Flute Music from the Kuna of Panama (Part 3)

by Hei-Yeung (John) Lai

[01:25–02:17] from Track #6, Music of Panama Cuna Indians, from “Primitive Music of the World” [sic], collated by Henry Cowell and released in 1962.

From the original liner notes: “flute music played by two men, recorded by Prof. Clyde Keeler.  Two players on homemade alto flutes improvise polyphony together.  Each flute has several contiguous tones of breathy quality.  The flutes are a fourth of fifth apart, and the result reminds one of the period, tenth century or so, when in the history of Western fine-art music organum was developing into early counterpoint.”

John Lai’s transcription of the main cycle from [01:25–02:17]. See table below for the variations of number of notes in final cell

First Reading

• The example above presents the cycle used in this excerpt. It repeats seven times. Each repetition can be seen as a distinct start over.
• The cycle consists of two parts (separated by the dotted bar line), suggesting two different temporalities.
  • Four short-long motivic cells constitute the first part. They suggest well a dotted quarter-note beat and a 12/8 meter.
    • Note: The first note (F#) of Cycles 1 and 2 is quarter-note long (marked by * in the example).
  • The evenly distributed (A#-G#-A#-G#) suggests another beat of different speeds (marked by the diamond note heads and the dotted line box). Fitting this gesture to the underlying eighth-note pulse established in the first part, the total duration of the A#-G#-A#-G# figure varies in length in different cycles (tabulated in the Table above).
    • Note: The figure is evenly distributed in most cases. Trace of unevenness is most evident in Cycle 1.
• The cycle wraps around itself, providing a source of continuity: the F#3 at the beginning of the cycle functions as both the starting point of the new cycle and the melodic goal of the previous cycle.

Second Reading

• The second reading enriches the cyclic hearing by considering a large-scale formal process. Specifically, it focuses on the entrainment of the dotted quarter-note beat and the transforming quality of each cycle through local and large-scale hemiolic processes.

Larger scale formal construction of the Panamanian flute excerpt

• The table above presents the rhythmic details of the excerpt. Each box corresponds to the underlying eighth-note pulse. A dotted quarter-note beat is strongly established after the second motivic cell (F#-A#) in Cycle 1. If one entrains with this beat throughout the excerpt (boxes shaded in yellow or grey), the listener will experience a transforming process as the cycle repeats.
• Cycle 1 ends with a local hemiola, which, in turn, strengthens the arrival of Cycle 2 through both melodic and metrical resolution. It may also foreshadow the large-scale hemiolic cycle occurring from Cycles 4 to 7 (discussed below).
• Every second half of the cycle suggests some local hemiolas because of the superimposition between the underlying dotted quarter-note grid and the non-triple evenly distributed A#-G#-A#-G# figure. However, the exact beat-class correspondence suggested by the hemiola here is hard to define, so I annotate them with the grey numbers and grey boxes instead.
• The excerpt can be interpreted as two sections based on the metrical processes: Cycles 1–3 and Cycles 4–7.
• Cycles 1–3:
  • After a strong establishment of the dotted quarter-note beat in Cycle 1, Cycle 2 undergoes a metrical displacement because of the four quarter-note long F#-A# opening cell. This opening cell may have just wanted to imitate the duration that happened in Cycle 1, or it wants to realize the quarter-note projection continuously suggested by the previous hemiola. As a result, the remaining motivic cells fall on the second eight-note beat of the underlying grid (ON-2).
  • After the 11-eighth-note span (1+10) occurred in the seoncd half of Cycle 2, the F#-A# motivic cells in Cycle 3 align again with the underlying beat, restoring an ON-1 state. Cycle 3 thus consolidates the dotted quarter-note beat. Thus, apart from suggesting a 12/8 meter in part one of the cycle strongly, the 12-eighth-note duration of part two (1+11) also realizes the large-scale metric projection, if not the 12/8 meter.
  • In sum, Cycles 1–3 undergo a process of ON-1 ON-2 ON-1.
• Cycles 4–7:
  • These four cycles feature a uniform rhythmic structure, where part 1 articulates a regular 3+3+3+3 progression, while part 2 is situated in a duration of 1+10.
  • Despite the uniformity, if one attends continuously to the dotted quarter-note beat, the quality of each cycle changes along with the shift of beat-class location. Specifically, the 11-eighth-note span of part 2 of each cycle here results in a metrical shift of the motivic cells to the underlying grid.
  • As a result, motivic cells in Cycle 5 fall on the third eight-note beat of the underlying grid (ON-3), while that in Cycle 6 falls on the second eight-note beat of the underlying grid (ON-2). Finally, Cycle 7 marks a structural metrical resolution by returning to the ON-1 state. It also suggests why Cycle 7 constitutes the ending of the excerpt, closing with a (melodic) resolution to an additional F#3 at the end (marked by the “X”).

In sum, Cycles 4–7 undergo a process of ON-1 ON-3 ON-2 ON-1. This large-scale hemiolic cycle maps to the same rhythmic structure inherent in the local hemiola in Cycle 1.