Audio file
Title: Alan Lomax discusses his film "The Longest Trail" at a Computational Social Science Society luncheon (part 1)
Date recorded: March 24, 1986
Contributor(s): Contributor: Lomax, AlanBelongs to: Lomax, 1986 (I)
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Date recorded: March 24, 1986
Contributor(s): Contributor: Lomax, Alan
Subject(s): Cantometrics; Choreometrics; Ona Indians; Shamans--South-America; The Longest Trail (Film)
Genre: interview/commentary
Location:
Tape number: T3828
Track Number: 1
Archive ID: T3828a
Note: "The Longest Trail" refers to the migration across the Bering Strait and the peopling of the Americas. Part of the series "The Rhythms of the Earth," the film was made to give American Indians an idea of their own culture and was being shown at Seneca Indian festival in upstate New York. Cantometrics and Choreometrics suggest that the expressive behavior of every day evinces the survival of ancient communication patterns, the ordering of human relationships, and use of space. Their analyses coincide with archeological evidence that Arctic nomads moved across the Siberian Plains south to Chile. One researcher, Ed Ericson, wrote a thesis on relation of Cantometrics to archeology that matches in detail the main regions of Amerindian culture. An ancient distribution brought the hunters, with the corn-irrigation culture of Mexico differentiating from the hunting and fishing cultures. Tierra del Feugo yields a yoiking song (a type also associated with the Lapps), featuring glottal vocal placement, much repetition, and the irregular rhythm that is the basic circum-Pacific and Siberian style today. Cantometrics results are grouped in basic core culture areas and their movements. Expressive style can be studied alongside of study of gene type. Evidence all around. Severe factor analysis has reduced the 139 descriptive criteria of Cantometrics to four main sets: form (how you handle shape, movement of hand/arms/torso/legs)| role| social organization (deals with integration, how distance is handled)| and gender (presence and absence of women). In the northern part of the world the need to conserve heat is associated with great restraint in movement of trunk and simultaneous movement of the limbs. Men dance, women stand on the side. In the tropics there is curving successive movement. Women are more involved in the tropics, may take the lead. Hunter style is side by side rather than face to face. Grain irrigation is associated with a highly integrated more dance group and a more complex organization of space. Hunter style persists in the civilization of the Andes and most of the circum-Pacific. The film presents complex findings that link tradition to ecology, environment, economics, social relations, and to time.
About the session: Alan Lomax discusses his film "The Longest Trail" at a Computational Social Science Society luncheon.
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