Description
Book SynopsisMusic Worlding in Palau: Chanting, Atmospheres, and Meaningfulness is a detailed study of the performing arts in Palau, Micronesia as holistic techniques enabling the experiential corporeality of music’s meaningfulness – that distinctly musical way of making sense of the world with which the felt body immediately resonates but which, to a significant extent, escapes interpretive techniques. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research alongside Pacific Islander and neo-phenomenological conceptual frameworks, Music Worlding in Palau distinguishes between meaning(s) and meaningfulness in Palauan music-making. These are not binary phenomena, but deeply intertwined. However, unlike meaning(s), meaningfulness to a significant extent suspends language and is thus often prematurely considered ineffable. The book proposes a broader understanding of how the performing arts give rise to a sense of meaningfulness whose felt-bodily affectivity is pivotal to music-making and lived realities. Music Worlding in Palau thus seeks to draw the reader closer to the holistic complexity of music-making both in Palau and more generally.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Music Worlding in Palau: An Introduction
Meaningfulness
Music Worlding
Intensity
Atmospheres
This Book
Music Worlding in Palau
Music Worlding in Palau: The Background
1 Latmikaik’s Children and Their Music
Palau
North Atlantic narratives of Palauan history
Meaningfulness
Schmitz on Meaningfulness
Surfaceless: Beyond the Binaries
Musical Meaning | Musical Meaningfulness
Musical Meaningfulness and Atmospheres
2 Vaguely Specific: Resonant Historicity with Chesóls
Chesols Meaningfulness
Suggestions of Motion
Sound’s History Lives on
Intensity: A Closer Look
Musical Meaningfulness as Latently Historical
Conclusion
3 Listening with the Dancing Body: Ruk and Movement’s Incipiency
A Sense of Klebelau: Going through the Motions
The Body Complex and Sound
Schmitz and the Threshold
Preacceleration | Suggestions of Motion
The Dance of the Not-Yet in New Phenomenological Perspective: mSuggestions of
Motion in Palauan Ruk
Body percussion
Group shouts
Rhythmic layering and densification
Conclusion: The Body in Sound and Motion
4 “Rak, Where Is He Now?” Presence | Present
Present, Presence, Meaningfulness
Omengeredakl
Sense Effects | Presence Effects
Music, Meaning, and Meaningfulness
Meaningfully Present
5 Resonance: Co-Becoming with Sound
Ngerulmud 2006: The Mother Bat
Resonance
Resonance: Conceptual Implications
Revisiting the Mother Bat
Conclusion
6 Of Magic and Meaningfulness : Chelitákl Rechuódel and the Felt-bodily Dimensions of Spiritual Practice
Magic | Olai
Present-day Magic
Magically Meaningful
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
