In his 1993 essay, social anthropologist Tim Ingold forwarded a conceptual framework based on Heidegger’s notion of “dwelling,” which he called a “taskscape perspective.” Ingold proposed this framework as a way of understanding the phenomenological relationships between dwelling and time as the latter unfolded through the completion of tasks needed for living within particular landscapes or environments. In this paper, I apply this perspective to the adaptive relationship that exists between the central and western styles of Inuit drum dancing and the psychosocial well-being of younger people living in Ulukhaktok, an isolated Inuit settlement in the Canadian Arctic. I suggest that as a set of learnable tasks, drum dancing now allows multiple generations of practitioners to embody and engage with an epistemology of doing that is based on a core set of culturally defined precepts, such as the performance of cultural productivity and a more culturally consonant mode of passive communication. After first defining the constituent elements of the dwelling perspective and its usefulness as a framework for understanding drum dancing’s transforming role in Inuit life, I then describe how this expressive practice has become part of an increasingly complex social space. Negotiating this space, I argue, has become an indispensable task for cultivating a healthy sense of cultural identity and cultural competence within the local social framework and for subverting social isolation by reconfiguring long-held ideas around what is acknowledged as a productive contribution to the common good.

This paper proposes a novel transcription method for world percussion that employs the operational metaphor of a weave. Weave notation conveys the complex, holistic interplay of ensemble parts, with pedagogical applications as a creative and analytical tool to engage students of all ages. Informed by conceptualizations of additive timelines (Kubik, 1999), lattice group theory (Pressing, 2002; Toussaint, 2003), and metric matrices (Locke, 2010), I present a weave of Kadodo recreational dance-drumming, part of the larger Adzogbo/Adzohu suite, a “warrior-spiritual music and dance… of the Ewe and Fon-speaking people of West Africa” (Gbolonyo, 2009). Here, TUBS (Time Unit Box System) notation is transformed so that onset attacks are represented with a color: each colored “weft” corresponds to a specific instrument, governed by a repeating horizontal pattern of onsets. The “warp” vertically threads a repeating isochronous pattern of downbeats, interspersed with the bell pattern timeline. This color-coded metric matrix, with its structural/geometric interpretation of West African dance-drumming, underscored by a clear downbeat referent, offers a glimpse of the music’s beguiling aesthetic beauty, and provides a framework to analyze and communicate the foundational, interwoven musical fabric of reciprocal accompaniment. Visualizing the repeating sequence as a continuous weave reveals coinciding alignments and alternating syncopations that comprise a recurring arc of tension and release. Hopefully, by seeing everything all at once, we may better hear everything all at once, deepening our understanding of West African music so that it can be performed and appreciated in culturally consonant ways.

The steelpan, invented in the 1930s in Trinidad and Tobago, has evolved over nine decades to a family of instruments and steelband orchestra, playing all genres of music globally. Since 1963, one year post-independence from Britain, music has been composed and arranged for the annual Panorama steelband music competition held during the country’s Carnival celebrations. This music, born out of the decolonisation process, is a unique blend of European and African elements that emerged in style and form over the first decade of the competition. Kramer (2001) describes the process of debricolage, a concept based on bricolage, as the breaking down of forms of the dominant culture and their transformation into symbols of identity by the subordinate group. Bricolage occurred when the colonial government banned African drums, and yielded the need-based invention of the steelpan; first from food tins, dust bins and other metal vessels, and ultimately from the oil drum. Debricolage occurred in the development of steelpan’s Panorama music by transforming orchestral, western Art music; breaking down its form, and re-assembling it using a mixture of African and European elements. This case study of the works of Leon “Smooth” Edwards, arranger for the Trinidad All Stars steelband, identifies the west African musical elements in the music beyond the well-known calypso rhythms and call-and-response form, using features identified by Nketia (1975), Ekwueme (1980), Agawu (2016) and Kunnuji and Wium (2023). It illustrates how they have been used to metamorphise western Art music into this indigenous artform of Trinidad and Tobago.

From Box to Cajón: Peta's Heritage is a documentary short film (30 min.) about the inter-connection between Afro-Peruvian musical (percussion) instruments and Afro-Peruvian history. The documentary shows not only how a community under terrible pressure (slavery) could essentially make something out of nothing and create a musical tradition complete with brand new instruments, but how a little-known community could create a musical instrument (the cajón) that is now used all over the world in other musical forms such as flamenco, Latin jazz, and rock.

NOTE: this is a fine-cut of the film; the documentary is partly in English and partly in Spanish with English subtitles.