SOAS Musicology Series. Abingdon, UK; New York: Routledge, 2020. 228 pp. (Figures, tables, maps.) US$160.00, cloth; US$48.95, ebook. ISBN 9780367591236.
Researchers who undertake the study of musical practices, instruments, and forms that are new to them are inevitably challenged by unexpected ways of thinking musically. Researcher autoethnographies of music learning can lend insight into the epistemological processes involved. In this study by Tony Lewis, the author’s focus on the creation of written transcriptions of pieces for Baluan garamut deepened his understanding of the performance tradition’s overall structure and key characteristics, and have aided him in both learning to play the instruments to a standard acceptable by Baluan musicians, and in teaching the content to others. Lewis argues for his analytical approach to garamut, saying “I engage knowingly in formal analysis because I believe the musical complexity of the Baluan garamut warrants it, because I believe there is a great deal we can learn from it on multiple levels, and because I very much enjoy engaging in it” (111).
The volume is divided into six chapters. In chapter 1, the author presents an overview of the research project aims, scope, and fieldwork methodology. Lewis outlines the overarching theme of his study in Baluan, which is the musicological analysis of music for the garamut, and the secondary themes pursued in order to accomplish this aim. Central to the author’s method in analyzing and understanding garamut composition and performance is the creation of notated transcriptions, which is presented in detail in chapter 6. A generous amount of space is given to the theories and methodology of fieldwork in ethnomusicology, including widely applied scholarship that addresses insider/outsider perspectives, ethics, personal relationships, and reciprocity.
Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of garamut in previous scholarly writings by ethnomusicologists, social anthropologists, and historians; a discussion of various English terminology used in those writings; and a justification for Lewis’s choice of “log drum” to describe the instruments. Lewis documents the names for individual drums in the two indigenous languages of Baluan used by the collaborators in his fieldwork study, including variations, and describes the naming (or non-naming) of the items for garamut he observed and/or performed. The author also documents the processes of constructing a new set of garamut instruments, which he commissioned. The chapter also describes the contexts for garamut performance.
In the third chapter, the author presents the components of his musicological analysis, introducing a system to describe structure within individual performance items and ways of categorizing items within the repertoire. He explains his choice of a Western notation system for the transcription work, and interpretation of distinct characteristics of Baluan garamut performance and composition, including the organization of the ensemble, and improvisation.
Chapter 4 presents the main findings of the study: the selection of repertoire observed and studied by the author in the field. The items in the repertoire are documented by name, classification, information about their history, and details and circumstances of each performance within the study period. Lewis analyzes each piece in terms of rhythmic characteristics, phrasing, and form.
Garamut performance in diaspora is discussed in chapter 5, through analysis of repertoire and performance style of a Port Moresby-based Baluan garamut ensemble, Paluai Sooksook. The author describes how performance contexts, such as entertainment for multicultural audiences and regional affiliations to Manus, influence the group’s artistic choices. To illustrate how these contexts can alter performance, Lewis traces the changes through a single piece, “Teapot,” from its origins on Baluan to international performance.
Cultural continuity, or the loss of forms of musical performance, is a contemporary scholarly concern within ethnomusicology. In the final chapter, Lewis returns to situating himself within the study and reflects on the influences on the transmission of garamut performance that the research project may have. He posits that through his creation of musical transcriptions, he could make a positive contribution to the continued development of a garamut repertoire.
The focus of Lewis’s content and methodology around the creation of musical transcriptions could invite criticism from several perspectives, including those that see missed opportunities in a more anthropological approach to garamut and how it is situated in Baluan worldviews. However, Lewis argues for his choices well, and acknowledges the limitations of transcriptions in understanding music that is composed, performed, and transmitted orally, as well as the centering of the author in the process:
While the process of this transformation is a vital part of constructing understanding, and while the visual results may have much to offer, the transcription can never be the music, and in that sense it is always characterised by its shortcomings. No transcription can tell everything, but consideration of transcription can tell the reader much about its author, as well as about the music […] Transcription necessarily documents the perspective and cognition of its author, precisely by what the author has chosen to represent, and what the author has omitted, whether by choice or by oversight. (3)
This book contributes to the literature of autoethnographies of music learning, comparative musicology, musicological analysis (within drumming traditions, Pacific musics, and musics of Papua New Guinea and Manus), methods of music transcription, and the influence of diaspora on performance style and repertoire. Lewis neatly reviews the literature recounting the travels of previous researchers to Baluan, which could be a useful reference for scholars with interests in the region.
Michelle Ladwig Williams
Independent Scholar, Auckland