Steven Feld


Steven Feld is an American ethnomusicologist, anthropologist, and linguist, who worked for many years with the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea. He earned a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991.

Early life

Feld was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 20, 1949. He graduated with a BA cum laude at Hofstra University in anthropology in 1971. He first went to the Bosavi territory in 1976, accompanied by anthropologist Edward L. Schieffelin, whose recordings of the Bosavi inspired him to pursue this work. His work there fulfilled his dissertation for his PhD from Indiana University in 1979.

Career

Feld later returned several times in the 1980s and 1990s to Papua New Guinea to research Bosavi song, rainforest ecology, and cultural poetics. He has also made briefer research visits to various locations in Europe.
He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Pennsylvania. He is currently a professor of anthropology and music at the University of New Mexico. Since 2001, he has also held a visiting appointment at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen, Norway, as a professor of world music.
In 2002, he founded the VoxLox label, "documentary sound art advocates for human rights and acoustic ecology." His most recent book Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra is based on five years of research and collaboration in Accra, Ghana.
He is also a musician, and he has been active in the New Mexican music scene since the 1970s.
Some of Feld's recordings are sampled on the track, "Kaluli Groove" on the 2007 album Global Drum Project by Mickey Hart, Zakir Hussain, Sikiru Adepoju, and Giovanni Hidalgo.

Academic work

Schizophonic mimesis

Schizophonic mimesis is a term coined by Steven Feld that describes the separation of a sound from its source, and the recontextualizing of that sound into a separate sonic context. The term in and of itself describes how sound recordings, split from their source through the chain of audio production, circulation, and consumption, stimulate and license renegotiations of identity in an ethnomusicological perspective.
The term is composed of two parts: schizophonia and mimesis. Firstly, schizophonia, a term coined by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, refers to the split between an original sound and the reproduction/transmission of this sound, be it in a recording, a song, etc. For example, any sound recording, radio, and telephone is a machine of schizophonia, in that they all separate the sound from its original source; in the case of radio, the source of a New York radio show is from New York, but a listener in Los Angeles hears the noises from Los Angeles. Secondly, mimesis describes an imitation or representation of that separated sound into another context. For example, mimesis has occurred if one places a recording of a baby's gurgle into a song.

Notable examples

  1. In 1969, ethnomusicologist Hugo Zemp recorded a Solomon Island woman named Afunakwa singing a popular Solomon Islands lullaby called "Rorogwela". Then, in 1992, on Deep Forest's album Boheme, a song called "Sweet Lullaby" samples Zemp's field recording of Rorogwela. Furthermore, in 1996, Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek sampled the melody of "Rorogwela" in his song "Pygmy Lullaby" on his album Visual World. The field recording is an example of schizophonia, and the placing of this field recording into "Sweet Lullaby" is an instance of schizophonic mimesis. The sampling of the melody in "Pygmy Lullaby" demonstrates further schizophonic mimesis.
  2. In 1966, ethnomusicologist Simha Arom recorded a particular style of music from the Ba-Benzélé Pygmies called Hindewhu, which consists of making music with a single-pitch flute and the human voice. Soon after, Herbie Hancock adapted the Hindewhu style by using a beer bottle instead of a flute in his 1973 remake of "Watermelon Man". Then, Madonna's song "Sanctuary" from the 1994 album Bedtime Stories sampled Hancock's adaptation of Hindewhu. Again, the field recording is an example of schizophonia, and the use of the Hindewhu style in Hancock's adaptation and "Sanctuary" are examples of schizophonic mimesis.

    Works