Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Chants and calls heard in Labasa



from w
Here are two pictures I took when I was researching the music of Labasa - at a South Indian temple and at the Naseakula mosque just below the Fijian village. I recorded the chants and calls to prayer from both places that day. For two to three years I was immersed in ethnomusicology - okay it's sounds academic but it was just going around with a portable tape-recorder and asking questions and listening to a huge variety of music - in villages, churches, homes, schools, sitting on the side of a mountain as the men and women cleaned a yam garden, festivals and so on. Very enjoyable field-days. Well, I only used about 5% of the tapes in the thesis but still have hundreds of cassette tapes. My thesis never got on-line, just copied for some universities. Nowadays it is a delight when someone allows their research papers to be read on-line. What do I do with all those old tapes?

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