John Baily

Adaptation to prisms: Do proprioceptive changes mediate adapted behaviour with ballistic arm movements?

In Experiment I subjects pointed repeatedly at a target viewed through laterally displacing prisms and received terminal visual feedback. In one task the pointing movements were slow (proprioceptively controlled), and in the other they were fast (pre-programmed). In both tasks adaptation proceeded at the same rate and to the same level of performance. Following fast pointing with prisms a large amount of arm-body adaptation was found with slow and fast test movements, while following slow pointing with prisms a large amount of arm-body adaptation was found with slow test movements, but only a small amount with fast test movements. The result suggests that adapted behaviour with preprogrammed movements is not mediated by a proprioceptive change. In Experiment II pointing movements were passive. No arm-body adaptation was found with fast test movements, and, contrary to expectation, only a small amount with slow test movements.

Music of Afghanistan : professional musicians in the city of Herat

Herat, city and province a brief history of music in Herat Afghan urban music in the 20th century the science of music Kabuli art music popular and Herati music the social organization of musicians social contexts of musical performance music in the Herati value system interpreting musical change in Herat.

Introduction: Music and Migration

Attention to migration and the activities of migrants have added vigour to studies of a range of cultural phenomena from literature and film to architecture and food. Music is particularly interesting as it is one of the widest spread and most easily created forms of cultural production. Ethnomusicology has long been attentive to processes and results of migration but it is only relatively recently that this has had an impact on studies of migration more broadly. As an introduction to the special issue, this article reviews literature, sets out a typology for considering the relationship between music and migration, and contextualises the papers in this collection.

Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology

This article starts with a brief discussion of Hoods notion of bi‐musicality and considers several reports in the literature of learning to perform as a research technique. The authors experiences of learning to play dutâr and rubâb in Afghanistan during the 1970s are described in some detail. The article concludes with a discussion of the many advantages of learning to perform as part of the fieldwork enterprise.

Arm-body adaptation with passive arm movements

Two experiments investigated the aftereffects of pointing with passive movements during exposure to 15-deg laterally displacing wedge pnsms. Experiment 1 compared exposure with passive and active supported movements when the aftereffects were measured with the arm still in the passive movement device. Following passive exposure and active supported exposure, 5.6 and 7.9 deg, respectively, of arm-body adaptation were measured. In Experiment 2, the passive and active supported exposure tasks were compared with a third task in which similar movements were made with the arm fully supported by the muscles. Aftereffects were measured with active test movements. The amount of arm-body adaptation measured following passive exposure was decreased to 2.8 deg, and following active supported exposure it was decreased to 2.8 deg, while following exposure with normal active movements, 5.3 deg of arm-body adaptation was found. The results suggest that when the arm remains outstretched during prism exposure, adaptation is specific to this extended posture.

So Near, So Far: Kabul's Music in Exile

Based on fieldwork conducted in 2000, this paper examines the role of music in two sites of Afghan settlement in exile, Peshawar (Pakistan) and Fremont (California). Interpreting the data in terms of recent research on music and migration the paper argues that Afghan music in Peshawar serves to maintain links with the past, while in Fremont there is the emergence of a new kind of modernized Afghan music, which is bound up with the construction of a new Afghan-American identity. The new music is now feeding back to Afghanistan itself, showing that new cultural performances created and constructed in exile may end up as models shaping cultural practices at home.

‘Music Is In Our Blood’: Gujarati Muslim Musicians in the UK

In the past, members of the Muslim Khalifa community in Gujarat (India) held a low position in the social hierarchy, a status closely bound up with two of their hereditary occupations, barber and musician. This paper examines changing Khalifa attitudes towards their previously stigmatised occupations now that they are a well-established and relatively successful community in the UK. While the connection with hairdressing is acknowledged and actively pursued, music making is an area of contestation, with competing claims that ‘music is in our blood’, and that music is not fully endorsed by Islam. Some of the implications of this for ‘Khalifa identity’ are examined.

The Art of the ‘Fieldwork Movie’: 35 Years of Making Ethnomusicological Films

This short article traces the authors work as an ethnomusicological filmmaker from 1973. Starting with very basic equipment, and using an 8mm camera as a research tool during his fieldwork in western Afghanistan, the author describes his discovery of the joys of editing his field materials to create The Herat Trilogy. These films led him to the National Film and Television School, where he imbibed the stylistic principles of observational cinema. At the NFTS he directed two 16mm ethnographic films, Amir and Lessons from Gulam. In 2000 he embarked on a series of field trips to explore the situation of music in the Afghan transnational community. In this new context the author developed further the use of the video camera as a research tool, editing selected research footage into ‘fieldwork movies’ which remain faithful to many of the principles of observational cinema.

War, Exile and the Music of Afghanistan : The Ethnographer’s Tale

Contents: Introduction Before the communist coup of 1978 The jihad (holy war) era The mujahideen parties come to power Taliban times Kabul after the Taliban The global circulation of Afghanistans music The summing up Glossary of musical instruments Bibliography Index.

The naghma‐ye kashâl of Afghanistan

The naghma‐ye kashâl, the “extended instrumental piece”, is a genre of instrumental art music specific to Afghanistan. Prescriptive notations for 14 such compositions in a variety of melodic modes are presented. They were collected in the form of dictated oral notations in the 1970s from Ustad Mohammad Omar of Kabul and Ustad Amir Jan Khushnawaz of Herat. Some of these compositions are rarely heard today, and the aim is to put them on record for future generations of Afghan musicians. A preliminary analysis of the compositions is offered, and some guidance given for their performance.