TY - JOUR
T1 - Alan Lomax’s Cantometrics Project
T2 - A comprehensive review
AU - Savage, Patrick E.
N1 - Funding Information:
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) scholarship, a Startup Grant from the Keio Research Institute at SFC, and an Individual Grant from the Keio Gijuku Academic Development Fund.
Funding Information:
Cantometrics (canto = song, metrics = measure) – the centrepiece and namesake of the Cantometrics Project – was developed in collaboration by Lomax and musicologist Victor Grauer, who along with Roswell Rudd applied it to code several thousand songs from around the world (further details below). Choreologists Irmgard Bartenieff and Forrestine Paulay helped develop a similar model for dance (choreometrics). Similar approaches were explored for speech (parlametrics), vowel use (phonotactics), breathing (minutage), song texts, and instrumentation (reviewed in detail by ). Lomax’s goal was to synthesize these various datasets into a digital interactive “Global Jukebox” that would unify his academic, pedagogical, and activist goals. Despite interest and financial support from Apple and other institutions, Lomax was unable to realize this goal before his death. However, in 2017 a preliminary version of the Global Jukebox ( http://theglobaljukebox.org ) was finally launched by ACE ().
Funding Information:
I thank Steven Brown and Victor Grauer for introducing me to cantometrics; Brown, Grauer, and Anna Lomax Wood for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript; and Kathleen Riviera for providing details of the number of cantometric and choreometric codings available at the Global Jukebox. I am also grateful to my classmates Emi Sakai, Kumi Shimozaki, and Masami Yamashita at the Tokyo University of the Arts for extensive help through training, testing and discussion of cantometrics. Of course, most of all, I am grateful to Alan Lomax for his vision. The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) scholarship, a Startup Grant from the Keio Research Institute at SFC, and an Individual Grant from the Keio Gijuku Academic Development Fund.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2018.
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Alan Lomax’s Cantometrics Project was arguably both the most ambitious and the most controversial undertaking in music and science that the world has known. Its flagship component, Lomax’s “cantometric” analysis of approximately 1,800 songs from 148 worldwide populations using 36 classificatory features, sparked extensive debate. While Lomax responded to some criticisms, neither his final conclusions nor the evidence on which they were based were ever fully made clear. For decades, neither cantometrics nor Lomax’s related projects involving dance, speech, popular music, digital humanities, pedagogy, and activism were widely adopted by other researchers, but there has been a resurgence of interest since Lomax’s death in 2002. Here, I provide a comprehensive critical review of the Cantometrics Project, focusing on issues regarding the song sample, classification scheme, statistical analyses, interpretation, and ethnocentrism/reductionism. I identify misunderstandings, improvements that were made, and criticisms that remain to be addressed, and distil Lomax’s sometimes-conflicting claims into diagrams summarizing his three primary results: (1) ten regional song-style types, (2) nine musical factors representing intra-musical correlations, and (3) correlations between these musical factors and five factors of social structure. Although Lomax’s interpretations regarding correlations between song style and social structure appear weakly supported, his historical interpretations regarding connections ranging from colonial diaspora to ancient migrations provide a more promising starting point for both research and teaching about the global arts. While Lomax’s attempts to correlate features of social structure such as gender, religion, politics, and economics with stylistic features of musical performance largely failed to gain acceptance, the Cantometrics Project can still provide both inspiration and cautionary lessons for future exploration of relationships between music and culture.
AB - Alan Lomax’s Cantometrics Project was arguably both the most ambitious and the most controversial undertaking in music and science that the world has known. Its flagship component, Lomax’s “cantometric” analysis of approximately 1,800 songs from 148 worldwide populations using 36 classificatory features, sparked extensive debate. While Lomax responded to some criticisms, neither his final conclusions nor the evidence on which they were based were ever fully made clear. For decades, neither cantometrics nor Lomax’s related projects involving dance, speech, popular music, digital humanities, pedagogy, and activism were widely adopted by other researchers, but there has been a resurgence of interest since Lomax’s death in 2002. Here, I provide a comprehensive critical review of the Cantometrics Project, focusing on issues regarding the song sample, classification scheme, statistical analyses, interpretation, and ethnocentrism/reductionism. I identify misunderstandings, improvements that were made, and criticisms that remain to be addressed, and distil Lomax’s sometimes-conflicting claims into diagrams summarizing his three primary results: (1) ten regional song-style types, (2) nine musical factors representing intra-musical correlations, and (3) correlations between these musical factors and five factors of social structure. Although Lomax’s interpretations regarding correlations between song style and social structure appear weakly supported, his historical interpretations regarding connections ranging from colonial diaspora to ancient migrations provide a more promising starting point for both research and teaching about the global arts. While Lomax’s attempts to correlate features of social structure such as gender, religion, politics, and economics with stylistic features of musical performance largely failed to gain acceptance, the Cantometrics Project can still provide both inspiration and cautionary lessons for future exploration of relationships between music and culture.
KW - Cross-cultural
KW - cultural evolution
KW - ethnomusicology
KW - performance style
KW - science
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U2 - 10.1177/2059204318786084
DO - 10.1177/2059204318786084
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85054256619
SN - 2059-2043
VL - 1
JO - Music and Science
JF - Music and Science
ER -