Traditional Games: Recording Experiences in Pacific and European Cultures

Abstract

Games and the rhymes and songs that go with them, have a fascination for many specialists: they are an 'under-ground' communication system spreading without media or print, they are a field of creative language play for the young, and they are an archive of archaic custom. My reasons for collecting games at home and in various parts of the world have been musical. The game songs in traditional music cultures are often a simplified music (with rudimentary rhythm and pitch organisation) which seems to prepare children for later participation in adult music making. There is also an archival interest because game songs can preserve musical features which have been lost by wholesale change in the wider music of a culture.