Joining the Razḥa: Egalitarianism and Exclusion in an Omani Participatory Music

When I first encountered razḥa, a participatory and collective dance form for Arab men in the Sultanate of Oman, I was amazed by the complexity of the dance, the importance of egalitarian norms within it, and the ease with which dancers participated without the guidance of leaders, conductors, sheet music, or instructions. While I learned razḥa with my Omani Arab friends, I asked them and myself two related questions: How do dancers come to participate so easily, to cooperate, to blend their movements together and effortlessly interact while performing complicated dance figures, singing novel poetry, and keeping together in time without any formal leaders? And, do participatory and collective dance forms help reinforce egalitarian norms, and if so, how? As I continued to participate, however, I also began to piece together how razḥa functioned to define a particular reference group by delimiting participation by tacitly encouraging certain people to participate while excluding others.

Video 1 is from a short film I recorded of several groups of men that had only been performing together for a few hours. All these groups had come together from nearby neighborhoods to enliven a festival that was being held by the local governor to honor the return of the Sultan, the authoritarian leader of Oman, from his time abroad seeking medical care. While the groups are from different neighborhoods in the rural town of Manaḥ and therefore familiar with one another, they did not practice for or coordinate this event at all. While you watch the short clip, focus on the ways in which individuals call for attention in the crowd and take the lead in singing the melody and pacing the poetry.

Video 1

In this example, filmed in 2017, the young man who is turned away from the camera and is nearest to the drummers is “versing”—a translation of the Arabic verb yishill—that is, singing a poetic couplet to a strophic melody. A strophic melody is one that is repeated for each poetic line of a song, which makes inventing new poetry easier (see the section on razḥa below for a discussion of how this works musically in Video 2). This melody and this couplet is then taken up by the surrounding group in rough halves: one half of the group sings the first half of the first couplet, and then the second half of the group sings the second half of the first couplet in response. This back-and-forth singing—sometimes called antiphony—means that both groups are necessary to complete the “thought” of the couplets. Participation, interaction, and cooperation are essential to the performance of razḥa. This sense of participation and cooperation is often related to other cooperative events, such as collective labor on farms, playing soccer, and cleaning up the neighborhood irrigation canal, or falaj. This same tune and almost the same text is dedicated to international soccer superstars like Lionel Messi, for example, who is renowned for being a good teammate and had to leave his beloved Barcelona team in 2021.

Video 2

What are some other ways in which participation, interaction, and cooperation are manifested in Video 2?

Oman: Background

Nestled in the southeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula, Oman is a predominantly Arab country. While we often imagine the Arabian Peninsula to be one vast desert, Oman is actually quite ecologically diverse, from snowy mountaintops to damp, humid valleys; dry, scrubby flatlands to sandy, sun-baked deserts. Historically, many of the folks who performed razḥa were agriculturalists, who farmed dates, wheat, and vegetables along huge over- and underground irrigation canals called falaj, which were cut into the rock beneath the earth over a thousand years ago. Nowadays, many people still farm a bit, but have adapted to a more service-oriented economy with the opening of international markets for agricultural goods.

Subara Tree, Town of Adam

Falaj, Horizontal Well in Karsha'

Empty Quarter, Desert

Wadi Valley, Batina

Interior Agricultural Village

Coast, Muscat

The modern Sultanate is a unitary, authoritarian state whose Sultan (and Prime Minister and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces and Minister of Defence and Minister of Foreign Affairs) at the time of my research was Sultan Qābūs bin Sa‘īd Āl Bū Sa‘īd, the longest ruler in the Middle East and the absolute monarch until his death in January 2020. He issued law by decree, such as the constitution-like Basic Statutes of the State, which ostensibly affords basic civil protections for citizens.

While the Omani economy is one of the more diversified economies in the region, the largest sector (fluctuating between 60% and 80%) of GDP comes from the crude oil industry. These revenues accrue largely through state ownership of 60% of Petroleum Development Oman, the largest supplier of crude oil and natural gas in the Sultanate. A huge proportion of the state budget is redirected into social services. With a population of about 2.99 million Omani nationals (as well as some 2 million expatriates) and growth at a steady 5.2% clip, such expenditures are likely to continue at similar levels for some time.

As has been noted by many scholars, Oman has perhaps witnessed the most dramatic change in living standards of any country in the world over the last 50 years. UNDP reports show incredible social and public health advances over the period from 1960 to 2018:

• Life expectancy increased from 40 to 77 years;
• Infant mortality reduced from more than 200 to less than 30 per 1,000 live births;
• Maternal deaths reduced to 27 per 100,000 live births;
• 3 schools with 900 male students to 920 schools with 454,000 students (49% female);
• Mean education (9.5 years) and expected education (14 years);
• Gender Development Index of 0.942; and
• 96% of population provided (free) basic health care access.

It is this history that helps to explain why the Sultan was both a despotic autocrat and a generally beloved figure. While political rights are minimal, social welfare programs are considerable and incredible development—perhaps the most significant improvement in the entire world—is a demonstrable fact of everyday life. So while some agitate for democratic reforms, many others are hesitant to criticize the state’s own narrative of its success.

Groups like the Firqat al-‘Arabī—who we just watched perform, amongst other groups—are based in a neighborhood and usually include a number of generational cohorts: it is very common for brothers, fathers, uncles, and grandfathers to all be present for one performance. In a very real sense, the groups themselves form the core of a given community—a group of neighboring, relatively socially equal households that are well-known within this or that neighborhood. Groups are composed of friends and neighbors who typically have known each other all their lives. They were often groups of friends who had passed through primary schooling together, then transitioned to local sports and civic clubs, maintaining their social ties and increasing their prestige in the community. Group members join because doing razḥa is an activity that is perceived as heritage—they can spend time with their friends, write poetry, and remain active. While not everyone in town joins these groups, the more connected people are with the local community, the more likely they are to be a member of the group. The extremely low performative barrier to entry means that most people can join in, even for a few songs, though they may not be able to be a permanent fixture in the group. When asked, members often report that razḥa is not only fun, but membership is incumbent upon them as members of their community. If people who can perform don’t, word spreads and they are cajoled back into the group. Certainly, young men sometimes drag their feet when asked to perform, some shy away from dancing and singing, and others are too busy. Nevertheless, performers, in general, are proud to perform part of their heritage. It is this sense of civic pride and duty that helps support the maintenance of egalitarian norms that inform participation in and performance of the razḥa.

The Razḥa

Razḥa is the most common Arab men’s communal dance form in most of northern Oman. Razḥa-s can break out at many occasions, really wherever a group of men is gathering in public in celebration: at religious festival days, weekend nights at the souq, soccer matches, national holidays, and so on. Razḥa-s are most often planned for a specific event, however, by inviting and engaging a firqa that specializes in razḥa performance. These planned events are even more numerous: national festivals and cultural fairs in several Gulf states; opening celebrations for stores, auto dealerships, roads, highway exits, infrastructural developments; horse races, human races, camel beauty pageants, auto shows, date exhibitions, and local cultural exhibits. Oftentimes civic groups will hire a firqa to enliven some public seminar or demonstration. Weddings are a staple venue for many groups.

Let’s talk a bit about razḥa as a performance practice. I will focus here on the understanding of razḥa that was common amongst male performers in Manaḥ during my research period. There are a number of kinds of razḥa-s in Manaḥ, including those that are called “walking razḥa-s” (razḥāt al-mashiyya), “fast razḥa-s” (razḥāt al-qaṣṣāfiyya or just al-qaṣṣafī), and “slow razḥa-s” (razḥāt al-nāḥiyya). Some folks thought there should be a fourth kind, the razḥa al-ḥarbiyya (war razḥa). A few folks in Manaḥ would refer to al-qaṣṣāfī as al-qaṣṣābī or as al-gaṣṣābī. Outside of Manaḥ, al-naḥiyya is usually called al-nā’iḥa. Don’t worry about all these types—Omanis are happy to refer to them all as razḥa-s, and then get more specific when they need to. You should, too!

Razḥa-s were almost always performed in a long sequence of linked dances with short pauses between them. As many as ten razḥa-s might be sung in a row before dancers take a more substantial break, with individual members joining and leaving the lines of singers and dancers as they saw fit. Depending on the type of razḥa, performers are arranged in one of two ways: either in a long line, for mashiyya, or in a circle, facing lines, or a crowd divided into two groups for the other types. Razḥāt al-mashiyya usually begins with the performers clustered as a group, but as the group begins to move, they collect into rows of five to six dancers and follow the drummers in a marching step. In al-qaṣṣāfī and al-nāḥiyya, dancers stand in two arching unlinked lines that frame a circle, within which circulate the drummers. The size of the circle was dependent on the number of performers, but dancers in one line were usually touching shoulders, a situation called takātif, or “rubbing shoulders.” The best setup for the circular razḥa-s is to have two facing semicircles of dancers, close enough to hear one another.

All razḥa-s I heard had a few features in common. While mashiyya simply moved from one location to another, the other types all occurred within a delimited area. When a specific razḥa began, say a qaṣṣāfī, one initial singer took the lead, though he might not leave his spot in one of the lines of dancers. He would gesture for silence, then yulāli’ or “give the mulālā’.” A mulālā’ is a string of vocables sung to the beat of the poetic line that sketches the melodic arc of the piece. Mulālā’-s are based on a few syllables and vowels: yā, layl, lay, way, āh, and lā. Mulālā’-s are not fixed. Instead, they are semi-improvised in order to “ride” (yarkab) the melody well and highlight the predominant rhythmic feel. They are also not always sung the same way, even for the same text. The same melody might be used for many texts, and often serves as a basis for composing poetry: if the line “rides” the melody, then it is good poetry. Take a listen to the example in Video 3, which consists of three different poetic texts sung to a similar strophic melody (my translation is provided below). The video begins with the long mulālā’, or basic melody, which is then adapted to three different poems.

Video 3

Video 3 is a studio recording with Autotune, but in live singing contexts the mulālā’ is sung until everyone knows it, which usually requires a number of cycles. When the person who gives the mulālā’ is satisfied, he raises his arms for silence a second time and gives the first poetic line. With this, the dancer/singers pick up the line and “throw” (yilqa‘) it back and forth antiphonally, until the second poetic line is given. When the poetic lines are sufficiently spread along the lines, the razḥa begins in earnest. The dancers have usually already begun to sway and dance to the rhythm of the mulālā’, though this often shifts with the introduction of the drums.

The drum pair, called the zāna, is usually composed of one larger drum and one smaller drum. They are usually two drums made together to be played as a pair, and are similar in design and construction.

Barrel-shaped raḥmānī, one of the Zāna pair

Hourglass zāna drums, kāsir (r) and raḥmānī (l) and troupe

The larger of the pair is called raḥmānī, while the smaller is called kāsir. The drum, especially the raḥmānī, anchors the dance steps. The basic step was a right foot forward on beat one, then a close with the left foot, a step back with the left, and then with the right. Usually, this last right-foot movement was “bobbed,” not really taking weight before it was emphatically stomped down on beat one again. The shoulders and head were all used in different ways, usually bobbing on upbeats or following the drumming. As a whole, the two lines danced in place for a few cycles of singing the poetic lines, then the group that “gave” the razḥa would widen their dance steps and start to move as a group around the circle counter-clockwise. When they reached the other line, that line would begin moving around the circle as well until they made one full circuit and all dancers were in their original positions. If desired, this circuit would continue. When movement around the circle ceased, performers could then signal for a second sequence of moves, in which one line would march forward until it reached the other, sing a few lines, and then retreat. This was mirrored by the other line. Occasionally, both lines would march toward the center and surround the drums, with all the dancers in close contact. This sequence was usually only done once or twice during a performance and was a period of intense invigoration. All of these dance figures were signaled by one or more dancers by holding up their arms or otherwise communicating nonverbally. To conclude the performance, one dancer at the center of the line would hold up their ‘aṣā (camel stick) or sword and waggle it in the air, and all the other dancers would join in. This meant that the poetry should not be repeated by the opposing line, and the performance would cease.

Now, watch Video 4 and see if you can recognize all the aspects of the razḥa that I described above. I’ve given a rough translation below, and some pictures that clarify some of the nouns to which I have referred. This is one of the examples I used to try and describe a “typical” razḥa, but we should always remember that not every performance is the same, and the razḥa is a living performance form that is always being taken in new directions. I am always excited to see the ways that young artists innovate.

Video 4

The Royal palace, the Qaṣr al-alam

The khanjar, a belt-dagger

The Politics of Participation

One of the things that I admired about razḥa when I first learned it was just how open and inclusive it was—virtually anyone who wanted to join the dance could. However, the more I participated myself, the more I realized that razḥa participation was highly regulated in a number of ways.

Ethnomusicologist Thomas Turino has developed four ways to talk about “music” in a more precise way: as participatory, as presentational, as high-fidelity, and as studio-audio art. Here, we will only focus on the difference between participatory and presentational music (the others are not really relevant to vernacular Omani music). Participatory music is “a special type of artistic practice in which there are no artist-audience distinctions, only participants and potential participants” whose “primary goal is to involve the maximum number of people” in the performance (2008, 28-30). Presentational performances, on the other hand, typically have a strict delimitation between “artists” and “audience”—think of your typical music concert in New York City. There is a stage, some professional musicians, a time when performances will begin and end, and usually some fee to be able to enjoy the performance.

Razḥa is a typical example of participatory music: as we’ve read, most anyone can participate (in fact, there is some pressure to do so), there is no real audience, and everyone thinks bigger razḥa-s are better razḥa-s. Old folks, kids, folks in wheelchairs or on crutches, shy, boisterous, and timid folks, experienced dancers, newbies—really anyone. One of the core values of participatory music is performing in such a way that invites participation, one that is inclusive, engaging, welcoming, encouraging, and expansive. In fact, as Turino points out, “the etiquette and quality of sociality is granted priority over the quality of the sound per se” (Ibid., 35), meaning that most participatory musicians would prefer more people to join in than to get a performance to sound “perfect.”

Second, razḥa has what Turino calls an open form, that is, music that is open-ended, endlessly repeatable, cyclical, and expandable to include varying numbers of participants. Open forms are usually fairly short, iterable, formulaic, predictable, and strophic. Razḥa also exhibits a dense, heterophonic musical texture, meaning that every singer and dancer is performing the same melody and dance in their own way—similar to but slightly different from all the other participants. This gives everyone a sense of being together as well as being apart, themselves in and amongst everyone else. The dense, overlapping texture ensures a cohesive, even overwhelming sound of cooperation even while making room for the large, idiosyncratic variances tolerated in timing, attack, tuning, and dance steps. Watch Video 1 again and pay attention to how varied and individual everyone’s performance is: there are sometimes huge variances from person to person. This is not bad, however—it really is the point!

This large tolerance for variance allows the razḥa to be highly synchronous without anyone having to boss anyone around or tell them directly how to dance. Compare this dance with ballet or salsa dancing. You could go right now and pay thousands and thousands of dollars to get yelled at until you “knew” ballet or salsa dancing. But in Oman, even if you ask someone to teach you how to dance razḥa, like I did, people would say, “just watch and join in, however you want!” There is a very strong tendency to prefer not telling other people what to do. So, no one teaches anyone how to do razḥa, you just watch it enough and are around it enough until you figure it out. A lot of participatory musics are like this. If you want to go contra-dancing, you’re unlikely to find a strong emphasis on teaching, rather, the emphasis is on doing it until you more-or-less figure it out.

Now, that does sound really open and welcoming. And it is! But what we need to add to Turino’s analysis of participatory music is the sociological notion of the reference group. Reference groups are really important, and everyone has one, or, more realistically, several that they belong to. What I mean by reference group is the group of people to whom one compares oneself, the group that one wants to fit into. If you think of someone or a group and realize, “I really do care what they think about me!” then you’ve found a reference group. If you make some art, like a song or a painting, and you show your family, they will say: “That’s great! You’re so talented! Now do the dishes.” You probably won’t believe their praise, though, because they are your family (they are supposed to say they like your art), but you know how it stacks up against other artists, “the real stuff.” That feeling is all about your artistic reference group. Reference groups help shape our norms, our values, our behaviors, and even things like how we dress and interact. The key to really understanding how participatory musics work is to understand how performance interacts with the notion of reference groups. Often, ethnomusicologists think that when folks say “this music is for anyone,” the best evidence is that, “hey, if they let me, some weird ethnomusicologist from a million miles away, join in on the dance, they really must mean it’s for everyone!” Well, maybe. But we also need to consider that usually ethnomusicologists are pretty funny individuals: outsiders with money and status who show strong interest in some cultural pattern that is far outside of their cultural milieu and sometimes kind of refuse to take “no” for an answer. What’s the harm of letting someone with no real reputation or social relations in your town join in your dance if they really want to? Heck, you might even gain a little status and a unique friend. Plus, you like your dance, and if someone across the ocean has heard of it and is interested, so much the better! Misunderstanding this extremely uneven social relationship for regular, everyday ones is a really common mistake.

The point of thinking about reference groups when we talk about participatory musics is to find where the “fault lines” of participation lie. Here’s one for razḥa: no Omani Arab women are allowed to razḥa, even if they want to. Now, of course, they have their own dances (that no men can join in on, often), but the reference group for Omani Arab razḥa dancers extends to other Omani Arab men, not women. Now, you can be old, young, have a great voice, be really good at poetry or really bad at it, be a good dancer or a crummy one—that doesn’t matter. But you can’t be an Omani Arab woman. On that note, even Arab men from other Arab countries are not necessarily welcome to join. The closer the country to Oman the more acceptable it is: if you’re Emirati, you’d probably have little problem joining in, but if you’re Moroccan, forget it; you’re just too far outside the reference group to slide in easily. Sometimes a group will grab someone famous and make them dance for a bit, but that’s different from really joining in.

It’s not just physical, geographical distance though: perhaps as many as two million “guest workers” from South Asia live in Oman, sometimes right near the neighborhoods where razḥa-s happen every weekend. These South Asians are never invited to join in or participate and are actively excluded even from watching the performance or tapping their foot along with the beat. They are clearly outside of the reference group for razḥa. When I asked why South Asians were excluded, I got lots of answers that weren’t really convincing: they don’t speak Arabic, they don’t “respect our traditions,” they can’t dance, and so on. These same barriers wouldn’t prevent other, higher status folks from being invited in, though, like myself.

Another thing that functions both as an egalitarian norm and as a boundary to define a reference group is the fact that there is no direct pedagogical aspect of razḥa. Really, the only way to learn razḥa is to be around it. Remember, razḥa is an open form, but there are a number of hidden norms and ways to act in razḥa that are never directly communicated to anyone. Think about it: if you’ve never been exposed to razḥa in any way, how could you really “join in” in any meaningful sense? All you might be able to do is follow along. Learning razḥa is like a side effect of being a regular member of an Omani Arab neighborhood. If you aren’t already a member of the reference group, you couldn’t really learn razḥa.

Watch Video 5. This is a short video produced for Omani National Day in 2019. What are some of the ways that participation is being managed here? Think very widely—what are some of the ways that you could participate in this performance right now? What would you need to learn? Who would you need to know? Who would you need to be?

Video 5

So, it’s not really that razḥa is just open to everyone and that anyone can join in and drop out whenever they see fit. Rather, there is a clearly demarcated but little commented-upon boundary around participation. Often, this boundary is strongest when it is applied against nearby groups from which some other group wants to stand in distinction. For example, African Americans and European Americans in the United States share a huge vocabulary of dances, harmonic schemes, tunes, song texts, performance styles, instruments, and genres, but nevertheless, all we ever seem to talk about is how “different” they are. On the flip side, both African-American and European-American artists are happy to “borrow” (“steal”) the Cuban son clave rhythm¹ —because Cuban musicians were outside of their English-speaking reference group.

In some sense, when we talk about participatory musics, we’re talking about musical performances that help to shape, define, and delineate forms of acceptable social relations. Omani Arab men, and a select few high-status outsiders, are all welcome to participate on their own terms, with almost no regard for their skin color, social background, class position, wealth, musical talent, age, and other factors that we might think would be salient. When we reach the boundary of that reference group, however, participation is highly gated: women, South Asians, and others are specifically not welcome to participate. This is not some special tendency that Omanis have to exclude, however, but a very common feature of so-called “participatory musics.”

Conclusion

Learning about and performing razḥa tells us a lot about Omani Arab sociality, or the way people think about and create social relationships, form associations, and cooperate with each other. Razḥa participation reveals both the ways in which egalitarian norms manifest amongst Omani Arab men as well as the way in which razḥa tacitly reinforces boundaries around a particular reference group. Thinking about razḥa as a kind of participatory music is helpful because it highlights all the ways in which the form of the music—open form, heterophonic texture, tolerations of idiosyncratic dance moves and singing—contribute to identity formation through openness and through exclusion. It also helps us to understand why our studies of music need to embrace critical approaches to social life, cultural patterns, and close attention to the role of music in creating and maintaining social difference.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do people sing together in groups? How is singing together in a group different from just one person singing or singing just by yourself?
2. What are some situations or contexts in which you would sing with a group? Are there features that those contexts share in common with each other, or with the Omani razḥa?
3. Can you think of any reference groups that you compare yourself to or rank yourself within? Do you think it is harder or easier to find reference groups given how much we engage in social media? How do we engage with reference groups through social media? How do Omani musicians engage with reference groups?
4. How do egalitarian norms manifest in razḥa? How does exclusion work? Try and think of all the subtle ways in which some people are excluded in razḥa—think of language, dress, status, etc.

Questions for Music Majors:

1. Listen to Video 3 closely and notate how the strophic melodies differ from one another in the three examples. Since these melodies are adapted to the words of the poetry, the lines are always slightly modified to “ride the melody.”
2. Watch and tap the drum rhythm in Video 4. How are the dance steps organized to the drum beat? Pay attention to the contrasting timbres of the drums—how do the drum parts interact?
3. You’ll notice that most of the melodies are not diatonic; that is, you can’t reproduce them on the piano, for example. Listen to the “second” melody in Videos 1 and 2 in the poetic lines 3 and 4. Try to hum along and find which pitches land “in between” keys on the piano.

Bibliography and Further Reading

Translations

Video 1.

Video 2.

1. Farewell! Go with God, you exemplars of manly virtue.
2. Your generosity is ample, [derived] from the foundation of the forefathers [i.e., from the examples of our elders]
3. We bid farewell with a brotherly farewell;
4. Amongst you is a virtuous one, leaving our lands.

Video 3.

Omani Razḥas.

Performers:

• Badr al-Darmakī
• Muḥammad al-Darmakī
• Hussām al-‘Ubaydānī
• Sāliḥ al-Darmakī
• Muhannad al-Qaṣṣābī

Studio Awtār, artistic production and distribution

Montage:

Sulaymān al-Darmakī

Razḥa 1 praises generosity at the right time and commends it even if not constant.

1. The cannon of generosity has not been silenced; make it ready!
2. The cannon of generosity is packed full of gunpowder.
3. Always ready at the right time [to show] reputation and glory;
4. And history witnesses it and its presence.

Razḥa 2 refers to the necessity of battle in securing good fortune.

1. O, soldier! The writer (Allah? The leader?) approaches my file;
2. When arrives the time in which good replaces ill.
3. Their ways endure, the people of the proud, undaunted military march;
4. A tooth for a tooth; an eye for an eye.

Razḥa 3 disparages narrow-mindedness.

1. Traveler, you wanted to travel;
2. To Ra’s al-Ḥadd and Maṣīra [a peninsula and a large island];
3. They see the work of the unbeliever
4. In the bird flying in the air.

Video 4.

A spontaneous razḥa performed after a nice lunch in the town of Adam, under the shade of the giant anthropomorphized tree name Ṣubārā.

1. From the Qaṣr al-Alam [the Royal Palace in Muscat, the capital] in the place of guests;
2. God, the nation, and His Majesty the Sultan!
3. The Sultanate of Oman, by the belt-dagger and the sword,
4. Brought forth the State and fulfilled the old agreement.

This fourth line is very dense with meaning and refers to the social compact that binds leaders and the led. Specifically, it refers to the dual obligation on the part of leaders to engage in conflict wisely and for the led to volunteer their blood for noble and just causes.

Video 5.

Razḥa “O, Oman!” is a nationalistic anthem from 2019.

By: The Ja‘alān Stars Troupe

1. O, Oman! O, homeland of the noble and generous people!
2. Whose place is among the highest nations.
3. O, where my spirit and heart live!
4. Who makes goodness and wealth inexpensive and easy.

Vocabulary:

Participatory music— According to Turino, “a special type of artistic practice in which there are no artist-audience distinctions, only participants and potential participants” and whose “primary goal is to involve the maximum number of people” in the performance.

Collective— A performance type that includes a variety of different ways to participate and requires more than one or two people to achieve a complete form.

Egalitarian norms— Norms are standards or expectations of behavior that are often unspoken and tacitly enforced; egalitarian norms are norms that enforce other-regarding behavior that treats all individuals (but see reference group) as being accorded similar levels of respect. Often, egalitarian norms militate against hierarchy formation and clear relations of leadership and followership. In egalitarian settings, you can’t tell other people what to do—or, more specifically, you can, but everyone will think you’re a jerk.

Reference group— A group of people to whom one relates or ranks oneself; the group to which one compares oneself.

Strophic melody— A melody is a rhythmic organization of successive pitches; a strophic melody is a melody that repeats over and over with new textual material. Ballads are strophic. Video 3 is an example of a strophic melody.

Antiphony— Two groups sing a shared melody in alternation, rather than all at once.

Heterophony, heterophonic— Heterophony is a musical texture in which multiple musicians perform the same melody with slight variations, such as in timing, articulation, attack, and dynamics.

Musical texture— The whole collection of musical parts or voices in relation to one another. Textures can be monophonic (one voice or instrument), homophonic (all voices play the same melody and rhythm but may harmonize), heterophonic, or polyphonic (each voice/instrument plays a unique melody and rhythm at the same time).

Open form— A musical form that can endlessly repeat and accommodate as many participants as want to participate.

Sociality— The way people think about and create social relationships, form associations, and cooperate with each other.