Redemarcation of Southeast Asian Music-culture Zone Based on A Particular Music Playing Style

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24652043
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Study of the arts/History of the arts/Arts in general
• Research Institution: Momoyama Gakuin University
• Principal Investigator: YUHI Kuniko 桃山学院大学, 国際教養学部, 非常勤講師 (50528586)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: インターロッキング奏法 / 東南アジア音楽文化圏 / オーストロネシア語族 / ポリリズム

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aims at the redemarcation of Southeast Asian music-culture zone paying attention to the existence of the interlocking music playing style. The interlocking playing style means the way to produce melody by sounding alternately the several musical instruments of the same type which individually tuned to a particular pitch.
Through three years of field researches, it became evident that several cases of the interlocking playing style were actually found from the northern-most Taiwan through Brunei to southern-most Indonesia. This region overlaps the domain of the Austronesians in Southeast Asia. A new boundary, thus, turned out to be drawn in Southeast Asian music-culture zone with regards to the interlocking playing style widely owned by the Austronesians living in this zone.
The further observation, in addition, tells that the interlocking playing style might have originated from a kind of polyrhythm with each component rhythm owing an individual pitch.

Free Research Field

音楽学