Micro-Structure, Macro-Structure, and Genre in ’Are’are Solo Polyphonic Raft Panpipe Music

In his classic account of ’Are’are solo polyphonic raft panpipe music, Hugo Zemp (1981a, 1981b, 2001) has drawn attention to pulsations within individual tones, non-legato articulation, segmental (‘Buchstaben’) form, and equiheptatonic tuning as features that link this unusual idiom to the elaborate music of ’Are’are panpipe ensembles that comprise four to ten performers. Employing readily accessible free and almost-free software (Audacity, Transcribe!, Melodyne), I present analyses of a field recording that is widely accessible online at the Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie (CREM) website. The resulting detailed analysis helps identify auditory counterparts to the pulsations, articulation, and tuning Zemp reported and serves to define distinctions not usually made in European-derived staff notation. I locate these aspects of audible micro-structure within a framework of large-scale cyclical rhythm and extend the scope of the analysis to assess the remaining recordings of this genre that are now housed at the CREM archive.