Celebrating 35 years of broadcasting, I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. We’re listening to recordings made by Alan Lomax.[blues music recording]Alan Lomax was one of the first people to take a sound recorder into the field to document the world’s music. When I met him in New York in 1985, he spoke about Cantometrics a system he had developed to understand the relationship between a culture and the music it produces.[world music recording]AL: “We believe that culture and music have something to do with each other. The question was, how does music represent culture? I found the answer was in the way music is performed, and not what was performed. The how, rather than the what, is always more general. And when I began to contrast musical style from one country to another, I for the first time began to make progress in my life as a scientist of music.”[blues and world music recordings]”To me, a song recording is like a spiral store house in which a treasure of information about the past is often contained. It’s an audible cultural icon, ready to be uncoiled to reveal a treasure of information, not only about cultures past, but a potential for future growth, because a culture can be revivified by being recorded.”JM: Celebrating 35 years of broadcasting, I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.
Cantometrics - Culture and Music
Developed by sound recordist Alan Lomax in the 1950s, Cantometrics is a measure of music in relation to the culture from which it stems.
Air Date:07/16/2020
Scientist:
Transcript:
Celebrating 35 years of broadcasting, I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. We're listening to recordings made by Alan Lomax.[blues music recording]Alan Lomax was one of the first people to take a sound recorder into the field to document the world's music. When I met him in New York in 1985, he spoke about Cantometrics a system he had developed to understand the relationship between a culture and the music it produces.[world music recording]AL: "We believe that culture and music have something to do with each other. The question was, how does music represent culture? I found the answer was in the way music is performed, and not what was performed. The how, rather than the what, is always more general. And when I began to contrast musical style from one country to another, I for the first time began to make progress in my life as a scientist of music."[blues and world music recordings]"To me, a song recording is like a spiral store house in which a treasure of information about the past is often contained. It's an audible cultural icon, ready to be uncoiled to reveal a treasure of information, not only about cultures past, but a potential for future growth, because a culture can be revivified by being recorded."JM: Celebrating 35 years of broadcasting, I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.