Inuit throat games and Siberian throat singing

The aim of this article is to show how throat singing and playing are similar in different circumpolar cultures, yet carry different meanings among the Inuit of Canada, the Ainu of Sakhalin Island (a former Japanese territory annexed to the Soviet Union in 1945), and the Chukchi of Russian Siberia.1. I first studied Inuit throat games in the 1970s, with my research group at the Université de Montréal, which included Nicole Beaudry, Claude Charron and Denise Harvey. The group was supported mainly by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This research focused on the katajjaq2 found mainly in northern Quebec and southern Baffin Island. Conversations with Monique Desroches, a former student who is now one of my ethnomusicologist colleagues at the Université de Montréal, as well as articles on the katajjait written by members of the Inuksiutiit anthropological team at Université Laval (Saladin d'Anglure, 1978; Carmen Montpetit and Céline Veillet, 1977, 1984) also helped me understand the religious significance of these games.

The work, published and unpublished, of Beverley Diamond Cavanagh (1976), Denise Harvey and Ramon Pelinski helped me to understand throat games practised, under other names, in other Inuit cultural regions: among the Netsilik Inuit and the Caribou Inuit. I myself visited the Inuit Iglulik region. These groups are located on the north-western side of Hudson Bay and north of Baffin Island.

In 1978, I had the opportunity to gather material and information from the Ainu of Japan on the rekutkara genre similar to katajjaq of the Inuit, thanks to a UNESCO research grant and the help of my colleague Kazuyuki Tanimoto of Hokkaido University of Education. More recently, Professor Tanimoto organized two conferences on circumpolar music, the first in Sapporo in 1992 - where I had the opportunity to meet two Russian specialists, Maria Zhornitskaya and Yuri Seikin, who provided me with important information - and the second in Magadan (Russia, 1994). The latter trip enabled me to collect recordings and information from the Chukchi of Anadyr.

I don't want the reader to think that throat music is the main musical genre of Inuit culture. From Alaska to Greenland, one genre predominates: the drum dance song. Today, an abundance of literature and recordings allow us to know what drum dances and their music are like among the Inuit.3. This is not the genre to which my research group devoted the most attention in Montreal. We concentrated on throat plays, which in Canada are culturally distinct from drum dance songs.

Throat games are performed by two women facing each other. They sometimes touch each other with their hands, or hold each other's shoulders or arms. Several recordings of katajjait4 can be used to introduce readers to their musical aspect. Example 1 shows a transcription of one of them: the square designates the exhaled sound, the triangle the inspired sound, the white symbolizes the voiced sounds, the black the unvoiced sounds.5. This transcription immediately shows that, most of the time, the second voice repeats the first, but out of phase canonically.

A similar genre, the rekutkaris found among the Ainu. There are two main groups of Ainu: those from the island of Hokkaido, in northern Japan, and the Kraft Ainu, who lived in Sakhalin before immigrating to Hokkaido following the annexation of this region by the Soviet Union. As far as I know, the rekutkar does not exist at all among the Ainu of Hokkaido; it is found only among the Ainu Kraft of Sakhalin. During my research in Hokkaido in 1978, I learned that the last Sakhalin immigrant to have practiced rekutkar died in 1973. However, I was able to find in archives recordings of this kind released in 1947 on 78 rpm records6. Example 2 provides a transcription of one of them.

Kazuyuki Tanimoto has published pieces that use the same throat technique: the eynen peak of the Siberian Chukchi (1992, pieces 9 and 13-24). Similar vocal productions can be found in other parts of Siberia, among the Koriak, Even, Evenk and Tungus groups. Obviously, all three genres, the katajjaqthe rekutkar and the eynen peakuse roughly the same vocal technique, which I'm going to describe using the example of the katajjaq. My main aim here, however, will be to focus on the varied functions and meanings of these vocal productions in the three cultures in which they are found. This will then lead me to use phylogenetic methods and semiological concepts to explain the similarities and differences between these genres.

 

Visit katajjaq of the Inuit

 

Let's start with the katajjait of the Inuit. What do we hear when we listen to a performance of this kind? Primarily, two homogeneous chains of sounds: a chain of low-pitched sounds (generally referred to as throat sounds) and a chain of higher-pitched sounds. We also hear the constant use of inhaled and exhaled sounds that create what we call a "breathy style". The throat sound of the lowest chain does not always appear as such in games performed on the western side of Hudson Bay (cf. Nattiez et al., 1989). From a circumpolar perspective, the main feature common to the three cultures studied is fundamentally the breathy style, but the throat sound is nevertheless of overriding importance.

After careful analysis of the katajjaitwe can establish that the motif is the basic construction unit of a katajjaq. It is made up of a morpheme, a particular rhythm, a melodic contour, a pattern of voiced and unvoiced sounds, and a pattern of inhaled and exhaled sounds. It is this last characteristic that allows us to speak of a "breathy style" (for a more detailed description, see Nattiez, 1983a). Each of the low-pitched and high-pitched sounds is emitted alternately by each woman. Most of the time, the pattern of the second voice is identical to the pattern of the first voice, but occasionally it is completely different.

In the frequent situation where the second voice imitates the first, the overall effect results from the superposition of the two voices, which are canonically out of phase. Thus, at the very moment when one woman produces a low-pitched sound, the other produces a high-pitched sound, giving the sensation of hearing two homogeneous chains of sounds, one low-pitched and the other high-pitched.7. The vocal pattern is repeated a certain number of times, and the sequence of these patterns creates a kind of phrase. But then a second motif appears which, through repetition, creates a second phrase, and so on. Very often, at the end of these productions, we hear the performers laughing. Why do we hear this?

So far, I've carefully avoided talking about songs: culturally, this genre is primarily a game. Beverley Cavanagh (1976), who studied similar productions among the Netsilik Inuit, was probably the first among the "Arctic Circle" of the Society for Ethnomusicology to insist on this aspect. Among the Netsilik, these productions belong to the larger family of ulapqusiit (traditional games), identified more precisely as nipaquhiit ("sound and noise games"). As Nicole Beaudry (1978b) has pointed out, this is also true of the throat games of northern Quebec and southern Baffin Island. For Cape Dorset Inuit, the katajjaq is a pileojartuq (a game played by two people).

At any moment, one of the two women may decide to change the pattern; the second woman must follow despite the change, and the new pattern is repeated until we hear a new alteration. They must continue for as long as possible, which requires a certain amount of stamina. It's quite difficult to perform this genre, and if one of the two women runs out of breath or is out of step with her partner, the performance stops and she loses the game. In some particular regions of the Inuit area (Cape Dorset, to be precise), where the katajjait are practiced, we were told that this competition can occur between two teams. A woman from team A performs this game with a woman from team B, and the winning team is the one that has eliminated all the women from the other team.

One of the two teams must win, but with merit: there is a gradation in the difficulties of sound production. It must also win with beautiful, quality sounds, experienced in the learning sessions.8. So virtuosity and aesthetics are no strangers to Inuit throat playing. What's more, the two women have to give the impression of perfect cohesion: those in the audience shouldn't be able to figure out who's doing what, and that's probably why it took the members of my research team a long time to figure out how these sound productions were performed.

Visit katajjaq is mainly a women's game. Men don't play it today. They learn it as young children, but as soon as they start hunting with their fathers, they stop.

So, since the katajjaq is a game, it seems its function is to entertain partners and audience alike. Actually, it's a little more complicated: I define throat play as a multi-purpose reception structure (cf. Nattiez, 1983a: 460).

Firstly, a structure. Regardless of the circumstances in which they are performed, these stops exhibit a number of the formal traits I mentioned earlier: rhythmic and morpheme patterns, melodic contours, voiced/unvoiced and inspired/exhaled sound patterns. Despite the astonishing variety of possible combinations of the constituent elements, the throat games present a homogeneous style.

Visit katajjaq is a structure home because its basic rhythmic and respiratory structure incorporates sound sources of various origins: meaningless syllables, archaic words, names of ancestors or people of yesteryear, animal names, place names. Women may also decide to perform a katajjaq by naming an object that is near them at the time of the game performance. They may introduce Western melodies, religious hymns or drum dance songs. If we put together the information gathered by researchers at Université de Montréal and Université Laval, and the data provided by a recording made in Povungnituk9The list of animals imitated is quite long, including geese, seagulls, seals, eiders, ptarmigan, walruses, dogs and mosquitoes. Performers also imitate natural sounds: wind, water, waves, beach sounds, the cracking of the northern lights. Although Inuit women in northern Quebec and southern Baffin Island do not imitate only the calls of geese, Montpetit and Veillet (1984) have suggested that, in all performances of katajjaitThe body position of both partners mimics the competition of geese during the mating season. On the west side of Hudson Bay, among the Caribou Inuit and Netsilik Inuit, long verbal phrases are also integrated into throat plays. In the record devoted to the vocal games of the Caribou, Netsilik and Iglulik Inuit, one can hear, for example, an original phrase, in Inuktitut, on the chewing of seal peritoneum, and the way this same phrase is performed in the panted style (Nattiez et al., 1989, parts 1 and 2).

This structure is called multifunctional because the game can be performed at any time, as a means of personal or group entertainment (the team game I mentioned earlier), as a way of keeping babies quiet, as a breathing exercise in anticipation of bad weather, and as a way for women to have fun and play with each other.

When a text is used, the original is difficult to recognize because the "breathless style" modifies it. What's more, the participants don't pronounce the words at the same time because of the canonical phase shift, and sometimes the two women put their heads side by side in a kitchen basin, which alters the sound of the words. As Beverley Cavanagh points out, the textual transformations turn the games into enigmatic riddles that listeners must decipher. They are used "to develop a child's (or an adult's) powers of imagination and reasoning... It's not just ambiguities that remain in the text, even once it's understood. It is fundamentally a challenge to the ear and to the intelligence to make sense of sounds." (Cavanagh 1976: 46-47)

In a compelling article, anthropologist Bernard Saladin d'Anglure proposed the idea that the games of the katajjaq were performed during the shamanic period, i.e. before the arrival of missionaries, on the occasion of three collective seasonal festivals: those of the spring equinox, the summer solstice and the winter solstice. In winter, "these feasts would be a kind of celebration of the reproduction of life, to hasten the return of the sun, the reproduction of play and the hunters' feast celebrating the bonds that unite them". At the beginning of spring, "the throat games could have had the function of hastening the return of the large migratory birds: the geese. At the end of spring, it could coincide with the brooding period, another important moment of reproduction that they encouraged" (Saladin d'Anglure, 1978: 90). The relationship between katajjait and fertility rites has been recognized more recently by an Inuk from Iqaluit10.

In September 1979, I had the opportunity to interview a woman from Piuvignituk, Alassie Alasuak. According to her katajjait were performed while the husbands were away hunting, a fact that Montpetit and Veillet, two students at Quebec's Laval University, had already established (1977). We find a similar observation by explorer William Edward Parry, when he describes, probably for the first time in history, an execution of throat games. He begins his narrative: "Occasionally, when most of the men are absent from the huts on a sealing excursion..." (1824: 538). Alassie was the only Inuk woman in northern Quebec to tell me that the katajjaq is used to hasten their return, attract animals to be hunted, or favorably influence natural elements such as air, wind or waves.

These particular fragments of information led me to formulate a hypothesis (Nattiez, 1992: 633) about the function these games might have had in the past, before the missionaries exerted their influence11 . In my view, they would have been linked to shamanism, not only in the ceremonies that have disappeared, but also in domestic executions. I don't use the word "shamanism" to refer only to what the shaman does in a given community. By shamanism, I mean all the practices and rites performed by all the members of an animist society. The hypothesis could be formulated as follows: while the men are out hunting, the women perform these games not only to amuse and entertain each other, but also to exert a certain influence on the spirits of birds, sea mammals, wind, water, ancestors, etc., with the aim of creating the most favorable conditions possible for hunting and fishing. As with the feasts mentioned by Saladin d'Anglure in connection with throat games, domestic performances would be addressed to the spirits of nature and animals. The fact that these practices are games is not a problem in the religious context of a traditional society where our modern opposition between secular and profane dimensions does not exist.

Hunting was of paramount importance in traditional Inuit society. If my hypothesis is correct, then we're dealing with both a symbolic and sexual division of labor. Using throat games as a means of influencing the animals and elements of nature, women would participate on an equal footing with men in the survival of the community. The men kill the game, while the women perform the games to influence the spirits. Inuit women's throat games are a kind of survival music.

 

Visit rekutkar of the Ainu

 

I spoke deliberately and cautiously of a hypothesis because no one in the field told us about this religious dimension. Only Alassie Alasuak cautiously alluded to it, insisting that she was born after the shamanic period. This silence on the subject of shamanism is easy to understand. The missionaries were effective between the 1920s and the 1950s: the Inuit don't talk about the shamanistic connotations of throat-playing, either because they're afraid to mention them, or because they're no longer aware of the religious connotations associated with the practice, which is no doubt particularly true of the younger generation of Inuit. My research among the Ainu of Japan and the Chukchi of Siberia reinforces this hypothesis.

What indeed is rekutkar among the Ainu? This word can be analyzed by examining its components: rekut means "throat" and kar means "to do".12. As can be seen in a photograph of a performance by a rekutkarpublished by William Malm in his book on Japanese music (1963: 242), the performers sit facing each other.

It's highly likely that the way they use their hands has an acoustic function: to fuse the sounds of both partners into one. Inuit women in the Caribou region also use a cooking bowl to achieve a similar effect of fusion and resonance. I can't say whether the rekutkarIn the Kraft Aïnou culture, sitting was seen as a game, a song or both. To my knowledge, the sitting position is not used by the Inuit of northern Quebec when they perform the katajjaqIt is, however, used by the Iglulik and Netsilik Inuit.

In a performance by rekutkarThere can be more than two couples and up to ten people. As an unpublished video by Ramon Pelinski shows, this is also sometimes the case among the Caribou Inuit. According to Fussa Kanaya (daughter of the late rekutkar in Hokkaido who died in 1973) whom I interviewed in 1978 with the help of Professor Tanimoto, the rekutkar was performed during the main hunting ritual of the Kraft Ainu in Sakhalin, the Bear Festival. More precisely, it was performed during the "rejoicing" part of the Festival preceding the ritual killing of the bear (i.e., before the bear was taken out of its cage to be killed). During this ritual, the women, leaning forward, would form a circle facing the center, their two hands used as a megaphone.

What does the rekutkar in the context of the Bear ritual? For the animist Ainu, the bear is the most important sacred animal, contributing to the strength and vitality of human beings. To perform the ritual, people feed and raise a baby bear in a cage until it reaches one year of age. They then organize the ritual killing of this bear, so that its spirit can return to paradise and tell the bear-gods how well it has been treated by human beings.

In a song, a rimse (Tanimoto and Nattiez, 1993, part 4), the text reads: "hau o peurep rekau", which means: "please, you bear, make your throat sound". If we refer to this recording, we can hear it clearly in the background of this song. It was performed during the festival, when a rope was passed around the bear's neck, just before its execution. This seems to establish with certainty that the bear's cry is associated, in Ainu culture, with the sound of the throat.

Finally, a song by Sakhalin, published by NHK in 196513contains sounds very similar to those of the rekutkar. The commentary accompanying this recording states precisely that these sounds correspond to those made by the bear on its arrival in paradise (Sarashina, Tanimoto, Masuda, 1965: 495).

 

Visit eynen peak of the Chukchi

 

Let's turn now to a few examples of how this throat technique is used in Siberia. As I mentioned at the start, this technique can be found in several Siberian groups (Chukchi, Even, Evenk, Koriak). However, it should not be confused with the production of harmonics in the songs of the Tuvas, for example, who also call them "throat singing" and claim, of course, that "they are the only true throat songs". I'll concentrate on a few examples from the Chukchi, because I've studied them through interviews with Chukchi from Anadyr.

The ritual context of these songs is very much alive in Siberia. Communism didn't destroy aboriginal religions, it froze them. Today, the Chukchi people practice many seasonal rites: for salmon, for the first birth of a reindeer, for the first reindeer killed, and so on. This technique of singing is not used in the context of games, as is the case with Canadian Inuit, but in ritual dances. Each dance, with its associated vocal production, depicts - with gestures representing animal behavior and vocal imitation of their calls - a variety of beasts: reindeer, seals, partridges, cranes. It is necessary to please their spirit in order to have, with a little luck, a good hunt or a good catch. Once again, these practices are linked to the quest for survival.

From a musical point of view, the eynen peak(i.e. the throat singing of the Chukchi) differs slightly from the katajjaq inuit: while a katajjaq is performed by two women (or, more rarely, a multiple of two), a large number of Chukchi women can perform the eynen peakone performs the lead voice, while each of the other women improvises on the basis of that voice14.

I mentioned earlier my hesitations about the rekutkar is it a game or a song? As far as the Chukchi are concerned, I'm sure that the eynen peak are not designed as games, but as songs. The Chukchi expression eynen peak means "to sing with the throat". When I asked them directly if they were playing games, they replied that singing for fun is when someone makes faces to make the audience laugh. There's no idea of competition.

But the comparison between katajjaq and the eynen peak brings us two surprises. During the executions of katajjaqThe performers have only one posture: they stand one in front of the other, with their mouths as close together as possible. Their bodies follow the rhythm of the performance, but the women remain in the same place. Among the Chukchi, as can be seen in a video by Moscow choreographer Maria Zhornitskaya, there are many choreographic figures: a solo dancer; a group of women in a circle dancing and turning clockwise; a line of dancers next to each other facing another line of dancers; a couple of dancers hopping; one woman alternately pulling each arm of the other woman facing her. But one particular figure is striking: in one dance imitating partridges, and in this one alone, body movements and sound productions are similar to those of the katajjaq inuit.

The second surprise arises when we watch the Chukchi crow dance in the same video: a sequence of sounds using throat technique appears before or after sequences of drum-dance songs whose pitches are similar to those we know from Western music, and following animal imitations. This is not the only performance of this type: the same succession of throat sounds, sung pitches and animal imitations occurs in a piece recorded by Henry Lecomte among the Chukchi (s.d., piece 11).

At the very beginning of this article, I pointed out that, in Inuit culture, drum dance songs and throat games are two different genres that are never performed "glued" together. They can, however, be performed during the same festive event. In fact, they have something in common: they both call for endurance. A good drum dancer is one who can keep the heavy drum turning with a flick of the wrist for as long as possible: good throat dancers are those who can keep the heavy drum turning for as long as possible: good throat dancers are those who can keep the heavy drum turning for as long as possible. katajjaq as long as possible without failure.

But, on the other hand, these two genres are completely different: Inuit drum dance songs tell stories linked to the life of the hunter, who is usually a composer-poet. Among the Inuit Iglulik, the song he composes is passed on to his wife, who in turn teaches it to the other women in the community. When people gather for festive occasions, the dance is performed by the composer-poet-dancer, and the song is sung by a chorus of women gathered in the igloo. Among the Inuit of Eastern Canada, women are the poetic memory of the community. These songs have well-identified authors, and even among the Caribou Inuit, they are considered "personal songs" (cf. Nattiez, in Nattiez-Conlon, 1993). On the other hand, there are no identified composers of Inuit throat games. Today, they are referred to as gamesThey are performed by women. Among Inuit symbolic forms, men's dances and women's games are two separate domains.

With the Chukchi, the situation is completely different. As I mentioned earlier, the eynen peak can be performed autonomously, but they can also be integrated into a sequence of dances. The Chukchi do not cognitively separate throat sounds from the sounds of drum dance chants performed during dances. Songs are performed in the context of ritual dances, whose sounds may be pitches (in the Western musical sense), animal imitations, etc. and throat sounds. This corresponds to the fact, acknowledged by Professor Tanimoto in an unpublished paper15that the imitation of animals in Ainou songs (such as the upopothe rimse or the kamuyyukar) has religious significance in an animist context. In my opinion, the same observation applies to the throat sounds of the katajjaq Inuit games in the shamanic era. But there's a difference between the songs of the Chukchi and the games of the Inuit: with the Chukchi, two groups of symbolic systems - dance movements and throat vocal technique combined with panting style - are united in a single symbolic form, ritual dance. For the Inuit, these two forms are separate and autonomous.

How can we explain this situation?

 

Phylogeny of circumpolar symbolic forms

 

The presence of this throat technique and its relationship to specific body movements and different meanings around the pole reinforces William P. Malm's proposal in 1967 that ethnomusicologists study what he called the music Circumboreal (1977: 209). Needless to say, a more comprehensive view of this circumpolar culture would have included all the other genres of music, and above all, the different types of drum dances that vary from Siberia to Greenland. Comparing Siberian throat-singing and Inuit throat-playing, I suggest that the similarities and differences between them could be elucidated on the basis of two questions of a semiological nature: firstly, to explain the similarities between signifiers through the phylogenesis of symbolic forms; secondly, to explain the diversity of cultural meanings through a general theory of the relationship between signifier and signified.

When a similar cultural trait or artifact is discovered in two distinct geographical regions, three types of explanation are possible: a universalist explanation, a diffusionist explanation or a phylogenetic explanation.

For example, the throat technique combined with the alternation of inhaled and exhaled sounds is found in singing ihamma the Tuareg Kel Ansar of Mali16. This area is so far removed from the circumpolar region that it is impossible to imagine an explanation for the analogy that would be based on diffusion or contact. What's more, the breathing analogy is set in a completely different sound context. In the case of the katajjaqfrom rekutkar and eynen peakthroat technique is linked to similar characteristics, as previously demonstrated. Here, the universality of the vocal apparatus may explain why two totally separate cultures produce similar sound events.

A diffusionist explanation of the similarities between throat games is sometimes possible. I have been able to establish that Netsilik Inuit throat games were introduced to Iglulik Inuit in northern Baffin Island by Rose Iqalliuq, a woman who learned them from her Netsilik mother, but moved to the Iglulik Inuit region (Nattiez, 1982: 137).

Can we explain the vocal and choreographic similarities between Inuit throat plays and Siberian throat singing in the same way? I think they're too far apart.17 to be the result of borrowings made during specific contacts between groups so far apart in the Arctic.

I'd therefore prefer a phylogenetic explanation.

Today, it is known that the Inuit emigrated from Asia to the American continent in the last of three migrations, through what is now known as the Bering Strait. Among Inuit and Asian peoples, distributional analogies between linguistic features (Greenberg-Ruhlen, 1992), archaeological artifacts (Leroi-Gourhan, 1946) and genetic data (Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza, 1994) have been established. This strongly suggests that these connections are the result of a migration that occurred four to five thousand years ago (Greenberg-Ruhlen, 1992: 97). The same is probably true for the katajjaq of the Inuit, the rekutkar and the eynen peak of the Chukchi, since the distribution of these three genera considered as a whole coincides with non-musical distributions recognized by linguists, archaeologists and geneticists (cf. Nattiez, 1983b, for an analogy of the distribution of throat technique and archaeological artifacts).

When did Inuit drum dances and throat games develop from a common substratum into separate, autonomous genres? We don't know, but we can try to explain two things: why, in all these genres, we find important similar features, such as melodic contours, inhaled and exhaled sounds, voiced and unvoiced sounds, throat technique, imitation of animals by voice and body movements; and why, although similar in form, these features are linked, in different cultures, to distinct genres such as songs, dances and games.

According to recent comparative and historical linguistic research (Greenberg, Turner, Zaguara, 1986; Greenberg, 1987; Ruhlen, 1987, 1994), the languages we know today belong to large families and developed from common origins. Since the 19th century, linguists have recognized the existence of Indo-European, from which French, English, Italian and Romanian derive, as well as Sanskrit, Avestic, Ancient Greek, Gothic Irish and Old Irish. The status of the Eskimo-Aleut language family (to which Inuktitut belongs) and the Chukchi-Kamchadal language family (to which Chukchi belongs) is well established (Ruhlen, 1987: 127-36). But Ruhlen suggests that "the most promising external links for the Chukchi-Kamchadal language family seem to be with the Eskimo-Aleut language family and the Giliark isolate" (ibid.: 126). Whether Ainu belongs to the Altaic family is still debated today (ibid..: 258-59). Ruhlen is tempted to assign it to the Japanese-Ryukiyvan language group (ibid.: 329). Is it possible, perhaps, that the ainou has a status analogous to that of the giliark? Would it be possible for the ethnomusicologist to suggest that the presence of the so-called throat technique among the Inuit of the Eskimo-Aleut division, among the Chukchi and Koryak of the Chukchi-Kamchadal division, among the Even and Evenk of the Altaic division, and among the Ainu might reinforce the hypothesis of a link between these three families? Connections between linguistic, genetic and cultural characteristics have recently been proposed. It is fascinating to discover that these three linguistic divisions correspond to three genetic divisions of the peoples who speak these languages, as demonstrated even more recently by Luca Cavalli-Sforza (1996: 225). For this geneticist, this is also true of cultural artefacts (1996: chapter 4; see also Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1988; Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza, 1994: chapter 6).

Because of the persuasive force of Cavalli-Sforza's demonstration regarding the conclusions of Greenberg and his school, I believe that protoforms of drum dances, drum dance songs, games and throat singing of the Inuit, Ainu and various Siberian peoples, dispersed to the northern part of both continents at the time of the third migration, four or five thousand years ago, and gave rise to the different genres that we can today distinguish, observe and compare.

If the dances, songs and games of the northern peoples evolved from common protoforms, as is the case with genes and languages, why do we find today, on the one hand, songs - including throat sounds - linked to dances, and, on the other, throat sounds linked to games? Because, historically, these particular symbolic forms (songs, dances, games) have been derived from a set of basic components that are not specific to songs, dances or games.

At this point in the examination, I'd like to follow Jean Molino's lead on the semiological functioning of symbolic forms. What, in his view, are the main anthropological characteristics of art? Forms and qualities, rhythms and values, affects, practical activity, symbolization, the pragmatic dimension (1991: 75-76; for a more recent formulation of his theory, cf. Molino, 2009: chap. 17). Similarly, if we look at the identical characteristics "behind" the symbolic forms studied here, what do we find? Rhythm is not only a feature of music, but also of dance, architecture and the body (e.g. heartbeat and breathing). Pitch relationships exist not only in music, but also in tonal languages. Intonation glissandi are typical of the melodic contours of questions and answers in languages, but can also be found in certain ways of singing. Timbre is a quality of both language and music. Gestures are linked to linguistic expression, to certain stereotyped aspects of games, and are present in dances, pantomime and imitations. In other words, what each culture has produced as families of particular symbolic forms - songs, dances or games - is in fact the result of a combination of proto-components which, as such, are not specific to songs, dances or games, but which constitute the basic parameters with which the various symbolic forms have been historically and culturally constructed. This explains why the gestures and pairing of women described above can be found in a particular Chukchi dance and as the body position at the base of the katajjaq in northern Quebec. This also explains why the sitting position is present in the domestic practice of the rekutkarIt also explains why the throat technique can be found in Siberian hunting and fishing ritual dances as well as in the domestic games of today's Inuit women.

Of course, all these symbolic forms have - or more precisely, had - something in common. The gestural and sonic imitation of the elements of nature, including animals, has (had) a religious function: to please the deities in order to get a good grip. In this sense, I fully agree with Roberte Hamayon, a French specialist in Siberian shamanism, who considers the games, dances and fights of the Siberian peoples (and in my opinion, this is also true of the Inuit) as rituals performed for the gods (1995).

 

Semiological autonomy of signifiers and signifieds in symbolic forms

 

If all this is true, we need to explain why these symbolic forms no longer carry such religious connotations today, especially among the Inuit of Canada. The semiological distinction between signifier and signified, in a historical perspective, will help us understand how a similar form (a signifier) receives a new meaning (a new signified) in a different culture.

As we've seen, around the North Pole we find a stable sound signifier, characterized by the "panted style" - inhalation/exhalation - with frequent use of so-called throat sounds. As the cultural environment changes, so do the meanings associated with these techniques and gestures. Among the Inuit, this vocal technique is used today in the context of games without, apparently, any religious connotations. Among the Chukchi, it is integrated into the context of ritual dance singing. When religious connotations are associated with the use of this vocal technique, the signifier to which the choreography and vocal sounds refer varies according to the religious and cultural context: the goose, seals and natural elements among the Inuit; the bear among the Ainu; a wide range of animals among the Chukchi.

From this situation, we can draw conclusions of wider interest to general musicology and semiology. In symbolic sound forms, the form (the meaning) is more resistant to change over time. However, the signified - the religious significance of animal imitations and the nature associated with these forms - is evanescent.

To demonstrate the generality of this observation, I'd like to tell a little story linked to my first visit to Japan, in 1978. When I visited Kyoto, thanks to the kindness of Professor Yamaguti, I was very attracted by the gardens and their symbolism. He provided me with an excellent guide who gave me some very interesting explanations:
"Why do we have a small mountain here?" I asked.
"This is the one where Buddha used to pray."
"In the Zen stone gardens," we were in Kyoto's Ryoanji Sekitei, "why do we have this canal with pebbles that separates the sand and stones from the rest of the temple?"
"It's the boundary between the sacred and profane worlds (higan/shigan)," he replied.
"Why do we have in the lake," I asked elsewhere, "two parallel stones, and here an oblique stone?"
"To remind us that the world is imperfect."
"Why do we have fish and turtles in the garden water?"
"Because the emperor who created this type of garden loved fish and turtles."

This last answer disconcerted me. The moment the informant was no longer aware of the symbolic function of certain aspects of the gardens, or was unable to associate one with them, the ancient signifier was replaced by an aesthetic statement implying the emperor's pleasure. In fact, the symbolic meaning associated with the fish and turtles had been forgotten by my guide. When I returned from Japan, I spent the long Tokyo-Montreal flight reading a book that could be found in every hotel in Japan (alongside the Bible): Buddha's teaching. In this book, I read: "A river is disturbed by the movements of fish and turtles, but the river flows on, pure and undisturbed by such details. Buddha is like the great river. The fish and turtles of other doctrines swim in its depths and press against its current, but in vain: the streams of Buddha's Dharma continue to flow, pure and undisturbed." (Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai, 1977: 33-34)

The same separation between signifier and signified occurred in Baroque music. We know that what was called, in the 19th century, Affektenlehrewas organically part of the music of the Baroque period. Moreover, the phrasing of this music often imitated the intonation and articulation of spoken dialogue, and many of its sonic characteristics were also signifiers of emotional and religious meanings. We are no longer aware of these symbolic associations when we listen to these works. When, recently, it was fashionable to interpret this music in a so-called "authentic" way, people like Nikolaus Harnoncourt were very aware - as he exposes in his latest writings - that authentic interpretations offered an empty shell, since we hear the right phrasing, the right signifier, but not the signified that was associated with it at the time, a signified that the musicologist can reconstruct thanks to historical research, but which remains inaccessible to today's listener. Speaking of St Matthew PassionHarnoncourt writes: "[This music] was then, much more than now, immediately perceived as a language, with many possibilities of expression. This vocabulary hardly touches us, because we no longer know it and it is no longer natural to us. (1985: 281) The loss of the symbolic meanings present in Western music led to the formalist conception of music described by Hanslick in his landmark book of 1854, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (Beauty in music).

While the religious context associated with the throat technique has disappeared among the Inuit, the vocal technique specific to the genre has remained. But either the ludic function has survived on its own, or it has replaced the religious meaning attached to the vocal signifier. This is not to say that throat games mean nothing today. They mean something else, and have a playful, competitive function. The signifiers have remained, the signifieds have changed.

This diachronic dimension explains the dissonance of information between informants. Since none of our informants from Cape Dorset, Sanikiluaq and Payne Bay ever insisted on the influence that these games can exert on the animals and elements of nature, it would seem that the testimony of just one person, Alassie Alasuak, in Puvignituk, can be called into question. In fact, Alassie was passing on information she had learned from her parents and grandparents, and which came from the shamanic period of Inuit culture. The tip of a symbolic iceberg, if I can put it that way when talking about music from the Far North! A piece of information from the ancient times of Inuit culture, but one that belongs to the realm of symbolic associations still very much alive among today's Siberian peoples.

Cultures with known relationships may use identical or similar signifiers, but semiologically, they don't work according to the same historical clock.

 

1 This article, unpublished in French, appeared in the magazine Ethnomusicologyvol. XLIII, No. 3, Fall 1999, pp. 399-418, under the title: "Inuit Throat-Games and Siberian Throat Singing: a Comparative, Historical, and Semiological Approach." I would like to thank Marie-Ève Thuot who, thanks to a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, adapted the English original into French. I have revised the text for the present publication. It was itself the revised version of the Charles Seeger lecture presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Toronto on November 2, 1996. The text of the lecture had been adapted due to the lack of visual and audio material in the paper version. The author thanks Roberte Hamayon, Henri Lecomte, Jean Molino and Bruno Nettl for their critical comments. Some elements of this lecture were presented in Tokyo on May 22, 1998, for the Koizumi Fumio Prize in ethnomusicology.

2 This is phonological writing. It should be pronounced "katadjark". Katajjait is the plural form.

3 For books, the reader may consult Pelinski (1981) for Caribou Inuit, Cavanagh (1982) for Netsilik Inuit, and Hauser (1987) for Greenland music. As far as recordings are concerned, drum dance songs are featured extensively in Pelinski (1990) for Caribou Inuit, in Hauser (1992) for Greenland, in Nattiez and Conlon (1993) for Iglulik Inuit, and in Le Mouël-Desjacques (1994) for Copper Inuit.

4 Especially Nattiez et al., 1989, and Nattiez et al., 1991.

5 This notation system was proposed by Nicole Beaudry (1978a) and Claude Charron (1978).

6 The part numbers of these 78 rpm discs are VC-27 (51) and VC-34 (65). To my knowledge, only one rekutkar recording is available today in a collection of plastic discs, published in 1965 by NHK (Japanese Broadcasting Corporation): Ainu Dento Hongaku [Ainu Traditional Music] (disc 1, side 1, part 7).

7 I am indebted to François Delalande (Groupe de Recherches Musicales, Paris) for proposing the concept of chain to characterize the perception of katajjaq. His observation ties in with a phenomenon to which psychologists of perception have devoted a great deal of attention, the formation of auditory currents (pitch streaming) that can be found in works by Bach as well as in the last movement of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony. A French presentation and references can be found in Sloboda 1988: 215-220.

8 As demonstrated by Nicole Beaudry in an unpublished work.

9 Inuit Throat-games and Harp songs. Eskimo Women's Music of Povungnituk. Canadian Music Heritage Collection, MH 1001, WRC1-1349 (Music Gallery Editions, Toronto, 1980).

10 Personal communication from Christopher Hatzis (Halifax, June 1998).

11 Anglican missionaries forgot about them after 1920 (Montpetit-Veillet, 1984: 64). Anthropologist Asen Balikci was still able to record them in 1958 at Piuvignituk, where, as in other parts of northern Quebec, Catholic missionaries encouraged the revival of traditional genres.

12 Personal communication from Professor Oshima, Sapporo.

13 See note vi. The piece to which I refer is available on side 8 of these series of four recordings, track 59.

14 I established this by using the "Arom method" of playback recording. I told the informants that I wanted to record different singers alone. I asked who wanted to be recorded first. Once that was done, I asked who would like to record their part while hearing the first voice on headphones. When I put this question to the other women, they all said they would like to record their own part while listening to the first lead vocal.

15 Presented at the Native Folk Festival-Symposium, Magadan (Russian Siberia), June 27, 1994.

16 It is possible to compare the katajjaq and ihamma by listening to tracks 12 and 13 of the first recording in the series Les voix du monde, une anthologie des expressions vocales/Voices of the World, an Anthology of Vocal Expressionpublished by the Laboratoire d'ethnomusicologie du Musée de l'homme in Paris (Harmonia Mundi, CMX 374 1010.12). The similarities with songs from Bahrain, Madagascar and Kenya on the same recording are also worth examining.

17 Following the 65th parallel, the distance between Anadyr (in the Chukchi area) and southern Baffin Island is exactly 5,000 kilometers.

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Cavanagh, Beverley. 1976. "Some Throat-Games of Netsilik Eskimo Women." Canadian Folk Music Journal 4: 43-47.

____. 1982. Music of the Netsilik Eskimo: a Study of Stability and Change. 2 vols, Canadian Ethnology Service, vol. 82. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada/Musées nationaux du Canada.

Charron, Claude. 1978. "Toward Transcription and Analysis of Inuit Throat-Games: Microstructure." Ethnomusicology 22 (2): 245-259.

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Hamayon, Roberte. 1995. "Why 'games' please spirits and displease God, or The 'game' elementary form of ritual, from Siberian shamanic examples." In Rites and ritualizationedited by G. Thinès and L. de Heusch. Paris: Vrin, 65-100.

Harnoncourt, Nicolas. 1985. The musical dialogue. Paris: Gallimard.

Hauser, Michael. 1987. Traditional Greenlandic Music. Copenhagen: Kragen/Ulo.

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____. 1977. Music Cultures of the Pacific, the Near East, and Asia. History of Music Series (2nd edition). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Molino, Jean. 1991. "L'art aujourd'hui. Spirit 173: 72-108.

Molino, Jean. 2009. The musical monkey. Semiology and anthropology of music. Arles: Actes Sud.

Montpetit, Carmen and C. Veillet. 1977. "Recherches en ethnomusicologie: les katajjait chez les Inuit du Nouveau-Québec." Inuit Studies Studies 1: 154-164.

____. 1984. "Inuit music from Arctic Quebec: contribution to a method of analysis in music anthropology." Cahiers de l'A.R.M.U.Q. 3: 58-81.

Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. 1992. "Inuit Vocal Games." Encyclopedia of Music in Canadaedited by H. Kallmann, G. Potvin, and K. Winters, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 633-34.

____. 1982. "Comparisons within a Culture: The Example of the katajjaq of the Inuit." In Cross-cultural Perspectives on Musicedited by R. Falck and T. Rice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 134-140.

____. 1983a. "Some Aspects of Inuit Vocal Games." Ethnomusicology 27 (3): 457-475.

____. 1983b. "The Rekkukara of the Ainu (Japan) and the Katajjaq of the Inuit (Canada): A Comparison." The World of Music/Le monde de la musique 25 (2): 33-44.

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Discography

Hauser, Michael. 1992. Traditional Greenlandic Music. Sisimiut, ULO, CD-75.

Le Mouël, Jean-François, A. Desjacques. 1994. Music of the Inuit (The Copper Eskimo Tradition)/Musique des Inuit (La tradition des Eskimos du Cuivre). Paris, Auvidis-Unesco, D 8053.

Lecomte, Henri. n.d. Siberia 3: Kolyma: nature and animal songs (Cukc, Even, Jukaghir). Buda, Musique du Monde/Music from the World, 92566-2.

Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, et al. 1989. Canada: Inuit vocal games (Caribou Inuit, Netsilik and Igloolik). Ocora, HM 83.

____. 1991. Canada: Inuit Games and Songs / Chants et jeux des Inuit. Auvidis-Unesco, D 8032.

Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, P. Conlon. 1993. Inuit Iglulik. Museum für Völkerkunde, Museum Collection Berlin, CD 19.

Pelinski, Ramon. 1990. Inuit music and song / Eskimo Point and Rankin Inlet. UMMUS, UMM 202
.
Tanimoto, Kazuyuki. 1992. Songs of the Chukchi. Victor, Smithsonian Folkways Records, VTCD-67.

Tanimoto, Kazuyuki, J.-J. Nattiez. 1993. Japan: Ainu Songs / Japon: Chants des Ainou. Auvidis-Unesco, D 8047.