Investigating Melody and Structure in Solomon Islands and Russian folk music

What will life be like without music? music exists in different cultures and traditions all over the world; all demonstrating interesting aspects of style. Music differs based on culure, however, musicians can perceive links between music from different cultures.

What is world music?

World music are music from all around the world consist of different cultural heritage, tradition, and ethic groups. These types of music are often original, and folk songs created by indigenous musicians, as well as characterised by the local/regional instrument of each culture. This investigation will explore two World Music piece from two distinct musical cultures: Solomon Island Rope Music and Russian folk music.

Cultural Background: Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is a part of a series of islands known as Melanesia located in the Pacific Ocean to the north-east of Australia. One of the most principal islands in the Solomon group is Guadalcanal where recordings of instrumental pieces such as the panpipe ensemble music can be found recorded. One of the most interesting aspects about Guadalcanal is its value on traditional instruments as much as the vocal. In this particular region, vocalist played an interesting role in imitating the effect of the local instrumental ensembles. Solomon Islands’ vocal music imitates the sound and texture of instrumental pieces. The listeners should concentrate on the sound and the quality of the vocal parts instead of its lyrical features.


Cultural Background: Russia

There are fascinating amounts of Russian folk music due to the great regional area. In Russia, it has been recognized that older women play an important role in maintaining and transmitting traditional music heritage. They do not perform as professional teachers or performers, but as more informal ensembles. These women are highly valued in their communities and are asked to perform publicly upon important occasions. Moreover, many Russian songs use call and response  to more broadly developed multi-part pieces.

I will now introduce the context and the origins of the piece in general, as well as the composers. The piece comes from two different countries and culture, however, shares interesting links

Rope Female Chorus

Rope is a term that may refer to a circular dance performed at public festivals, or female chorus group who performed at the festivals and informal cultural rites. This investigation concerns the latter type. The piece contains no instrumental accompaniment nor dance movement; The women sit on the ground and perform this song. In these types of performance, two of the women will be soloist. The performance can be done with two types of vocal qualities: chest voice and head voice. The tonal quality of the latter is distinct and unique. The remaining ten singers produce a lower-pitched drone note. As they sing they stagger their breathing points in a passage to achieve the effect of a continuous sound. The song is sequential and special names are given to each parts in this texture. The track is called a “Ratsi Rope” meaning “Begin the rope”. This piece features the prelude of a sequence of Rope songs. 


Russian Play Song

Play Song originates in the village of Kieba in Siberia, They are songs sung by a group of women while young girls perform dances. Typical of Russian Songs, each verse contains short phrases and contains eight to nine syllables. Moreover, the song often includes one or more repetitive words and ideas. This piece is performed without instrumental accompaniment and contains narrow melodic range: Approximately an octave. This piece is also flexible in terms of performance since singers are free to perform the melody notes and accompanying pitch a third below and can alter through this progression throughout the piece. This performance of the song has a total of six verses. The verses contains humorous content. 



Summary Translation -


Oh, meadow berry,

oh young girl!
where have you been walking ?

I was walking through the open country,

I was sitting under the bush. 

Under the raspberry’s leaf.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The investigation will give an in-depth analysis focusing on two main aspects of the pieces that contains connections: melody and structure.


Analysis and comparison of musical elements

A. General comparison between Play song and Rope song



B. Melody

In the melodic aspect, Rope song explores hexatonic scale consisting of pitch values approximately G, A, B, C, E, and F#. The piece is consistant in its fundamental four beat pattern which is repeated in various formats throughout the song. The first solo vocalist revolves around the pitch E, while the second on G forming a close harmony within the same phrase.

The sound quality of the melodic line also features interesting music aspect. The first soloist occassionally uses the interval between C and F#, forming augmented fourth which forms a strong dissonant tone quality making it sound unfamiliar and unpleasant when considering the piece is a Classical point of view. The interval used is usually refered to in Western Classical music as “diabolus in musica” meaning “The Devil’s interval” which is often avoided in tradition Western melody-writing. The performance loud in without vibrato of the dissonant note clusters set up a physical buzz tension in the air. The is periodically resolved as the singers move on to more consonant combinations of pitches and finally by their closing sustained unison or octave drone. 


There are also interesting exploration of tone quality in the melody for example the soloists’ techniques in performing the neighboring pitches at once during the final beat of the introduction; the tone features E, F#, and G. The solo parts are independent in its rhythmic and melodic features. Soloists explore two vocal tones: chest tone and head tone. Notes up to B features chest voice quality while high C and D requires head voice. The pitch G is sustained by the drone-part singers throughout the piece and is also reached by the two solo singers at the very end of the song around 1:37.

Play Song gives an impression of a simple duple meter piece, however, the final bar of each verse and chorus is extended by a beat. The melodic range is considerably narrow due to a lot of repetition in the pitch. The piece explores major important pitch such as B. In the Russian Play song, B is the fundamental pitch in the piece. It provides the start and the ending of each phrase, while E also play a role of second importance to B. The choral part of the song alternates between passages of unison and passages of thirds.

The piece starts out with a monophonic passage by one female soloist from 0:00-0:06 then followed by a female vocal group performing in the same phrase and tone quality. However, there are evidence of ornamentation and variation of the rhythm. At 0:32, the rhythmic value is ornamented through the alteration of the original note value into a faster dynamic and lively passage. Moreover, in the chorus section around 0:13, the chorus sang two main pitch which are always of same interval apart. The close harmonic range establishes a consonant harmony of the two melodic lines which gives the piece the sound quality of a more complex structure. In addition to this, the lively tempo in the section also supports bring out the melody.

Due to the piece being vocal, there are evidence of word painting in the melody which is demonstrated through the use of high pitch to emphasize significant phrase and words. There are also other examples of word painting such as the use of rhythmic passage to support and emphsize the melody. In bar 5-8 which features the sentence “where have you been walking ?” as well as “Under the raspberry leaf” in bar 14-18, the rhythm ornamented style such as pitch slide as well as the rhythm - longer which emphasize the phrase. This section of the song is important because it represents the humor and mockery side of the piece - The mocking tone is demonstated through this use of longer note value as well as the pitch slide.


C. Structure

In terms of structure, Female Rope Song's structure features a technique similar to theme and variation. It is difficult to clearly differentiate each section due to the continuous, lethargic phrases. There are no rest nor pause which clearly identifies sections. The piece gives a reminiscent to a through-composed piece with slightly variation from the previous verse, however, there are no strict structure of the piece.

The piece begins as the first soloist introduces the motif while the second soloist follows two beats later. The chorus gradually joins in at approximately 0:10 with the low pitched drone. The two soloist perform fourteen variations of their basic vocal patterns. The variation explores the same sets of pitch and rhythm with slight alteration and ornamentation in each variation. However, there are no distinct development within the forms - the variation do not introducemuch alteration to the motif.

While in Russian Play Song, the piece contains six vocal verses which features rhythmic and melodic repetition. Six verses contains different lyrics, however, the song has two basic melodic and rhythmic phrases. The first phrase is four bars in length and the second five (including the extra beat). In verse 1 phrase A is given to a solo singer, but from the first entry of phrase B the whole song is sung by a group of female voices. This pattern is repeated with all six verses.

Moreover, the structure could also be identified as Call and Response form typical of many Russian folk music since the piece features alteration between soloist and group. The soloist part can represent consequent while the chorus verse represents antecedent (contrasting a solo opening phrase with a group reply).

In conclusion, through the investigation of the melody and musical structure in two distinct musical cultures: Russia and Solomon Islands, both pieces demonstrates good comparison within the two musical links. However, both of the songs are vocal, therefore, the musical analysis could not determine the characteristic of the countries‘ instrumental music.




Bibliography:

Bennett, Roy. Investigating Musical Styles. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 


"Solomon islands map OCEANIA - Country map of Solomon islands." Greece map | A detailed map of Greece. http://www.greece-map.net/oceania/solomon-islands-map.htm (accessed November 14, 2010).

Stock, Jonathan. World Sound Matters: An Anthology of Music from Around the World. Student ed. Germany: Schott, 2004.

(listening tracks: CD1 Track 17 and CD 2 Track 9)

"The Breakthrough Institute: Russia ." The Breakthrough Institute: Home. http://www.thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/05/post_3.shtml (accessed November 11, 2010).