Embedded Music Theory
Eshantha Peiris · Music Theory Online · 2024
Around the world, music theory is commonly understood as knowledge cultivated by specialist musicians and scholars.It is also assumed to require analytical terminology supplemented with visual representations.However, even in performance traditions less concerned with explicit formulations of musical processes, musical theorizations can be embedded in the minds of the performers and their audiences.This article aims to broaden common understandings of music theory through the lens of orally transmitted ritualistic verses from Sri Lanka, which are sung or recited along with drumming.Versions of these Sinhala verses have been previously published in Sedaraman, J.E. 2008 [1964].Uḍ araṭ a Näṭ um Kalāva [The Art of Upcountry Dance] (Colombo: M.D. Gunasena).Transliterations and translations of these verses are presented alongside audio recordings of performances (some including video), to illustrate the ways in which the oral transmission and performance of such lyrics involves different modes of theorizing-such as knowledge of how conventional poetic meters can be sung, shared understandings of how to interpret vocables as drum strokes, and the association of different drum timbres with cosmological references.The article provides socio-historical context for the verses, details their form, explains the underlying conventions of versification, and analyzes the relationship between recited syllables and drum strokes, while highlighting the various processes of theorizing that undergird them.