Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression (Conduct and Communication)

Winner of the 1991 J. I. Stanley Prize of the School of American Research

Now in its second edition, Sound and Sentiment is an ethnographic study of sound as a cultural system--that is, a system of symbols--among the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea. It shows how an analysis of modes and codes of sound communication leads to an understanding of life in Kaluli society. By studying the form and performance of weeping, poetics, and song in relation to the Kaluli natural and spiritual world, Steven Feld reveals Kaluli sound expressions as embodiments of deeply felt sentiments.

For this second edition the author has updated his original work with a new, innovative chapter that includes an interpretive review by its subjects, the Kaluli people themselves. He has also written a new preface and discography and revised the references section.

Steven Feld, a MacArthur Fellowship recpient, is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Music at the University of New Mexico. He is coauthor, with Charles Keil, of Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues and, with Bambi B. Schieffelin, of Bosavi-English-Tok Pisin Dictionary. With Keith H. Basso he edited Senses of Place.