Systematic Organology: Developing a Phylogenetic Approach to East Asian Semi-Tubular Zithers

Semi-tubular zithers are common across all east-asia (China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam). Although many scholars wrote monographies about each instruments in this organological category, their evolution and transmission process during their history remain unknown. However, different scholars pointed out the relation between these instruments. Moreover, the history of this geo-cultural landscape indicate a strong inter-influence of the different countries. In 2004, Ilya Tëmkin wrote about a new method to study the evolution and transmission of musical instruments. In 2008, he formalized what he and Niles Eldredge called "phyloorganology" which can be translated as phylogenetic of musical instruments. Phylogenetic methods are used in evolutionary biology to study the evolution of organisms according to the evolution theory developed by Darwin and many other after him. We mustn't transpose directly the biological methods in the study of the evolution of cultural artifacts but we must research how to deploy a consistent methodological framework. In order to apply such methods to musical instrument or other cultural artifacts (myths and legends, languages, embroderies motives etc.) we need to employ a systematic approach in their description. The construction process of a description matrix is fundamental in this approach. In this presentation, i will present my work about the construction of a description guide and matrix in order to study the evolution of semi tubular zithers of East Asia. I will then show an example of an exploratory phylogenetic analysis.