lectura 7 hypermedia and ethnomusicology

7/28/2019 Lectura 7 Hypermedia and Ethnomusicology

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Society for Ethnomusicology

Hypermedia and EthnomusicologyAuthor(s): Barbara Rose LangeSource: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Winter, 2001), pp. 132-149Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for EthnomusicologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/852637

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ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

Hypermedia and EthnomusicologyBARBARA ROSE LANGE / University of Houston

Hypermedia is digitally encoded information that is realized in text,graphics, sound, and film.' Hypermedia and its earlier prototype, hy-pertext, is characterized by a structure of nodes, or units of information,that are interconnected by "electronic cross-references," or links (Berk andDevlin 1991:4).2 Digital documents change sequential ways of followingtexts, particularly analog sound recordings and film, since their binary en-coding enables them to be accessed at any point. The nearly global infra-structure for disseminating digital media has the potential to broaden theaudience for ethnomusicological research, but the technology's develop-ers have affected its configurations in ways that often contradict researchgoals. Georgina Born has observed that engineers had an integral role incomposition at the French computer music center Ircam (1997). In hyper-media applications of interest to ethnomusicologists, design experimenta-tion often dwarfs the fundamental concerns of participant-observationfieldwork, ethical obligations to field co-respondents, comprehending liveperformance, or the use of theory as an explanatory device. Yet these ap-plications have also stimulated narrative change, provided wide access tofield recordings, and given regionally-oriented interest groups a new meansof expression.Two hypermedia applications have become prominent in relation toethnomusicology.3 Compact disc-read-only memory, or the CD-ROM, isan aluminum-coated disc read by laser that encodes graphics, video, text,and audio material.4 Web pages and web sites are aggregations of digitallyencoded data that as of the late 1990s are accessed at specific host com-puter locations on the Internet. Applications in both forms that are rele-vant to ethnomusicology are being generated from and used in diverse lo-cations. From an engineering standpoint, the CD-ROM appears obsolete.Web sites potentially offer much more flexibility and easier accessibilitythan CD-ROMs. Far more information can be posted on the computer sup-? 2001 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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Lange: Hypermedia and Ethnomusicology 133porting a web site than can be etched on an aluminum disc, and it can beupdated more frequently; in fact some Internet links update the contentof CD-ROMs (see Blacking 1998, 1999). The contrast between the two for-mats reflects a trend in developing technology to introduce successivelycomplex designs. Users may still derive benefit from old models, but be-cause of planned obsolescence they are eventually constrained to adopt andlearn the new applications (Fulton 1996:112-113). The production of CD-ROMs with a serious scholarly component has actually increased in the late1990s. Internet use requires an infrastructure enabling large amounts of datato be transferred at high speed and low cost. Only in Western Europe andthe U.S. are these connections available on a broad basis and then only toa stratum of technologically educated, well-to-do people (Anderson et al.1995:24-29, McConnaughey and Lader 1998, Sec. III). CD-ROMs are de-signed to be played on and can also be written in the drives of personalcomputers, which are relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain in manyparts of the world.5 Projects of interest to ethnomusicologists now initiatefrom the World Wide Web but as of the late 1990s, CD-ROMS that takeinnovative approaches to their topics and incorporate interesting audio andvisual material are being produced from many parts of the globe and wel-comed by constituencies there.

Organizational StructureFrank Halasz, a designer of NoteCards, an outline program that was oneof the first workable hypertext designs, observed that navigation is oneinherent problem in hypermedia. Several solutions have evolved, althougha standard has yet to emerge. Halasz noted that a central display or organi-zational map was crucial, since it served as a composite "inclusion mecha-nism." This feature could summarize the type of material in groups of nodesand links, as well as provide the ability to shift between levels of detail

(Halasz 1988:842-44; Heller 1990:431). This concept has manifested inmany applications as a main navigational screen, the first or second to beshown on a monitor when one accesses a CD-ROM or web page.6 But theengineering culture from which navigational screens, nodes, and linksemerged is almost completely divorced from the long previous tradition ofinformation guides in library science. Basic vehicles of information retriev-al like overviews, lists of subcategories, weighing in order of importanceand flexible shifting between general and specific levels of information areinconsistently built into most hypermedia applications.The node and link structure was originally conceived in terms ofbranching diagrams. In their analysis of electronic media and anthropolo-gy, Gary Seaman and Homer Williams suggested that continuity could be


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134 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2001

achieved among numerous nodes and links by offering different pathwaysto the same data (1992:310). Branching structures have been subsumed inmany cases by Boolean searching, where the user determines the link bychoosing a word and all possible nodes will be supplied by the search.Applications of interest to ethnomusicologists use Boolean, navigational,and multipath systems. An added organizational element in hypermedia isthe way nodes and links are visually represented in graphic interfaces. Booksutilize a relatively narrow range of typefaces and index design. The graph-ics in hypermedia are designed not only to supply information, but as "in-ference engines" that help the user navigate (van Dam 1988:894). The in-fluence of software engineering culture, particularly in its orientationstoward entertainment, is often evident. The semiotic content of these graph-ics-twirling globes, montages, miniaturized photos-often contradicts thegrounding of ethnomusicology in the real actions of real people.

Multiple Media and Juried PeriodicalsHypermedia seems to offer a more full representation of the subjectthan do print or audio recordings alone. Jeff Titon pointed out in a discus-

sion of ethnographic film that viewers must accept many artifices in orderto believe that living performance is represented (1992). Hypermedia re-quires a similar change in perception. In the late 1990s, most applicationspresent multiple modes of representation sequentially through the node andlink structure. The monitors and drivers for realizing media at a given userendpoint are imperfect, so that any blend is fractured by pauses for load-ing and data access. Hypermedia has been used to add facets of represen-tation in scholarly journals accessed via the Internet. Three such publica-tions that are directly oriented to ethnomusicology have hypermediadesign.7 As of the late 1990s, Ethnomusicology on Line, Music and Anthro-pology, and Oideion have published essays that are organized similarly tothose in print journals. Oideion's editor also has requested documents witha multilink structure that would experiment with linear conventions (Au-thor 1998). The essays include examples and illustrations in multiple me-dia, as well as providing links to information on subjects related to the ar-ticle topics. Overviews are provided on the main navigational pages, whichspace basic site divisions on the screen. The articles add color in photo-graphs, maps, and links but do not incorporate other graphics. Two of thejournals solve the problem of exact citation by dividing the articles intosections, although this can disrupt the narrative flow if the user encoun-ters technical difficulties upon accessing each section.

Maps, audio recordings, photos, transcriptions, manuscript excerpts,and film clips are linked to the texts of the articles. For example a brief film


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Lange: Hypermedia and Ethnomusicology 135

clip of Greek Anastenarisses dancing in an article by Tullia Magrini onwomen and mourning illustrates points about the expression of inner ten-sion and a focus on icons (Magrini 1998, sec. 4). A biographical essay, alsoby Magrini, includes a link to a transcript of an interview with the musi-cian (Magrini 1997). Other components enhance the themes of the essaysin a general way, as with the maps of ancient Greece and Mediterraneantrade routes adjacent to the text of an essay on music history and migra-tion in the region (Bohlman 1997). The place of description needs to bereassessed with the inclusion of many new forms of media. Film and audioclips convey multiple aspects of sound and demeanor, but they are onlybrief extracts of full performances. The reader may continue to be inter-ested in the author's insights into semiotic content as well as the examplesthemselves.

Interactivity and Narrative ExperimentationThe node and link structure shares its networked character with writ-

ten texts as characterized by Barthes, Foucault, and others (Landow 1997:2-3). Seaman and Williams observe that the digital medium allows users toemploy reading procedures like backtracking, skimming, and jumping frompoint to point with audio and video as well as print forms (1992:301). Inhypermedia design, this feature is termed "interactivity," since the readeror user chooses the directions he will take through informational nodes(Biella 1994). In the types of hypermedia under review here, the term falselyconnotes exchange since the digitally-realized texts and options for routesthrough them are predetermined by the designer. Writers do interactthrough electronic mail. Some in the hard sciences have utilized electron-ic means to critique scholarly work in progress although this has not be-come common practice in ethnomusicology; the Society for Ethnomusicol-ogy's listserv discussions range over topics of general interest.8 Many otherlistservs discuss regional music topics in detail, although because theirmembership is drawn from aficionados as well as ethnographically-orient-ed researchers, their exchanges often remain unreflective about relationsbetween the producers and the consumers of music.

Hypermedia can allow the user to interrupt standard narrative struc-ture. Peter Biella, in relation to digitized ethnographic film, described a pos-sibility to "transcend the real-time experience of viewing" so that theorycan be more successfully linked to visual texts. Biella argued that with dig-ital technology a key feature of social science interpretation, multiple formsof explanation, could be applied to film (1996:596). Biella applied theseideas in Yanomamo Interactive: The Ax Fight, a CD-ROM expanding onNapoleon Chagnon's film that records a dispute between Amazonian Indi-


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ans. Like Chagnon's compilation (1975), the CD-ROM presents the film inedited and unedited versions; here, however, the user can select and freezespecific camera shots. The navigational screen is unusual in that the usercan link the operations of four different frames displayed on the monitor.In the CD-ROM descriptive text is linked to specific points in the film. Theuser can also access maps, genealogies, and other details on the peopledepicted in the film. Martin Oppenheimer identified an alternate narrativeoption made possible by Biella's CD-ROM, to keep track of one individu-al's identity and actions during different parts of the film sequence (1998).The digital medium has been used to undo canonic musical constructs. TheCD-ROM Hyperkalevala (1996) takes as its departure point the Karelianrunes that Elias Lonnrot compiled and rewrote during the nineteenth cen-tury for his literary epic. The designers of Hyperkalevala combine graph-ics, photos, film, and audio recordings (including some that are nearly acentury old) to explore the runes as sung in performance, regional locales,the belief systems indicated in rune texts and performance, and the forma-tion of the Kalevala as a literary work (DuBois 1997).In the web site and CD-ROM Venda Girls' Initiation Ceremonies, Su-zel Ana Reily and Lev Weinstock change print narrative in another way: theyblend John Blacking's separately published essays on the subject with tran-scriptions, audio examples from his field recordings, video clips, and pho-tographs (Blacking 1998, 1999; Reily 1998:49). The document takes anestablished ethnographic approach, that of focusing on a single ceremonytype as a means of understanding (see Bateson 1958 [1936]). The hyper-media configuration might well have had Blacking's support, since it viv-idly illustrates his concerns with musical embodiment and links musicalanalysis with ethnographic description.

Field Co-respondentsMany source musicians do not belong to the societal constituencieswho own computers and live in locations that lack an infrastructure sup-

porting digital media. This generates ethical challenges. Many archives arenow devoting considerable resources to hypermedia production and design,possibly reducing the energy and financial outlay they devote to servingsource constituencies. Source musicians' lack of access to computers ren-ders them far less able to critique these representations of themselves thanthose on film, sound recordings, or in books. The remote access beingdeveloped in the late 1990s may enable some source musicians to choosemore specifically how to represent themselves. In an extension of indige-nous film projects such as those conducted in the Amazon with AnthonySeeger's assistance or in the American Southwest (see Worth 1972), field


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colleagues might choose to do video and audio streaming of their live per-formances, framed by the ethnomusicologist's or co-respondents' criticalcommentaries. Distributors have often marginalized the work of sourcemusicians who are involved with the music industry. Some now producetheir own CDS that incorporate multimedia in an enhanced format (seeKalyi Jag 1998).9 Access to an audience via Internet is providing manymarginalizedperformerswith an alternativemeans to publicize and sell theirrecordings. The home page of Aaron Fox includes ordering information forrecordings by country musicians with whom he conducted research (Fox1999).

As new forms of publication ethnographically-oriented hypermediaapplications are not dependent upon analytical conventions, so there is agreater opportunity to foreground the words of individualco-respondents.On the enhanced CD Crossroads: Southern Routes (1996) the commen-taries of performers are joined to musical and visual examples. Efforts torepresent verbal art in translation but as closely to live performance aspossible have been extended to the Internet with Dennis Tedlock's post-ing of a Zuni story (Tedlock 1983, n.d.). One link in Fox's home page is aninterview excerpt with the Texas musician Randy Meyer. There are manyinterview excerpts available at the RootsWorld commercial site (http://www.rootsworld.com/rw), but since the interview style is journalisticsub-jects like a musician's own aesthetics or the nature of a society's musicalinvolvement do not receive attention. Jeff Titon built a hypermedia docu-ment about the fiddler Clyde Davenport largely upon interview excerpts(Titon 1991, 1992 [1991]). In addition, there are audio clips in which Dav-enport demonstrates his view of the difference between tunes. Ratherthanworking from an overview, Titon designed the document with "web-likerather than linear structures"(Titon 1992 [1991]), thus utilizing the multi-path model envisioned by Seaman and Williams. Most but not all nodes arelinked to the "Clyde Davenport" page; the topic "Old-TimeFiddling,"notreferenced on that page, can be accessed through five other links."'Unedited Field Materials

Because they can include large amounts of information, hypermediaapplications seem ideal for making "raw" ield materials-unedited record-ings, text transcriptions,or field notes-available to a varietyof users (withthe understanding that even "raw"material can be highly edited). A fewauthorshave posted to web sites audio and video examples that correspondto their publications in other media. Some are extracts of longer projects,as with the synopsis and interview excerpts from a film about Vietnameseadolescents in America (Rothenberg 1995). Others are audio and video


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examples that were the basis for graphic representations in print. Audioand video files related to Eric Charry's essay on West African guitars clarifyvoicings depicted in the transcriptions and stimulate additional questionsabout articulation techniques (1994, 1998). The audio files linked to JohnMurphy's article on Brazilian rabeca playing transmit the music's visceralquality and subtlety as well as sounds of casual performance contexts thatare usually excluded from commercial recordings (Murphy 1997). Themajor print journals in the field of ethnomusicology have begun to includehypermedia supplements; audio files illustrate examples of Bavarian musicin a recent issue of The World of Music (http://www.uni-bamberg.de/-ba2fm3/wom992.htm). Audio annotations would be invaluable for furtherdiscussion on topics like contour-based melodic sensibilities or participa-tory discrepancies that challenge the limits of print description and graph-ic representation (List 1985, Progler 1995, Alen 1995); a set of such illus-trations has been provided for an Ethnomusicology article by Magrini ona similarly dense subject, gendered musical expression (2000). Retroactiveillustration would immediately raise new ethical questions: List evidentlyobtained permission for recording the Hopi kachina songs that were thebasis of his melodic concept analysis, but the source musicians or theirdescendants might not choose to grant the indiscriminate access that In-ternet posting makes possible.Archival collections have been made available in digitized form viaInternet. The Australian National library has posted indigenous storytellingperformances (Stories 1999); documentation of folk music from the Fran-conia region of Germany is also planned (Baumann 1995, 1999; see Grie-bel 1999). The Library of Congress has made digitized photos, sound re-cordings, transcriptions, letters, and research notes available on the Internetin its American Memory series." Among its musically-oriented collectionsare records of ethnographic work in California, the American Southeast, andNew Mexico. The letters and notes in these collections reveal much aboutthe research process. A letter from Harold Spivacke to John Lomax at Rai-ford, Florida where he recorded songs in a prison commiserates with himabout the demise of group work songs (Southern Mosaic 1999). A mono-graph on the alabado is intexted in the Juan B. Rael collection, thus en-abling the user to compare his published work with his field materials (Rael1951; Hispano Music 1999).The archival nature of this material has yielded a problem that mani-fests as search difficulty for the user. Whereas archives often employ afinding aid that describes and lists the contents of the collection, the Amer-ican Memory series did not include such an orienting device in its digitizedcollections (Arms 1996a, par. 23-24). Seaman and Williams suggested thatthe hypertext structure could enable people to use material at different


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Lange: Hypermedia and Ethnomusicology 139levels of knowledge (1992:308-310). This vision partially informed the Li-brary of Congress' choice to use InQuery, a system of weighted keywordsearching that uses Boolean and proximity operators (Arms 1996b). InQueryis satisfactory for K-12 teachers and students, the primary audience for thecollection; college-level users found this searching system to be too limit-ed and yet too amorphous (Arms 1996a, par. 8; Veccia et al. 1993, Chap-ter III). Clicking on the "Spirituals" song category provided under "BrowseAudio Subjects" in the Southern Mosaic collection brings up a list of re-cordings in no discernible order. The feature of full-text searching is valu-able; the term "Raiford"yielded letters and fieldnotes as well as recordings.Many audio examples and text transcriptions in the American Memorycollections are in separate records. Even though a double browser can beopened to examine them together, physical documents remain easier toutilize. A keyword search does not locate the user at an exact point in thefieldnotes of Southern Mosaic. Finding the text to the zarzuela song "Unviejecito chiquito y jorobadito," marked as being in section 6 of the Lomaxfield notes, requires scrolling through many other texts.

Hypermedia might be a forum for scholars to make public the largecollections of field notes, interview transcripts or recordings, and othersource material that underlie their monographs and articles (Biella 1994;Seaman and Williams 1992). But this material can reveal uncomfortableweaknesses and to date very few individuals have made source materialavailable. One prototype is represented by Robert Garfias' posting of EastAsian musics related to gagaku (1998). Many ethnomusicologists' homepages serve teaching rather than publication functions, with class syllabi,links to other sites in the individual's area of interest, and informal essayson topics in their areas of expertise.12

Hypermedia Applications and Specific ConstituenciesThe "transformative actions" of technological development can be in-fluenced by ordinary identity dynamics (see Boczkowski 1999:102-103).

Many hypermedia applications are geared primarily toward a national orregional constituency. They use indigenous languages; Hyperkalevala is inFinnish, and the Tale of Genji (1996), a CD-ROM elaborating on Lady Mu-rasaki's novel, is in Japanese and English. The Japanese text portions fromthe novel use archaic characters, thus requiring greater knowledge andconcentration from a Japanese reader than from a reader of English. Manynations and regions now maintain web sites with information on uniqueart forms. India's Kerala state web site, for example, provides weekly up-dates on local festivals, with thumbnail descriptions of regional art formsincluding kathakali and panchavadyam ("Kerala" 1999).


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The CD-ROM, as a tangible product, is a logical medium for empirical-ly-oriented traditions of scholarship. It provides an opportunity for organi-zations that have been separate in some of these countries-ethnographicmuseums, folklore institutes, and musicology institutes-to combine theirmaterials. The cross-referencing of nodes and links can extend the criticaledition or monument model that prevails at many European institutions(Robinson 1993; see Nettl 1983:272-273). The release of archival footageand the inclusion of multiple media make these applications attractive bothto scholars and to intellectuals with a general interest in national tradi-tions-precisely those people who are likely to own personal computersand to be interested in digital applications. In many cases the question oflicensing is relatively unproblematic because rights are held by the state andnot commercial entities. The author of Nadanubhava, a CD-ROM on SouthIndian classical music, could select historically representative photos, draw-ings, and recordings of forty different artists without obstacles (pers. comm.Shashikiran, April 1999). The authors of these applications are associatedwith research institutes and universities, but this work is not always sub-ject to traditional review processes. In many cases the result is innovative.Hyperkalevala's deconstructions of Lonnrot's epic have been mentioned;Nadanubhava describes music theory, performance technique, and com-parative points of style rather than taking the orientation toward religionthat predominates in South Indian music study.

Fan Web SitesThe World Wide Web is well established as a forum for individual in-

terests. Some of the information useful particularly as teaching resourcesmay come from web sites and links maintained by devotees of particulargenres. The information contained in these sites can be exhaustive; anaficionado's web site has what scholars recognize as being the most thor-ough bibliography on J. S. Bach (Tomita 1999). Translated articles, photosof shakuhachi players in historical dress, descriptions of standard reper-toire items translated from Japanese, and notations from performers' websites helped to supplement a unit on Japanese music for my own worldmusic classes (Singer 1987; "Shakuhachi" 1998). Agenda do Samba-Choro[Notebook of Samba-Choro] (Neves 1996) is a web site designed by a Bra-zilian software engineer. The site includes an annotated listing of clubs thatfeature samba and choro in Rio de Janeiro and other major cities. Anothernode highlights recent recordings. A listserv is linked to the site; brief bi-ographies and discographies of famous artists are included with audio sam-ples. Links are provided to music publishers, in addition to full graphicrepresentation of some scores. Although it is a source of valuable detail,


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fan culture (in many cases issuing from revivalist activity) may be concernedwith stylistic authenticity, individual musicians, and canonic repertoires (seeFeintuch 1993, Livingston 1999); certain elements might be left out of fansites that an ethnomusicologist would judge relevant. A case in point is theabsence of city blues, or even female performers, from blues web sites. The"Outras Informacoes" (Other Information) node of the samba-choro website only provides links to other sites that have "nice" (boa) Brazilian mu-sic, as opposed to rough-sounding or sexually explicit genres.

Products for a General AudienceHypermedia applications for the general public are significant because

they have a comparatively large audience and sophisticated technical de-signs.'3 Don De Lillo has evoked the image of reproductions carrying au-ras associated with their use (1985). CD-ROMs have entertainment conno-tations; many designers and users of hypermedia play video games thatrequire them rapidly to switch attention from one image to another andemploy a system of frequent rewards (often signaled by a musical motif).Similarly, a number of CD-ROMs on world music topics give visual and au-ditory gratification without providing substance.'4 Africa: Folk Music At-las, a book, set of audio CDs, and CD-ROM, supplies the rudiments of in-formation on African music (D'Amico 1997). The first screens of the mainlinks on the CD-ROM are decorated with photomontages. Text segmentsare cued to ethnic group names. Clicking on keywords yields audio exam-ples with attention-grabbing timbre, rhythm, and melody that are severalminutes in length; however, very little information is supplied on the mu-sical sound other than instrument name and ethnic group. Clicking onminiaturized photos aligned next to the text yields full-screen views. In the"Hutu and Tutsi" node, striking photos are cued to general information onlocal drums and ceremonies, so that costume, action and color impressesthe user and not the ethnographic context. By contrast, the two photo-graphs in Steven Feld's Sound and Sentiment (1982) are not only strikingfrom a visual standpoint; their meaning is grounded in a whole monograph'sanalysis and description. The title screen of the CD-ROMWorld Beat (1994)uses bright colors, a repeating synthesizer motif that resembles video gamesignals, and a twirling globe. The "Interactive Documentary" node openswith photos that appear and disappear in overlapping arrangements at in-tervals of several seconds. The user can click on photos to obtain a textand video display, immediately interrupting the narration cued to the ro-tating photo screen. World Beat and Africa. Folk Music Atlas both juxta-pose audio and visual examples with contradictory text information. Rob-ert Garfias has noted the erroneous captioning on several video examples


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in World Beat (1995); in Africa: Folk Music Atlas the audio examples donot coincide with a given text file. An example of djembe is played, forexample, when text describing Algerian rai is on the screen.The design features of commercial products heighten a tendency incomputer-mediated communication identified by Sherry Turkle, that itbecomes representation without an original (1995). Rachelle Heller haspointed out that the graphic content of information nodes can help, moti-vate, or detract users from continuing to explore a particular hypertext area(Heller 1990:437). The graphics on the commercial world-music productsmay be motivating the user with attractive stereotypes rather than withinformation about field co-respondents grounded in actual experience. Theaudio clips, similarly disengaged, exploit the same pathology. But in spiteof their problematic representations the commercial world music productsare serving as models of design. All of the encyclopedia products give fair-ly extensive and clear overviews, and are engineered so that the user caneasily switch between subfiles and run video and audio applications (al-though information on installing drivers was incomplete for one such prod-uct, the first edition of Encarta Africana [Appiah and Gates 1993-99]).Microsoft Musical Instruments (1992-94) represents an elegant earlymodel. At the time of its release, this CD-ROM was a major contribution tothe literature of musical instrument encyclopedias because the instrumentphotos had a resolution surpassing those in print encyclopedias, differentinstrument components were depicted, and sounds were linked to thepictures. The "Facts" boxes of text linked to each instrument representa-tion utilized the basics of the Sachs-Hornbostel classification system, al-though the five-part Western designation was used as a broader category.In the "Instruments of the World" section pictorial overlays on a continentdiagram were linked to corresponding audio and text files. The number ofinstruments was small and the sound clips were extremely short, rangingfrom fifteen to thirty seconds and on some timbral comparison nodes, lessthan one second.

Some applications meant for a general audience combine media in waysthat demonstrate a potential for imparting historical, ecological, and socialnuances. The web site Frances Densmore: Song Catcher (Smith 1997) usesmaterial originally assembled for a documentary aired on National PublicRadio. It includes photographs and recordings that Densmore made, play-ing these as illustrations to a re-enactment of a lecture by her. One utilityallows photos and musical transcriptions to be run in rapid sequence, im-itating the magic lantern show, a nineteenth-century predecessor of film.Links are provided to a variety of directly related topics, including audiostatements by descendants of singers whom Densmore recorded; informa-tion on other women anthropologists of the time; a bibliography; cylinder


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Lange: Hypermedia and Ethnomusicology

recordings by Densmore; and art music arrangements. The selection ofmaterials for historical relevance, their reconstruction in performance, andmeticulous documentation of sources provide the user with insights intothe life, work, and social milieu of Frances Densmore that might previous-ly have been available only to specialists in her work or the history of theupper Midwest.Like the plethora of CD-ROMs on jazz figures that were released in themid-1990s, many applications reorganize material that is easily available else-where. Other CD-ROMs authored and compiled by ethnomusicologists in-clude archival material but employ the multilevel approach suggested bySeaman and Williams. There are benefits in orienting these applications toa general audience; the text portions of Nadanubhava are written in ex-tremely clear language and an English-language bibliography is provided.Because the authors and compilers include respected scholars and the au-dio and video footage has original provenance, Crossroads. Southern Routes(1996) and Pygmees Aka (Arom and Furniss 1998) can be considered asmultimedia ethnographies that, similarly to Colin Turnbull's The Forest Peo-ple (1962), interest both professionals and the public. General audiencesrespond well to the content and the design of these applications, as is dem-onstrated by positive reviews and awards. These projects initiated from ascholarly perspective have depth and consistency of conception that thegeneral public appreciates. Indian reviewers praised Nadanubhava for itsdetailed explanations, lengthy indices, comparisons with other musical sys-tems, and the way in which "the mode of presentation through audio, vid-eo and graphics compels attention" (Raman 1998). Sing Out magazinepraised the multiple user options in Crossroads: Southern Routes wherebyrelated styles were linked, simultaneous text translations could be access-ed, and a scrolling feature was supplied so that "you can sit back and justlisten to the songs and watch as the highlighted lyrics go by" (1996-97).

Applications on Subjects Related to EthnomusicologyA number of applications not oriented specifically towards music con-

vey cultural and historical information that is key to understanding musi-cal performance. In the CD-ROM Tale of Genji, video clips of dance se-quences are part of a section describing court life in Heian Japan and digitalrenditions of relevant paintings are included. Several features are ideal forthe hypermedia configuration. Summaries are supplied about a number ofthe story's vast gallery of characters and the user can read text sections asthey are narrated by a female voice. Encarta Africana (Appiah and Gates1993-99), a CD-ROM devoted to Africa and the African diaspora, integratesmusic into many entries and has a separate section devoted to music and

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musicians. Encarta Africana's graphics are fairly neutral. The typefaceresembles hand-printed letters; categories and nodes are indicated withcolor, and icons signify different media. The nodes are linked in multipleways. Through a multi-frame design and icons designating the type of me-dia incorporated into the entries, the user can identify subtopics and illus-trations within major topic areas. The entries include bibliographic refer-ences, full-text searching is available for selected subjects under a "TopicTrek" rubric, and examples can be listed by medium. The brevity of theaudio examples at under thirty seconds renders them virtually useless as atool for in-depth teaching or study, although the texts to which they areattached contain a significant level of detail. For example, the "Amadinda(Xylophone) Ensemble" topic, accessed via the "Media Gallery" section,yields an audio clip, a caption describing the ensemble's history, informa-tion on the particular musical example, and the source for the recording.Although the audio examples are clearly referenced, the film clips do notregularly supply titles of their sources or the date of release.

ConclusionHypermedia applications provide opportunities to expand representa-tions of musical performance. Technological limits on data storage andtransmission are constantly being exceeded; it will soon become commonto include lengthy amounts of text, film, or sound, as with Smithsonian

Folkways' plan for digitally posting its archive. These tools are bounded bymethodological orientation; just Alexander Ellis saw the tape recording asa way to make accurate frequency measurements and Charles Seeger andothers used the melograph to analyze accents and pitch oscillation, so hy-permedia appears to help contemporary ethnomusicologists in their con-cern to comprehend and represent the whole. But technologies also changethe user, as Marshall McLuhan observed. The diffusion of a new mediumcan split a community into subgroups of users and non-users. Innovatorsexperience the new form of communication as having great benefits. Con-versely, elements of the old media may remain standard among non-usersand not diffuse to the new medium (Markus 1987:492-94). The dichoto-my between those ethnomusicologists who introduce and apply new tech-nological developments and those who do not may become as marked asthe division of the 1970s between musicological and anthropological ori-entations.15 Hypermedia appears to help synthesize representations and torework ethnographic narrative structures, but the conventions of academ-ic exchange, including peer review, documentation and evaluation of sourc-es, and clear referencing systems are diminished because they are not con-sistently utilized in the digital applications. The technology used to encode


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Lange: Hypermedia and Ethnomusicologyhypermedia in its sound and graphic forms is constantly evolving, so thatthe medium remains far more ephemeral than print. These factors reducethe value of hypermedia authorship for academic institution-buildingthrough the tenure and promotion process, even though the ethnomusi-cologists who understand hypermedia design are maintaining a crucialpresence in the commercial and civil arenas.The blending of scholarly and public access interests in hypermediarepresents a conundrum. As ethnomusicologists continue to earn accoladesfor general-interest hypermedia applications, it needs to be demonstratedto developers, reviewers and users that the perceived elegance of designcomes not only from an engineer's perspective, but also from the carefulthought about performance and the hands-on fieldwork that characterizesthe discipline of ethnomusicology. Our individual visions disseminated viapersonal home pages would benefit from a process of collegial feedbackor review. Commercial and fan ventures need to be tracked so that objec-tification can be interrupted. While not everyone will be committed togaining the technological expertise required to create or access them, hy-permedia applications presently offer the basic benefits of easy access toarchival material, narrative experimentation, and an approach to live per-formance from multiple angles.Notes

1. I am grateful to Timothy Koozin and John Murphyfor their comments, and to PhilipGayle, Orival Goncalves, and Shawn Davis for technical and translationassistance.2. The concept of the node and link structure was introduced by VannevarBush (1945).Douglas Engelbartapplied these ideas to humans and computers (1963); the concept of theuser's freedom to navigate in a nonlinear fashion was introduced by Ted Nelson (1987 [1974]),who coined the term "hypertext."3. This essay uses the word "application"rather than product or work, since the Inter-net features addressed here do not comprise a physical unit.4. Digital video discs, or DVDs, are the same size as CD- ROMSbut are designed to storevisual information, which occupies exponentially more information than text or audio. Filmsare the dominant medium being released on DVDs, since their high fidelity sound and visualresolution appeal to the public sector user. The hypermedia capability to access individualframes has made the DVD a desired medium for digitized museum collections. Other digitalapplications include highly structured tutorials and gaming programs that are designed torespond to the user's level of competence by becoming more complex (Dillon and Leonard1998:187-188).5. CD-ROMapplications require expert technicians to realize the forms of media envi-sioned by the people responsible for content; the technical design of Nadanubhava wassupported by Intel India (pers. comm. Shashikiran, Houston, TX, April 1999). Web page de-sign also requires technical expertise, although templates are available for the lay designer.6. As of the late 1990s, many applications have several frames, one of which suppliesorientation. The article segments of Encarta Africana (1993-1999) include a separate out-line frame with types of media indicated by color and icons.7. The Transcultural Music Review posts purely the texts of articles(http://www2.uji.es/trans).

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146 Ethnomusicology, Winter 20018. The arXiv.org e-Print archive (http://www.xxx.lanl.gov/) posts papers in physics,mathematics, nonlinear studies, and computer science. Critiques are conducted privately by

e-mailand revised papers are then posted.9. An enhanced CD encodes audio material that is recognized by an ordinary compactdisc player as well as multimedia elements that are recognized by a computer's CD-ROMutil-ities.10. "Old-TimeFiddling" s linked to three nodes found on the Davenport page ("Clyde'sRepertoire,""JeffTiton,"and "Gift")as well as to "Bluegrass" nd "WhatIs Music,"two nodesthat are not on the Davenport page.11. The AmericanMemorycollections were piloted at a varietyof library ocations in CD-ROMand 11-inch videodisc format. Similar archival collections were also designed for thevideodisc platform.12. Several introductory world music classes at U.S. universities have a virtualclassroom

component. Students' on-line reflections distinguish these courses from their physical and real-time counterparts.13. Commercial web sites will not be considered in this discussion. Some of them con-tain information not found elsewhere, for example specialized radio playlists (see http://www.thebluehighway.com).14. The values of user constituencies are one focus for ethnographic and folklore research(see Sherman 1999).15. It is possible that deep engagement with hypermedia can change the user's modesof perception and sociality (see Lysloff 1999).

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