Song Clusters
Songs with Structural Similarities
With hundreds of songs in the repertoire, how do people--singers and audiences--differentiate them from each other? Each song has distinctive structural features--melodic and/or rhythmic content, ornamentation, and typical form. Sometimes what distinguishes one song from the next is microscopic. Often these similarities are geographic in origin. Songs from a particular place sound similar.Martis described songs that from particular regions, like the group of ratok from Maninjau, as all being similar in kiek. We could see these stylistic aesthetics as one manifestation of music and place.
At one performance we attended, Pak Ketua described two particular songs--"Kabau Punco" and "Indang Parik Rantang"-- as being from a similar kurung (compartment). When we were working together on song identification and texts later that summer, Pak Ketua explained what he meant by the songs being in the same "kurung:" "Ada beda sedikit saja, dari sebuah lagu" (there is very little difference between these songs). The differences can take place at the beginning, the middle, or at different points (informal conversation, July 28, 2016). The similarities between these songs relate to melodic and rhythmic content, including ornamentation, along with overall structure. The differences might be slight, but enough to constitute a new song with a different title. It is one of the reasons that pagurau and even singers might confuse one song for another.