“Small Voices Doomed” is the symbolic title of my presentation. I could have said “Soft Voices Doomed” to express the fact that we are living in an era in which loud and persistent voices tend to prevail. Technologies for the amplification and multiplication of messages were, of course, developed by “soft voices,” i.e., by a few individuals with extraordinary scientific talents. But their inventions have been hijacked by others who neither match up to the talents of the former, nor would they share their profits with them. The pertinent question therefore is how to deal with the ensuing pollution.

Uzbekistan is a Central Asian country with a population of 27 million. It is bordered by Afghanistan to the south, Turkmenistan to the west, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to the north, and Tajikistan to the east. There is also a large Uzbek population living in the north of Afghanistan (figure 1).

Within the varied repertoire of songs sung in the course of the traditional village wedding ceremony in Slovakia, specific songs were performed—usually by women without instrumental accompaniment—at particular, mostly ritual moments with context-appropriate texts to one or two recurring, locally identified wedding tunes called svadobné nôty. Today, these songs are still known by village people and are occasionally also performed within or outside the wedding context. Moreover, this phenomenon of a common local wedding melody seems to be spread among the wedding traditions of central, southern, and eastern Europe, sharing the name (svadobný hlas, svadbarski glas, svatovski glas) and similar features (Važanová 1999).

From the 1950s through 1990s, ethnomusicology in Yugoslavia represented the sum of several distinct research traditions that, by and large, overlapped with the borders of six constituent republics: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Although the overarching national framework quickly disintegrated with the onset of the Yugoslav wars of succession in the early 1990s, localized research within particular borders was largely unaffected. The triumph of militant nationalism, the sweeping social changes, and the attendant musical transformations across the region raised issues of researchers’ accountability. Faced with unimaginable violence in the name of national identity and cultural difference, what should, or can, an ethnomusicologist do?

Researchers have increasingly begun to critically assess local engagements with globalizing notions of civil society that have been introduced via Western-based supranational political, economic, financial, and cultural programmes (Fischer 1997; Okongwu and Mencher 2000; Yúdice 2003). Following the notion of thinking globally and acting locally, such programmes are usually set up by transnational structures such as the World Bank, UNESCO, the European Union, or global foundations such as the Open Society Institute, and put into practice by local actors, among them non-governmental organizations. This article positions music within intra-national discourses that work hand-in-hand with the political and cultural economics of Western cultural initiatives and aim to promote an understanding of pluralism in countries throughout Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted by Nino Tsitsishvili, Erica Haskell, and myself in Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ukraine, respectively, this study juxtaposes the perspectives of policy makers and grant givers in Western Europe and the United States with the views of people in post-socialist conflict zones for whom such initiatives are intended. It analyses the political and cultural implications of UNESCO's declaration of Georgian polyphony as a masterpiece of intangible cultural heritage of humanity, the local effects of internationally sponsored music projects in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the role of national minority music festivals sponsored by Western philanthropic organizations in nation-building processes in Ukraine.

Ruslana's winning performance of “Dyki Tantsi” (Wild Dances) at the Eurovision Song Contest 2004 opened with trembity (plural; sing. trembita), alpine horns linked to, inter alia, the Hutsuls (a Ukrainian ethnic minority). However, trembity are not only used by Ruslana, but also incorporated into songs by other Ukrainian groups like Mad Heads XL's “Smereka” (2005) and Haydamaky's “Tini zabutykh predkiv” (2002). The use of local instruments and melodies in the music which Ruslana in the opening quote labels “drive-ethno-dance” is a way in which some groups from Ukraine anchor themselves. According to Armin Siebert, one of the directors of the Berlin Label Eastblok Music, which specializes in music from Eastern Europe, it is also an exciting element of Russian and Ukrainian popular music:

This article examines contemporary methods of transmission of one Sephardi Jewish liturgy. Studies of Jewish liturgical music are scarce, and research on the transmission of Jewish liturgical music is still absent. The study described here is a first attempt to address this issue.

The Iðunn Society of Intoners and Versifiers (Kvæðamannafélagiðd Iðunn) was founded in Reykjavik in 1929. Iðunn set out to protect the practice of rímur-'intoning and versification (kves&kapur) and immediately took very strong ownership of the means of preserving and disseminating the tradition. By nature, folk traditions are constantly fluctuating, but during the era of national romanticism it became important to preserve and “freeze” these traditions in order to serve the purposes of the formation of national identity. An example would be the Norwegian fiddle and vocal tradition which was systematically gathered from the most remote mountain areas in order to firstly save it from extinction and secondly to serve as a source for the composers of the new “national music.” The Dane Svend Grundtvig had a different agenda, wanting his collection to become a trustworthy and perfect museum of folksongs (Havåg 1997:23-33). In Finland, Elias Lönnrot gathered folksongs and compiled the Kalevala, which became the symbol of Finnish national identity (Pekkila 1994:406). Even though the rímur tradition was not an element in the official identity-building taking place in Iceland around 1930, ideas of national romantic origins had a “freezing and policing” effect on it. In this paper I will demonstrate how the Iðunn Society exercised strong ownership of the old rímur tradition. Specifically, I will show how Iðunn re-shaped and policed the form. The study also draws attention to contradictions in the way Iðunn's members took pride in their cultural roots and their childhood practice while simultaneously holding prejudices and beliefs that worked against a living tradition.

Surrogate speech is a phonological system by which word tones of a spoken language are represented in tones produced on a musical instrument. Ethnomusicologists regard this as a musical process. This article analyses the surrogate speech system of the Asante ivory trumpeters who perform at the royal courts of Ghana. The language of the Asante is Twi, which is tonal, based on two tones, high and low. The tones produced on the Asante's ivory trumpets outline the speech contours of the high and low spoken tones of Twi. The trumpet surrogate speech thus substitutes for spoken verse during rites wherein ordinary speech is not reverent enough, or previously, in combat and politics, wherein the surrogate speech functioned clandestinely to keep orders secret from enemies.

On my first research trip to Bali, Indonesia, I brought along a reasonably expensive digital metronome with the wrongheaded idea that it would somehow aid my learning gamelan music. In a completely uncharacteristic mistake, Singapore Airlines lost my luggage containing the metronome. More than once, my Balinese teachers suggested (only half-kiddingly) that the goddess of music, Saraswati, had probably had a hand in this. Many Balinese teachers have commented that their greatest pedagogical challenge is in helping their foreign students develop a sense of the fluid, flexible nature of Balinese musical time. The differences between Balinese and Euro-American musical time and their representations have partially blinded theorists to its shape, function, and significance. In his magnum opus Music in Bali (1966), Colin McPhee describes a performance that particularly delighted him: