_____________________________________________________________ Volume 20 March 2005 Number 1 _____________________________________________________________ Editor Managing Editor John Miles Foley Heather Maring Associate Editor Senior Editorial Assistants John Zemke Michael Barnes IT Manager Editorial Assistant Jamie Stephens Andrew Porter Slavica Publishers, Inc. For a complete catalog of books from Slavica, with prices and ordering information, write to: Slavica Publishers, Inc. Indiana University 2611 E. 10th St. Bloomington, IN 47408-2603 www.slavica.com/journals/oraltradition/oraltradition.html ISSN: 0883-5365 Each contribution copyright 2005 by its author. All rights reserved. The editor and the publisher assume no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by the authors. Oral Tradition (www.oraltradition.org/ot/) seeks to provide a comparative and interdisciplinary focus for studies in oral tradition and related fields by publishing research and scholarship on the creation, transmission, and interpretation of all forms of oral traditional expression. As well as essays treating certifiably oral traditions, OT presents investigations of the relationships between oral and written traditions, as well as brief accounts of important fieldwork, and occasional transcriptions and translations of oral texts. In addition, issues will include the annual Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lecture on Oral Tradition. Submissions should follow the list-of reference format (style sheet available on request) and may be sent via e-mail ([email protected]) or snail-mail; all quotations of primary materials must be made in the original language(s) with following English translations. Most contributions will be reviewed by at least one specialist reader and one member of the editorial board before a final decision is reached. Oral Tradition appears twice per year, in March and October. To enter a subscription, please contact Slavica Publishers at the address given above. All manuscripts and editorial correspondence should be addressed to the editor, John Miles Foley, Center for Studies in Oral Tradition, 65 McReynolds Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA. Printed in the United States of America. EDITORIAL BOARD Mark C. Amodio Joseph J. Duggan Vassar College Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Old and Middle English French, Spanish, comparative Patricia Arant Alan Dundes Brown University Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Russian Folklore Samuel Armistead Mark W. Edwards University of California/Davis Stanford University Hispanic, comparative Ancient Greek Richard Bauman Ruth Finnegan Indiana University Open University Folklore, Theory African, South Pacific Dan Ben-Amos Thomas Hale University of Pennsylvania Penn. State University Folklore African Mary Ellen Brown Lee Haring Indiana University Brooklyn College, CUNY Folklore, Balladry African Chogjin Joseph Harris Chinese Academy Harvard University of Social Sciences Old Norse Mongolian, Chinese Bridget Connelly Lauri Harvilahti University of Cal./Berkeley University of Helsinki Arabic Russian, Finnish, Altai Robert P. Creed Lauri Honko () Univ. of Mass./Amherst Turku University Old English, Comparative Comparative Epic Robert Culley Dell Hymes McGill University University of Virginia Biblical Studies Native American, Linguistics Thomas DuBois Martin Jaffee University of Wisconsin Hebrew Bible Scandinavian Univ. of Washington EDITORIAL BOARD Minna Skafte Jensen Shelly Fenno Quinn Odense University Ohio State University Ancient Greek, Latin Japanese Werner Kelber Burton Raffel Rice University Univ. of Southwestern Biblical Studies Louisiana Translation Françoise Létoublon Université Stendahl Karl Reichl Ancient Greek Universität Bonn Turkic, Old and Middle English Victor Mair University of Pennsylvania John Roberts Chinese Ohio State University African-American Nada Milošević-Djordjević University of Belgrade Joel Sherzer South Slavic University of Texas/Austin Native American, Anthropology Stephen Mitchell Harvard University Dennis Tedlock Scandinavian SUNY/Buffalo Native American Gregory Nagy Harvard University J. Barre Toelken Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Utah State University comparative Folklore, Native American Joseph Falaky Nagy Ronald J. Turner Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles Univ. of Missouri/Columbia Old Irish Storytelling Susan Niditch Andrew Wiget Amherst College University of New Mexico Hebrew Bible Native American Walter J. Ong () St. Louis University (Emeritus) Hermeneutics of orality and literacy Performance Literature Special Editors Rosalind Thomas and Drew Gerstle Contents Rosalind Thomas Special Editor’s Column Performance Literature and the Written Word: Lost in Transcription? ................................................................................1 Peter Middleton How to Read a Reading of a Written Poem................................................ 7 Richard Bauman and Patrick Feaster “Fellow Townsmen and My Noble Constituents!”: Representations of Oratory on Early Commercial Recordings ................35 Felicia Hughes-Freeland Visual Takes on Dance in Java .................................................................58 Edward L. Schieffelin Moving Performance to Text: Can Performance be Transcribed? ..........80 Isolde Standish Mediators of Modernity:“Photo-interpreters” in Japanese Silent Cinema .......................................................................93 Naoko Yamagata Plato, Memory, and Performance ..........................................................111 Lalita du Perron and Nicolas Magriel Shellac, Bakelite, Vinyl, and Paper: Artifacts and Representations of North Indian Art Music .....................................130 About the Authors...................................................................................159 Special Editor’s Column Performance Literature and the Written Word: Lost in Transcription? Rosalind Thomas This volume examines performance and the phenomenon of performance literature in a highly comparative framework. Literatures around the world, both in the past and in contemporary times, were and are experienced through live performance. This is true in the West, but even more so in non-Western societies. Performance involves engagement, audience, emotion; and performance literature therefore cannot be understood without its audience and social or religious context. This remains the case even when there are written texts that represent some or all of the words. In the modern Western world we are now used to experiencing literature primarily from reading silently, and despite theater and poetry readings, the dominant idea of proper literature in academic circles is of something preserved permanently upon the written page (and scholars therefore start with the written text). This is not the case in most literatures of the non-Western world, or of the pre-nineteenth century in the West; nor is it the case for contemporary popular youth culture, the world over, where song and the iPod are now constant companions. “Performance literature,” literature meant primarily to be experienced in performance, is the subject of this volume of Oral Tradition. Performance literature was the theme of a series of four intense and intensely exciting two- and three-day workshops held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, between July 2001 and May 2003. They were part of a still more ambitious enterprise with its focus firmly on Oriental and African literatures, the eight workshops of the AHRB (Arts and Humanities Research Board) Centre for Asian and African Literatures based in the School of Oriental and African Studies and University College London. For two years the Literature and Performance Workshop, whose project leaders were Drew Gerstle and myself, had a regular core of participants, many of whom were based in London or were leading scholars in their fields from outside London and outside the United Kingdom: most were specialists in one or another African or Asian 2 literature—historians, anthropologists, and literary specialists—or historians and literary scholars of a pre-modern European society with comparable interests. Of the former group, all were “hands-on” specialists with direct experience in the field. Themes and questions were formulated for each workshop, and ideas and research developed from one to the other. As entirely appropriate for workshops on performance literature, many papers played videos or tapes of performances; many papers were performances themselves—performances of words, but also in some cases of dance—and the sessions were far more visually or aurally engaging than most seminars on literature.1 There was a palpable sense of excitement over the coming together in one room of specialists in so many different literatures and over the suggestive similarities and equally provocative differences between them. Papers, questions, and discussions sparked further questions. The articles in this and the next issue of Oral Tradition represent many—though by no means all—of the literatures discussed in the workshops, and while we cannot include the interventions of “discussants” and the spirit of the general discussion, the articles here have all been informed by them. From Japan to Somalia, from Indian to Xhosa society, there are rich traditions of performance art and performance literature that often challenge Western categories and the assumptions of literary theory based on the European paradigm. Even in so literate and book-oriented a society as that of Japan, performance remained—and