
Contents
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9.1 Challenges in the study of language and music in Ethiopia 9.1 Challenges in the study of language and music in Ethiopia
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9.1.1 Lack of systematic data 9.1.1 Lack of systematic data
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9.1.2 Linguistic families or musical areas? 9.1.2 Linguistic families or musical areas?
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9.2 Why sing rather than speak? 9.2 Why sing rather than speak?
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9.2.1 Distinctive communication styles 9.2.1 Distinctive communication styles
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9.2.2 Song as rhetoric 9.2.2 Song as rhetoric
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9.3 Formal relationships 9.3 Formal relationships
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9.3.1 Metre, prosody, and melody 9.3.1 Metre, prosody, and melody
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9.3.2 Orality and literacy 9.3.2 Orality and literacy
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9.4 Conclusion 9.4 Conclusion
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9 Language and music
Get accessKatell Morand is Maîtresse de Conférences of Ethnomusicology in the Anthropology Department at the University of Paris Nanterre and the Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie (LESC, CNRS). Her research on Amharic sung poetry has been published in journals such as les Annales d’Ethiopie, Les Cahiers de Littérature Orale, Etnografica, and Terrain as well as in several edited volumes. She is a guest editor for special issues of Cahiers d’Ethnomusicologie (“Music and Violence”) and Cahiers de Littérature Orale (“Echopoetics”), both published in 2020. She is currently working on a book version of her PhD dissertation on music, solitude, and memory in Gojjam (which was awarded the 2013 prize from the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac).
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Published:22 May 2023
Cite
Abstract
This chapter considers language and music in Ethiopia and looks at the state of the art from the point of view of an ethnomusicologist. This chapter first emphasizes that Ethiopia’s well-acknowledged linguistic and cultural diversity poses significant challenges to the present review, as only a fraction of Ethiopia’s musical styles is known in significant detail. Studies in linguistic and oral literature have also generally shown little concern for the description of voice, timbre, or melodic contour in instances of formalized speech. Given the lack of information on language and instrumental music, the chapter focuses on the singing voice, first raising issues of scale and comparison (do linguistic families and musical areas overlap?), then of pragmatics (why sing when one can speak?) and formal relationships, before offering a few suggestions for future research.
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