flute, kotiráp

Flute system used by the Gavião people of Rôndonia State in Brazil, described in Moore & Meyer (2014) and Meyer & Moore (2013). The instrument itself (kotiráp in Gavião) is a four-note bamboo fipple flute. The language is tonal, with L, H, downstepped H, and high-falling and low-rising contour tones, as well as vowel length contrasts (2014:616-7). The encoding system is a ‘sung mode’, reproducing the tone-note associations of specific pieces of Gavião vocal music, where H and L tones are encoded with higher and lower pitches on the flute respectively. Pitch mapping has multiple registers, assigning H and L tones to relatively higher and lower pitches within the flute’s four-note range; players typically switch registers in the middle of each verse of surrogate song (2013:321). Contour tones are simplified to their initial pitch level (321).  Downstep is encoded (319). Long vowels map to longer note durations (319). Only men play the kotiráp. Content includes poetry, especially around romantic topics, and is used by young men to respond to women playing the Gavião musical bow (iridináp) in courtship dialogues (316).

Meyer, J., & Moore, D. (2013). Arte verbal e música na língua Gavião de Rondônia: Metodologia para estudar e documentar a fala tocada com instrumentos musicais. Boletim Do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas, 8(2), 307–324.,Moore, D., & Meyer, J. (2014). The Study of tone and related phenomena in an Amazonian tone language: Gavião of Rondônia. Language Documentation, 8, 24.