The Austronesian world refers to the geographical and linguistic realm encompassing Taiwan, insular Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Do the speakers of these languages share not only linguistic but also musical markers? I suggest an examination of Austronesian chants as a starting point for considering this question, as chant is closely related to speech. Drawing from my studies of Austronesian chants among Taiwan’s Indigenous groups, I will explore possible connections among chants across various Austronesian regions from two perspectives: parallelism and cognates. Principles of parallelism are manifested in Taiwanese Indigenous chants through common features such as couplet formats and dualities between vocables and lexical lyrics, call and response, and syllabic and melismatic singing, features that mirror chants or ritual speeches across the Austronesian world. Cognates referring to Austronesian chants, such as olic (Taiwan), oli (Hawai‘i), and oriori (Aotearoa), suggest that chanting traditions in these regions may derive from a common lineage. To examine these connections, I will employ a “transported soundscape” framework, inspired by Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith’s “transported landscapes” theory. Matisoo-Smith argues that Austronesian ancestors constructed “transported landscapes” through introducing “culturally and economically important plants and animals” to the islands they settled, thereby facilitating the dispersal of Austronesian-speaking peoples (2015). By examining how chant, as a culturally and economically important component, relates to Austronesian transported soundscapes, I aim to shed light on little-known aspects of Austronesian musics and facilitate a deeper understanding of the relationships between music and language.

This paper examines the song Jump Down, Turn Around, Pick a Bale of Cotton as an American work song using Walter Benjamin’s concept of Aura. Investigating field recordings from prison farms, Fannie Lou Hamer’s childhood experience of singing the song, Huddie Ledbetter’s commercial recording, its subsequent success in popular entertainment and use as a pedagogical tool, we see a clear delineation of the song’s trajectory at the point of commercial reproduction. Before market success, the song, tempo and lyrics were fluid, however once recorded became fixed. Indeed, the embrace of a cheery version of this work song fits the historiography of American slavery. Additionally, in researching music of the enslaved, I also suggest that this song likely originated well after 1865 in penal colonies, given the popularity of African American songs composed by laborers enslaved in antebellum America. I argue utilizing the established, upbeat version of Pick a Bale of Cotton not only undermines the contribution of labor and skill of enslaved, diminishes the importance of the cotton industry to the national economy, but romanticizes the conditions under which cotton was produced. Finally, implications for ethnomusicology are the importance of historical context when using music as a pedagogical tool, even when ethnologically authentic, and that by broadening the scope of research we can present a fuller picture of any creative work.

Power relations fundamentally shape the study and translation of culture in ethnomusicology. Drawing on Philip Ciantar’s observation that collaborative processes remain bound by societal power dynamics (Ciantar 2013, 30), this paper examines how colonial frameworks continue to influence ethnomusicological research. Beverly Diamond’s analysis of missionary accounts of Indigenous North American music (Diamond 2013, 158–159) and Kofi Agawu’s critique of Western interpretations of African musical practices (Agawu 2016, 36) demonstrate how colonial perspectives distort cultural understanding and documentation. Using my forthcoming book Interpreting Court Song in Uganda: Musical Meaning, Power Relations, and Political Life (University of Rochester Press, 2025) as a case study, I analyze how contemporary scholarship can actively work to dismantle colonial practices in ethnomusicology. I argue that conventional academic methodologies often obscure and misrepresent the priorities of studied communities. The privileging of certain authorial voices frequently marginalizes research collaborators’ perspectives and renders scholarship inaccessible to broader audiences. This paper not only identifies these colonial legacies in current methodological approaches but also presents concrete strategies I have developed to advance decolonial practices in ethnomusicological research.