Mechanisms of Categorisation in Tai Dam community of Laos: Between Music and Identity

This paper develops part of a PhD project in ethnomusicology entitled “Relevance and Musical Model, the Case of Khap Tai Dam”, which is dedicated to the singing called khap of the Tai Dam ethnic group in Laos. The paper will give a global presentation of the research and its issues, focussing on the notions of melodic model and categorisation, and their relations with music and identity. The issues of melodic model and categories results from observations made in Tai Dam villages visited in the context of this research: the use of three melodic models as a basis for the construction of songs, and the presence of ethnic and musical categories in the discourse of interviewees. The first part of the paper focuses on determination of melodic model through use of paradigmatic analysis. The second part is dedicated to musical categorisation and its criteria, and the role of melodic model as the main criteria of categorisation. The analysis will reveal that the model is the most relevant indication for musical categorisation, while language plays a major role in identity categorisation.