the paradox of timbre - revista ethnomusicology

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The Paradox of TimbreAuthor(s): Cornelia FalesSource: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 46, No. 1, (Winter, 2002), pp. 56-95Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for EthnomusicologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/852808Accessed: 05/04/2008 19:11

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ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

The Paradox of Timbre

CORNELIA FALES / University of California, Santa Barbara

Introduction

n 1950, Alan Merriam toured the Belgian Congo and Trust Territory of Ruanda-Urundi to record music representing various ethnic groups of the

region. Among the 67 reels of tape that resulted are the earliest recordings of Burundi Whispered Inanga or Inanga Chucbotee, a genre of which only one other substantial collection exists and few performers remain. For this, Merriam's tapes are priceless; but they are also memorable as an example of how the simple act of recording immortalizes a notion of music that may reflect the researcher more than the musicians represented.

Inanga Chuchotee consists of a whispered text, accompanied by the

inanga, a trough zither of eight strings. As is often the case with African

music, the Barundi assign primary importance to the vocal text, though its real significance according to musicians, lies not so much in its meaning, but in the whisper that articulates it and particularly in the effect of the combined timbres of the noisy whisper and the inanga. Merriam's tapes, however, show a consistent tendency to position the microphone so close to the inanga, that the text is often muffled and inaudible. It is difficult to

escape the conclusion that Merriam was more interested in virtuosic inan-

ga playing-in the accompaniment, that is-than he was in the whispered vocals by which the Barundi define the genre.

In obscuring the central effect of Whispered Inanga, Merriam's record-

ings of the music betray the subtle bias of what has come to be called "pitch- centrism" or "timbre deafness," a perceptual proclivity on the part of western listeners, including ethnomusicologists, to focus on melody in music where the dominant parameter is timbre. Listeners from a culture where

pitch is governed by law while timbre is governed by taste, where musical execution is judged correct or incorrect according to variations in pitch, while variations in other parameters of music are judged pleasing or dis-

pleasing1-such listeners would be surprised and perhaps disoriented to

? 2002 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

56

VOL. 46, No. 1 WINTER 2002

Fales: The Paradox of Timbre 57

find the opposite polarity in evaluations of Whispered Inanga. A performance of Inanga is judged incorrect if the expected timbral effect is impre- cisely executed, whereas wide deviations in pitch are considered ornamen-

tal, expressive or, if unsuccessful, in bad taste or inappropriate. Especially in a genre where the instrument, inanga, retains its tuning with difficulty, where the whispering voice is pitchless, and where the meter changes according to patterns of long and short syllables in the text, timbre is the

single element that is a fairly stable and predictable standard of correctness. I will return to Whispered Inanga later.

Timbre

In the last fifteen years, the citing of timbre as an important feature of African music has taken on the same aura of banal truth that once characterized the association of rhythm and African music. Both associations are true for a great deal of African music, but unlike rhythm which continues to attract scholarly attention, the role of timbre even now is often no sooner mentioned than forgotten.2 As scholars, indeed as listeners, we have a difficult time describing timbre. Though we can talk about it in large gen- eralities, as though it were a conceptual abstraction- "timbre is important to African music, community is important to African music"--it is only by deliberate effort that we conceptualize it as a distinctly ongoing, dynamic feature of music with the same clarity as pitch or meter. So to describe Merriam's misinterpretation of the Whispered Inanga aesthetic as timbre deafness is imprecise. We have a peculiar amnesia3 in regard to timbre, but we're not deaf to timbre: we hear it, we use it-no one has much trouble

telling instruments apart-but we have no language to describe it.4 With no domain-specific adjectives, timbre must be described in metaphor or by analogy to other senses, and this is true in many, many languages of the world.

Through the study of timbre runs a sort of paradox that I will summa- rize here briefly before embarking on the more detailed discussion to follow. One of the objectives of hearing, as of all the senses, is to furnish listeners with accurate information about the environment. We will see that the dimension of timbre is particularly implicated in achieving this objective: not only does timbre carry the most information about a source and its location (Butler 1973), but of all parameters of music, it is also carries the most information about the environment through which the sound has traveled. Human experience shows that in most cases, acquisition of audi-

tory information is accomplished with little difficulty. But, as the technol-

ogy of digital sound analysis becomes more sophisticated and accessible, increasing evidence accumulates that what we hear-the source we iden-

58 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2002

tify so easily-is often different, especially in timbre, than the sound that

digital analysis tells us was actually emitted. The difference is blatant because sound analysis can reveal only the physical characteristics of a sound, and if it shows features different than those we perceive, we know that the act of perceiving the sound has changed it. The paradox emerges with the observation that while timbre is a dimension of central importance to iden-

tifying sources, it is also the dimension that is most divergent from the sound in the physical world.

How can we reconcile the success with which we identify a source with the fact that the sound we hear is demonstrably different in timbre than the sound emitted by the source in question? The resolution of this

paradox is complex and will hopefully emerge in the remainder of this

paper, but for now, enough to say that auditory system does indeed iden-

tify sources, but it identifies a version of the sources that may not always coincide with the version existing in the physical world. Instead, it per- ceives sources according to its own expectations, sources that are consistent with similar sources identified in the past, or that have characteristics

typical to an environment, though digital analysis might show them to be

completely anomalous by any measurable standard. The paradox exists because however different the perceived version of a source might be to the physical signal it represents, it is a version that works in our world, it is a version that is consistent with versions of other listeners, it is a version "real" enough that it allows us to deal with the physical environment. The version is that source to us, and as long as it continues to work, we need no other. That the paradox of timbre is rarely appreciated by ordinary listeners is a sign that the system that processes sounds for perception is also careful to keep its transformative operations outside of the awareness of the listener.5 One of the proposals of this paper, however, is that in music

something happens to timbre that makes listeners aware of its paradox. Timbre is a slippery concept and a slippery percept, perceptually mal-

leable and difficult to define in precisely arranged units. Though human

auditory acuity, on one level at least,6 is greater for the discrimination of timbre than pitch, contrasts in pitch register on a conscious level more

immediately and starkly than timbre contrasts of equal magnitude. To the

general listener, pitch and loudness are variable characteristics of sound, timbre is a condition; pitch and loudness are things a sound does, timbre is what a sound is. Given that timbre is critical to human contact with the environment and a sonic dimension we track with peculiar sensitivity, given that timbre is routinely cited as one of the four parameters of sound, the fact that it attracts so little attention7 becomes itself part of the mys- tery: timbre seems to do its considerable work with secretive discretion.

This paper proposes a theory of timbre that addresses its role in the

Fales. The Paradox of Timbre 59

larger sensation of musical sound. The theory begins with recent research in timbre perception and applies it to music recorded in various contexts. While the most persuasive validation of a theory like the one presented here would include a number of extensively analyzed case studies, the limits and

objectives of this paper argue for breadth rather than depth of evidence. For broadly confirming evidence, therefore, I draw on musical phenomena widely distributed throughout ethnomusicology literature, returning to

my own work in Burundi for deeper analytical demonstration. If the result is a bit anecdotal or less than ideally thorough, my aim is to roughly map out a neglected area of the musical experience, establishing coordinates to be filled in with richer ethnographic study.

Timbre and the Unconscious

An interesting and revealing exercise is to play a short excerpt of

monophonic instrumental music several times to listeners who are utterly unfamiliar with the instrument they are hearing. If asked to describe the sound and its source, most listeners are surprised at the quantity of specific information they are able to deduce from tiny, immensely subtle details, all without conscious effort or reflection. But though they can easily determine that the unknown sound is, for example, an impulsive rather than a sustained tone,8 they must be prodded for this information with questions as to the actions (plucking, bowing, blowing, etc.) the musician might be

making to play the instrument. They can, in other words, more easily describe the production of the sound than the perceived features of the sound that allow them knowledge of its production.

The point of the exercise is to demonstrate three aspects of auditory cognition. First, ordinary listeners with no special training possess an ex-

traordinary amount of knowledge about sound and its sources. Second, while some source characteristics are implied by the pitch range and in-

tensity of its sound, listeners generally seem to base their knowledge of a source and especially of its location, largely on qualities of timbre-on the

abruptness of an attack, for example, or a brightness of sound indicating resilient resonating material-so much so, in fact, that timbre comes to be identified with its source. Third, the information listeners are able to deduce from a sound is derived from a multitude of unremarkable acoustic details of which a great deal have been processed and interpreted preat- tentively9-that is, without listeners' conscious awareness. I propose in this

paper that the dimension of timbre in particular is preattentive both in processing and in the qualities that result from that processing.

In what sense is timbre unconscious? If we are conscious of hearing first one instrument and then another, are we not conscious of timbre?


While researchers continue to grapple with the facts that there seem to be several kinds of consciousness and that it is a phenomenon of degrees, not an all-or-none cognitive state, most seem to acknowledge a broad categor- ical difference between consciousness as phenomenal experience and consciousness as reflective self-awareness. Phenomenal consciousness might include the warm sensation of the sun on one's face, while reflective consciousness would consist of the intellectual awareness of felt warmth, and of the sun as the source of the sensation. Phenomenal consciousness is often

sensory or emotive, reflective consciousness is often verbal or representa- tive-that is, one who is reflectively conscious can usually express the nature of the experience. Though most often the two kinds of consciousness occur together, they can occur individually as well.10 Without the viv- idness of phenomenal consciousness, we must trust a less convincing reflective consciousness of our experience; without reflective consciousness, we

may be phenomenally conscious of an experience that is richly sentient, but at the same time, hazy, ill-defined, and inexpressible. If indeed the

experience of timbre is preattentive, then it appears to be a case of phenomenal but not reflective consciousness.

While relatively little of the research on consciousness has focused on timbre perception specifically, work on auditory perception in general and unconscious perception in other sensory modalities has been extensive,

yielding a set of characteristics common to both the process and the results of preattentive perception. Many of these features-of which two are es-

pecially relevant to this discussion-are present in the experience of timbre. For example, the hallmark characteristic of preattentive or unconscious

perception, a feature Merikle and Reingold call "indirect measure sensitiv-

ity" (1992), is obvious in the listening exercise above. Indirect measure

sensitivity alludes to the fact that preattentively processed information can not be directly examined or evaluated, though it may be a source of input to relevant problems. We may have difficulty describing, or even concep- tualizing timbre as an independent musical parameter on the basis of direct examination, but we use it easily to distinguish or characterize sounds.

A second characteristic of preattentive processing relevant to timbre is the tendency of perceivers to attribute the effects of such processes to a conscious phenomenon of outstanding perceptual salience, and to do so

with absolute conviction (Merikle & Daneman, 1998). For example, when

laboratory subjects are exposed to subliminal pictures of colored geomet- ric shapes, then asked later to pick out the shapes they "saw" earlier, they are unsuccessful, as predicted by the indirect measure sensitivity of unconscious events. However, if the same subjects are asked to choose from

among several shapes those they find most attractive, not only do they choose the shapes they were exposed to previously with a probability far


greater than chance, but they provide thorough, reasoned explanation for their choice, insisting on factors such as a habitual preference for certain

shapes, colors, symmetries, etc. Their very knowledge of themselves is influenced by the need to explain a choice whose real explanation has little to do with aesthetic preference. Similarly, listeners may point to a change in pitch or dynamic level in music to describe what is actually a variation in timbre; it may be, in fact, that the disregard of timbre mentioned earlier is as much the result of misattribution as true neglect.

Auditory Processing

With whatever degree of auditory unconsciousness, the fact remains that listeners are amazingly and confidently good at deriving information about the acoustic world from the perceived world it inspires. The distinction is important: the acoustic world is the physical environment where sound as acoustic signal is produced and dispersed; the perceived world is the subjective, sonic world created by listeners as a result of their translation of signals from the acoustic world. The acoustic world is available

through deduction and calculation, but never directly experienced. Sepa- ration of the two domains is at least conceptually necessary, because as noted earlier the correspondence between the two worlds, between signals from the acoustic environment and the auditory perception that results, has proven to be far from exact. A given acoustic stimulus may not excite the same percept in all listeners, nor even in the same listener across mul-

tiple exposures. Auditory perception more often than not depends on factors external to-sometimes in contradiction to-the acoustic stimulus that

provokes it. In this paper, I maintain that many of these factors are embod- ied in the parameter of timbre.

Outside of a musical context, auditory perception has been shown to be precisely geared to source identification. The goal of listening, at least

ostensibly, is to maintain an identity relationship between acoustic source and perceived source. Research has shown that the auditory cortex-with no help from the conscious mind which may know nothing about acoustics-uses hardwired information about the behavior of sound in the physical world to accomplish most lower- and much higher-level processing of

complex sound. The auditory world of a normal listener, it seems, is founded on a canonical knowledge of sound and its sources, knowledge which has to do largely with issues of timbre.

How does source-orientation shape the mechanics of sound processing, and why is timbre the parameter most effected by this orientation? From minute to minute, the auditory cortex is faced with the formidable task of grouping by source, an immense collection of individual acoustic


elements-frequencies of specific amplitude and duration-each group to be deciphered as a perceptual unit characterized by its mixture of elements.'l A generally accepted thesis as to the brain's organizational strategy is that it uses what Bregman calls "heuristics", competing clues or hy- potheses regarding possible groupings, based largely on characteristics of source behavior.12 Those clues whose combination describes the most likely source are used to organize a set of stimuli into auditory percepts. Timbre, of course, is a primary result of this grouping. In theory, all the information needed to determine pitch and loudness for natural sounds is available before the sound has even left the inner ear; timbre must wait until signals from all elements reach the auditory cortex where they are grouped and subjected to the process of perceptual fusion into the unitary sensation of tone quality. Since the perceived timbre of a steadystate tone is determined largely by the relative amplitudes of its constituent frequencies,'3 there is no single property or component of an acoustic signal that corresponds to that sensation; thus, perceived timbre exists in a very real sense only in the mind of the listener, not in the objective world. It is here that the paradox of timbre begins to show itself.

For obvious reasons, accurate and efficient source characterization is an essential tool for the survival of the listener. But it is also vital to the perceptual equilibrium of the listener. When Bregman uses the term "heuristic" for the brain's organizational strategies, he means it as computer scientists use it to contrast with "algorithm". An algorithm is a procedural solution to a problem; faced with a problem, to discover the relevant algorithm is to overcome the problem. A heuristic, on the other hand, is a hy- pothesis; it is time-dependent, the best of several possible strategies informed by current information to advance from one stage to the next in progress toward a solution. Given the nature of human hearing as current- ly understood, therefore, identification of a sound source is by definition based on incomplete information. If we notice furthermore that auditory processing as described above is profoundly tautological-that is, its ob-

jective is to discover source information, while using preexisting information about sound sources to pursue its objective-we begin to understand how truly precarious the perceived world of an ordinary listener can be.

Nevertheless, under unexceptional circumstances listeners are altogether unconscious of the heuristic nature of auditory perception, oblivious of the acoustic world whose relation to the perceptual world they inhabit is one of "best guess". The consistency of perceived information is so vital to the equilibrium of listeners, that they will report hearing missing pieces of an acoustic pattern in order to maintain an auditory gestalt (Warren 1976). Similarly, when exposed to audio/visual stimuli constructed so that what is heard conflicts with what is seen, subjects ingeniously and uncon-


sciously combine elements from both aural and visual stimuli to form a

percept in which they have absolute faith; the sensory conflict is resolved with no more apparent effort than ordinary listening (McGurk and Mac- Donald 1976). Confident of their auditory acuity, listeners feel themselves

directly and aurally linked to a source in the acoustic world. So strong is the source orientation of environmental listening, that listeners project the fundamental premise of their auditory logic onto the data it is meant to

interpret and subjective auditory sensation onto a world of sources until sound equals source. We say-I hear a cricket; not-I hear a sound that

may indicate the presence of a cricket. As though to colonize the acoustic

world, we project even our reaction to a sound onto its imputed source; we say-I hear a sad violin-when it is a sound we hear, and we who are sad. Our entire auditory world, it seems, is based on the substitution of the indexed for the indexical and the effect for the cause.

Perceptualization

As a kind of shorthand in this paper, I will use the word "perceptualization" to mean any cognitive operation or feature that contributes to the

perceptual outcome of a signal beyond the actual acoustic elements of the

signal. If one conceives of the perceived world as shared responsibility, the result of contributions from the acoustic world and the perceiver's mind, then perceptualization is the process by which necessary interpretive elements are identified, created, and combined with acoustic properties of the environment to create auditory percepts. Theoretically, perceptualization is a measurable quantity: the difference between the percept predicted in consideration of its raw acoustic input and the percept actually experienced by a listener-or, the divergence of the perceived sound from the acoustic signal-is a measure of perceptualization. For example, to the extent that there exists no component of an acoustic signal that by itself provokes or corresponds to the sensation of timbre, timbre can be said to be less

predictable from a consideration of an unprocessed acoustic signal, and thus more highly perceptualized, than the parameters of either pitch or loudness. For a number of reasons, timbre appears to be the parameter most

frequently and intensely implicated in perceptualization. First as perceived quality, it is already the most perceptualized, therefore the most mallea- ble parameter of sound. Second, it is the parameter that carries the most information about sound sources, and thus accrues the most benefit from various perceptualizing operations. And third, it is reflectively unconscious to the listener, thus representing a domain in which perceptualization can work most invisibly.

Experimental work on auditory illusion using stimuli created to provoke perceptualization has uncovered many of the strategies and priorities by


which it functions. Perceptualization appears to act according to consistent and transparent logic, largely-but not entirely-geared to promoting au-

ditory efficiency. For example, a common laboratory illusion is created when a listener's perceptualization assumes incorrectly that it is confronted with a degraded signal, which it efficiently attempts to correct by filling in or re-

storing "missing" segments of sound where no acoustic stimulus exists (War- ren 1976). A great deal of perceptualizing energy is directed toward remov-

ing inconsistencies, enhancing or subduing sounds according to their

importance, and arranging other alterations that ensure a confidence-inspir- ing transformation of the acoustic into the perceptual world. One of the iro- nies of perceptualization is that many of its functions are geared to convinc-

ing the listener that it doesn't exist, that signals from the acoustic world

literally are the percepts they provoke. In this sense, perceptualization is the guardian of sensory equilibrium, a state that depends as much on a listener's obliviousness to the acoustic world as on the evasive tactics of perceptualization. Thus a subset of perceptualized effects seem to break with the logic of auditory economy, to be directed instead toward camouflaging the operations of perceptualization from the listener. Since the creation of some of these effects consume considerable cognitive resources, their presence in situations where they contribute little to perceptual success suggests that the perceptualizing mind has an interest in self-concealment only slightly less urgent than its mandate to facilitate audition.

For our purposes here, a particularly important characteristic of perceptualization concerns its relative potency and durability in different contexts. If the role of perceptualization generally is to effect some useful difference between auditory percept and acoustic signal, then its strength can be measured by the degree to which it successfully overcomes the natural characteristics of the acoustic world in constructing a perceived world. In this sense, the power of perceptualization is inversely proportional to the feature intensity of the acoustic signal. For example, a common efficiency mechanism of perceptualization is the removal, from a listener's auditory field, of sounds in the environment-the buzzing hum of neon lights, for

example-that are continuous and unchanging. In most cases the buzz of neon lights is dynamically soft enough that it is easily eliminated as percept; but the more intense or louder the neon buzz, the less successful the operations necessary to remove it.

Another factor influencing the robustness of perceptualization is its relative reliance on acoustic information in creating its effects. A comparison of effects suggests that perceptualization seems to create the strongest effects when it can work from within the perceived world, avoiding as much as possible any reference to the acoustic world. The perceptualized filling in of the degraded signal described above requires intense and on-


going attention to the acoustic signal in order to restore a sound that is

precisely consistent with the existing sound. The result is an illusion that is striking but relatively fragile and easily disrupted. On the other hand, perceptualizing operations that allow listeners to hear the sound of their own names standing out clearly and distinctly from an undifferentiated mass of sound (a large crowd all conversing, for example) that otherwise defeats

audibility-these operations create a more robust effect, one that persists even when listeners are informed of its illusory quality. The durability of the effect depends on the special significance to listeners of their own

names, to which a correspondingly heightened sensitivity is an integral part of the very structure of their perceived worlds. Such sensitivity is activat- ed automatically by the sound of the name without particular reference to its acoustic context. Thus, unlike the restored sound in the first example whose perceptualized production is highly dependent on the existing acoustic signal, the name-sensitivity of the second example allows the perceptual amplification of a name with only the smallest assistance from the acoustic signal to which it responds. At an extreme, the effects of perceptualization may be created almost entirely from the cognitive substance of listeners' minds-that is, from pre-existing information or structures in the

perceived world-but they must implicate the acoustic world to some

degree at least-else auditory perception becomes auditory hallucination.

Music

This is the process as it occurs on the part of unimpaired listeners in

unexceptional circumstances. But substantial evidence suggests that the

experience of music is something other than unexceptional. That there are different modes of listening is a fact long recognized by auditory scientists. More recent research in brain laterialization (Liegeois-Chauvel et al. 1998; Peretz 1988) has found evidence suggesting that the mode applied to musical listening is more flexible-both procedurally and in perceptual result- than the modes applied to speech and certain environmental sounds. It

appears that part of the difference between musical and other modes of

listening resides in the degree to which source characteristics are ignored during the regrouping process in favor of other schemes of perceptualization. Depending on the skill of the musician and the willingness of listen-

ers, such subversion may disrupt perceptual equilibrium profoundly or

fleetingly, but disruption is inevitable. An overview of traditional performance styles suggests two broad categories of timbre manipulation that I call respectively timbral anomaly and timbre juxtaposition. Within the

category of timbral anomaly, there are two techniques that I will call timbre anomaly by extraction and timbre anomaly by redistribution.


Timbral Anomaly

The creation of timbre anomalies generally involves a disorder of perceptual grouping. We observed earlier that the perceptual grouping of discrete acoustic elements in the cortex occurs according to heuristic logic based on the nature of sources in the acoustic world. The success of a timbral anomaly depends on the ability of a non-sourcebased organizational schema to supplant the natural tendency to organize perceptually by source.14 Thus timbre manipulation works directly contrary to the efforts of perceptualization. There are two techniques for creating timbral anomalies in music (schematicized in Figures 1 and 2), differing in the methods

by which they incite reorganization. The creation of timbral anomaly both

by extraction and by redistribution occurs by changing the relationship of individual components of a tone to the timbral group of which they are a

part. The extraction technique leaves the global organization of the original timbre in tact, while emphasizing one or a small group of those elements to stand out in relief against the remainder of the tone. The redistribution

technique takes the global organization of a tone's timbre, and breaks it

apart so that a subset of its elements are free to join or form other groups, each to be perceived as a separate timbre.

Timbre Anomaly by Extraction

The extraction method is best typified by overtone singing or didjeridoo music. In both overtone singing (Figure 3), and didjeridoo music (Fig-

Figure 1: Timbre change by EXTRACTION, presented schematically in visual domain. The diagonal line visible in timbre two is also present in timbre one, though not immediately visible until emphasized in timbre two. Notice in particular that the technique of extraction has involved a physical change to the constitute elements.

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Timbre One Timbre Two


Figure 2: Timbre change by REDISTRIBUTION, presented schematically in visual domain. The constituent components of timbre one can be seen as a single grouped unit; in timbre two, the presence of additional timbres has caused two subsets of the larger group to redistribute into groups with new timbres. Notice in particular that the original constituent elements have not

physically changed; technique of redistribution causes only the viewer's

perception to change.

Timbre One Timbre Two ne

ure 4), a subset of the harmonics comprising a tone's timbre is amplified to a point of sufficiently greater intensity than surrounding harmonics, that they stand out in relief from the remainder of the tone's timbre. In the case of overtone singing, a very few harmonics are extracted by amplification, provoking the sensation of a second pitch sounding above the drone of the primary tone. In didjeridoo music, the coupled resonators of the musician's mouth and the tube of the instrument permit the extraction of an entire formant-a "clump" of harmonics-that moves in frequency relative to the drone of the instrument to give the sensation of two timbres moving against each other."5

It is important to note that timbre effects like those demonstrated by both kinds of music often result in percepts that would not otherwise occur in the acoustic world. Both produce multiple tones from what are ordinarily single-phonation instruments. In overtone singing, furthermore, it often happens that the successive harmonics producing the melody, constitute a series of sinetones-single frequencies without harmonics of their own which are ordinarily produced only synthetically. The didjeridoo offers one of a very few occasions to hear frequentially-configured timbre'6

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Figure 3: Spectrogram of Tuvan overtone singing. Horizontal axis is time; vertical axis is frequency; amplitude is indicated by greyscale (darker is higher amplitude). Note that harmonics are relatively constant in frequency, except for a pronounced vibrato, indicating little fundamental pitch variation, but that amplitude of emphasized harmonics varies intensely in order to create overtone melody.

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without pitch, since the moving formant is made up of the same harmonics as the primary tone but lacks its own fundamental (and the harmonics that would go with it), and thus has no discernible pitch. When acoustic elements like pitched overtones or the didjeridoo formant break free from the perceptual fusion of timbre, they lose a degree of perceptualization. To "hear out" a high-frequency harmonic is to reverse the auditory process, including whatever contribution has been made by the listener's own perceptualization. Ordinarily, loose harmonics are inaccessible to us, since they only ever make an appearance as part of timbre.17 Released from the effects of perceptualization and untempered by the refining influence of the listener's mind, these elements must stand on their own, their singular character in the perceptual world nearly identical to-or at least, directly dic- tated by-their character in the acoustic world.

Timbre Anomaly by Redistribution

The anomalies above result from the extraction of a harmonic or formant from a timbral gestalt. Other forms of timbre-shaping, however, re-


Figure 4: Spectrogram of didjeridoo tone. Horizontal axis is time; vertical axis is frequency; amplitude is indicated by greyscale (darker is higher amplitude). Note that harmonics are relatively constant in frequency, while formant moves rapidly over time.

tribution creates an anomalous sound, an example of what Bregman (1994)

.. ..,

has called a "chimeric" sound, a percept made up of components from several sources with little resemblance to any of them; or one might call it an example of "inherent timbre" by analogy to G. Kubik's notions of inherent melodies and rhythm (Kubik 1989). Examples of these kinds of effects are plentiful. The Ghanaian balafon, for example, produces tones in a bass

register whose harmonics fuse with the long-resonating noise of a mirla-

ton, to produce a pitched, buzzy drone that transforms a percussive sound into a sound of sustained resonance (Figure 5). Another kind of chimeric sound results from two simultaneous tones of a steel pan whose inharmonic

partials combine to provoke the percept of a third tone of different pitch (Fenn 1997). Another example described by Gage Averill (1999) is the bell tone in barbershop singing, which appears to result from the blending of a few harmonics from each of the singers. Finally, in this category is Bu- rundi Inanga Chuchot6e (Figure 6), a description of which follows short-

ly; for now, we note it as a genre that rests on an illusive melodicized

whisper-the fusion of inanga harmonics with whispered noise.


Figure 5: Spectrogram of Ghanaian balofon tones, showing rapid, percussive strikes of the lamels, overlaid with the sustained buzzing of mirlaton- produced noise.

An important difference between the extraction and redistribution methods of anomaly is the degree to which they use acoustic factors to incite perceptual reorganization. As schematicized in Figures 3 and 4, anom-

aly by extraction requires an acoustic change in the component to be ex-

tracted, whereas anomaly by redistribution occurs with no change at all to the original sound. Thus, while overtone singing requires that the extracted overtones be physically amplified until they are heard out as a separate pitch, the melodicized whisper of Burundi Inanga Chuchot&e requires no acoustic change in the sounds from which the components are contribut-

ed; whatever change occurs, occurs solely in the mind of the perceiver. From the point of view of musicians, the creation of a timbral anomaly in overtone singing requires that they change the sound; the creation of a timbral anomaly in Inanga Chuchotee requires that they change the listeners, inducing them to change their mode of perception. Thus a performer's control over the effect of a timbral anomaly is correspondingly greater with the extraction than with the redistribution technique; extraction of relevant harmonics is largely a matter of musical skill, redistribution of acoustic elements is more a matter of musical persuasion.18 If indeed timbre

manipulation works by defeating perceptualization, and if perceptualization is strong to the extent that it avoids the acoustic world, then the acoustic


Figure 6: Spectrogram of an excerpt from Inanga Chuchotee. The first five broad vertical stripes are the attacks of the inanga playing alone; the last four vertical are the inanga together with the noisy whisper of the musician.

changes required by the extraction method give it a potent weapon against the forces of perceptualization.

What is the effect of timbral anomalies? Shaped by a skillful musician, the borders of a timbral unit become fluid, provoking a different percept with each context. Among other things, techniques such as these disrupt perceptual complacency, presenting anomalous sounds that subvert a listener's instinctive knowledge of source behavior, creating instead a pro- found if momentary disorientation. Whether, for example, the absolute

certainty that a human vocal tract produces only one pitched sound at a time is innate or learned early in life, the disruption of that certainty with first exposure to overtone singing must constitute a brief violence to a listener's faith in perceptual constancy. For all the drama of these methods of timbre shifting, however, one suspects that they quickly decline in effi-

cacy with listeners' exposure, as anomalous sounds solidify into generic attributes or become typical of new and exotic sound sources.

Timbre Juxtaposition

A second category of timbre manipulation, produces an effect that is more subtle but perhaps less easily dulled over time. Here, the musician

juxtaposes sounds that fall on opposing ends of a continuum of timbral


structure. Evidence from digital analysis of a broad range of musical tones

suggests a timbre continuum extending from sounds that are harmonical-

ly-based to those that are formant-structured (Figure 7). A formant-structured timbre is one whose spectrum consists of several formants, broad bands or clumps of high intensity harmonics similar to those described earlier in didjeridoo music. Generally speaking, the softer the material from which an instrument's resonator is constructed, the broader the spectral peaks or formants of its timbre. In formant-structured timbres, the location and size of the formants determine the timbre of a sound. In harmonically- structured sound, timbre is dominated by several primary harmonics that characterize the tone's timbre. In the world of acoustic sources, the epito- me of formant-structured timbre is demonstrated in vocal sound, characterized by formants whose position determines vowel quality. At the other end of the timbre continuum, a typical harmonically-structured sound

might resemble a flute tone in a high register, whose audible spectrum may consist of as few as two harmonics.

The difference between harmonically-structured and formant-based timbres centers on the unit of perceptual salience-that is, on whether

single harmonics or entire formants dictate timbral quality. In the processing of harmonically-structured sounds, source information must be derived from the relative characteristics of individual harmonics, whereas in formant-based timbres, source information is contained in the relative inten-

sity and position of formant units. In harmonically-structured timbres, each harmonic contributes individually to the quality of the tone, whereas in formant-based timbres, entire formants constitute a single contribution to the tone quality.19 An important distinction between the two kinds of sounds lies in the differing degrees of perceptualization inherent in each sound. Given that the two sounds imply different units of perceptual sa-

Figure 7: Schematic representation of spectra of two kinds of timbre, representing two ends of timbre continuum. In the formant-structured sound three formants are shown outlined with a dotted line and numbered.

F1 ...*. F2 F3

I I 1 ll ll Ill Formant-structured Harmonically-structured

spectrum spectrum

Fales: The Paradox of Timbre

lience, formant-based timbres can be said to require a greater magnitude ofperceptualization than harmonically-structured timbres. A formant consists of harmonics that have already been perceptualized into a salient unit, whereas harmonically-structured timbres have undergone no prior perceptualization when they are examined for grouping and source characteristics. In a sense, then, harmonically-structured timbres are purer, less "con- taminated" by perceptualization, and closer in nature to the raw acoustic form in which they were emitted.

Examples of timbre juxtaposition are as plentiful as those of timbral

anomaly. We have already seen one such contrast: A review of the overtone singing represented in Figure 5 reveals that the music actually employs both techniques of timbre manipulation. Not only does the resulting sound constitute a timbral anomaly, but it also juxtaposes the quintessential formant-structured sound with the quintessential harmonically-structured sound by taking from the vowel-formant timbre a single harmonic, a sine-

tone, to be perceived as pitch. Thus the musician produces the anomaly of multiple pitches from a single-voiced instrument, while simultaneously including both ends of the timbre continuum in his vocalization. While overtone singing is remarkable in using both timbre techniques in a single sound, its real power lies in the fact that it encompasses distant points on the timbre continuum in the same sound. A classic example of juxtaposition over time occurs in Indian sitar music with the ornament of "minde"

by which a string is bent on its way to a target pitch. Like many stringed instruments, the sitar produces a timbre that is typically formant-based; regular use of minde, however, produces a sudden prominent harmonic that fleetingly rearranges the instrument's timbre into a harmonic-structure (Fig- ures 8a and b), an effect that appears to be constant in spite of considerable variability in the timbral quality of sitars overall.20

Perceived Timbre Juxtapositions

The implication of the timbre continuum is this: A juxtaposition of formant- and harmonically-structured timbres entails a redistribution of

perceptualization. If as noted above, a harmonically-structured sound is

shaped by a less intense perceptualizing influence, then it is more easily predicted from a consideration of its acoustic components-that is, it is more similar to the signal which it represents-than is a formant-structured sound. A sound's position on the timbre continuum, then, reflects not only magnitude of perceptualization, but the relative similarity of the perceived sound to the acoustic signal that provokes it, or the proximity of the sound-and by extension, of the listener-to the acoustic world.

73


Figure 8a: Spectrogram of sitar ornament, minde.

An Analogy, With Apologies to Plato's Cave

Imagine sitting in a spot for most of a lifetime at a precise distance from an impermeable screen behind which exists a glowing source of constant warmth. If you never moved from the sitting position, you might wonder about domains beyond your awareness, but you would have little suspicion of a defined region containing a heat source behind the screen. However, if you were to move forward and backward relative to the screen, you would feel a temperature fluctuation with changing distance from the screen. With no other information, you would remain oblivious of the glowing source behind the screen; but you would know that something on the invisible side of the screen emits warmth, since its effects on the visible side of the screen-as measured by your sensory thermometer-alters with proximity to the screen and the invisible world behind it. And by means of your changing reaction to this "thing" behind the screen, you would have ongoing indication of a domain where the thing resided.

In the same way, the skillful arrangement of contrasting timbres moves listeners to different perceptual positions relative to the acoustic world, positions that reflect auditory processes differing in quality and degree, and resulting in different sensory reactions. Part of the experience of listening in these situations extends beyond the sounds themselves, to an awareness of differences in timbral processing, in degree of perceptualization and


Figure 8b: Spectral slice of sitar tone during minde, at point marked by arrow in spectrogram lOa.

proximity to the acoustic world. Because this awareness occurs in the pass- ing of musical time, it is most likely nonspecific. Just as the moving sub-

ject in the analogy remains unaware of the glowing source, so also musical listeners receive no information from processed sounds as to the nature or contents of the acoustic world, but only the awareness of a realm revealed in the changing magnitude of processing it requires. Though subtle and brief, the moment offers listeners phenomenal evidence that the world is a facsimile, a humanized rendering-as though perception were noth-

ing more than a projection of features onto a domain whose real character is indecipherable. In this moment, the paradox of timbre is revealed.

Implications : Timbre Manipulation v. Perceptualization

We have already observed that a major difference between the broad

categories of timbral anomaly and juxtaposition lies in the relative durabil-

ity of their effects: timbral anomaly can be startlingly dramatic, but is quickly absorbed into a listener's repertoire of familiar sounds; timbre juxtaposition, on the other hand, is ongoing, cumulative, and quietly relentless in its assault on the barriers between the perceptual and acoustic worlds. As noted above, timbre manipulation in all its forms stands in direct opposi- tion to the efforts of perceptualization whose function is nothing if not to shore up the walls enclosing a listener's perceived world. The difference in potency of the various timbre techniques, then, can be understood as an ongoing tally of wins and losses in the struggle between perceptualization and musical timbre manipulation. A comparison of the three methods of timbre manipulation is represented in Figure 9. Notice particularly the

Figure 9: Comparison of techniques of timbre manipulation.

TIMBRE ANOMALY

Examples Effect

Result

Role of Musician

Reliance on acoustics Robustness of effect Listener susceptibility

By extraction Overtone singing; didjeridoo; mouthbow. One or more harmonics extracted from

timbre and heard out separately. Perception of an extra sound in absence

of extra source. Alters musical sound to emphasize

relevant elements (acoustic & perceived worlds).

Moderate to intense. Moderate to intense. Moderate to intense.

TIMBRE JUXTAPOSITION

By redistribution Steel pan tones; Whispered Inanga. Timbre broken apart, elements

redistributed to other groupings. Perception of sourceless sound.

Induces listeners to perceive sound in non-source mode (perceived world).

Slight. Depends on listener. Controllable by listener.

Panpipes; sitar minde. Juxtaposition of formanted and

harmonically-based timbres. Rapid changes of degree/kind of

perceptualization. Alternates timbres appropriately

(acoustic world).

Intense. Intense. Intense.


relationship between degree of reliance on acoustic factors in creating timbre effects and the strength of the effect.

If, as described above, auditory perception generally is the result of acoustic stimulus plus perceptualization, then timbre anomaly by extraction works on the acoustic stimulus, timbral anomaly by redistribution works on perceptualization, and timbre juxtaposition works by revealing the interplay between the two. What we find is that the three techniques of timbre manipulation-timbre anomaly by redistribution, anomaly by extraction, and timbre juxtaposition-form a scale of progressively more effective control of perceptualization as reliance on the acoustic world increases. If the technique of extraction relies on the acoustic world to a

greater extent than the technique of redistribution, the technique of timbre juxtaposition is totally centered in the acoustic world. And if the musician who employs the extraction technique is therefore more in control of its success than the musician employing the redistribution technique, a

performer who uses the juxtaposition technique has even greater power over its success. Put another way, a listener exposed to all three methods of timbre manipulation has progressively little power to resist the effect as its production moves from the redistribution to the juxtaposition tech-

niques. In terms of the musical effect of the different techniques, the abil-

ity of each to disrupt perceptual equilibrium, to fracture the listener's perceived world becomes more intense and predictable with movement from

juxtaposition to extraction to redistribution. The theory presented here proposes that when musical timbre is han-

dled in specific ways, it works against the ongoing efforts of perceptualization to maintain a seamless perceived world. If it cannot show us the

gross discrepancies between the perceived and acoustic worlds by presenting us with timbral anomalies, fictional sources, and proof that the same acoustic signal yields different percepts from one moment to the next, then timbre forces an awareness of perceptualization as it engineers those dis-

crepancies, then hides all evidence of its work. It would be foolish, of

course, to suggest that every time listeners experience the right combination of timbres in music, suddenly they understand all the principles of acoustics. Like many auditory phenomena, timbre effects pass swiftly and with subterranean impact. If indeed timbre is a parameter of sound that is

unconsciously processed and experienced, listeners at a concert will not be conscious of each perceptual tremor delivered through their ears. Rather, I suggest that the very subliminality of these sensations is a clue to their

power. If one recalls the immunity of unconscious phenomena to direct examination and the inevitable misattribution of unconscious effects, if one recalls that especially reflectively-unconscious sensation may lack phenomenal definition, it is not surprising that listeners might feel the power of music without ever considering its timbral basis.

78 Etbnomusicology, Winter 2002

Instead, the cumulative effect of a musical experience of dramatic, subtle, sustained, or sporadic timbre manipulation-the flashing into view of the acoustic world-may move listeners with a range of specificity and emotion: from a more or less vague sense of perceiving something normally imperceivable, to an unaccountable feeling of transcendence or separation from the earthly world (of sources), to a more general notion that music is an imperfect translation of something, to the apprehension of something absent or lost of which a hazy essence is returned through music. It may be, that is, that the inaccessible effects of musical timbre elicit a kind of rorschach subjectivity: detached from the mooring of perceptual constancy, listeners make sense of their experience in whatever expressive cur- rency is around.

Inanga and Kubandwa

If the effects of timbre manipulation are phenomenal but not reflectively conscious, then one should not expect musicians to be able to describe their use of timbre, nor listeners their response. But it would be entirely consistent with what is known about unconscious processes to interpret patterns of timbre variation as indirect evidence that musicians are aware of and using timbre effects strategically, though they may be conscious only of choosing sounds that seem to "work" better in one context than another. A comparison of three kinds of Burundi song that use the inanga as accompaniment will reveal timbral patterns that suggest strategic variation and demonstrate the characteristics of timbre manipulation discussed above. Two of the genres that use inanga also employ respectively the techniques of timbral anomaly and timbre juxtaposition, so that their comparison will reveal primary differences between the techniques and typical contexts of use.

Voiced Inanga

The first kind of song, called simply Inanga (I will call it "Voiced Inan- ga" here to distinguish it from Whispered Inanga) consists of texts from traditional declamatory styles of poetry sung to an inanga accompaniment. These texts are sung in full voice, just as they are when sung to other instruments like the umuduri (musical bow) or the sanza (mbira). As a musical form, this kind of inanga music seems to constitute a catchall category, consisting of songs sometimes sung a cappella or to other instruments, by men, women, and children, in no particular context, and for no particular audience; in common parlance, the category includes virtually any song sung to the inanga with the exception of the music specifically classified


under another genre of inanga music. Lacking any generic homogeneity, Voiced Inanga is too unwieldy for exhaustive description here. Of importance to the argument however, is the quality of the combined timbres of the instrument and singing voice (Figure 10). All things being equal, Voiced

Inanga shows no generic specification for timbre effects. As seen in the

figure below, both the voice and the instrument with its soft-wood resonator are formanted. In view of its generalized usage, Voiced Inanga is useful as a kind of default or baseline timbre for comparison with the other two

genres of inanga music.

Whispered Inanga

If Voiced Inanga is a heterogeneous genre, Inanga Chuchotee is the

opposite. The music was introduced in the beginning of this paper, mentioned again in the section on timbral anomaly by redistribution, and I have dealt with its special qualities at length elsewhere (Fales 1995a, 1995b, 1998). Relevant to discussion here is Whispered Inanga's manipulation of timbre to create a pronounced anomaly, an auditory illusion around which

performance of the music is shaped. The essential effect is this: The text of the genre is whispered in the tonal language of Kirundi. Because a whis-

per is acoustically pitchless, the vocal component of Whispered Inanga is limited in two ways: it cannot produce a melody, and it cannot produce the linguistic tones that distinguish grammatical or lexical features. Never- theless Burundi listeners claim with absolute conviction that the musician

"sings" to the melody of the inanga; the musician's voice must "meet" the

strings of the inanga by going up and down in pitch in coordination with the melody of the accompaniment. In regard to the tonal contours of the

language, listeners point out that if the voice failed to go up and down with the inanga, the singer would be "mispronouncing" or "speaking wrong" the text. Part of the illusion of Whispered Inanga depends on features of the

genre that function to link the instrumental and vocal parts of the song by giving linguistic functions to the instrument, and musical functions to the voice. For example, the tonal contours that are absent in the whispered text are instead produced by the inanga, which simultaneously matches the moraic rhythm of the text. Thus tone and vowel length are two features of the text that are reflected in the instrumental melody. In addition, a hier-

archy of generic rules-some linguistic, some melodic-is built into the combined sounds of the whisper and instrument, until the relationship between the inanga and voice is entirely synergetic.

The synergy of the voice and instrument allows interaction between features of the two components to produce a timbral anomaly. Specifical- ly, primary elements from the harmonic complex of the inanga fuse per-


ceptually with the vocal (whispered) component of the genre to produce the sensation of a melodicized whisper, an example of anomaly by redistribution and a true auditory chimera. Notice however, that the voice/instrument synergy is based on constructs existing only in the mind of the

listener, not in the physical sound to which they apply. It is the listener who expects the voice to produce a melody, the listener who expects melodic and tonal correspondence, the listener who expects vowel length to be reflected rhythmically.21 As described above, the redistribution tech-

nique does nothing to change acoustic properties of the relevant sounds, it is the listener who must experience the changes. As the whispered stro-

phes alternate with short instrumental interludes, the illusion turns on and off with each verse, each time requiring listeners to rearrange their perceptual grouping strategy.

The work of the Whispered Inanga musician is subtle and indirect. He intends his music to introduce a timbral anomaly into the perceived world of his listeners. But whether by design or necessity, he cannot change the acoustic world of his sounds, and he cannot enter the perceived world of his listeners. Instead, he carves out from their shared acoustic world a smaller world-call it an acoustic arena, a performative space-where perhaps listeners can relinquish their source-ridden perception without

physical danger. Or perhaps it is simply a place where the musician sub- stitutes other concerns for source identification. Following the generic rules of Whispered Inanga, he creates a place where the distinction between sources is less clear cut and exacting: musicians insist that they can only perform at night when auditory and visual distraction is at a minimum, and

they position themselves with faces as close to the inanga as possible to minimize the distance between sources and obscure localization cues that result from their separation. But these efforts represent the limit of the musician's control over his music's reception. He can create the smaller arena of Whispered Inanga, he can beckon to the audience, but finally, listeners enter or not as they will. One might suppose that part of the experience of Inanga Chuchotee is the implicit decision on the part of the audience to yield to the musician, to the perceptual transformation of his music. For the illusion to succeed, listeners must be willing to surrender their concentration and imagination in service to the illusion.

Inanga musicians are well aware of the importance of the listener's

willingness to fall under the spell of the music:

Ni mwijoro nyene ikunda kuvuga mwijoro. Ku murango It [inanga] likes to speak only at night. In the daytime, haca imyaga nyinshi abantu bakavuga ari benshi. Nayo ahandi there is a lot of chatter, many people are speaking, while inanga urabona mw'ijoro, abantu baba bahoze bakababicaye bamwe

bakumvira


the inanga-you see, at night people are silent and sitting together, and they'd listen to

uno murya w'inanga. . . to that string of inanga. .. (Etien Biranguza, Rusaka Commune)

nayo ahandi hari abatumva neza bokwumva upfa Otherwise there are those who don't hear well, they only hear kuvuza mu murya, batazi gufata ico uriko uravuza. .. what you make the strings speak, they don't know how to hear [the

substance] of what you're causing-to-speak. .. bobitora batevye kuko abantu ntibategera kimwe They discover/feel it [the effects of the music] slowly, because people don't

understand in the same way. urabona kwiga kwumva inanga biba mu maraso. You see to learn to hear Inanga it has to be in the blood. (Joseph Torobeka, Bujumbura)

The phenomenon of Whispered Inanga then, is not so much an illusion as a collusion between audience, performer, and instrument.

Inanga ya Kubandwa

The last kind of inanga music to be examined here is the least hetero-

geneous of the three and the most constrained in performance. It is performed only by designated individuals and only in very particular circumstances. The music is a ritual part of an initiatic possession cult called

kubandwa, and it demonstrates the second large category of timbre ma-

nipulation, the juxtaposition of timbres from opposite ends of the timbre continuum. Kubandwa, is a phenomenon of all the intralacustrine countries of Africa (Berger, 1973). In other countries, the cult worships a spirit called

Ryangombe; in Burundi, the spirit is called Kiranga or occasionally Kiran-

ga-Ryangombe. In all countries where kubandwa is practiced, the spirit Kiranga-Ryangombe, is understood to have begun as an ordinary mortal; this fact is important, since it means that Kiranga-Ryangombe is actually one of an infinite number of imizimu or ancestor spirits who are ordinarily in- clined to malevolence at the slightest sign of neglect from living relatives. One of Kiranga's functions is to protect the living from dead.

By all accounts, the rituals marking the celebration of kubandwa are more often arduous, draining of resources, and fearsome than they are joy- ous or purely celebratory. Initiation, in particular, occurs in the dead of

night and involves a fair amount of unpleasantness for the initiate. Part of the apparent lugubriousness of kubandwa ceremonies begins with the precise role of Kiranga in regard to his human charges. Though he may grant favors-and a large part of various rituals seems to consist of listing the wants and needs of supplicants-Kiranga and his spirit attendants act pri-

82 Etbnomusicology, Winter 2002

marily as protection against a vibrant world of sometimes vicious spirits. And Kiranga too can be exacting and vengeful if an umubandwa (a follow- er of Kubandwa) promises something to the spirit in return for some de- sired outcome, and then fails to deliver. But most often Kiranga is enlisted to help ward off attacks by the intezi or abaganza, spirits whose particular role seems to be to afflict human victims as a way of bringing them to Kiranga. On being called by an igishegu or adept of the cult,

Kiranga yaseruka uno munsi kuri uno (muntu) yavyiteguriye.. . emwe [Kiranga] agabanga.

Kiranga makes himself be seen that day at the house of the one who commanded the ceremony, and then he forms a screen (between the protected and the assailing spirits).

(Marita Ntawenganyira, Sous-colline Mija)

There is little hesitation on the part of ababandwa to admit that one does not come willingly to kubandwa, a sentiment mirrored in numerous kirundi proverbs. The term "kubandwa" in fact derives from the passive form of the verb kubanda, to push or press, so that the very name of the cult-to be pressured-implies the reluctant submission of adherents. The sequence of events leading to initiation seems to be as follows: A man or woman becomes sick; perhaps s/he consults a traditional healer who offers no relief, or a European doctor who is equally powerless, or both. By now, it is clear that the victim has been assaulted by some unnatural force- a spirit of some kind-and s/he hopes fervently to find that the spirit is umuzimo-an ancestor spirit-since these are among the least noxious and costly to appease of all spirits. Next s/he consults an umupfumu, a divin- er or sorcerer, who investigates the condition and announces-alas-that the victim is not beset by imizimo, but instead "arategwa intezi", s/he has been thrown or attacked by the intezi or abaganza spirits whose appease- ment demands initiation to kubandwa. Bernard Zuure points out that while Rwandans come to Ryangombe willingly and with celebration, the Barun- di are coerced, chosen by Kiranga who shows his choice by sending the intezi: "Utaterwa intezi ntiyobandwa-he who is not thrown by (possessed) the intezi will not go to kubandwa" (quoted in Zuure, 1929).

However, both in live interviews and in the little existing literature about kubandwa, there is considerable suggestion that initiation provokes conflicting feelings. The initiate has, after all, been personally chosen and betrothed by Kiranga, and whether male or female, becomes Kiranga's "wife" for the duration of the initiation ritual. There appears to be a fair amount of pride on the part of initiates at being the center of what is un- doubtedly an impressive ceremony, and at joining a community which has previously excluded them. Furthermore, there is large evidence that once


initiated, ababandwa are eager to proceed to a higher stage in kubandwa, a stage where they become ibishegu, are privy to esoteric knowledge, and have the authority to initiate new members or to conduct other ceremonies which praise or call Kiranga for protection or special requests. Though it is true that ibishegu are often the recipients of various gifts and offerings, it is unlikely that they accrue enough real wealth from their position to motivate them to higher levels in the cult, especially since the position also

subjects them to a fair amount of responsible and sometimes onerous ac-

tivity in the community. More likely, those who become ibishegu feel a real

calling to the position, a kinship to Kiranga and his spiritual attendants, and a desire for ongoing contact with the world they inhabit.

If kubandwa inspires conflicting reactions, the conflict sharpens in the

experience of Inanga ya Kubandwa. Inanga ya Kubandwa differs from the other two kinds of inanga in both sound and purpose. It is not entertain-

ment; it is sung prayer. Interviews suggest that questions concerning tal- ent or skill in performance make little sense to the ababandwa, though this seems less true in regard to the ability to play the inanga than the ability to

sing. Typically, all participants in a kubandwa ritual sing, though usually the leader of a song in call-and-response form is the one who plays the inan-

ga, almost always a man. With the exception of a better or worse ability to remember texts to many songs, there seem no real criteria for a good or less good performance. The sole characteristic that seems to distinguish one

performance from another is the quality of ubuguruguru, a term difficult to translate, but meaning something like "noise", "agitation," or "turbulence." The term actually applies less to a performance of Inanga ya Kuband-

wa, than to a ritual or ceremony at which the music has been performed in a particular manner. Not only does ubuguruguru distinguish different calibres of music within the context of kubandwa, but it also distinguishes Inanga Chuchotee from Inanga ya Kubandwa.

inanga ifise kuvugirwa hasi apana gusobora ijwe urisbire hejuru Whispered Inanga has to be whispered for with a low voice, not a high

voice, Harya inanga uyongoreye ushobora kuyumva na we nyene. Nayo harya

ushira That inanga you whisper for it, you can hear it in the right way. While when

you put ijwi hejuru, canke ukayivuza cane ukaturutsa umurya. Birya

birashobora a high voice, or you speak in a high voice, you make the string cry out loud.

It [Inanga ya Kubandwa] can kwanduruku nko ku buguruguru nyene. cause that turbulence exactly [that we spoke about]. (Lazare Nkurikiye, Colline Biganda)


From this and similar comments in recorded interviews, it is clear that the difference between Inanga Chuchotee and Inanga ya Kubandwa is not

simply that the first is whispered and the second sung in full voice, but that the singing in the second is high-and there is no question here that "high" means "high in pitch." Inanga ya Kubandwa requires a kind of falsetto that not only sets it apart from Inanga Chuchotee, but also from Voiced Inan-

ga. And it is exactly the falsetto of the voice combined with the timbre of the inanga that produces the effect described earlier as timbre juxtaposition. Unlike the whispered and voiced components of the other two genres, the high sparse sound of the falsetto-both for male and female singers- produces a stark harmonic that pierces the thick formants of the inanga. An even greater contrast is implemented with the addition of inyagara, gourd rattles filled with seeds or pebbles that are essential to rituals in all the kubandwa cults of east/central Africa. Inyagara produce pronounced, noisy formants that alternate with the harmonic structure of the voice.

A comparison of the three kinds of inanga music presented here shows that Voiced Inanga combines an instrument whose timbre has the relative-

ly pronounced formants of most soft-wood, stringed instruments, with ful-

ly-voiced vocal formants. All things equal, Voiced Inanga requires no regular timbre effects. Whispered Inanga shows the same elements as Voiced

Figure 10: Spectrogram of an excerpt from Voiced Inanga. Horizontal lines are inanga harmonics; curving lines are voice harmonics. Both are well- defined and formanted.

I

__ 7M;w_;''''_11.. '. I..l lU _11 : -

r------


Figure 11: Spectrogram of an excerpt from Inanga Chuchotee. Hazy shad- ows are the noise of the whisper.

Inanga, except that the vocal formants consist of noise rather than the discrete harmonics of voiced singing. The timbre effect is dramatic in Whis-

pered Inanga-the entire genre revolves around it-but the effect is invis-

ible to acoustic analysis, since it is purely perceptual. In Inanga ya

Kubandwa, the et o the thime oeffect is clearly visible from acou s- crete harmonics of voiced singing. The timbre effect is dramatic in W:;his- pere d Inanga--the entire genre revolves around it--but the effect i s invisible to acoustic analysis, since it is purely perceptual. In Inanga ya Kubandwa, the impetus for th e t imbre effect is clearly visible from acoustic analysis. Indeed, as described above timbre juxtaposition depends on

purely acoustic elements of the sound, so that spectral analysis of Inanga ya Kubandwa shows clearly the features that qualify a timbre as formanted or harmonically-structured. Thus, an important distinction between Whis-

pered Inanga and Inanga ya Kubandwa lies in the degree to which their re-

spective methods of timbre manipulation adhere to the perceived world. In Whispered Inanga, the musician uses a technique that appeals directly to the forces of perceptualization, so that the entire effect occurs within the perceived world; in Inanga ya Kubandwa, the musician relies on acoustic features of juxtaposed sounds to dictate the behavior of perceptualization.

A corresponding distinction exists in the susceptibility of listeners to the techniques in each genre. As noted above, the use of anomaly by redistribution in Whispered Inanga results in an effect that is largely volun-

tary on the part of listeners, whereas the use of timbre juxtaposition in

Inanga ya Kubandwa results in an effect that is almost inescapable. If Whis-

pered Inanga charms listeners into a timbral anomaly, Inanga ya Kuband-


Figure 12a: Spectrogram of an excerpt from Inanga ya Kubandwa. Notice single prominent harmonic, second from bottom.

wa captures them and assaults them with acoustic awareness; if the Whis-

pered Inanga audience drifts in and out of the appropriate perceptual mode, modulating the impact of the effect, the kubandwa audience is riveted by music whose effect intensifies relentlessly. Perhaps the most important difference between the two kinds of inanga is that whereas Whispered

Figure 12b: Spectral slice of tone in figure 12a at point marked with arrow on spectrogram 12a. Notice spike of prominent harmonic.

----------------- - - ;


Inanga is performed by a musician using all his artistry to persuade listeners to perceive a timbral anomaly, Inanga ya Kubandwa is enacted by the listeners themselves. Together the ababandwa create a juxtaposition of timbre, each offering a sound to contrast with the others. As a group, they build a musical momentum that no one individual can halt or resist, until the contents of the perceived and acoustic worlds overflow into each other. It is in this overflowing that is the significance of ubuguruguru appears to lie.

In kubandwa, then, the combination of the inanga and inyagara with the falsetto voices of the ababandwa brings ubuguruguru into the music, and leaves the border between the acoustic and perceived worlds perme- able. Whether or not adherents of kubandwa actually understand the phenomenon in terms of worlds and borders, it is surely no coincidence that the metaphor of expanded perception plays well into the objectives of the ritual. For just at the moment when the border between the acoustic and perceived worlds weakens, Kiranga appears, having crossed over from the world of spirits into the world of the living. Kiranga yabonetse-lets himself be seen-Kirangayasokoroka-manifests himself. It is as though over- exposure to the effects of timbre juxtaposition allows the ababandwa to open a window between the worlds through which Kiranga enters. Al- though it is unlikely that the arrival of Kiranga is conceptualized by the Barundi specifically in terms of the ritual music that accompanies him, still the analogy presented here is more than just a figurative paralleling of acoustic and spiritual worlds; rather it presents a precise resume of a listener's stance in regard to the known perceived world and the unknown acoustic world. In the relationship between the spirit Kiranga and his human wor- shippers we see in condensed form all the dimensions of a listener's un- derstanding of a world of acoustic sources he knows is there but cannot experience directly.

Just as a listener infers a source he cannot see from its impact on his auditory system, so also an umubandwa infers the existence of Kiranga from the spirit's impact on his life; as a listener constructs the nature and condition of the source from qualities of its impact, the umubandwa judges Kiran- ga's moods, his pleasures and peeves by the kind and intensity of his impact. Though a listener has only auditory-thus circumstantial-evidence of a source, if he determines it to be an object of consequence, he responds with conviction; he does not wait for proof of an oncoming truck to step back onto the curb. Similarly, a confirmed umubandwa responds directly to Kiranga, though the evidence from which the spirit's will is inferred may seem indirect, random, or ambiguous to a nonbeliever. Indeed, neither the listener nor the umubandwa respond at all to the immediate evidence, but rather to the entity that the evidence confirms. Only an impossibly naive listener steps back on the curb to avoid the sound of a truck, rather than the truck itself; and only a noninitiate would go to a healer or sorcerer to


cure the illness which is only a symptom of Kiranga's attention ("Si mur- wayi, yaganiye na Kiranga"-he's not sick, he's chatting with Kiranga). Just as a listener conflates sound and source to hear a cricket, an umubandwa takes the medium of Kiranga's message to be Kiranga himself.

Like elements of the acoustic world, Kiranga can be experienced only at one remove, and part of the esotericism of the cult appears to reside in the secrecy surrounding the recognition and interpretation of that remove. A notable consistency in interviews of ababandwa and in literature on the cult is the conflation of Kiranga with signs of his influence. The birth of twins or the striking of lightening are not simply omens or afflictions im- posed by Kiranga to show pleasure or disapproval. They are rather Kiran- ga himself, present at a greater or lesser remove from the perceiver. Often an event constituting a greater remove of Kiranga's presence seems to call for the ceremony at which Kiranga is present with the least remove, in his possession of an igishegu, an adept. Even in expository interviews detail- ing the step-by-step procedures of kubandwa, informants elide the stage between preparing for a ceremony, gathering the faithful, and the moment of Kiranga's first appearance; ababandwa seem never to distinguish between the possessing spirit and the possessed conduit. According to most interviews, Kiranga indicates his arrival with a characteristic sound, ukuvumera, a word best translated as "lowing" or "mooing", the sound a cow makes to its calf. At the sound of ukuvumera, Kiranga is present.

Jewe, usanga arijewe, Kiranga-kiri-umweru, emwe tera imbere nk'umuzinga.

Me, you have found me, Kiranga-painted-white, so progress forward like a hive of bees.

(Felix Agahimbare, Colline Musanga)

Neither our interviews nor the interviews documented in available literature record details of the possession process-no trauma, no signs that the possessed is undergoing a personality transfer. Simply Kiranga is there and the chosen igishegu is not.

Interview questions meant to explore the juncture between the possessed and possessor-what if one igishegu gets tired, can Kiranga move to another body? What if there are ceremonies on two hills at once; can Kiranga be in two places at once?-questions such as these seemed to make no sense to the ababandwa.

Ntibaba bagira ngo ni uguhita gusa.. . .ngo urya ni Kiranga. It doesn't have anything to do with some person only identified

(recognized), this one is Kiranga. ahasigaye Kiranga agaca asokoroka, akabonekera aho, hano kuri uno

munsi.


There is nothing left but Kiranga appears, he makes himself seen, there, on that day.

(Marita Ntawenganyira, Sous-colline Mija)

The possessed does not become Kiranga; rather the possessed is Kiranga, and when Kiranga is gone again, something else exists in his place, just as

Kiranga is present in the birth of twins, whereas when he's not there, the birth results in only a single child. The trick is not so much to recognize the signs of Kiranga, but to recognize the forms of Kiranga, and the degree of the perceiver's remove from that form. Kiranga is perceivable in each form, but the indirectness of that perception, the degree of remove between the perceiver and Kiranga as presented in that form is measured by the

obscurity of the connection between the form and Kiranga. Though these

degrees of obscurity seem randomly assigned to an outsider (Kiranga-as-lightening presents him at a smaller remove from the perceiver than Kiranga-as- an-act-of-bravery-in-battle), the correlation of Kiranga's proximity with type of representation seems so longstanding to the ababandwa as to require no

explanation; Kiranga is closer in the form of lightening than he is in the form of bravery in the same way that Burundi is closer to Rwanda than to Gabon. The most direct, least removed experience of the spirit is the perception of Kiranga incarnate in the body of an igishegu. All encounters with Kiran-

ga-whatever the perceptual remove-lead to this ultimate presentation of the spirit incarnate, though even it is one remove from direct experience of the spirit. Direct experience of Kiranga would require a sojourn in the

spirit world, a world unattainable to living beings in a mortal world. In a sense, the entire cult of kubandwa consists of movement toward and away from Kiranga depending on the form in which he presents himself.

The variable proximity of the ababandwa to Kiranga, of course, adds

depth to the analogy between timbre juxtaposition and kubandwa. Just as a harmonically-structured sound at the extreme end of the timbre continuum invokes the least amount of perceptualization, resulting in the greatest similarity between the perceived sound and the acoustic signal that provokes it, so also the presence of Kiranga incarnate in a human body results in an experience that approaches most nearly a direct encounter with Kiran- ga in the spirit world. And just as the similarity between perceived sound and acoustic signal reflects the proximity of the listener to the acoustic world, so also the nearly-direct encounter with humanly incarnate Kiran- ga reflects the proximity of the umubandwa to the spirit world. A final similarity between kubandwa and musical timbre juxtaposition is the quality of submission each requires. Both phenomena in a sense define a field of

power, and having crossed into that field, participants relinquish the ability to resist the power. Questions concerning the relative strength of Kiran- ga and his human conduits elicit notions of fatalism and resignation:


Interviewer (Rosemarie Kadende): None nk'ubu, umuntu yatewe tuvuge, arashobora... .umuntu Well, like this, a person who's been thrown (possessed by Kiranga), can he

... a person ataraterwa arashobora [kwanka] ... kwankira nk'ico cari can he [refuse to] not be thrown ... refuse with those amulets kumuzamwo? Nk'ubu comatuma nko kwica umuntu, yobigira? to come over to them? For example, if they (Kiranga and/or his attendants)

ordered him, say, to kill a person, would he do it? Arashobora kwanka? Urumva aho mvuze nyene ikuntu gibambaye cane, Could he refuse? You understand I'm taking here (an example of) something

very terrible/complicated mugabo tuvuge nk'ubu kimutumye kugira ikindi kintu nyene kigoye. . . but let's say, for example, he ordered him to do some other thing/act

delicate... Umubandwa: Oya... .ico ntibiba.. .oya, ntibiba. Oya Ntibiba. Oya. . . No, this, it can't be, no it's not possible, no it can't be no... aba agomba kwiyabura.. .Bimatumye gutryo, kuri iryo jambo He wants to kill himself. When the things (spirits) order him like that, to

that word kwica umuntu, aba abagomba kwiyahura. . .Indome ziwe ziba To kill a person, he wants to kill himself.. .his words/his term zashitse Imana yamwandikiye. has arrived there (at the end of the plan/story) that God has written for him. (Bitama Marcien, Ecole Primaire de Busimba)

Just as the only retreat from timbre juxtaposition is to remove oneself from the music altogether, escape from Kiranga's will seems to correlate with a loss of vital will.

Without pursuing the analogy further, I point out that the parallelism between timbre juxtaposition and kubandwa emerges in part because the two phenomena may be seen to have a common basis: both proceed from an impetus toward what is unknown. It has perhaps been evident from the

beginning of this paper that the perceived world/acoustic world distinction is simply a subregion of the subjective/objective dichotomy that em- braces the contributions of all the sensory systems to a perceived reality as constructed from the objective reality of physical stimuli. To the extent that the subjective/objective distinction describes the line between the known and unknown, many formulations of an essentially epistemological duality end in metaphysics: the ultimate unknown is God. Thus, it is perhaps not inappropriate that music that explores the subjective/objective duality in one domain should become an expressive instrument in explor- ing the same duality in another domain.


Conclusion

I have proposed in this paper three characteristics of timbre that contribute to its role in music. First, timbre constitutes a link to the external world in containing the descriptive clues important for source identification and for deciphering aspects of the terrain between the source and the listener. Second, it functions as perceptualization's primary instrument in accomplishing its various objectives. And third, it is a parameter of music that we experience phenomenally, but without informational consciousness. The first two of these characteristics are responsible for what I have called the paradox of timbre: that timbre is the parameter of sound most implicated in source identification but also most implicated in the discrepancy between an acoustic signal and the percept it provokes. The third characteristic of timbre is the one that allows it the malleability and elusiveness to wield its power in music. As an informationally unconscious phenomenon, timbre is restricted to indirect measure and its effects are likely to be misattributed to some other outstandingly conscious aspect of the experience. Thus, timbre is free to operate with little direct scrutiny by a listener, creating effects that are intense but also hazy in definition, difficult to articulate, and freely attributable to other features of the musical context. Without addressing the issues of universalism or comparativ- ism, then, we might note that though the principles of auditory cognition presented in this paper imply a certain uniformity of process, they also allow wide variation in result. Indeed, the "misattribution" that is so clear a clin- ical sign of unconsciousness becomes an unmarked conceptual and musical field to be shaped with all the creativity and variability whose study is the substance of ethnomusicology.

I do not mean to imply that musicians in command of the various techniques of timbre manipulation understand the acoustic or cognitive implications of what they do in the way they have been presented here; it may well be, in fact, that they are as informationally unconscious of timbre as their audience. But it is clear that a gifted musician knows that certain sounds or combinations of sounds carry a power that others do not, and that part of a musician's art includes a sense of when to make use of that power. A skillful use of timbre betrays the stratagems of perceptualization, disrupts its efforts to maintain an unfractured perceived world, and subjects listeners to relentless small pricks from perceptual to acoustic awareness.

If there is doubt as to the ability of musical timbre to reveal the existence of acoustic and perceived realities, one might consider the frequency with which musical sound is represented in many traditions as a kind of "double medium", a place-holder for some absent entity: music as the


voice of the ancestors, as the sounds of nature, as the cry of lost children, as the wisdom of totem animals. Western music as well has consistently conceptualized music with a kind of binary structure: in a sense, the entire history of western music aesthetics is shaped by the effort to explain why perceived music is not simply itself-an art form with sound as a

medium; rather, music is an earthly reflection of divine proportion, a ren- dition of celestial harmonies, an imitation of nature, or an expression of the

passions. Perhaps conceptions of music such as these reflect the efforts of diverse cultures to recover a "sourceness" lost from music, or to make sense of the disjuncture between acoustic and perceived worlds unveiled by musical timbre.

Notes

1. Rhythm, of course, is also subject to determinations of rightness or wrongness, though for expressive purposes, broader deviations in meter than in pitch are tolerated.

2. It is artificial to talk about one musical parameter in isolation from the others. They all interact and are at times perceptually interchangeable. But since in most respects, timbre is distinct from and covaries with pitch, loudness, and duration, and because it must be iso- lated conceptually to understand its unique functions and effects in music, I will continue to refer to it in isolation.

3. We should note from the outset that the ability to use timbre in music or to hear timbral change is not the same as the ability to describe or directly examine timbre: it is perfect- ly possible that even musicians who are particularly sensitive to timbre might still be unable to describe what they are hearing.

4. Even in literature on Western music in fact, from the presocratic philosophers until the early romantic period, descriptions of timbre are practically nonexistent, except rarely and often elliptically in regard to performance technique. For example, Charles Burnett points out that throughout the middle ages "whenever the perception of two different sounds is discussed. . . differences in pitch rather than in any other quality are at issue. Pitch is the

primary differentiating factor in sound-rather than say, brightness, volume or sweetness" (1991:48); and as early as the twelfth century, the translator Dominicus Gundissalinus noted that there were no words to describe differences in sound quality; different sounds "had no names of their own", but were described by analogy with other senses (63).

5. The neurobiologist Walter Freeman (2000) describes the same paradox as a more general phenomenon:

The conclusion is that the only knowledge that animals and humans can have of the world outside themselves is what they construct within their own brains.... This finding could not have been obtained by introspection, because the process of observation contains within it some well-known operations that compensate for accidental changes in appear- ances of objects owing to variations in perspective, context, and so forth.... Each exposure to a stimulus changes the brain's synaptic structure so that it cannot respond identically over time, although it may appear subjectively to be so. (414)

6. Recent MNN experiments show listeners able to preattentively detect timbral changes in sound segments so short in duration that a pitch determination is impossible.

7. Recent attempts of theoreticians (cf. Erickson 1975, Slawson 1985, Cogan 1984, Cogan and Escot 1976) to establish analytical systems of timbre have sadly met with little response. Also, an anonymous reviewer for this paper points out that among ethnomusicologists, Ger- hard Kubik, David Dargie, and David Rycroft have also addressed issues of timbre.


8. Impulsive sounds are those produced by discontinuous excitation of a vibrating material (plucking or striking, for example); sustained sounds are those produced by a continuous stimulus (blowing or bowing, for example).

9. For ease of expression and consistent with current (perhaps deplorable) practice, I will use the words preattentive and unconscious synonymously to refer both to auditory processes that occur without the active awareness of the listener, as well as to the results of that processing.

10. An example of phenomenal consciousness without reflective consciousness might become apparent if, after a few days of feeling uncharacteristically pessimistic and negative, one suddenly realizes, "Oh yes, this is a general sadness that occurs every year near the anni- versary of my father's death"; the realization of the exact content and cause of one's unchar- acteristic emotion marks the return of previously absent reflective consciousness; an example of reflective without phenomenal consciousness might be a situation in which one recogniz- es intellectually an object or person to be dangerous, while continuing to feel unthreatened, even to the point of carelessness.

11. The necessity of grouping acoustic elements by source results from the fact that incoming signals from multiple sources undergo a form of natural Fourier transform by which the composite signal is "unravelled" at the basilar membrane into discrete frequency components. Each component sends a signal to the brain, traveling along neural pathways that are predominantly tonotopic, with the result when news of the signal reaches the brain, its elements are mapped by frequency rather than by source.

12. E.g., heuristics might group together partials that are harmonically rather than non- harmonically related, that have the same onsets, that modulate in frequency together, etc.; all of these features are characteristic of sound in the acoustic world.

13. In addition to the relative amplitudes of its harmonics, a sound's timbre is also characterized by its attack and time variant spectral features.

14. For example, a source-based schema might group together a collection of frequen- tial components based on their harmonic relation to each other (e.g., frequencies of 220 Hz, 440 Hz, 660 Hz, 880 Hz, 1100 Hz, etc.), producing the percept of a tone of pitch A, with a distinctive timbre; under the right circumstances, a simultaneous tone consisting of harmonic frequencies of 165 Hz, 330 Hz, 495 Hz, 660 Hz, 825 Hz, and 990 Hz might succeed in "cap- turing" not only the 660 Hz component of the first tone, which fits into its own harmonic series, but also the 880 Hz component, not because it is harmonically related to other frequencies in the second tone, but because it "follows" the 660 Hz component into a new grouping. The result of this capture would be that both the first and the second tone would have a new timbre.

15. Among other generic variations in both overtone singing and didjeridoo music, the prominence of the unfused elements may be varied or maintained at a level of intensity that exceeds only slightly that of surrounding harmonics, so that inexperienced listeners are often unable to hear the extracted elements separately, while experienced listeners can shift perceptual gears back and forth between "hearing out" the harmonic elements separately or leaving them fused to the original timbre. When listeners "leave" the elements fused to an original timbre, they can be said to be resistant to the effect of timbre manipulation.

16. As opposed to noise which can also be considered timbre without pitch, but which does not consist of harmonically-related overtones, but rather of random frequencies.

17. The harmonics that are produced on stringed or other instruments to create pitches in an upper range are not really single frequencies, but rather some subset of the original tone's harmonics; on a stringed instrument the specific hamonics included in this subset are determined by where the string is touched lightly enough to prevent certain modes of vibration.

18. In reality, of course, the difference between the extraction and redistribution techniques is a matter a degree. As the overtone in overtone singing becomes less and less prominent, the creation of anomaly becomes less a function of extraction and more a function of redistribution, albeit of a single component; it is said that particularly gifted Tuvan children


can hear overtones in a simple drone even when none are emphasized, so that they are able to hear whatever melody they like in any steady tone (personal communication).

19. More evidence for this difference lies in the fact that if any single harmonic is filtered out of a formant-based sound, the overall sound quality of the sound remains unchanged; if a

single harmonic is filtered from a harmonically-structured timbre the difference in sound quality is immediately apparent.

20. Thanks to Scott Marcus for information regarding the effect of bridge construction on sitar timbre.

21. That these qualities are perceptual, not acoustic, is confirmed by the fact that they are idiosyncratic to listeners who speak a language that is tonal with long and short vowels; nonKirundi speakers are often hardpressed to hear an illusion that comes easily to Kirundi

speakers.

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