Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:59:02am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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The Materiality of Music-Making | |
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One Material, Many Materialities: Goat Skin and Vocality in Yoruba Dùndún Drumming Harvard University, Among Yoruba drummers in southwestern Nigeria, the Dùndún is often described as Òkú Ewúrẹ́ Tó ń F’ohùn Bí Ẹ̀nìyàn—“the dead goat skin that vocalizes like a human,” a formulation that locates vocality in the drum’s membrane. While studies of Dùndún have richly documented its linguistic and rhythmic functions and social roles (Euba 1990; Villepastour 2010; Omojola 2012), accounts of its vocality have largely centered on human drumming technique and speech imitation. As a result, the material behavior of the drum’s membrane remains analytically underexamined, obscuring how vocal meaning, intelligibility, and expressive nuance are shaped in performance. This paper argues that Dùndún vocality emerges through the material responsiveness of goat skin under changing conditions of pressure, tension, heat, and touch. Drawing on four months of performance-based observation in Ilora, Oyo State (Nigeria), close listening to archival recordings, oral accounts of material engagement, and interviews with master drummers (Àyàn), I employ material tracing—tracking how the membrane’s physical state shifts across a performance—to analyze how drummers negotiate the skin’s biological limitations and expressive possibilities. I demonstrate that the Dùndún membrane does not possess a singular materiality; rather, it exhibits multiple materialities that yield distinct vocal registers. These include melorhythmic vocality (Àlùjó), produced through a quasi-slack membrane state that foregrounds patterned temporal articulation; nasal vocality, where membrane resistance produces a pinched, speech-like resonance; ohùn ago (a sonorous, bell-like voice), achieved through high-tension clarity; and speech (surrogate) vocality, in which elasticity is manipulated to mirror the tonal glides of the Yoruba language. I show how drummers actively regulate membrane tension: while they apply (solar) heat to tighten a slack skin, they also tie twine around the leather tension cords to deliberately relax the membrane. By foregrounding responsive materials, this paper reframes vocality as a hybrid phenomenon and suggests that musical communication—and the analytic frameworks used in describing it—depends not only on human control or symbolic structure, but on the dynamic properties of the materials through which sound, meaning, and culture are co-constituted. | |