Wayang wong panggung is a Javanese dance drama performed in a theater with a proscenium stage, accompanied by traditional Javanese “orchestra” called gamelan. Characteristic of this dance theater is the minimal specific preparation made for each of the nightly performances. The music is not composed specifically for this theatrical form nor for any specific story performed in this medium. It is spontaneously chosen from a pool of musical compositions which experts consider appropriate for this theater. The choice of composition and its “treatment” (i.e. which, where, when and how the tempo, dynamics, arrangement, tuning system, etc. are chosen and changed) is executed instantaneously. The dance movements are not specifically choreographed for a given performance; rather, they are drawn from a well-established pool of movement motifs and phrases. The monologs and dialogs are improvised, following a set format, using vocabulary suitable to the character represented, the relationship between this character and the character with whom he is communicating, the situation at hand, the story, etc.

It's an honor for me to have been invited to speak on this occasion of the golden anniversary of the ICTM. Bemused by this choice, I have sought for the program committee's motivations and have concluded that they asked me because they thought I am such a senior citizen that I probably helped Theodore Baker proofread his dissertation in 1882. Not so, but as I was present at the 1950 meeting of IFMC in Bloomington, I may qualify as the person who has been attending IFMC-ICTM meetings longer than anyone else here today. In that summer of 1950, I had just begun to study seriously with local arrangements chair, Dr. George Herzog, and he asked me to be his errand boy. So I'll hark back several times today to those precedent-setting times. I also have the feeling that the program committee ended up with me because they associated me with the part of the world in which we are meeting today, an area that was seminal, as well, to much of what happened later in our field. And so, in looking unsystematically at our history, I'll be pointing out how so much of significance happened within two or three hundred kilometers from here. And also, while the concept of “keynote talk” suggests prediction and a perspective of the future, I have always ducked when asked by students what I think may happen some day, so I'll talk somewhat about the past and avoid prediction.

During recent years there have been two major attempts to take stock of folk music research in Austria. Walther Wünsch, former head of the Institute for Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Theatre Arts in Graz, has reported on the history of ethnomusicology in Austria, and Walter Graf, who once held the chair of comparative musicology at Vienna University, has published an essay on comparative musicology in Austria since 1896. Neither of them, it seems to me, does complete justice to his subject, in that he limits himself to the work of those Austrian collectors, editors, and researchers who have dealt with fields other than Austria itself. Of course, there is as little agreement on the question of what really constitutes comparative musicology as there is on the definition of ethnomusicology. But for that very reason we should be careful not to ignore either the new field of “European ethnomusicology” or, in particular, those comparative studies that have dealt with the researches of Béla Bartók, Werner Danckert, Constantin Brâiloiu, Walter Wiora, and with the results of their collecting activities.

The noted New Zealand Maori authority Te Rangi Hiroa declared that the rich heritage of traditional instruments was now silent, they were no longer played, they would be ‘forever mute'(Buck 1949:270). Among the predominant flutes and trumpets of this instrumentarium were voice modifiers (jews harp, mouth bow), whizzers and whirlers, and percussion (rattlers, castanets, gong, and other ‘found’ instruments). Most enigmatic of all was the pūtωrino, the so-called bugle-flute, perhaps unique in the world's instruments, a combination of three instruments—flute, trumpet and voice modifier. A description of the sound of this instrument 'Me te wai e utuutu ana' (like water ‘bubbling into a calabash held under the surface of the water’ Anderson 1934: 275) provides our title, and one of the signposts in the revival of the pūtωrino.

This paper is one of the results of my ongoing diachronic investigations concerning the music of hereditary shamans on Chindo, an island in south-west Korea. My first field research on the music there was carried out in the early 1980s for a year; this work resulted in my dissertation (Park 1985). About twenty years after my first fieldwork, during the summers of 2000-2001, I made a number of trips back to Chindo, focussing on more specific issues, such as change, improvisation, and comparative analysis. A recent publication of mine (Park 2003) deals with the general nature of the changes the tradition has undergone. The present paper deals specifically with changes in improvisational practice.

I feel privileged to have been invited to open this session here in Jerusalem this afternoon. You, my friends and colleagues gathered from many parts of the world, may at this moment be feeling as I do, that we live in a very remarkable time: remarkable especially for the opportunities it gives us of meeting people from different civilizations. Today, indeed, our musical traditions, so different in their origins, form and content, are in growing communication; and, on the face of it, there would seem to be unprecedented opportunities for preserving and renewing regional music in its traditional forms. These traditional forms are those of folk music, liturgical music and learned music, but exclude the popular and individualistic repertoire. Before speaking of preservation and renewal, however, we must first recognize the existence of powerful forces which are working only for music's confusion and destruction. For the advances in technology and communications made by Western industrial society have been used for very different ends.

In an earlier paper (McLean 1961)—presented at the IFMC Vienna Conference in 1960—I emphasized what seemed to me to be an extreme conservatism associated with the transmission of traditional Maori singing—or waiata—style. I outlined some of the evidence for this, and indicated ways in which accuracy of transmission was attained in practice. As a sequel, I should like now to examine Maori concepts of accuracy more closely, and go on to consider anomalies presented by such phenomena as traditionally approved reworkings of waiata texts, the undoubted existence of melodic variants of particular songs, and an evident current trend towards accelerated change in waiata singing style itself.

This paper explores the highly complex interactions of Tahitian musicians and dancers in performance. More specifically, it examines the art of cueing as both a musical action and a social process that fulfils the artistic needs of the performance while simultaneously reinforcing Tahitian constructs of social hierarchy and dominance. In Tahiti, cueing is power—sound power—and, by extension, social relations made audible.

The Iðunn Society of Intoners and Versifiers (Kvæðamannafélagiðd Iðunn) was founded in Reykjavik in 1929. Iðunn set out to protect the practice of rímur-'intoning and versification (kves&kapur) and immediately took very strong ownership of the means of preserving and disseminating the tradition. By nature, folk traditions are constantly fluctuating, but during the era of national romanticism it became important to preserve and “freeze” these traditions in order to serve the purposes of the formation of national identity. An example would be the Norwegian fiddle and vocal tradition which was systematically gathered from the most remote mountain areas in order to firstly save it from extinction and secondly to serve as a source for the composers of the new “national music.” The Dane Svend Grundtvig had a different agenda, wanting his collection to become a trustworthy and perfect museum of folksongs (Havåg 1997:23-33). In Finland, Elias Lönnrot gathered folksongs and compiled the Kalevala, which became the symbol of Finnish national identity (Pekkila 1994:406). Even though the rímur tradition was not an element in the official identity-building taking place in Iceland around 1930, ideas of national romantic origins had a “freezing and policing” effect on it. In this paper I will demonstrate how the Iðunn Society exercised strong ownership of the old rímur tradition. Specifically, I will show how Iðunn re-shaped and policed the form. The study also draws attention to contradictions in the way Iðunn's members took pride in their cultural roots and their childhood practice while simultaneously holding prejudices and beliefs that worked against a living tradition.

In his study on Serbo-Croatian folk songs Béla Bartók makes the statement that our current musical notation has intrinsic limitations and that “the only true notation of folk melodies are the sound tracks on the record itself.” While “these could be magnified, photographed and printed, instead of, or with, the usual notation, in view of the too complicated nature of the curves, [their use] would not be of much help; the human mind would not be able to translate the visual signs into tones.”

This article examines the study of folk music traditions in Denmark, with an emphasis on collection, research and scholarly publication. Popular writings, use in education and the practice of folk music have been incorporated only sporadically. Geographically, the article covers what is now Denmark as well as the Faroe Islands. Greenland, which like the Faroe Islands has a commonwealth relationship with Denmark, is treated in a separate article.

In 1999 archaeologists excavated a section of the Hellweg, a medieval road near the present city of Paderborn in northern Germany. In the rubble of the road, which was an important east–west trade route, the excavators found a Jew's harp, deposited in an archaeological context dating it to the late thirteenth century. The iron instrument was well preserved, except for the broken and partly missing lamella (figure 1). It had a distinct mark punched into its forged frame. Where did this musical instrument originate and how did it arrive at this site? Was it brought here by someone who played the Jew's harp or by a pedlar carrying this instrument among other goods for sale? Who had made it and where?