This week's Food & Paper is part of the program of the SoMoS 2024 symposium.
Link to the SoMoS program: /ritmo/english/projects/djembedance/events/somos-2024/
Abstract
The notational implications of metric regularity and isochrony position non-metric musical styles as relatively inaccessible to many systems of temporal analysis (Frigyesi 1993; Clayton 1996). This challenge calls for alternatives in order to analytically approach the non-metric time settings present in many musical traditions such as taksim, alap, and recitative, among others. An intriguing possibility is the measurement of tonal durations through interonset-interval (IOI, see Polak 2010; Johansson 2017) analysis, untangling the analysis of musical time from notational presumptions (Roeder 2020). But even when freed from the constraints of traditional systems of notation, a core concern remains of how to understand these measured durations in relation to the temporal parameters of non-metric traditions. What alternative methodologies are necessary complements to quantitative measurement when approaching a time setting in which durations create structure without reference to a regular meter? To explore these questions, this paper analyzes the temporal structure of Bulgarian nonmetric bavni pesni (slow songs) through a combination of quantitative methodologies such as melographic transcription and IOI analysis, and ethnographically-solicited sensory considerations. While the general melodic outline of a bavna pesna remains recognizable between performers, ornamentation, duration of longer tones, and general pace are all subject to a large degree of interpretation that characterizes a performer’s idiosyncratic style. When approaching these stylistic differences, musicians’ comments from recent fieldwork learning bavni pesni indicate that considering the physicality of performance, the haptics of ornamentation, and the sensed nature of interpretation can facilitate the process and interpretation of quantitative measurement. These considerations can approach timing variations between different types of melodic activity such as longer tonal durations (with a two to three second range of variation) and ornamental durations (with less than 55 milliseconds of variation) within the melodic/physical gestures in which they are contextualized. Understanding durations in terms of gesture demonstrates how quantitative analytical methods may benefit from the practice-oriented performance considerations that determine temporal parameters in non-metric time settings.
Bio
Nathan Bernacki is a practitioner of Balkan folk music and dance from North Carolina, United States. His research interests involve the analysis of musical time in Balkan traditional music and dance, and the process of combining ethnography and analysis. Since adolescence he has learned, taught, and performed Balkan traditional dances in numerous North American Balkan dance groups, and has studied g?dulka (a traditional Bulgarian string instrument) since his early teenage years with prominent Bulgarian musicians in the United States and in Bulgaria. He is currently conducting dissertation fieldwork on contemporary Bulgarian folk music compositions in Plovdiv, Bulgaria supported by a Fulbright Open Research Grant.