Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression

by Steven Feld

This thirtieth anniversary edition of Sound and Sentiment makes Steven Feld's landmark, field-defining book available to a new generation of scholars and students. A sensory ethnography set in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, among the Kaluli people of Bosavi, Sound and Sentiment introduced the anthropology of sound, or the cultural study of sound. After it was first published in 1982, a second edition, incorporating additional field research and a new postscript, was released in 1990. The third edition includes all of the material from the first two editions, along with a substantial new introduction in which Feld discusses Bosavi's recent history and reflects on the challenges it poses for contemporary theory and representation.

Steven Feld is a musician, filmmaker, and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Music at the University of New Mexico. His books include Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana, also published by Duke University Press. He is a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Genres: Music, Anthropology, Nonfiction, Animals, Poetry, Ethnography

344 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1982

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in 1999, when I was doing an independent study class on world music as an undergrad. It focuses on the Kaluli people and the idea of birdsong and water flow forming the background concepts of their musical themes and life. Pretty much an ethnomusicology classic.

[Mark]

If I had stuck with anthropology and ethnomusicology, this is the kind of book I would have wanted to write.

[Tomas Serrien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impressive piece of fieldwork.

[Trenchologist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense and very specific, but that's to be expected. This book came to me by way of a music major friend who thought I'd enjoy it (I love birds & play piano so understand music theory enough I wasn't lost during the technical stuff), and I did. Music/syntax/symbolism in bird songs and water(falling-movement quality). Not a casual read; it took concentration and I reread some parts. But I liked what I got out of it in the end, and Feld's approach to subject v-v culture then -ism avoidance in explicating both.

[Onur Engin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Sound and Sentiment, Steven Feld presents an ethnographic study of the cultural significance of sound among the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea. He argues that the limited visibility of the rainforest environment has led Kaluli culture, communication, and aesthetics to be shaped around the spiritual words and natural sounds of their surroundings. Feld begins by examining a Kaluli myth about a boy who transforms into a bird after his sister refuses to share her food with him, and demonstrates how this myth serves as a metaphoric foundation for Kaluli aesthetics, with bird sounds representing the voices of the deceased. He then discusses the classification and symbolism of different bird sounds, the role of women in funeral "melodic-sung-weeping," and the connection between Kaluli poetry and bird sounds. In the final chapter, Feld synthesizes his arguments, arguing that Kaluli aesthetics are centered on the concept of "being a bird" and that birds and their songs serve as mediators for audible social sentiments such as singing, weeping, and communication. Feld employs a range of structuralist, anthropological, linguistic, semiotic, ethnographic, and musicological methods and techniques in his study, and raises questions about the relationship between environment, culture, and the meanings of sounds.