Cantometrics
Cantometrics is a method for defining societies’ singing styles and correlating them with other cultural features. Coined by Alan Lomax, cantometrics refers to a method devised in the 1960s by Lomax, Victor Grauer, and other participants in the Columbia University Cross-Cultural Study of Expressive Style, which identifies stylistic patterns in singing from societies throughout the world. Based on 36 variables grouped under 7 headings, culturespecific approaches to singing receive ratings that have allowed the definition of 10 performance regions. Song performance features in each region correlate with and derive from social structure.
The cantometric method emerged with the availability of a body of recorded song samples from across the globe. Significant, recurrent features of performance, based on as few as ten individual examples from a society, have become the measures for creating a cantometric profile of the society’s singing style. Such a profile identifies these characteristics of singing: vocal qualities, use of ornamentation (for example, glissandos and tremolos), dynamic features, melodic features, rhythmic features, level of cohesiveness, and group organization. Subcharacteristics of each of these general traits are scaled between two poles: For example, melodic form (one of nine melodic features) ranges from complex to simple, and vocal width (one of six vocal qualities) ranges from narrow to wide.
Similar profiles among several societies produce song-style regions, which correspond roughly to culture areas in George P. Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas. Song-style region 1, for example, represents pockets of hunter-gatherer cultures in Africa; region 6 corresponds to the tropical gardener cultures of Oceania and central Africa, and region 8 is the Old High Culture that extends from north Africa throughout most of southern and central Asia.
Moreover, the method adds an explanatory dimension to the construction of profiles and the definition of regions. Researchers using cantometric scales hypothesize correlations between singing performance and social structure. For example, harsh vocal timbres predominate in cultures that stress the development of aggressiveness in males. Narrow vocal widths and a high degree of nasality occur in cultures with tightly controlled sexuality. Rhythmic regularity reflects the inculcation in childhood of habits of obedience and adherence to structured rules, and irregular rhythms occur in cultures with indulgent child-rearing practices.