Afghan Music in Australia

My research on the music of Afghanistan began in the 1970s, with two years of ethnomusicological fieldwork, most of it in the provincial city of Herat, and to a lesser extent the capital, Kabul. My research in Herat was wide-ranging, looking into the performance of various genres: urban and rural; folk, popular and art; vocal and instrumental; traditional and modern; professional and amateur; female and male; and also at various forms of religious singing that did not fall clearly into the category of music, such as Sufi zikr, Shiah lamentations and Quranic recitation. The largely separate world of women’s music making in Herat was researched by my wife Veronica (Doubleday, 1988), so that together we more or less covered the whole range of instrumental and vocal performance. When its came to writing the ethnographic monograph that was a major output from this research (Baily, 1988) I focused on male professional musicians operating in Herat city. Research into the wider musical context informed the ethnography but had little visible presence in my book

Downsizing and Productivity Growth: Myth or Reality?

The conventional wisdom is that the rising productivity in the U.S. manufacturing sector in the 1980s has been driven by the apparently pervasive downsizing over this period. Aggregate evidence clearly shows falling employment accompanying the rise in productivity. In this paper, we examine the microeconomic evidence using the plant level data from the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD). In contrast to the conventional wisdom, we find that plants that increased employment as well as productivity contribute almost as much to overall productivity growth in the 1980s as the plants that increased productivity at the expense of employment. Further, there are striking differences by sector (defined by industry, size, region, wages, and ownership type) in the allocation of plants in terms of whether they upsize or downsize and whether they increase or decrease productivity. Nevertheless, in spite of the striking differences across sectors defined in a variety of ways, most of the variance of productivity and employment growth is accounted for by idiosyncratic factors.

The circulation of ‘New Music’ between Afghanistan and its transnational community

From the late 1940s the radio station in Kabul had become the centre for innovation and patronage in the creation of a new popular music suitable for radio broadcasting. In a country where there was no university department of music, no conservatories, no music as part of the school curriculum, no national sound archive, the radio station was the centre of musical activity and creativity. It employed a large number of musicians, singers, male and female, and composers. It ran various orchestras and small ensembles. The radio station provided new possibilities for musicians, mostly singers, to be recruited from amateur backgrounds. The best example is Ahmad Zahir, sometimes described as "the Afghan Elvis", whose music is still incredibly popular and widely emulated today. Ahmad Zahir was much involved in creating and performing a modernised Afghan music, using western instruments, himself playing electric organ rather than harmonium. It is worth mentioning that Kabul's first international rock festival took place in 1975 (Dupree 1976). The radio station also promoted the careers of women singers, perhaps most notably Farida Mahwash, who in 1975 was given the honorific title of Ustad by the Afghan government

Discours sur la musique à Hérat (Afghanistan)

Trois types de discours musicaux ayant cours dans la ville afghane de Hérat dans les années 1970 sont analysés ici : le discours des spécialistes, celui des semi-spécialistes et celui des non-spécialistes. Il existe une relation hiérarchique entre ces trois discours dans la mesure où les spécialistes peuvent tenir le discours des non-spécialistes alors que le contraire n’est pas possible. Le discours des spécialistes, appelé « science de la musique », est une théorie musicale héritée du sous-continent indien. A l’intérieur de ce discours, on distingue en outre les modèles représentatifs des modèles opérationnels de la structure musicale, selon le rôle que joue la connaissance exprimée verbalement au cours de la performance musicale. Le modèle représentatif est une rationalisation a posteriori des pratiques musicales acquises par le processus imitatif, tandis que le modèle opérationnel intervient directement aussi bien dans l’apprentissage de la musique que dans son interprétation par des musiciens chevronnés.Three kinds of musical discourse about music as practised in the Afghan city of Herat in the 1970s are examined: those of experts, semi-experts, and non-experts. There is a hierarchical relationship between these, in that experts may engage in the discourse of non-experts, but not vice versa. The discourse of experts is couched in terms of the « science of music », a music theory derived from the Indian sub-Continent. A further distinction is made within expert discourse between representational and operational models of music structure, depending on the role or knowledge which can be expressed verbally in the actual performance of music. The representational model is a post hoc rationalisation of performance practices established by imitative procedures, while the operational model is one which mediates both directly in the acquisition of musical skills and in performance by the skilled practitioner

L’interaction homme-instrument. Vers une conceptualisation

L’instrument de musique est une sorte de transducteur qui convertit les schémas de mouvements corporels en structures sonores. En analysant deux luths à cordes pincées d’Afghanistan : le dutâr à quatorze cordes de Hérat et le rubâb, on aborde ici l’interface entre le système sensori-moteur humain et la disposition spatiale de l’instrument de musique. Cette comparaison montre comment certains aspects de la structure mélodique s’adaptent ergonomiquement à la morphologie de l’instrument. Appliquant cette approche au jeu de la guitare folk blues, on remarque que, pour ces instruments, le musicien peut conceptualiser les structures musicales en terme d’action, en une sorte de « pensée en mouvements »

Jüüzli du Muotatal. Quatre films de Hugo Zemp

Ces quatre films sur la youtse et le yodel du Muotatal en Suisse centrale représentent une sorte de tour de force, car ils mettent en évidence quatre approches de la « mise en film » de la musique avec les paramètres d’une seule philosophie stylistique. Bien que nous attendions encore le guide (promis) qui doit accompagner les films, Zemp (1988) nous a déjà donné quelques informations de base sur le tournage. Dans l’article en question, il éclaire de nombreux aspects de son style cinématographiq..

Modèles d’imprégnation musicale en Afghanistan

L’étude de l’imprégnation musicale est une clef pour mieux comprendre les systèmes musicaux en tant que phénomènes cognitifs, car elle montre comment se construisent des schèmes cognitifs et quelles sont les informations nécessaires à ce processus. Elle dévoile ainsi la nature du savoir musical, tout en permettant de différencier ses éléments innés de ceux acquis socialement. Partant de l’environnement musical de l’enfant, notre analyse se propose d’en examiner l’influence sur le développemen..

Salmonella infection in grey seals (Halichoerus grypus), a marine mammal sentinel species:Pathogenicity and molecular typing of Salmonella strains compared with human and livestock isolates

Microbial pollution of the marine environment through land–sea transfer of human and livestock pathogens is of concern.Salmonellawas isolated from rectal swabs of free-ranging and stranded grey seal pups (21.1%; 37/175) and compared with strains from the same serovars isolated from human clinical cases, livestock, wild mammals and birds in Scotland, UK to characterize possible transmission routes using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and multi-locus variable number of tandem repeat analyses. A higher prevalence ofSalmonellawas found in pups exposed to seawater, suggesting that this may represent a source of this pathogen.SalmonellaBovismorbificans was the most common isolate (18.3% pups; 32/175) and was indistinguishable from isolates found in Scottish cattle.Salmonella Typhimurium was infrequent (2.3% pups; 4/175), mostly similar to isolates found in garden birds and, in one case, identical to a highly multidrug resistant strain isolated from a human child.Salmonella Haifa was rare (1.1% pups; 2/175), but isolates were indistinguishable from that of a human clinical isolate. These results suggest thatS.Bovismorbificans may circulate between grey seal and cattle populations and that bothS.Typhimurium andS.Haifa isolates are shared with humans, raising concerns of microbial marine pollution