Svan Funeral Dirges (Zär): Language-Music Relation and Phonetic Properties

Authors : Frank SCHERBAUM, Nana MZHAVANADZE

Pages : 66-82

Doi:10.33906/musicologist.875348

View : 12 | Download : 4

Publication Date : 2021-06-30

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :This paper reports on the results of a follow-up study to Scherbaum and Mzhavanadze insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(2020); and Mzhavanadze and Scherbaum insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(2020);, which jointly describe the acoustical and musicological properties, respectively, of a new collection of field recordings of three-voiced Svan funeral dirges, known as zär in Svan and zari in Georgian. The focus of the present work is on language–music relation and phonetic properties. It was motivated by the pioneering work of Bolle Zemp insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(1994; 1997; 2001);, who for the first time examined this topic from both an ethnomusicological and a linguistic perspective. We revisit some of Bolle Zemp’s observations and assumptions with a substantially expanded insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(by a factor of 11); data set and by using computational phonetic analysis tools not available at the time of her study. Her observation of correlations between pitch, duration, and timbre features related to the interjection of woj insert ignore into journalissuearticles values( wai ); is consistent with our analysis for only some of the singers. Therefore, rather than assigning a general semantic meaning to these correlations, we offer an alternative interpretation as a natural consequence of the formant tuning techniques, which we found employed in the vocal production of some of the singers.  
Keywords : Svan Funeral Dirges, Language Music Relation, Phonetic Properties