Étude ethnomusicologique du bagana, lyre d'Éthiopie

Weisser, Stéphanie

doi:10.2307/40240658

Cited by 3 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…The great number of statements falling into subcategories 6.3.6 and 6.3.8 (both related to the contact with the divine) can also be explained by the conception of God in Christian Amhara society: the sacred has to remain hidden and may not be investigated – as illustrated by the lyrics of the famous bagana song Manimeramere (“Who can question?”, cf. Weisser, 2005, p. 45–47, 288). God himself is usually elusive (Reminick, 1975, p. 28) and can only be “reached” through intercessors, the most important being the Virgin Mary, to which the bagana is strongly linked according to tradition.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recurring themes of bagana songs are death, the futility of life on earth and its perversions. The lyrics seem to possess a cathartic dimension: musicians and listeners exorcize the frustrations stemming from the toils of everyday life and the fear of death, giving meaning to their suffering as the path to redemption (Weisser, 2005).…”

Section: The Ethiopian Lyre Baganamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Melodic variation of the ostinato , when it occurs, is always subtle (from a single note to half a musical phrase). Singing voice and bagana are in a relation of quasi-homophony (Weisser, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emotion and music: The Ethiopian lyre bagana

Weisser¹

2011

Musicae Scientiae

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The bagana is a paraliturgical lyre played by the Christian Amhara of Ethiopia. It is used to perform spiritual music. Bagana is an intimate instrument, accompanied by the singing voice only. It has a special role in Christian Amhara music, as its myth of origin closely connects it to God, the biblical King David and King Menelik I. It is reputed to be very powerful and its performances arouse intense reactions in both players and listeners. Some of these reactions were observed directly (immediate calming, tears, overwhelmed faces). Inner reactions to bagana were investigated by means of 108 statements collected from 32 participants (from virtuoso players to simple listeners) during interviews or discussion. Statements were classified by using the Strong Experiences related to Music (SEM) descriptive system ( Gabrielsson & Lindström Wik, 2003 ). Results show that the inner reactions bagana elicits are varied (statements fall into six of the seven categories of the SEM descriptive system) but a majority of the statements can be classified into the Feelings/Emotions (5) and Existential and Transcendental (6) categories. The least commonly admitted reactions fall into the Physical Reactions and Behaviours (2) and the Perception (3) categories. These results are discussed in detail and confronted with the direct observations. The utility and difficulties of the SEM descriptive system in ethnomusicological contexts are also discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Ethiopian Lyre Baganamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emotion and music: The Ethiopian lyre bagana

Weisser¹

2011

Musicae Scientiae

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“…The analyzed corpus comprises 29 melodies of bagana songs performed by 7 players (5 men, 2 women), and 8 derderotch. These 37 pieces were recorded by Weisser [25] between 2002 and 2005 in Ethiopia (except for 2 of them recorded in Washington DC). In this paper, no differentiation will be made between derdera and bagana songs.…”

Section: Bagana Corpusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The analysis of the learning process used by the most revered player, Alemu Aga, has shown that the first phase of this process is based on exercises composed of short motifs [25]. These exercises correspond, according to Alemu Aga, to motifs that are either frequently or rarely encountered in his real bagana songs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Antipattern Discovery in Ethiopian Bagana Songs

Conklin

Weisser

2014

Discovery Science

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This paper develops and applies sequential pattern mining to a corpus of songs for the bagana, a large lyre played in Ethiopia. An important aspect of this repertoire is the unique availability of rare motifs that have been used by a master bagana teacher in Ethiopia. The method is applied to find antipatterns: patterns that are surprisingly rare in a corpus of bagana songs. In contrast to previous work, this is performed without an explicit set of background pieces. The results of this study show that data mining methods can reveal with high significance these antipatterns of interest based on the computational analysis of a small corpus of bagana songs.

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Rethinking Musical Instrument Classification: Towards a Modular Approach to the Hornbostel-Sachs System

Weisser¹,

Quanten²

2011

yearb. tradit. music

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In 1914, Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs created a hierarchic ordering (macrotaxonomy) of all musical instruments, even though they (and many others after them, see Kartomi 1990 and 2001) pointed out the difficulty of developing a systematic classification of all musical instruments (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961:5). This conceptual framework implies that the classifier has to walk one and only one route in the process of classifying objects. This cut-off “tracing” cannot possibly encompass all the possible features that make an instrument what it is and inevitably eliminates several other essential qualities of the object.

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Étude ethnomusicologique du bagana, lyre d'Éthiopie

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Emotion and music: The Ethiopian lyre bagana

Emotion and music: The Ethiopian lyre bagana

Antipattern Discovery in Ethiopian Bagana Songs

Rethinking Musical Instrument Classification: Towards a Modular Approach to the Hornbostel-Sachs System

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