TY  - JOUR
TI  - Svan Funeral Dirges (Zär): Language-Music Relation and Phonetic Properties
AB  - This paper reports on the results of a follow-up study to Scherbaum andMzhavanadze (2020) and Mzhavanadze and Scherbaum (2020), whichjointly describe the acoustical and musicological properties,respectively, of a new collection of field recordings of three-voiced Svanfuneral dirges, known as zär in Svan and zari in Georgian. The focus ofthe present work is on language–music relation and phoneticproperties. It was motivated by the pioneering work of Bolle Zemp(1994; 1997; 2001), who for the first time examined this topic from bothan ethnomusicological and a linguistic perspective. We revisit some ofBolle Zemp’s observations and assumptions with a substantiallyexpanded (by a factor of 11) data set and by using computationalphonetic analysis tools not available at the time of her study. Herobservation of correlations between pitch, duration, and timbre featuresrelated to the interjection of woj(wai) is consistent with our analysis foronly some of the singers. Therefore, rather than assigning a generalsemantic meaning to these correlations, we offer an alternativeinterpretation as a natural consequence of the formant tuningtechniques, which we found employed in the vocal production of someof the singers.
AU  - Mzhavanadze, Nana
AU  - Scherbaum, Frank
DO  - 10.33906/musicologist.875348
PY  - 2021
JO  - Musicologist: An International Journal of Music Studies
VL  - 5
IS  - 1
SN  - 2618-5652
SP  - 66
EP  - 82
DB  - TRDizin
UR  - http://search/yayin/detay/433228
ER  -