Poetic Text and Melodic Text: Text-Setting in Two Song Traditions of Timor

Abstract

Abstract:Two traditions of unaccompanied singing in rural Timor—vaihoho duets of Fataluku speakers (Timor-Leste) and choral kananuk of the Southern Tetun (Timor-Leste and Indonesian Timor)—expand poetic texts by inserting vocables and extraneous words according to remarkably specific patterns of insertion and repetition. In effect there are two levels of text: that of the poem itself and that of a melodic text belonging not to the poem but to the melody. The article closes with brief comparisons to some other singing traditions in Indonesia and elsewhere (Rajasthan, Laos, and the Solomon Islands) and calls for detailed study of the structural role of "fillers" in text-setting.