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Cantometrics
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<!-- initial research for this article performed by [[user:Hyacinth]] --> {{Anthropology of art|Related articles}} '''Cantometrics''' ("song measurements") is a method developed by [[Alan Lomax]] and a team of researchers for relating elements of the world's [[tradition]]al vocal music (or [[folk music|folk songs]]) to features of [[sociology|social]] organization as defined via [[George Murdock]]'s [[Human Relations Area Files]], resulting in a taxonomy of expressive human communications style. Lomax defined Cantometrics as the study of singing as normative expressive behavior and maintained that Cantometrics reveals folk performance style to be a "systems-maintaining framework" which models key patterns of co-action in everyday life. His work on Cantometrics gave rise to further comparative studies of aspects of human communication in relation to culture, including: Choreometrics, Parlametrics, Phonotactics (an analysis of vowel frequency in speech), and Minutage (a study of breath management). Instead of the traditional Western musicological descriptive criteria of pitch, rhythm, and harmony, Cantometrics employs 37 style factors developed by Lomax and his team in consultation with specialists in [[linguistics]], [[otolaryngology]] and [[Speech and Language Pathology|voice therapy]]. The vocal style factors were designed to be easily rated by observers on a five-point scale according to their presence or absence. They include, for example: group cohesion in singing; orchestral organization; tense or relaxed vocal quality; breathiness; short or long phrases; rasp (vocal grating, such as associated, for example with the singing of [[Louis Armstrong]]); presence and percentage of [[vocables]] versus meaningful words); and [[melisma]] ([[Ornament (music)|ornamentation]]), to name a few. In the early stages of his work on the Cantometrics coding system, Lomax wrote of the relationship of musical style to culture:<blockquote>"Its fundamental diagnostic traits appear to be vocal quality (color, timbre, normal pitch, attack, type of melodic ornamentation, etc.) and the degree in which song is normally monodic or polyphonic. The determinative socio-psychological factors seem to be . . . the type of social organization, the pattern of erotic life, and the treatment of children.... I myself believe that the voice quality is the root [diagnostic] element. From this socio-psychological complex there seem to arise a complex of habitual musical practices which we call musical style"<ref>[http://research.culturalequity.org/psr-history.jsp Cantometrics: Concept of Style]</ref> </blockquote>
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