Investigating Bell Patterns in Candomblé from Historical Field Recordings

Richa Namballa (NYU) joins us to discuss her PhD research.

I will discuss a corpus-based study conducted in partnership with New York University - Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) on the sound archives of the Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie (CREM). In this research, we explore the rhythmic characteristics of bell patterns from the musical practices of Candomblé, an Afro-diasporic religion developed in Brazil. Our study aims to promote a more global, inclusive, and transdisciplinary approach to music information research (MIR) that puts ethnomusicological, anthropological, and computational approaches in dialogue with one another. The outcomes of this pilot study serve as an important foundation for our future work involving cross-cultural comparisons, source separation, and microtiming.

NOTE: this event is part of the DL4MIR workshop series (ccrma-mir.github.io); guest speaker talks are open to the broader CCRMA community.