Seite - 31 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 3/2017

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Birgit Abels | Musical Atmospheres and Sea-Nomadic Movement Among the Sama Dilaut 31 ensemble approach the listener from a different angle than the sound of all other boats. This in- creases the effect of being felt-bodily-dragged in alternating directions within a changing sonic space. Second, several tagunggu’ ensembles may be playing similar melodic motifs at the same time, but the ensembles’ tunings may vary. Therefore, similar melodic gestures may reach the listener’s ear from different sound sources and at different times, but their inner tonal structure also may be internally inflected, e.g., a scale degree 3 may be just audibly lower coming from an ensemble on boat A than coming from an ensemble on boat B. The psychoacoustic effects of this are complex and vary from listener to listener, but what’s important to the present analysis is that these microtonal scale inflections further contribute to the listener’s disorientation in to- nal space. This is because the listener’s tonal frame of reference is based on one ensemble’s scale structure at a certain time, but then it gets constantly jolted by the arrival of another ensemble (which may pass by just a few meters from the listener) and its own tuning. Like with rhythm, the listener’s own movement reinforces these effects considerably, as everything is continuously moving relative to each other: the listener, the sound sources, and the tonal structures. Because of this ongoing motion, the sonic space is fundamentally volatile – it keeps changing in unpredictable ways. The listener, therefore, must constantly realign with the space surrounding him or her, which keeps the felt body excited and active in the sense of Ingold: To keep riding “on the cusp of the very movement of the world’s coming-into-being,” listeners need to constantly sound out space and music by means of both. (3) Loudness. Perceived loudness, the way in which the sense of hearing processes the in- tensity of auditory sensations, hinges on the distance between the sound source and the listener. Changes in loudness impact the listener’s spatial orientation, yielding orientational confusion the moment both listener and sound source are in uncoordinated motion. With both the listen - er and the position of sound sources continuously moving, loudness is a constantly shifting parameter in the musical experience of the Regatta Lepa. (4) Timbre. The acoustic behavior of gong instruments is complicated, especially with a view to timbre development as the sound evolves (Sethares 2013, 174). The reason for this is that the partials keep rising and falling as the sound lingers. Such “energy exchanges give the gong its characteristic, evolving timbre – as if the partials of the gong are smoothly sweeping up and down the […] scale” (ibid.). Naturally, this effect is less clearly discernible on a recording, but powerful within the acoustic environment in question. Psycho-acoustically, it yields an ef- fect of rotating motion within the individual gong sounds themselves, the succession of which forms melodic units. If, as described above, the melodic work of tagunggu’ unsettles the listener’s spatial orientation, then the individual pitches that contribute to this effect themselves feature a spinning motion. This adds yet another dimension of unhinging spatial orientation. The above set of analytical categories is far from exhaustive and allows for the exploration of suggestions of movement in any music, but, as shown above for all categories, they are par- ticularly productive when music goes along with physical movement. This is because physical movement through ensounded spaces increases the spatial effect that the respective structural dynamics have on the felt-bodily experience. The felt body has to constantly re-familiarize itself with its (acoustic) surroundings. This heightened felt-bodily involvement (Betroffenheit, in the language of Schmitz) is the first step of the transductive process through which corporeal sen- sations manifest as shared feelings.