Book Review - Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression by Steven Feld
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Steven Feld. (1990, second ed.) Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Book review by Heba Fatima, Lecturer in English, Birupa College (affiliated to Utkal University, Odisha)
Steven Feld is an American anthropologist, ethnomusicologist and sound artist known for his research on the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea. The Kaluli are a group of indigenous people residing in the rain forest regions near Mt. Bosavi, characterized by an egalitarian social structure and by an emphasis on spoken language as the primary means of communication and control. Originally published in 1982, Feld’s Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression is an anthropological and ethnomusicological study that contextualises Kaluli sonic expressions within the natural world that they inhabit and examines the sentiments that are conveyed through such expressions.
Drawing on Claude Levi-Strauss’s structuralism, Clifford Geertz’s interpretive ethnography and the ethnography of communication paradigm of Dell Hymes, Sound and Sentiment examines the ways in which the cultural ethos of the Kaluli people is informed by and is an embodiment of sound by analysing certain weeping and ceremonial performances along with a formal study of song and poetics. In the chapters focusing on Kaluli weeping and song, one sees that weeping is predominantly associated with the womenfolk while song is associated with men and is intended to ‘move [them] to tears’ (220). Song is more compositionally structured. It comprises ‘bird sound’ and ‘bird talk’ (220) and is performed in a ‘bird voice’ (220). While grief is the chief emotion here, it is at times overshadowed by the performance aspect of the Kaluli song. Funerary weeping, on the contrary, directly emanates from loss and grief. It provides the space for improvisations and spontaneity.
Feld describes the performance of a specific weeping practice among the Kaluli womenfolk, concluding that weeping comes closest to becoming a bird as the weeping sounds are comparable to bird sounds here. Since the Kaluli people draw analogies between the behaviour of birds and humans, the categories of birds reflect the human categories. Birds and bird sounds symbolize loss and sorrow which is mediated through weeping, song and Kaluli poetics.
Becoming a bird is the core metaphor for ‘Kaluli aesthetics’ (14) which he discusses in the concluding chapter of the book. It symbolizes loss and death by evoking the myth of ‘the boy who became a muni bird’ (14). This myth forms the core of the book and links sound with sentiment among the Kaluli. The first chapter elucidates this myth wherein a boy, upon being refused food by his elder sister, becomes a bird. By the time the sister regrets doing so, the brother has transformed into a bird and can no longer speak human language. He weeps in the language of birds as the rejection of a plea is equated with abandonment in Kaluli culture.
Since birds occupy such a central position among the Kaluli people, Feld also undertakes a taxonomic study of birds to understand their significance, ultimately realising that nature is embedded in the cultural system of the Kaluli people. To the outsider, they might just be birds but to the Kaluli people, they are ‘voices in the forest’ (45). Birds are recognized through their voices and are regarded as the spirit reflections of the deceased. The Kaluli bird taxonomy is thus not only influenced by morphology, observation and experience but also cultural symbolism.
In the subsequent chapters, Feld analyses the poetic content of the text of the song. He suggests that the texts have multiple meanings and studies how the Kaluli shift between ordinary conversation and poetic expression through linguistic code-switching. He also suggests that the Kaluli people have a musical theory, which is in opposition to the widely held notion in ethnomusicology that nonliterate people do not have a theory of music followed by a discussion on Kaluli musical terminology.
Sound and Sentiment is considered groundbreaking as it establishes sound as a method of knowledge production. It forms the basis of Feld’s research on the Kaluli sonic environment, leading to the formulation of the term ‘acoustemology’ which is understood simply as a way of knowing mediated by sound. It is an essential read for scholars of anthropology, ethnomusicology and sound studies.
Byline:
Heba Fatima, Lecturer in English, Birupa College (affiliated to Utkal University, Odisha).
Heba Fatima is currently posted as a lecturer in English at Birupa College, Odisha. Her areas of interest include popular culture, folklore and gender studies.
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