Categories
Bible Translation

I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing

I’ve been hobbnobbing with Ethnomusicologists this week. I gave a short devotional talk for the Ethnomusicology and Performing Arts course that is being held here at the moment and then my friends Rob and Lois Baker were around the office after their return from Benin. I’m always fascinated by the work that ethnomusicologists do and as a very bad guitarists, I am full of admiration (or jealousy) for their talents. It was while talking to one of the staff teaching the course that I learned that Tom Avery, one of the best in the field, had passed away this week. I met Tom a few times and always found him an encouraging and inspiring person to be around – even if he was very dubious about me as a blues singer (a long story, which I wont repeat here).

A tribute to Tom has just appeared online and it makes great reading:

Jack and Jo sought help from Dr. Tom Avery, a Wycliffe ethnomusicologist also working in Brazil at the time. Tom did extensive library research on the tribe. He then went with Jack and Jo and recorded Canela music so he could analyze it using a computer program he had written. After making recordings of Canela music Tom transcribed the music note by note, aided by computer-generated graphs of the melodies. Every part of the Canela music system was examined — form, melody, rhythm, scale, and more. He discovered that the intervals between notes of the Canela scale differ from the European scale. Therefore, Canela music cannot be played on a piano, because some of the notes would “fall in the cracks.”… Read More

Hat Tip: Wycliffe UK