Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 1
From Audiation to Yukpo: Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions
Authorship: Ethan Chessin and Patricia Shehan Campbell

In the classic film The Sound of Music, Maria offers this advice to the Von Trapp
children: “Now children, do re mi fa so and so on are only the tools we use to build a
song.” Indeed, the solfege syllables used by Maria and the children with great panache
are a cornerstone of music pedagogy in the Western Art Music tradition, a learning tool
that activates the listening ear, the vocal-productive skills, and the cognitive processes,
and which directs musicians towards understanding the iconic figures of notation, for
both vocalists and instrumentalists. The adoption of solfege into pedagogical use in a
system known as solmization dates to a proposal by eleventh-century monk Guido of
Arezzo in which the first syllable of each line of music to an eighth-century hymn is used
as a mnemonic for the scale tone on which it is sung (Miller 1973). Solfege, also known
by such names as solfeggio and Tonic Sol-Fa, turns everyone into a singer, lifting their
voices to convert graphic figures and gestures into a stream of sung pitches. Now used
widely in instructional practice and prominent in published teaching (and student)
materials, Guidonian solfege serves a variety of purposes for singers as well as for
players of piano as well as various band and orchestral instruments. The syllables
themselves are semantically meaningless and could easily be replaced by others with a
similar effect (though Maria may have to rewrite the words to her song), but the longstanding tradition of do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do is holding firm in the West, with every
indication that it will be continued for the foreseeable future.
Western Art Music is not the only tradition to have adopted a set of vocalizations

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 2
for pedagogical use with instrumentalists. Many of the world’s cultures have in place
systems that direct players to sing as a pathway to musical learning, though these systems
vary greatly in formality and complexity. In fact, while it is rare to find a complete
rationale or even an origin story for such vocalizations (as in the case of Guido’s eighthcentury hymn), scholars have discussed vocalization systems that address pitch, rhythm,
timbre, contour, and many other factors not present in Guidonian solfege. These systems
from musical traditions of many of the world’s cultures may tell a great deal about those
musical traditions, even if they are rendered unconsciously.
Studying such systems of vocalization can be troublesome when vocables are
used solely in instrumental music lessons, as formal performances are not likely to
include their use and there may be little in print that describes them. The use of the
solmization system of solfege syllables is only a small component of the ethnographies of
musical cultures, and has rarely been investigated exclusively. Even rarer are studies
comparing their use across the world. The purpose of this paper is to compile and
determine the functions and purposes of the use of singing – specifically, the singing and
chanting of semantically meaningless vocal syllables – in the formal lessons offered by
musicians of selected instrumental art traditions of the world’s cultures.
Vocalization in Western Instrumental Music
The evidence is plentiful in documentation of the use and effectiveness of solfege
in Western art music traditions, including its presence in formalized institutions such as
schools, conservatories, and in university courses. This may be related to the intellectual
and sociocultural processes that underpin musical learning in the West. Grutzmacher
(1987) found that a school program of instrumental study that included vocalization was

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 3
more effective at teaching technical skill and conceptual understanding to fifth- and sixthgrade instrumental students as compared to instrumental practice alone. Similarly,
Sheldon (1998) found that the study of sight singing of excerpts from relevant band
literature and the use of solfege had a positive effect on an important dimension of
musicianship: the ability of undergraduate music majors to identify errors in instrumental
music excerpts. In both of these studies, no inherent value is ascribed to the semantic
meaning of the syllables themselves; rather, the sung syllables are important to the
understanding by students of the contextual value of the pitches within the tonal system.
This research is further supported by Goolsby (1996), who observed that effective music
teachers employed all varieties of vocal modeling with greater frequency than
inexperienced teachers. The intentional use of vocalizations in instrumental music
instruction in the West is in no doubt due to its efficacy in developing musical
understanding and skills, particularly connecting the listening ear to what is visualized in
printed staff notation.
Popular approaches to music pedagogy put the principle of vocalization to use in
instrumental (as well as vocal) settings. The Kodaly concept, a thorough-going training
that features sung solfege in the sequential development of inner hearing, is highly
regarded for its pathway to music literacy (Choksy 1999), and the eurhythmic movement
of the Dalcroze method embraces solfege (and solfege rhythmique) as a critical
component of musicianship training (Mead 1994). Followers of Edwin Gordon and his
Music Learning Theory advocate for the use of vocables in teaching not only pitch
relationships through solfege but also rhythmic relationships. Walters and Taggart
(1989) expounded on this idea and its applications to the teaching of instrumental music,

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 4
elementary general music, the piano, and jazz. Grunow and Gordon’s (1995)
instrumental method books Jump Right In are an example of solmization in practice, as
they employ Gordon’s concept of audiation (inner hearing) which relies upon vocalizing
musical ideas such as rhythms, solfege syllables, and rote songs. Other authors,
including Dalby (1999), Robinson (1996), and Schleuter (1984) discussed the practical
application of the use of vocalization (as advocated by Gordon’s theory) in beginning and
intermediate band and orchestral classrooms. Howard’s (1996) proposals for integrating
solmization into instrumental music lessons are similar, though Kodaly-based in their
emphasis on folk music, kinesthetic mnemonics (i.e. the Curwen hand signs), and canons.
Vocalization in World Instrumental Music Traditions
These examples of the use of vocalization in instrumental music education
programs in Western culture have been proposed for similar purposes, generally as an aid
to understanding and retention of pitch relationships and rhythmic patterns, occasionally
containing information on contextual tonal meaning and stylistic interpretation.
Elsewhere in the world, instrumental music practice involves systems of vocalization that
affirm these purposes, as well as to introduce other reasons for its presence in the musical
training. The role of vocalization as a mnemonic device for various musical elements is
central to its use in music in and beyond the West.
Mnemonic Aids
In his encyclopedic entry to the authoritative Grove Music Online, Bent (2010)
defines the concept of notation to include ”formalized systems of signalling between
musicians, and systems of memorizing and teaching music with spoken syllables, words
or phrases” (¶ 1). This definition is broad enough to encompass both visual systems of

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 5
notation (such as the Western staff notation) and aural systems such as solmization.
While the practice of visual notation is common in some traditions, aural processes
without associated visual icons function well in other traditions as effective means of
transmission. Words or syllables, with and without semantic meaning, can function as
critical memory aids for learning and retaining music. Chiener (2002) provided an
example of this in the nanguan music of Taiwan, when he noted that the memorization of
song texts is a crucial step in the acquisition of a sufficient body of instrumental
repertoire within this delicate and gentle chamber music genre. Comprising the nanguan
ensemble are pipa (four-stringed lute), sazian (two-stringed lute), erxian (two-stringed
fiddle), xiao (flute), and a wood clapper. Originating in the southern Chinese province of
Fujian, nanguan requires the oral transmission of these song texts from masters to
disciples (with the aid of handbooks) (Yeh 1988). The song texts are placed in right-toleft columns on a page, joining indications for beat, pitch, and fingering, and these four
elements are presented orally by the teacher and are thus memorized by the players (see
Fig. 1)

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 6

Fig. 1: Example of Nanguan song text
Whereas memorization in nanguan music relies upon a system of vocalization in
which the syllables have inherent meaning, Anderson (1980), Ruckert (2004), and Allen
and Viswanathan (2005) discussed the importance of rote memorization (aided by a
vocalization system in which the syllables are semantically meaningless) in the
Hindustani and Karnatic musical systems of North and South India. In these traditions,
the practice of singing precedes the development of instrumental performance on sitar,
sarod, vina, shenai, and bansuri in Indian classical music, where there exists no
comprehensively meaningful system of written notation.
Mnemonics by vocalization can take many forms, and there exist various

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 7
vocalization systems around the world that aid in the memorization of specific elements
of music. Perhaps the simplest form of this is the transmission of melody. Koning
(1980) described the use of an Irish technique called jigging in which the student invents
nonsense syllables on which to echo an instrumental melody. The syllables themselves
may change from iteration to iteration, and yet while they are often neither discernible
bits of Gaelic or English language, they provide simple verbal building blocks for the
transmission (preservation) of instrumental melodies commonly played on fiddle, flute,
and bagpipe. To the southeast of Ireland, gajda (bagpipe) players in Bulgaria learn their
melodic repertoire from each other in ways similar to the Irish, by whistling or repeating
melodies on improvised nonsense syllables like “ta-da” (Rice 1994). A further
geographic distance away, the Shona mbira players of Zimbabwe employ many styles of
singing while playing, some of which – huro, for example – are direct imitations of
instrumental motives improvised by other musicians in concert (Berliner 1981).
Melody is often closely linked to its tonal context and that of its accompaniment.
Like the standard solfege system in the West which includes not only the pitch-class of
the melodic notes (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti) but also an inferred relationship to chordal
harmony, the sargam of Indian classical music links specific syllable names
(correspondingly, sa-re-ga-ma-pa-dha-ni) to specific notes within the context of a raga,
which is a concept that lies somewhere between a scale and “a storehouse of remembered
melodic history and a body of melodic potential” (Allen and Vishwanathan 2005, 42).
In contrast to the association of mnemonic syllables with absolute pitches as in
sargam and solfege, there exist many systems of equal complexity that treat melodic
content according to its contour. Campbell (1991) outlined a medieval Japanese

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 8
symbology that contains only pitch contours in which it is impossible to reconstruct a
melody from written sources, and oral transmission – by the use of such syllables – is
therefore the only way to communicate musical material accurately. Research by Hughes
(2000) on the subject of sung and rhythmically chanted syllable systems is richly
descriptive. He referred to more than a dozen “acoustic-iconic mnemonic systems” of
various levels of complexity that employ the technique of raising vowel formant with
pitch contour, including systems from Scotland, Lesotho, Thailand, and Korea.
Like Gordon's Music Learning Theory method that links rhythmic patterns to
mnemonic syllables, various world traditions utilize vocalization systems that contain
rhythmic information (Campbell 1991). These systems are fully enveloped within
processes for learning to play tabla (Ruckert 2004), the mridangam drum of the Karnatic
Indian tradition (Allen and Vishnawathan 2005), the Irish bodhran (Williams 2009),
drums and gongs of the Korean samulnori (Howard 2005), and the Egyptian tambourine
known as riqq (Sawa 1996). In India, for example, students vocalize rhythmic patterns
with specific syllables to coincide with the structure of the tala, or metric cycle (Gottlieb
1993, Ruckert 2004). Hughes (1991) described various aspects of the Korean yukpo
mnemonic language, in which, lacking a strict one-to-one relationship between syllables
and note lengths, certain vowels tend to signify shorter sounds while others represent
longer ones.
Accents are often components of information on rhythmic patterns that are
delivered orally. Some mnemonic systems include information specifically reflecting the
stress of a given sound. Campbell (1991) outlined a system in Malawi (further detailed
by Kubik 1987) in which certain hard consonant sounds represent accented notes, similar

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 9
to a system Kwami (1998) identified amongst Ewe drummers in Ghana. Hughes (2000)
also recognized this principle in practice in the performance of “wind instruments, (in
which) initial consonants generally mimic the attack or onset of a pitch” (96). For
example, the shoga (oral mnemonic system) for the Japanese ryuteki flute often uses the
syllable ta for stressed notes while unstressed notes are represented by the syllables ra or
fa. Similar systems operate for the Brazilian berimbau (in the representative syllables
don and chin) and for the Middle Eastern doumbek (similarly, tek and dum).
Many of these mnemonic systems for conveying rhythm and accent in drumming
also contain information on articulation, timbre, and tone quality. In writing about
temple drumming in Kerala, India, Groesbeck (2003) outlined the mnemonics for the six
possible drum strokes, onomatopoeically related to the sounds they create. Kwami
(1998) listed a similar catalogue of vocalized drum strokes amongst Ewe drummers in
Ghana. This phenomenon is not limited to percussion instruments, however. For
example, the yukpo mnemonic systems in Korea vary between instrument types based on
the sound emitted by each instrument, depending on the type of attack and decay (Hughes
1991). It is therefore possible to determine the instrument for which a song is intended
by listening only to a vocalized version, such as the percussive sounds of the plucked
zither yukpo system’s featuring of tang and ching syllables versus the liquid sounds of the
oboe yukpo system’s use of re and na. The informal rules governing consonants that
represent techniques for tonguing Korean flutes and playing single notes versus chords
are similar to those utilized in playing Japanese shamisen (three-stringed lute) and
Javanese kendhang drumming.
Mnemonic vocalization systems can convey both musical and extramusical

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 10
meaning. In his study of learning processes in the Taiwan nanguan ensemble, Chiener
(2002) noted the importance of gesture, both as an aid to and a product of memory.
Rules of equal complexity dictate the gestural counting of the beat and the reciting of the
mnemonics. The skill of a nanguan musician can be judged by his or her physical
reaction to observed music, such that extremely skilled audience members can make their
abilities known to the performers on stage simply by accurately tapping their feet in
counting the progress of the music. This is similar to the keeping of the metric tala cycle
in Indian classical music, which has a wide gestural vocabulary of finger, hand, and wrist
maneuvers that act as reinforcement of the often obscured beat and can help identify
musicians who are in the know (Anderson 1980). Russian and Lithuanian women take
dance cues from verbal imitations of song melodies, and often times the dancing aids in
rhythmic unification through the women's accented stomping patterns (Zarskiene 2003).
The rare phenomenon of the Lithuanian skuduciai music is perhaps one of the
most striking examples of the role of vocal mnemonics in the process of learning and
performing. Here, the sound of the pipe is produced by uttering certain vocalizations. It
is therefore impossible to play without simultaneously singing semantically meaningless
syllables, which are then used to teach the songs in the absence of the pipes (Zarskiene
2003). These skuduciai consist of grass-like reeds, but may be made of wood, too. They
are still played outdoors while going to work, during night watches of grazing horses, and
at work with bees, always with players vocalizing directly into the pipes.
Finally, these vocalizations can be used as a memory aid not only for the content
of the music but also for the style in which it is played. In his classic tome on jazz
musicians, Berliner (1994) described a musical conversation in which the teacher, an

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 11
accomplished drummer, used various “scat” syllables to convey to his student the
intricacies of a recording. By riffing and improvising on the thematic material at hand,
the teacher and student were able to absorb the musical ideas and their potential
variations, and thus to work within one of the core components of jazz style:
improvisation.
Implicit Learning
The example of scat-style vocalization in jazz forms a segue into the second broad
category of the uses of vocalizations in instrumental music traditions. While oral
mnemonics are used explicitly to teach and remember key aspects of music performance
(e.g. for pitch contour on the Korean flute, or for stick techniques in Indonesian
drumming), these vocalizations often contain implicit information that is vital to the
performer but not a function of the syllables themselves. In Berliner’s chronicling of jazz
musicians, for example, the scat syllables are used explicitly to convey the style: “Some
syllables enable them to imitate singular qualities of different instruments” (126), since
the “b” and “p” sounds accurately mimic a saxophone reed beginning to vibrate, while
“d” and “t” sounds are formed just as one would tongue a trumpet or trombone (Stewart
1987). Additionally, the student in the musical conversation learns to improvise
variations on rhythmic phrases through use of scat syllables. This information is not
contained in the syllables themselves, but is a natural result of their correct and continued
use.
Chiener (2002) summarized this principle succinctly, writing that “authoritative
learning processes [like rote repetition and memorization of examples performed by the
teacher] limit the student's acquisition of theoretical concepts that stand free of specific

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 12
repertoire. Teachers presume that learning is a process of memorizing one piece after
another. Although they have theoretical knowledge, it is a knowledge that is not ordered
into abstract, generalized discourses but is implicit within musical content” (119). Vocal
syllables, therefore, can also teach theoretical knowledge implicitly through these
authoritative pedagogical techniques or other means.
As seen in Berliner’s account of scatting by the jazz teacher and his student
(Berliner 1994, 109), the ability to improvise is a common outcome of this vocalization
technique. A similar practice is central to Hindustani conventions of improvisation, or
manodharma sangita (Campbell and Teicher, 1997). Once Indian musicians achieve
fluency with the sargam syllables, they progress to a study of vocal improvisation, using
scale-degree labels as the verbal content (Anderson 1980). Both vocalists and
instrumentalists study improvisation by echoing phrases sung by the teacher until the
composition process itself is familiar and accessible. This process leaves the student with
the ability to improvise as well as to perform memorized ragas with correct stylistic
ornamentation. Wade (1984) enumerated six forms of improvisation within the classical
Hindustani genre khyāl, two of which utilize non-syntactic vocables: “Sargam passages
are those enunciating the syllables for the pitches (Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni) as they are
sung...Nom-tom features rhythmic pulsations, achieved by pitch repetition, particular
ornamentation, and enunciation of text syllables, vocables, or vowels.” (27)
Improvisation can be taught through similar processes whether or not it is
explicitly embraced in the musical culture. Jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong
generally subscribe to the belief that “If you can’t sing it, you can’t play it” (Berliner,
1994), inferring that vocal learning must precede instrumental learning for the purpose of

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 13
improvisation. On the other hand, Groesbeck (1999) described the pedagogy of
Tayampaka temple music in Kerala, India: “In a performance which consists almost
entirely of improvisation, improvisation is generally not taught, and discouraged among
students; some older informants even remembered times in which students were beaten
with sticks or canes for improvising” (9). Instead, students learn preset forms that are
combined according to orthodox rules until the student achieves a level of mastery
sufficient to create his or her own forms.
Similarly, Nooshin (1998) described the role of improvisation in Iranian classical
music in this manner: “One of the most striking aspects of learning in this tradition in
which improvisation plays such a central role is that pupils are not actually taught how to
improvise as such” (73). By learning to sing short set pieces called gushehs, musicians
learn improvisational competence. This process of abstracting stylistic elements from a
canon (known as radif) of hundreds of pieces is an example of theoretical knowledge
taught implicitly, exemplified in a remark made to Nettl (2002) by his teacher: “We do
not teach improvisation. You learn the radif, and it teaches you to improvise” (140).
Additionally, the art of improvisation is inseparable from the teaching and learning of the
canonic musical material. Though the gushehs have a set melodic structure, they are
always performed with creative variations bordering on improvisation, even as they are
being demonstrated and repeated by teacher and student. As Nettl (2009) wrote, “the
radif...is memorized, but structurally it cannot in essence be distinguished from the
improvisation that is based on it” (197).
In Iran, the radif is organized into twelve modes (dastgahs), each of which
contain hundreds of micromelodies known as gushehs that are fit for improvising upon

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 14
(Nettl 1987). While the radif (which has its roots in Persian poetry and oratory, hence its
vocal emphasis) is the central organizing principle of both the instrumental lessons and
the performances of the genre, it is only taught implicitly, through the dastgahs and
gushehs (Nooshin 1998). Other traditions transmit the entirety of the instrumental canon
through vocal means in similar ways. For example, the instrumental gharana tradition of
Pakistan consists of an overarching canon of works possessed by groups of families
(biradari), each of which transmits pools of specific musical ideas (Silver and Burghardt
1976); such a tradition exists also in India (Neuman 1990). The ideas within these
gharana traditions are generated vocally and transmitted instrumentally. The music of
the Ashkenazic Jews, on the other hand, is also informed by a liturgical canon consisting
of prayer melodies and Biblical cantillations (Heskes 1984). The rules, styles, and motifs
of the liturgical canon inform the Ashkenazic Jewish instrumental form of klezmer, which
also derives much of its material from secular sources. Though klezmer is primarily an
instrumental form, the transmission of religious material in synagogues and prayer
sessions – some with words, as in prayer texts, and some without, such as nigunim, or
sacred table songs – serves to preserve the raw material of this genre.
Prayer texts, of course, are not without contextualized cultural meaning. Often
the instrumental adoption of modes used during specific services or times of the year can
communicate special emotions to Jewish listeners who are attuned to the context of the
motifs and melodies (Heskes 1984). This phenomenon is similar to the use in Nigeria of
tonal levels in the Yoruba dundun (talking drum) language, including “linguistic tones,
vowel sounds, consonant distinctions, and grammatical constructions.” (Manuel and Fiol
48) While the drum is used in a musical context, the meaning it evokes is based directly

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 15
upon its resemblance to the tonal nature of the Yoruba language (Waterman 1990). This
is the reverse of vocal syllables as semantically meaningless signposts to musical ideas:
Yoruba drumming is a semantically meaningful musical signpost to verbal ideas. Finally,
the hocketing of vocal syllables integral to the production of tone in Lithuanian panpipe
music functions as an indicator of group membership (Zarskiene 2003). As a single
musician’s part to a song is meaningless unless performed in the context of the others,
these mnemonic devices only work as such when a full group of performers is present.
Thus, it is the vocal syllables themselves that enforce group unity.
Other Uses of Vocalization for Instrumental Musicians
In addition to explicit mnemonic uses and implicit teaching, vocalizations are
used for several other reasons in instrumental music pedagogy worldwide. In many
traditions, these vocalizations are used as aids to performance and rehearsal efficiency
and unity. Hughes (2000) observed the use of vocal syllables as shortcuts to selecting
places to start rehearsals or practice sessions in Japan: “When a teacher wishes to direct a
student's attention to a particular passage…this can be done by saying, ‘Start again from
[chichitetsuton]’, without actually singing the pitches” (116). Maori chant employs a
similar practice in order to synchronize musicians during performances. To cue a phrase
ending, the song leader might add a non-translatable vocable such as “i" or “e” to the end
of the preceding line as a signal to the instrumentalists (McLean 1968, McLean 1996).
Similarly, Lithuanian and Russian pipe players’ hocketed vocalizations serve to keep all
musicians aligned in time (Zarskiene 2003). Shona mbira players in Zimbabwe take an
opposite approach, setting their mbira patterns to nonsense syllables sung to signal a
point of departure for an improvisatory section (Berliner 1981). Hughes (2000) described

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 16
an example of vocal syllables, aligning the three different instrument parts to be played
by one musician: “Consider how villagers in Iwate, northern Japan, learn the ‘Devil
Sword Dance’ (oni kenbai). While dancing, the student simultaneously sings [den suko
den den ...] – the combined mnemonics for stick-drum and cymbals – to the tune of the
flute melody, thus learning the dance and three instruments all at once” (117).
Unsurprisingly, oral mnemonics in music are often closely related to language.
Kwami (1998) wrote of specific connections between drum-language syllables and Ewe
language phrases, reminiscent of the syntactic meaning of dundun drumming in Yoruba
culture (Campbell 1996, Manuel and Fiol 2007). Nooshin (1994) mentioned the
“intimate relationship” between the logic of musical phrases and the syntax of sentence
structures in Iranian music and Farsi. Indeed, the poetic structure of the music is so
important in the pin peat ensemble music of Cambodia that vocables are added to the end
of many vocal phrases in order to balance the meter of the lyrics, thereby altering the
structure of the melody (Sam 1988). Zarskiene (2003) delineated the differences in vocal
syllables used in the production of panpipe music in the Baltic regions based on the
dialects spoken by the musicians, which persist even though all vocables arose from
imitations of the same instrumental tones.
In fact, Baltic panpipe music is a prime example of a genre in which the system of
vocal syllables is a direct outgrowth of the instrumental tradition that it imitates; this is
not always the case in other traditions. Ramnarine (1996) profiled the adoption of the
kantele, a once uncommon stringed folk instrument, by the Finnish school systems to
teach the national epic (the Kalevala), which is a lengthy poem of interwoven storylines
featuring a cast of players that has been set to music. Hughes (1991) described a

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 17
sixteenth-century Korean manuscript containing several vocal songs (playable on modern
Korean instruments) that encompass non-translatable vocables that are likely examples of
archaic yukpo – the Korean solmization system for relative pitch used for teaching flute
melodies. This is potentially an example of an instrumental song influenced by vocal
syllables which, in turn, originated in an instrumental tradition!
Such interrelationships between vocal and instrumental music forms may, in fact,
be the reason for the continued survival of the musical content of particular genres over
long periods of time. Tari (1998) argued that the longevity of certain musical traditions
in northern Hungary is in part based on the interconnectedness of the vocal and
instrumental traditions and the customs that both accompany. Even when elements of
these customs are lost, as in the case of the original flute melody of the Korean song, the
ability of a melody to transform across vocal/instrumental boundaries can be central to its
survival: “A tune leaving its original custom often survives in another function. E.g. it
may live on as a simple lyrical song without any custom (modification), or turn into an
instrumental dance tune (metamorphosis)” (Tari 1999, 98). Indeed, Sam (1988)
contended that when oral transmission alone is responsible for maintaining a musical
tradition, many pieces may be lost, as was the case in the Khmer classical court music
tradition. Ramnarine (1996) echoed the importance of institutional support for folk
traditions in Finland played on the kantele as the presence of Western classical music in
the schools can otherwise replace and 'disappear' the transmission of folk music.
Conclusion
Singing (and references to it as a pedagogical technique called “vocalization” and
its solfeging system of solmization) serves many roles in the transmission of instrumental

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 18
music. More than simply “the tools we use to build a song” as articulated by Maria von
Trapp in The Sound of Music, these vocalizations can serve as oral mnemonics for
musical elements from pitch and rhythm to accents, ornamentation, and style.
Furthermore, the vocalizations employed by instrumentalists carry a great deal of implicit
meaning within the specific culture in which they function, such as the transmission of a
canon of musical knowledge, theoretical knowledge, and rules surrounding
improvisation. Finally, these vocalizations play roles in rehearsing and perpetuating
music and musical traditions in their middle ground between vocal and instrumental
music. Examples of vocalizations abound, providing windows that offer views of the
role of music in multiple cultures, including the connections between vocal and
instrumental music, music and language, and music and culture. As Maria von Trapp
might well remark, “when you know the solfege system of vocalizations to sing, you can
indeed play most anything”.

 Vocalizations in World Instrumental Traditions 19
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