"Canzoni per l'America: gli Stati Uniti e le sue genti attraverso la musica folk"

Riassunto Il nostro viaggio attraverso la musica folk americana partirà dal un racconto della Grande Depressione, dello stato di indigenza nel quale versava la maggior parte della popolazione e attraverso le vicende e le canzoni del nonno della canzone di protesta: Woody Guthrie. Sottolineeremo come egli abbia influenzato successivamente tutta una serie di cantautori che si formarono con lui, attraverso i suoi scritti o i suoi pezzi. Vedremo dunque come un altro grande musicista, Pete Seeger lottò più volte contro la censura per dare risonanza a tante battaglie altrimenti inascoltate, come i movimenti per i diritti civili degli afroamericani e per la pace. Con le canzoni di Bob Dylan analizzeremo i movimenti giovanili e pacifisti contro la guerra nel Vietnam e i fermenti della beat generation. Considereremo con Bruce Springsteen i nuovi diseredati della recessione economica, la nuova ondata di nazionalismi, le censure successive agli attentati dell’ 11 Settembre 2001 e il nuovo ordine mondiale. La musica folk continuerà dunque a vivere grazie alla comunità che la rende viva e la fa circolare, ma soprattutto, grazie al passaggio di testimone tra i grandi artisti che l’hanno resa concretamente la voce dell’America.

Polychaete fauna of the Northwest Portuguese Coastal Shelf: ecology, diversity and distribution

Polychaetes are one of the larger groups of macroinvertebrates with more than 9000 species recognised, distributed worldwide. Thanks to the broad ecological adaptability and high abundaces, this taxon plays a leading role and is considered an important component of all benthic assemblages. Our knowledge about the West Iberian Coast polychaete fauna are scarce, and the only studies are recent. In this sense, the aim of this work was to investigate the composition and the spatial distribution of the polychaete fauna along the NW Portuguese Coastal Shelf, focusing on their relationship to environmental factors (depth, grain size, longitude and latitude) and to add new data to the existing biological dataset. A total of 39 sites were analysed, collected in an area of about 5665 km², between 20 and 150 m depth, distributed in a way to cover the overall grain size gradient. A total of 9352 specimens belonging to 41 families were found, and the analysis based on the abundance of polychaete species revealed five affinity groups: (a) nearshore medium sand characterised by Pisione parapari and Hesionura elongata; (b) very coarse sand that showed the highest abundance of Syllidae and was characterised by Protodorvillea kefersteini and Syllis garciai; (c) fine sand dominated by Spiophanes bombyx and Glycera tridactyla; (d) very fine sand with Nepthys assimilis and Amage sp. and the highest abundance of Paraonidae; (d) mud characterised by Labioleanira yhleni and Ampharete finmarchica. The combination of the environmental variables and the biological data, done with BIOENV routine, demonstrated that depth, grain size and fine contents were the best related with the biological data (rho=0.598). In general, the results agree with the composition and the spatial distribution of the polychaete fauna in other parts of the world; further polychaete assemblages related to mud sediments were firstly recorded in the Northwestern Portuguese Coastal Shelf.

Semantic priming of familiar songs

We explored the functional organization of semantic memory for music by comparing priming across familiar songs both within modalities (Experiment 1, tune to tune; Experiment 3, category label to lyrics) and across modalities (Experiment 2, category label to tune; Experiment 4, tune to lyrics). Participants judged whether or not the target tune or lyrics were real (akin to lexical decision tasks). We found significant priming, analogous to linguistic associative-priming effects, in reaction times for related primes as compared to unrelated primes, but primarily for within-modality comparisons. Reaction times to tunes (e.g., "Silent Night") were faster following related tunes ("Deck the Hall") than following unrelated tunes ("God Bless America"). However, a category label (e.g., Christmas) did not prime tunes from within that category. Lyrics were primed by a related category label, but not by a related tune. These results support the conceptual organization of music in semantic memory, but with potentially weaker associations across modalities.

Effect of unilateral temporal-lobe excision on perception and imagery of songs

Auditory imagery for songs was studied in two groups of patients with left or right temporal-lobe excision for control of epilepsy, and a group of matched normal control subjects. Two tasks were used. In the perceptual task, subjects saw the text of a familiar song and simultaneously heard it sung. On each trial they judged if the second of two capitalized lyrics was higher or lower in pitch than the first. The imagery task was identical in all respects except that no song was presented, so that subjects had to generate an auditory image of the song. The results indicated that all subjects found the imagery task more difficult than the perceptual task, but patients with right temporal-lobe damage performed significantly worse on both tasks than either patients with left temporal-lobe lesions or normal control subjects. These results support the idea that imagery arises from activation of a neural substrate shared with perceptual mechanisms, and provides evidence for a right temporal- lobe specialization for this type of auditory imaginal processing.

Memory for the absolute pitch of familiar songs

Four experiments were conducted to examine the ability of people without "perfect pitch" to retain the absolute pitch offamiliar tunes. In Experiment 1, participants imagined given tunes, and then hummed their first notes four times either between or within sessions. The variability of these productions was very low. Experiment 2 used a recognition paradigm, with results similar to those in Experiment 1 for musicians, but with some additional variability shown for unselected subjects. In Experiment 3, subjects rated the suitability ofvarious pitches to start familiar tunes. Previously given preferred notes were rated high, as were notes three or four semitones distant from the preferred notes, but not notes one or two semitones distant. In Experiment 4, subjects mentally transformed the pitches of familiar tunes to the highest and lowest levels possible. These experiments suggest some retention of the absolute pitch of tunes despite a paucity of verbal or visual cues for the pitch.

Mental scanning in auditory imagery for songs

Four experiments examined how people operate on memory representations of familiar songs. The tasks were similar to those used in studies of visual imagery. In one task, subjects saw a one word lyric from a song and then saw a second lyric; then they had to say if the second lyric was from the same song as the first. In a second task, subjects mentally compared pitches of notes corresponding to song lyrics. In both tasks, reaction time increased as a function of the distance in beats between the two lyrics in the actual song, and in some conditions reaction time increased with the starting beat of the earlier lyric. Imagery instructions modified the main results somewhat in the first task, but not in the second, much harder task. The results suggest that song representations have temporal-like characteristics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The organization of memory for familiar songs

Investigated the organizing principles in memory for familiar songs in 2 experiments. It was hypothesized that individuals do not store and remember each song in isolation. Rather, there exists a rich system of relationships among tunes that can be revealed through similarity rating studies and memory tasks. One initial assumption was the division of relations among tunes into musical (e.g., tempo, rhythm) and nonmusical similarity. In Exp I, 20 undergraduates were asked to sort 60 familiar tunes into groups according to both musical and nonmusical criteria. Clustering analyses showed clear patterns of nonmusical similarity but few instances of musical similarity. Exp II, with 16 Ss, explored the psychological validity of the nonmusical relationships revealed in Exp I. A speeded verification task showed that songs similar to each other are confused more often than are distantly related songs. A free-recall task showed greater clustering for closely related songs than for distantly related ones. The relationship between these studies and studies of semantic memory is discussed. Also, the contribution of musical training and individual knowledge to the organization of the memory system is considered. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Perceived and Imagined Tempos of Familiar Songs

Two studies investigated the similarity of metronome settings to perceived and imagined familiar songs by subjects unselected for musical ability. In Study 1, mean tempo settings in the two tasks were about 100 beats per minute. Songs with slower perceived tempos tended to be faster in the imagery task and vice versa. In Study 2, subjects set fastest and slowest acceptable tempos for the same set of songs in the imagery mode. These settings were positively correlated with the preferred tempo for the song. Most subjects thought that there were limits on how fast or slow a song could be imagined. These results suggest that tempo is explicitly represented in auditory imagery.