The commonalities between melodic line, geometric line and environmental topography in traditional cultures of Northern Siberia

• Main Author: Nikolsky, Aleksey
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: figshare 2021
• Subjects: 190409 Musicology and Ethnomusicology; FOS Arts arts, history of arts, performing arts, music; 190406 Music Composition; 190407 Music Performance; 90901 Cartography; FOS Environmental engineering; 190502 Fine Arts incl. Sculpture and Painting; 49999 Earth Sciences not elsewhere classified; FOS Earth and related environmental sciences; 90904 Navigation and Position Fixing; 160104 Social and Cultural Anthropology; FOS Sociology; 220499 Religion and Religious Studies not elsewhere classified; FOS Philosophy, ethics and religion; Chukchi; Chukotka; khanty; nenets; Siberia
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.15146010.v1; https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/The_commonalities_between_melodic_line_geometric_line_and_environmental_topography_in_traditional_cultures_of_Northern_Siberia/15146010/1

This paper introduces a new field of study - systematic geomusicology. I start by summarizing the correspondences between the properties of physical objects and the attributes of music structures. Then I present the evidence that cross-modality constitutes the characteristic trait of music that distinguishes it from other auditory stimuli. Cross-modal ties of music are inherently related to musical emotions by connecting the affective states associated with real-life objects, their properties and functions with the affective states triggered by music. The capacity of music to prime and entrain secures the effective conversion of environmental typology into schemes of tonal organization. Once such conversion is adopted by a community of music-users, music acquires the mnemonic role by conserving cognitive schemes crucial for survival and well-being of an individual and a society at large, acting as a driving force in the organization of important non-musical activities. The process of natural selection of the most effective cognitive strategies is implemented in an ongoing feedback loop between the "auditory objects" of music and the physical objects of perceptual reality. This paper outlines the ethnomusicological evidence for the existence of such feedback between the tonal organization of music and 6 non-musical domains: composition in traditional art, strategies of drawing from life, sketching maps, environmental topography, and methods of navigation and orientation in space. The ethnographic data focuses on indigenous cultures of Northeastern Eurasia (the Urals, Siberia, Chukotka and the Russian Far East). The Nenets culture is selected as a paradigm of the prehistoric music because of its relatively strong isolation from external influences, excellent conservation and close similarity in lifestyle to the well-known cultures of the Last Glacial Period. Six above-listed aspects of the Nenets culture are compared to those of neighboring ethnicities of Khanty, Komi and more distant Chukchi in regard to their differences in environmental topography and sustenance strategies. Their cross-comparison demonstrates for each of these cultures the close similarity between the dominant scheme of tonal organization, the strategy of way-finding, and the method of spatial organization in pictorial representation of perceptual reality. At the same time, the inter-cultural differences can be traced to the geographic characteristics of the surrounding habitat. Based on the findings, I propose a new model of genesis of music from the "landscape aesthetics" and present the institute of "personal song" that is shared by all four analyzed ethnicities as a critical link between the inherent territoriality of animal communication and the abstract nature of human music as we know it today.