Folk musicians often keep intensity at one level. A woman singing a ballad doesn’t tend to drop to a whisper and then belt out the words of the next verse. A fi ddler mobilizing dancers plays at maximum volume to be heard over the feet and conversation, maybe for hours. But there are more subtle ways that intensity comes into play to mark shifts of sections or mood. It automatically alters when an extra instrument kicks into the band mix, raising the volume. Even in the microworld of a two-stringed lute, such as the Afghan dambura tunes I collected, the musician’s choice to play on one string or on both simultaneously registers as a shift in both timbre and intensity, or he can rap on the lute’s soundbox to sharpen the sound and change the sense of rhythm. None of these four aspects of folk music sound exists in isolation. Testing shows that each is interdependent. Just as timbre changes the sense of intensity, pitch comes across differently depending on duration and timbre. The sense of duration also varies in combination with the other three, and so on. This is why folk music is so aurally rich and satisfying. Music enters the ear as complex sound patterns, then turns into emotion and meaning in the brain. The way this works is currently the subject of a whole new wave of data, analysis, and interpretation on the part of neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and ethnomusicologists, from popular books through arcane research reports. Yet almost all the literature starts from European classical and popular music, leaving out the rich folk traditions that could be tapped for understanding these important subjects.
Folk Music and Duration
