What the “Talking Jew’s Harp” is saying: Jew’s harp and personal song as the foundation of timbre-oriented musical systems

This article is an attempt to further develop the theory of divergence of musical systems of east and west of Eurasia by defining characteristics of a special type of musical cognition prevalent in traditional musical cultures of the indige-nous population of Siberia and Russian Far East. Its underlying trait is orientation on timbre (spectral content of musical sound) rather than pitch (frequency relations between musical sounds). Accordingly, western Eurasian musical cultures are characterized by the evolution of frequency-based modes towards Western tonality – in contrast to the northeastern Eurasian cultures’ special “timbral modes” and “spectral textures.” Unlike “tonality” of frequency-based forms of music, timbral “tonal organization” relies on personal use of music. Most known forms of musicking in timbre-based musical cultures of northern Eurasia are based on making music “for oneself” or for close circle of relatives and friends. Collective music-making here is exceedingly rare. Timbre-based music most likely has vocal roots and originates in the institution of “personal song” – a system of personal identifica-tion by means of individualized patterns of changes in rhythm, timbre and pitch contour following the model of person-alization of the speaking voice. “Personal song” allows for recognizing a person similar to the way in which we recog-nize a person by his voice. The Jew’s harp musical tradition constitutes the instrumental counterpart to personalized singing. Evolution of tonal organization of jaw harp music, largely determined by its unique acoustic features, compris-es the backbone of the historic development of timbre-based music systems.