Spectro‐temporal analysis of Palauan chants

A field study was carried out to determine how songs from the repertory of chants in Palau have changed over the last century. To this end, several chanters were recorded during recent fieldwork; these sound documents were then compared to items from several historic collections of sound recordings from the Phonogram Archives Berlin, Germany, and the Pacific Collection, Library of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. The available recordings cover the time span from 1909–2006. Analytical results were derived in the form of spectrograms both for recent recordings from the years 2005/2006 and historic ones from 1963. They confirmed the auditory impression that chanting in Palau today has moved away from a recitative style, relying predominantly on the speaking voice, towards a performance practice the sound ideal of which is the singing voice. Also, the range of pitch employed in these chants has expanded. Spectral analysis also revealed how, in particular genres, the musical form of group chants is structured by the changing contours of a frequency band that is resolved at phrasal ends, when the singers narrow the range of this tonal cluster. This unique technique is one of the core musical elements of the Palauan singing tradition.