1 INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC 44TH WORLD CONFERENCE 13 - 19 JULY 2017 BOOK OF ABSTRACTS 2 Kai Åberg (University of Eastern Finland) Finnish Romani songs – a product or a process? the constructivist perspective to the music of the Finnish Kaale Over the past 25 years among the Finnish Romani musicians (and elsewhere in Europe), I have sought various things in the empirical material of my research. The basic question, however, was already crystallized in an early stage of the research process: How are the elements of cultural meaning of the songs and the informants’ conceptions of the songs constructed? Because legacies may be constituted in a multiple and flexible way, the purpose of my presentation is not only to describe the songs or events of song culture, or to chart their distribution, but also to seek more complex ways of understanding and explaining them: How are the meanings of the Romani music constructed in different times and places? Although we can be partly freed from determinism by underscoring the role of humans in construction of their own reality, people should not, however, be defined as independent of their culture. Seen from a folkloristic perspective, the same could be said in other terms; even constructivists have not ignored that people belong to their heritage before heritage belongs to them. When speaking of a collective musical tradition we must not forget that underlying tradition there is a social group and people tend to act differently in groups than on their own. My approach is based on the notion of knowledge as socially constructed. According to my theoretical framework of social and cultural constructionism, the reality of music culture is constructed via its actors. By this I mean that when we perform music, or discuss it, we construct or lend significance to the subject. My paper is based on intensive fieldwork among the Roma I have done since 1994. Suraya Agayeva (Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, Baku) On features of the theory of mugham in medieval manuscripts of the East Mugham is an ancient cyclic genre of the professional traditional music of Azerbaijan. It was formed over many centuries, absorbing the best spiritual achievements of the Azerbaijani people 3 in the fields of music, poetry, philosophy and aesthetics. The development of this branch of musical culture was reflected in the medieval manuscripts of treatises on music, which are reliable sources on the history of music generally. At times modern ethnomusicology has not taken into consideration that the explanations of some musical theoretical issues espoused by the medieval scholars varied sharply and were dependent on their philosophical views. Thus the true sense of historical facts related to the culture of music can be misrepresented. In this presentation two main philosophical trends which are applied in the medieval science of music of Azerbaijan and in the Middle East as a whole are given: the cosmological aspect belonging to the subscribers of the Pythagorean doctrine of the harmony of the spheres, especially developed in the 15th century and the classical mathematical approach related to the teachings of Farabi, a representative of Eastern Aristotelianism. Representatives of this approach refused any connection between music and the movement of the planets or any natural phenomena. The opinions of the medieval scholars concerning the impact of mugham on the human senses is also examined. Mugham at all times focused on spiritual improvement thereby affecting not only the minds, but also the subconscious, genetic memory of both performers and listeners, bringing them into a trance-like state, immersing and dissolving in the greatness of the ‘harmony of unity.’ The report is illustrated by examples from medieval manuscripts and video fragments of modern performances of the mugham music of Azerbaijan. Ignacio Agrimbau (SOAS, University of London) Remembering the present: conflicting discourses of competence and ancestral legacy among Dagara xylophonists in the Upper West Region of Ghana This paper will examine the recreation of different narratives of Dagara ancestral legacy as discursive resources to substantiate discrepant notions of competence among xylophone (gyil) players in the villages of Chetu and Hiineteng, Upper West Region (UWR) of Ghana. 4 Youth Associations in the UWR were founded in the mid 1970s to promote the political, social and economic development of the area (Lentz 2006). Grounded on a discourse of cultural cohesion, the creation of cultural festivals was functional to the diversification of the associations’ sphere of political influence. In those events, Dagara creative practice was showcased outside traditional ritual and recreational performance contexts (Wiggins 1998, Woma 2013). New styles and forms were developed as festival performances articulated the ideological and political underpinnings of the events, leading to the organization of gyil performance competitions and the establishment of a new criteria for the assessment of competence. As an outlet for the celebration and reinforcement of local kinship networks and ethnic identities, festival performances are considered by many participants and organisers as a legitimate platform for the preservation of ancestral legacy. However, for other musicians the ‘competition style’ bolsters a biased representation of gyil music and symbolises the unsettling impact of the social and economic changes that have affected the region since the founding of Youth Associations. Furthermore, the exclusion of prestigious elderly musicians who cannot meet the performance criteria for these competitions has provoked feelings of alienation and resentment among many villagers. For them the competition style is damaging to their tradition (saakumu) and the gyil, itself a symbol of the Dagara people’s relationship with the ancestral world. Based on fieldwork research completed in 2013-15, this discussion will illustrate how the different ways in which individuals imagine their relationship with the past informs divergent representations of contemporary Dagara expressive culture. 5 Nasim Ahmadian (University of Alberta) The legacy of ‘my own music’: domination of individual identity over collective identity of Iranian performers through presenting musical interpretation of Iranian traditional music Individualism, a prominent aspect of Iranian culture, has flowed into the musical heritage of performers through domination of individual identity over collective identity. In fact, Iranian traditional music and the practice of its interpretation is enriched by personalized performance of music and the legacy of ‘musical self.’ Relying on their individual dimension of identity, Iranian performers tend to own music in the realm of performance and to mirror their selfness, prior to the composer’s views, in the process of interpretation. This preliminary research explores the framework of musical interpretation throughout presenting individual identity by Iranian performers. The methodology is based on interdisciplinary studies of music, social psychology, and sociology. Complementary data was collected by analyzing audio/video albums of several Iranian musicians, and the field study focused on personal interviews of 17 prominent performers. According to this study, a performer’s individual identity is reflected in musical interpretation of Iranian music through four main aspects: 1) Personal style, which entitles the musical style mainly with an individual rather than a historical era; 2) Personalized musical expression, through which the performer makes him/herself distinct from other performers even in a style shared with them; 3) Virtuosity as the core of Iranian music and the main factor through which the performer is evaluated in both solo and ensemble performance; 4) Improvisation, which is considered as the highest point of Iranian music performance and is valued by the level of detachment from pre-composed music in terms of self-presentation in prompt and innovative usage of creation, emotion and musical techniques. This research defines the qualities of musical interpretation in the individualistic cultural context of the performer. This outcome contributes to closer analysis of individual identity and concept 6 of self, based on psychological and behavioral structures of the society, which also illuminates the interrelationship between performer and musical interpretation. Ardian Ahmedaja (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna) Shaping sounds and movements Under discussion in this panel are music analysis and movement analysis from the viewpoint of the sound and movement formation in close cooperation with their creators’ ideas, perceptions and attitudes. We will begin with the results of an experiment with singers in northeastern Latvia. Singers, who perform in the older way, feel uncomfortable in their groups. When several of these singers from different groups were invited to sing together, performing with ‘their’ groups rather than with singers from “older times” was shown to be their preference. Such attitudes of the creators extend the field of musical analysis. Next will be analyses of two different developments of performance tempo in local practices in Albania. ‘Older times’ repertoires and genres show marginal tempo changes over several decades. Other genres connected mostly with everyday life phenomena, however, are performed much faster today. According to performers, tempo is affected considerably by the time that