 143 Vocal polyphony in the Middle East 144 Pearl divers of the Persian Gulf 145 Polyphony in Jewish music 146 Armenia 148 The Bedouins, Egypt, Turkey 149 Central Asia: Overtone singing 149 Tajikistan (and Kazakhstan) 151 Afghanistan: Nuristan 152 North Asia 154 East Asia 155 Japan: Ainus 155 China 158 Chinese minorities 158 Tibet 160 Taiwan 161 South-East Asia 163 Vietnam 163 Nepal, Burma 164 5
South Asia: India (Assam; Southern India) 164 Conclusions 166 North America: Vocal Polyphony among Native Americans 167 Northwest Coast 167 Eastern Coast 168 Southwestern 168 Plain Indians 168 South America 169 Q’ero 169 Amazonian region 170 Conclusions 172 Polyphonic singing on Pacific Islands 172 Polynesia 172 Tonga 173 Tahiti 174 Smaller islands 174 Melanesia 175 New Guinea 175 Micronesia 176 Australia 176 Conclusions of the first part 176 ======PART II Comparative Perspectives 178 ======Introduction: Dialog between regional and comparative studies 178 Brief review of comparative studies and ideas 181 Section 1. Methodological Issues 185 “They sound so similar”, or how could we compare polyphonic traditions 185 What is more stable: Language or music? 187 What are the stable and mobile elements of musical culture? 189 Set of stylistic parameters of polyphonic cultures 193 Section 2. Practical Issues. Regions, Styles, Peoples, Migrations: Historical dynamics and comparative perspectives 197 Case Study #1. What happened to the vocal polyphony in Khevsureti? 198 Case Study #2. Historical dynamics: Appearance or disappearance? 200 Case Study #3. Who can drink milk? Or the origins of European professional polyphony 203 Conclusions for the previous two cases 209 Case Study #4. Drone and horses: Ancient European family of vocal polyphony and the Indo-Europeans 210 Legacy of singing Indo-Europeans 217 East Georgia: Listen what the “long” table songs can tell us 217 European mix: Indo-European contribution to ancient European polyphony 220 More about mixed styles: Age matters 221 More mixture: The influence of European professional polyphony 223 6
Conclusions 224 Case Study #5. Heterophony 225 Case Study #6. Lithuanian sutartines 229 Case Study #7. Overtone singing of Central Asia 235 Case Study #8. The Nuristan polyphony 240 Case Study #9. Ainu polyphony 247 Case Study #10. Southeast Asian polyphony 251 Case Study #11. From Atlas Mountains to Bahrain 252 Case Study #12. “I’ll follow the sun” Round-the-world travel ticket and the vocal polyphony of Native Americans 255 Case Study #13. Vocal polyphony in ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica 261 Case Study #14. Polynesian polyphony 273 Case Study #15. The Beatles: Ancient sounds in hit parades 277 Unity of the music creator and the performer 278 Writing music together 278 Performance style 281 The performance as a social experience 281 Harmony of The Beatles songs 282 Dissonances 286 Drone 287 Vocal harmonizing 288 Conclusions 288 Conclusions of the second part 289 ======Part III Singing, Questioning, Thinking, Talking, Stuttering 293 ======Brief summary instead of introduction 293 Sounds of the ancient choir: Primordial vocal polyphony 294 Few preliminary questions and answers 297 Singing ape 299 Singing rabbit and the Lion Dance: Origin of the rhythm 302 Singing in peaceful times: Towards the origins of human language 311 Gestural theory of language origins 315 Pitch based language: singing, whistling, drumming 317 Whistle languages 318 “Language” of African drums 320 Tone languages 320 Pitch language: The first dead language in human history? 321 Is music an enigma? 324 Small question to Noam Chomsky 326 Has anybody asked a question? Language and intelligence 327 Questions in music: Musical dialogue 329 Few basic questions about questions 330 Why do we ask questions? 331 7
What evolutionary advantage could the ability of asking questions have given to human individuals? 331 What evolutionary advantage could the ability of asking questions have given to human groups? 332 So, who asked the first question: Or “Interrogo ergo cogito” 333 Is asking questions a uniquely human ability or do we share this ability with few other species? 334 Where did the phenomenon of question came from – are there any evolutionary prerequisites for the questioning behavior? 338 Who could answer the first question when it was formulated? 339 Is question one of the higher functions of syntactic structures? 340 Is there a genetic component for questioning behavior? 341 Questions and mental retardation 342 Questions and Genie: Do we learn to ask question? 342 Questions, apes and children 343 Questions and protolanguage 344 How do we learn to ask questions? 345 Question of chronology: When was the ability to ask questions born? 346 Let’s Talk: Origin of Speech 347 What can vocal polyphony tell us about the origins of speech? 348 Language and Homo sapiens 351 Correlation with the paleoanthropological data 352 Choral polyphony and the theories of human origins 355 Tone languages and the asynchronous model of speech origin 356 Music, Speech and Stuttering 358 Speech, choral singing and stuttering 359 Stuttering in different cultures: A shadow of “milk-drinking syndrome” again?361 What about stuttering among Chinese? 364 Official attitude towards prevalence studies 367 Reasons? Plenty of them! 370 Conclusions 371 PS: What about polyphony? 372 Developmental Dyslexia 373 “My child said today ‘biscu-it’”: Cross-Cultural Aspect of the Acquisition of Phonological System 374 From polyphony to monophony: Belated Appendix to the “Case Study #3” 376 Conclusions: Any more questions? 378
PostScript: Moral and Ethics Issues of the Study of Vocal Polyphony 381 Appendix: Conferences, Seminars and Symposia on Traditional Polyphony 386 References 397 Index 438
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Foreword and Acknowledgments
April 26, 1977, Tuesday, was a sunny day in Tbilisi, capital of the former USSR Republic of Georgia. I was coming down from the mountain ‘Mtatsminda’ (lit. “Saint Mountain”), an impressive 500 metres high mountain range that dominates the very centre of Tbilisi. I was accompanying my guest, a musicologist student from the Lvov Conservatory (Western Ukraine) Natalia Shvets, who happened to be at the graduate students’ conference, which was taking place at that time at Tbilisi State Conservatory. Walking down the narrow and steep streets of old Tbilisi, I was teaching Natalia the beautiful Georgian healing song “Batonebo” [“Lords”]. Everything was going well, Natalia had a good musical ear and soon we were able to sing the tantalising dissonant harmonies of the healing song together. The only problem was that, as with most of the Georgian traditional songs, Batonebo needs at least three singers to convey all three necessary parts of the song. Well, there we were - only two of us, walking down the empty street of Old Tbilisi and singing two parts of the three-part song. And then suddenly, “out of the blue” sky of that Tbilisi spring afternoon came the bass voice complementing the full three-part harmony of the healing song. We looked around and there he was, a Georgian male in his thirties, leaning over the balcony on the second floor on the left side of the street and helping two lone singers with the bass part. We waved to each other and continued on our way down the street, still accompanied by his bass. This is by no means a “life-changing experience” (particularly in Georgia where almost everyone sings in harmony), but I still remember it as one of the nice moments of life, when a song suddenly brings together people who never met before. Actually, the real reason I can pinpoint the exact day when this happened after so many years is because I have been writing a diary every (well, almost) single day for the last 30 years. My good friend and colleague, arguably the most influential ethnomusicologist of the Soviet Union, Izaly Zemtsovsky from Sankt Petersburg (currently at Stanford University) had a somewhat similar experience in Abkhazia, the north-western part of Georgia. Let us listen to how he described his experience in his own words: “… I would like to share with you what I saw in the hamlet of Gudauta in the summer of 1978: an Abkhazian, dozing as he waited for the bus, in his sleep immediately began intoning a drone as soon as he heard the distant sound, barely audible in the cavernous empty waiting room, of a solo voice singing in the manner of his native land, a song that required a drone.” (Zemtsovsky, 2006a). [For non-professional readers – the “drone” is a long sustained sound, often (but not always) sung as the lowest part of a polyphonic song. Drone can be played on instruments as well] The following tongue-in-cheek story comes from the decorated Georgian traditional singer and the leader of the world-renowned Rustavi Choir, Anzor Erkomaishvili. Let us listen to his own words: “A big group of artists of Georgian Philharmony arrived from Tbilisi to our village [Anzor Erkomaishvili’s native village is Makvaneti, in Guria, the mountainous Black Sea-side region of western Georgia]. After their performance a traditional ‘supra’ [banquet-like Georgian traditional feast at a long table with toasts and singing] was organised in the spacious room of ‘Kolkhoz’ [Soviet Collective Farm] officials. We (village singers) were also invited. The guests from the State Philharmony toasted our singing and said they enjoyed Gurian traditional songs very much, although I somehow had an impression that at that moment the guests were 9
more enjoying the traditional ‘Honey-Vodka’, home-made by Kasiane Bersenadze. As the feasting reached its highest point, one of the guests, a professional opera singer, started singing, announcing beforehand that he was going to sing for us the aria of ‘Abdul the Arab’ [from the opera ‘Tale of Shota Rustaveli’, by the Georgian composer Dimitri Araqishvili]. Ilarion Sikharulidze [a well-respected Gurian traditional singer who was at the table] waited for a while, and when he lost faith that the lone singer would be supported by any of his own friends or colleagues, he himself gave a supporting high harmony to his singing. Tele Iobishvili [another traditional Gurian singer who was at the feast as well] supported the aria by the bass part. I should confess that the result was not bad at all, particularly considering that two out of the three performers had no idea of the song they were singing. ‘This is an “aria” from the classical opera and should be performed alone’, announced a professional singer with mild annoyance in his voice as the song came to an end. ‘Well’, came the reply from Ilarion Sikharulidze, ‘as we Georgians say, it is a pity for a man to be alone while eating, as for singing, I have never heard of a song that has to be sung alone’” (Erkomaishvili, 1988:56). Georgia was widely known for its rich polyphonic traditions in the former Soviet Union. “Two Georgians and a bottle of red wine is already three-part singing” was a popular Russian saying. But of course, such stories of compulsory group participation to complement the harmony of a polyphonic song do not come from Georgia alone. It would be natural to expect that in most of the cultures with traditional polyphonic singing, you would come across similar stories of people joining in singing to complement the harmony, sometimes in the most unusual circumstances. Our good friend, Bulgarian ethnomusicologist Boryana Alexandrova, told me a family story that took place in the 1970, during the “Silver Wedding” of her own uncle, Mladen Angelov, an ardent singer of Bulgarian traditional songs. In the midst of the most sacred part of the ceremony, while standing with his head leaning forward and covered with the sacral cloth by the local priest, to the common laughter of everyone present at this memorable moment, the “silver groom” suddenly started singing a drone to support the priest’s recitation (personal communication from December 27th, 1987). I also vividly remember Dunia Rihtman, ethnomusicologist from Bosnia (now in Israel), singing along quietly during the concert of Georgian polyphonic songs on November 14th 1986 in Borjomi, Georgia, during the International Conference “Problems of folk polyphony”. Conforming to the etiquette of a conventional performance, Dunia was trying not to be loud, but I was sitting next to her and I could clearly hear her droning along to the unknown (for her) Georgian songs. By the way, I was droning as well. Exactly the same way as I was quietly harmonizing to the (unknown to me) Hungarian monophonic melodies at the Kechkemet music festival in Hungary on August 27, 1977. Co-participation in a musical performance can happen without singing. As a matter of fact, singing along is not the most widely spread form of co-participation (particularly in western cultures). The most universal (and the most natural and economical) way to “join in” the musical flow must be joining the beat of a musical piece by simply tapping, finger snapping or even just making a swinging movement using any part of the body. This phenomenon is so widely spread in human societies that it often escapes our attention. Representatives of some cultures are particularly prone to the urge of “joining the beat”. I remember how amazed was my friend, musicologist and singer Irina Bavkun from the Novosibirsk Conservatory, when she went to a concert of Russian 10
classical music together with a big group of African exchange students. According to Irina’s words, “every time, as soon as there was a more-or-less rhythmic section in the music (compositions of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and other Russian “classic” composers were performed at that evening), there was a vigorous rhythmic tapping coming from our guests” (personal communication of 28 March, 1979). Why it is so pleasurable to move our body following the rhythm of a musical piece (often without even noticing this) or to sing along with our favourite song? This is one of the questions that I will try to answer on the pages of this book. The problem of a listener’s behaviour during the performance, or, in more “scholarly” words, the relationship between the “performers” and the “listeners” is a fascinating topic by itself. In some musical styles the gap between the performers and the listeners is immense, and in other styles and cultures there is hardly any difference at all. Let me give a brief description of the performer/listener relationships of some of the best- known musical styles. If you have ever been at a live performance of any of Beethoven’s magnificent symphonies, or heard pieces by any other “classical” composer, you might notice the strict rules of behaviour for listeners at the performance of classical European music. The listeners at a classical music concert must remain absolutely silent for the duration of the playing. They are not supposed to clap even during the break between the parts of the symphony (you must wait until all the parts are finished!), let alone any more emotional expression of excitement during the performance. In this style of music (European classical music) the gap between the performers and the listeners is the greatest. If you have ever been at a performance of jazz music you will remember the quite different set of rules for an audience of this style of music. Listeners are expected to support performers and appreciate their improvisational skills not only at the end of the pieces, but during the performance as well. Not to clap when any of the jazz musicians finishes her/his share of the improvisation is almost as rude as to clap after the first part of the symphony at a classical music concert. The jazz model of listeners’ appreciation during the performance is widely known in different traditional cultures, particularly in non-polyphonic cultures, where the boundaries between professional musicians and listeners are clearly set but the listeners are not required to be passive. Now let us turn to the cultures, where polyphonic singing (part-singing) tradition is well alive. Here the performer/listener relationship has a totally different meaning. I remember, during my fieldworks in Georgia (mostly during recording sessions at a traditional “supra” feast) I would often realise that all present were contributing to the choral singing (sometimes including myself). So, although this may sound bizarre to some readers, in the societies with a tradition of polyphonic singing there often are no listeners at all, as all the members of the event are actively involved in the music making (singing, dancing, or making different rhythmic sounds at the traditional celebrations). Listening through your own performance, you may agree, can be emotionally a much more loaded experience than passive listening to somebody else’s performance. The closest to this kind of model of the total participation of all present, characteristic of traditional polyphonic societies, is the model of the performer/audience relationship characteristic of rock concerts. Rock musicians naturally encourage this kind of emotionally loaded mass participation during their live concerts as an important part of their show. If the readers of this book have ever seen a rock-performance on a TV screen 11
(or even more importantly - have been at a live rock concert) they will remember the high moments, when the performers invite the audience to participate (sometimes stopping singing in the midst of the song and directing the microphone to the audience). Of course, the “rock-audience” is hardly even ”waiting” for such “invitation”, and generally the more successful the performers, the bigger and louder is the audience participation (singing along and making different kinds of supporting sounds). Singing the most popular hit songs along with the rock performers has long been a routine element of rock concerts. Few who have experienced this kind of mass excitement and group participation would agree that sometimes the “accompanying” sound can in fact reach an uncomfortably loud level. So, the model of relationships between the performers and the listeners varies widely from the very passive role of the listeners, who cannot express their feelings until the very end of the musical composition (we may call this “the European Classical Music Model”) to the very active participation of all present, where everyone is actively involved in the performance (we may call this “Traditional Polyphonic Culture Model”). It is not hard to imagine the level of confusion that could be created by an inappropriate model of the performer/listeners relationship during the performance. Imagine, for example, listeners trying to sing along and generally trying to vigorously support the performers of a Beethoven symphony, or, on the other hand, imagine the listeners at a “Metallica” concert clapping only at the end of the songs. If the first case would be evaluated as ’total anarchy and a disastrous degrading of the values of classical music’, the second would be evaluated as a “total failure” for the rock-band. This book is mostly dedicated to research of the traditional vocal polyphonic cultures, to the traditional social model of the performance, distribution of polyphonic traditions throughout the world, their possible links to each other, and the possible origins of the phenomenon of polyphonic singing. While talking about polyphonic singing traditions, we should not forget that there is a big group of cultures where mass participation and group singing (particularly singing in different parts) is not so widely practised. For example, vocal polyphony was generally absent in Central Asian musical cultures. For representatives of such cultures listening to the simultaneous singing of a few different parts could be as unnatural and confusing as listening to the simultaneous speech of several speakers. It was quite natural therefore, that despite the major efforts of Soviet cultural ideology during the few decades of the existence of the Soviet Union to create a “unified Socialist musical culture” (with multi-part choral polyphonic singing as one of its main elements), one of the first things that happened in Central Asia after the “Perestroika” started was that the big choirs were disbanded. We will concentrate on the peculiarities of the distribution of polyphonic and monophonic traditions a bit later in this book, but I would like to stress that one of the most intriguing features of vocal polyphony is its enigmatic distribution throughout the world’s musical cultures. For example, why there is so much vocal polyphony in sub- Saharan Africa and almost no signs of polyphony among Australian Aborigines? Or why do the Ainus (the indigenous population of North Japan) have vocal polyphony whereas almost no other traditional culture in East Asia practices vocal polyphony? And why is that sometimes only a part of the culture of a country contains vocal polyphony whereas 12
the rest of the country does not practice it (as happens in China, Vietnam, India, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Greece and many other countries)? Some of these questions have been around for many decades and quite a few scholars have contributed publications aiming at their solution. And still, ethnomusicologists are not yet sure about most of the existing answers. During the twenty years of my own research in this field I have come to the conclusion that, contrary to the general belief of musicologists and ethnomusicologists, vocal polyphony is not a late cultural development of initial monophonic singing, but was in fact a very archaic phenomenon and an integral part of the evolutionary process of the development of human language and speech (Jordania, 1986a, 1986b, 1988, 1988a, 1989, 1992, 1994a, 1997, 1998, 2000b, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006). Recent years have seen an unparalleled boom in research of the origins of our species and human language, and new technical means of research have come to scholars’ aid. We are now much better equipped than ever before to understand the evolutionary processes of some of the most important cognitive and communicational acquisitions of human history. Throughout this book I will argue that the evolutionary history of human choral singing (group singing) is closely connected not only to the evolutionary history of human language and speech, but to the evolutionary history of human cognition as well. This book consists of three parts: Part 1 is fully dedicated to the detailed picture of the enigmatic distribution of the traditional polyphony all over the world. I will try to use the wealth of publications on different styles of vocal polyphony, as well as sometimes unpublished information generously provided by my colleagues and will try to provide an updated picture of the distribution of polyphonic traditions in different countries and major regions of the continents of the contemporary world. Part 2 is dedicated to the research of the historical perspectives of traditional vocal polyphony through different polyphonic traditions. I will argue that the historical dynamics show clear signs of the decline (and disappearance) of vocal polyphonic traditions in many parts of the world. I will concentrate on the multi-faceted process of the disappearance of vocal polyphonic traditions, I will discuss the possibility of the existence of vocal polyphony in some long-gone civilizations, and I will attempt to raise the elusive issue of the possible age of some of the polyphonic traditions (for example, drone polyphony, overtone singing, heterophonic polyphony, Lithuanian Sutartines and many more). This part of the book will be mostly organized around different “Case Studies” of different styles or interesting regions of traditional polyphony. Part 3 is fully dedicated to the origins and evolution of human choral singing in the light of the initial development of human language, speech and intelligence. Data on the distribution of vocal polyphonic traditions all over the world, advances in physical anthropology, archaeology, primatology and neurology will be employed. Peculiarities of epidemiology of speech and reading pathologies (stuttering and dyslexia), as well as the process of the acquisition of a phonological system by children from different regions of the world will be also employed. I will try to argue that the last major acquisition of human evolution – the emergence of articulated speech - fundamentally affected the general picture of the distribution of the traditions of vocal polyphony all over the world.
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In 1989 Tbilisi State University Press published my book on traditional polyphony (“Georgian Traditional Polyphony in the International Context of Polyphonic cultures: the Problem of Origins of Polyphony”). The book was published in Russian with an English summary. There is no doubt that the intervening 15 years have brought very dramatic changes for many regions of the world, and particularly for the former USSR where I came from. The fall of the Soviet Union and the creation of new independent states (including my native Georgia), the breakdown of the Iron Curtain and communist governments in East Europe, the advent of the Internet and email communications has drastically changed the world and opened up revolutionary new possibilities of interaction between peoples and cultures. Global confrontation between the different models of the future of humanity (capitalism vs. communism) changed into the confrontation of the future with the past of humanity (secular democracy vs. religious fundamentalism). Ethnomusicologists were among those who benefited from the new possibilities of interaction between the cultures and scholars. In the wake of the increased interaction between the cultures of different regions of the world, the role of ethnomusicology is increasing in the contemporary world. Freedom of travel and new possibilities for fieldwork in most regions of the world, new cooperation between scholars and research institutions, and the migration of scholars (mostly from the former communist countries and the Third World countries to Western countries) created a new global stratification of ethnomusicological research and resources. Traditional polyphony has been one of the most actively developing spheres of research activity in ethnomusicology in the last twenty years. New national and international bodies, dedicated to the coordination of international research in the sphere of traditional polyphony, have emerged (Polifonies Vivantes in Paris, France; International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony at Tbilisi State Conservatory, Georgia; European Centre of Study of Polyphony, Vienna, Austria). Conferences and symposia fully dedicated to the problems of traditional polyphony have been held at different national institutions (Georgia, France, Russia, Taiwan, Austria). It is not surprising that in the context of radically increased means of communication a major body of new data on traditional polyphony has emerged. The new data and continuing research brought about a set of new ideas on the distribution and mechanisms of the evolution of traditional polyphony. In my 1989 book I tried to summarise the situation to that moment, mostly without access to the major Western libraries and without the help of the Internet and email communication. Attempts were made to translate and to publish the revised version of my book in English (I am very grateful to Lynn Newman-Bertrand from the Emory University in Atlanta for her efforts), and for some time I was diligently preparing all sorts of additions (new materials and ideas) to upgrade the text of my first book for its new revised (and translated into English) publication. The accumulation of new data and the development of new ideas were going so rapidly that by the mid-1990s I realised that the book I wanted to be published was quite different from the one that I had published in 1989, both in the scope of the materials and in the suggested model of evolution of traditional vocal polyphony. The idea of writing a new book arose.
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Let me briefly introduce some of the new ideas that were not part of my book in 1989: