18th International Meeting

StubickeToplice
Croatia

13-17 April, 2011

at the invitation of

Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku

Gisa Jähnichen, 
Comparative Musicology - Audiovisual Media
Music Department
Faculty of Human Ecology
Universiti Putra Malaysia
UPM Serdang, Selangor
MALAYSIA
gisajaehnichen@web.de

The Last of their Kind: Khmu Flute Songs

Khmu flute songs seem to be a non-inheritable tradition. Usually conducted by elder women, flute songs are played to entertain and to impress young people in the villages, to teach them with short sayings inserted between the melodic lines and to train their acoustic memory. Hence, the direct communication between performer and audience is of utmost importance. Flute songs that are performed through alternate blowing and singing into a transverse flute have certain joint features with common entertainment songs, but they are far more difficult and challenging for instrument playing and voicing, and different kinds of breathing have to be tightly co-ordinated. Because of these unique techniques and a certain mental condition to perform flute songs, almost no young woman takes up this interesting music practice. Besides playing difficulties a further reason for neglecting Khmu flute songs is that they are not "intelligible" for non-Khmu audiences, for mass media or stage performances. The sound is hard to amplify; the voice is of inconsistent quality, from piercing to indistinct, and the short text insertion may need the audience’s response. Thus, we can say that the Khmu flute songs recorded in the last decade will be the last of their kind unless Khmu people start to care about them. The paper introduces Khmu flute songs in comparison with existing song types, connected cultural concepts and selective developments that once led to the flute song practice and today to its actual decline. The material for this paper originates from field work in Lai Chau (1992), Luang Prabang (2000) and Oudomxay (2010).