# Making Pathways while Walking and Singing in Shimshal Valley, Pakistan

Thibault Fontanari

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## To cite this version:

Thibault Fontanari. Making Pathways while Walking and Singing in Shimshal Valley, Pakistan. The World of Music (New Series), 2019, 8 (1), pp.87-104. hal-05499243

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a journal of the department of musicology
of the georg august university göttingen

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Dwelling in Musical Movement:
Making a Home in and
through Music

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>
the world of music (new series)

Editor: Birgit Abels

Co-editor: Barbara Titus

Book reviews editor: Eva-Maria A. van Straaten

Recording reviews editor: Rehanna Kheshgi

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

GEORG-AUGUST-UNIVERSITÄT
GÖTTINGEN

**Advisory Board:**

**Linda Barwick.** Professor and Associate Dean (Research), Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney, Australia

**Dan Bendrups.** LaTrobe University, Australia

**Martin Boiko.** Associated professor, Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Latvia, Latvia

**Rafael José de Menezes Bastos.** Professor, Department of Anthropology, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil

**Shubha Chaudhuri.** Director, Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology, New Delhi, India

**Scheherazade Qassim Hassan.** Lecturer, Department of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology, University of Paris X-Nanterre, Paris, France

**Josep Martí i Pérez.** Professor, Department of Musicology, Instituto Milà i Fontanals, C.S.I.C., Barcelona, Spain

**Svanibor Pettan.** Professor, Music Academy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

**Suzel Ana Reily.** Reader, School of Creative Arts, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

**Adelaida Reyes.** Professor, Jersey City State College, Jersey City/NJ, USA

**Francis Saighoe.** Professor, Department of Music, University of Cape Coast, Ghana

**Huib Schippers.** Director, Smithsonian Folkways, Washington/DC, USA

**Yoshiko Tokumaru.** Professor, Department of Music, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan

**Bell Yung.** Professor, Department of Music, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

**Bonnie Wade.** Professor, Department of Music, University of California at Berkeley, USA

**Impressum:**

* the world of music (new series)

a journal of the department of musicology of the georg august university göttingen

Editor: Prof. Dr. Birgit Abels • Department of Musicology, Georg August Universität Göttingen

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• Cover illustration: This 'ūd's rosette, made of walnut with a bone veneer, presents a circle of names of the most prominent maqāmāt of Arab (Ottoman) music in the Thuluth form of Naskh calligraphy. In the centre is the name of the maker Anṭwān Nahḥāt. Jamīl Yurgākī Qandalhaft restored the 'ūd, including its rosette; the 'ūd is a hybrid.
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the world of music (new series)

vol. 8 (2019) 1

Dwelling in Musical Movement:
Making a Home in and through Music

**Birgit Abels**
Editor

**Barbara Titus**
Co-Editor

**Barbara Titus**
Guest Editor

**Eva-Maria Alexandra van Straaten**
Book Reviews Editor

**Rehanna L. Kheshgi**
Recording Reviews Editor

VWB – Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung
Berlin 2019
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## Dwelling in Musical Movement:
Making a Home in and through Music

### Articles

<table><tr><td>Barbara Titus</td><td>Introduction: Dwelling in Musical Movement</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Rachel Beckles<br>Willson</td><td>Orientation through Instruments: The ‘ūd, the<br>Palestinian Home, and Kamīlyā Jubrān</td><td>23</td></tr><tr><td>Birgit Abels</td><td>A Poetics of Dwelling with Music and Dance:<br>Le hip hop as Homing Practice</td><td>49</td></tr><tr><td>Anna Lisa Ramella</td><td>States of Play/ing: Sonic Dwellings on a Music Tour</td><td>65</td></tr><tr><td>Thibault Fontanari</td><td>Making Pathways while Walking and Singing in<br>Shimshal Valley, Pakistan</td><td>87</td></tr></table>

### Book Reviews (Eva-Maria Alexandra van Straaten, ed.)

<table><tr><td>Scott V. Linford</td><td>Robert B. Winans (ed.), Banjo Roots and Branches.<br>(2018)</td><td>105</td></tr><tr><td>Dongshin Chang</td><td>Nancy Yunhwa Rao, Chinatown Opera Theater in<br>North America. (2017)</td><td>108</td></tr><tr><td>Eric Petzoldt</td><td>Robert Lachmann and Ruth Davis (eds.), The<br>"Oriental Music" Broadcasts 1936–1937—A<br>Musical Ethnography of Mandatory Palestine.<br>(2013)</td><td>111</td></tr></table>
<table><tr><td>Charissa Granger</td><td>Andrew Martin, Ray Funk, and Jeannine Remy, Steelpan in Education: A History of the Northern Illinois University Steelband. (2017)</td><td>114</td></tr><tr><td>Brian Diettrich</td><td>Frederick Lau and Christine R. Yano (eds.), Making Waves: Traveling Musics in Hawai'i, Asia, and the Pacific. (2018)</td><td>117</td></tr><tr><td>Marissa Moore</td><td>Jonathan Dueck, Congregational Music, Conflict and Community. (2017)</td><td>118</td></tr><tr><td>Megan Jane Sinnott</td><td>Andrew N. Weintraub and Bart Barendregt (eds.), Vamping the Stage: Female Voices of Asian Modernities. (2017)</td><td>121</td></tr><tr><td>Anna-Elena Pääkkölä</td><td>Lori Burns and Steven Lacasse (eds.), The Pop Palimpsest: Intertextuality in Recorded Popular Music. (2018)</td><td>124</td></tr><tr><td>Werner Graebner</td><td>Frank Gunderson, The Legacy of Tanzanian Musicians Muhidin Gurumo and Hassan Bitchuka. Rhumba Kiserebuka! (2018)</td><td>127</td></tr><tr><td>Mischa van Kan</td><td>Gerhard Kubik, Jazz Transatlantic, Volume I: The African Undercurrent in Twentieth-Century Jazz Culture; Jazz Transatlantic, Volume II: Jazz Derivatives and Developments in Twentieth-Century Africa. (2017)</td><td>130</td></tr></table>

Recording Reviews (Rehanna L. Kheshgi, ed.)

<table><tr><td>Kathryn Alexander</td><td>The Groove is not Trivial. Verite Productions. Directed by Tommie Dell Smith. (2016)</td><td>135</td></tr><tr><td>Kiku Day</td><td>Teruhisa Fukuda. Japan: Musical Offering of a Shakuhachi Master. Produced by the Musée d'ethnographie de Genève. (2018)</td><td>136</td></tr><tr><td>Polina Dessiatnichenko</td><td>Gochag Askarov and Pierre De Trégomain. Mugham Souls. Felmay Records. (2017)</td><td>138</td></tr></table>
Joe Kinzer

*Laos: Musique des Khmou. Recorded by Véronique de Lavenère. Produced by the Musée d'ethnographie de Genève. (2017)*

140

About the
Contributors

143

*the world of music*
*(new series)*

145
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# Making Pathways while Walking and Singing in Shimshal Valley, Pakistan

Thibault Fontanari

## Abstract

This article explores the way in which the inhabitants of Shimshal Valley in the Karakoram (Pakistan) make their home in the world by praising and singing while walking. I start my narrative by describing how people position themselves socially, both at home and on the road. Two episodes follow. The first one depicts a collective action in which the villagers open up a road obstructed by falling stones. The second episode is about the singing of a poem by a shepherd during a journey to the summer pastures. Through a phenomenological approach I seek to understand how the sonic dimension of collective actions frames a shared place and generates the matrix from which praise songs are composed. These songs are sung during the walk and gather people together in a shared place, in addition to generating a melodic line as a pathway on which listeners walk.

## Introduction

"Tu't kumør tařk?"* ("Where are you going?") In the valley of Shimshal, in the Karakoram Mountains in northern Pakistan, elders and youths ask this question to anyone they meet on the way. To know where someone is going is to imagine which pathways they will take, what activities they will perform and with whom. From the beginning of April to the end of September, the villagers cultivate plots of wheat, barley and potatoes, irrigated by glacial meltwater channeled through a network of canals. All year around, Shimshalis lead their herds of goats, sheep and yaks on the surrounding pastures over a territory of about 2,700 km². Cycles of migration dovetail with work in the fields. These activities are carried out throughout the year, according to the seasons. Irrigation depends on the freezing and thawing of glaciers, and migration on the rise and fall of the rivers that will need to be crossed.¹

To reach their summer and winter pastures from the village, Shimshalis build and constantly repair mountain pathways, huts and bridges according to a complex
pooling of resources and labour. From 1982 to 2003, the main collective work was devoted to the construction of a road accessible to jeeps, connecting the villages to the main Hunza Valley and the Karakoram Highway which passes through it. This highway was built between 1964 and 1978 thanks to an agreement between Pakistan and China (Kreutzmann 1991:712). The construction of the Shimshal road and the Karakoram Highway fuelled significant changes in the mobility of the Shimshalis: every year, fewer and fewer families are involved in migration cycles, while more and more young people leave their village for Hunza Valley and the southern cities where they study and work. Some of these students return to their village in the summer to guide tourists.² As David Butz and Nancy Cook (2016:206) pointed out these changes were not a direct result of the Karakoram Highway; they stemmed from new forms of mobility related to a specific religious and political context, although the highway accelerated them.

Whether Shimshalis are walking on their mountain pathways or travelling by
jeep, they will invoke God’s protection and rely on those following them in order
to move yacks across a flooded river, to unblock a jeep, to open up an obstructed
pathway or road, and to reach their home or destination safely. Such events call for
collective and synchronized action between the travelers, who act according to their
social position in society. Making and repairing pathways and roads were the main
focus of my research during my first field trips. Thus, I noticed the attention people
paid to the weather before leaving their home, and to the sounds of falling stones
on roads and pathways, announcing a slide. When a pathway or a road is blocked,
or worse, partially destroyed, people gather together and express interjections and
praises to encourage themselves and give pulse to their actions.

During my last field trips, I realized that these praises were also present in songs
that were sung during collective events by migrating shepherds in the village and in
mountain huts. These songs are called stownøy bayd or “praise songs” for they relate
the daring actions of the villagers and legitimize the honour (izzat) the others owe
them, for enabling them to live a peaceful and secure life. Wakhi poems and narra-
tives were particularly well studied by John Mock who conducted ethnographic re-
search in Shimshal, Avgarch and Chapursan. In his PhD thesis, he shows how these
expressive oral forms performed in specific contexts (such as the ones I mentioned)
are part of a construction of reality. Mock shows that these expressive forms are nar-
rative or poetic and correspond to different genres. Their narration and performance
reproduce people’s perception of reality in two ways: “They refer to specific loca-
tions, people, events, etc., known to a particular group of Wakhi people. They also
refer to a way of talking about such instances that is known to all Wakhi people.”
(Mock 1998:42). Thus, “[o]ral expression talks about cultural knowledge and social
relations, in effect constituting reality through talking about it” (ibid.).

If the context frames the performance of songs, which are part of a construction
of reality, how are people affected by the sounds of the work, their interjections and
the voice of the singer? In this article, I adopt a phenomenological approach inspired
by the work of Merleau-Ponty (2004 [1945]) and Collot (2005 [1997], 2012), in
which thought emerges from a sensible relation to the world. From this standpoint I first discuss the processes through which poems are generated from the experience of the landscape, and then explore the effects of the songs on the listeners.

The narrative of my text reflects the way people talk about events in their songs: from home to the pastures and back again. My intention is to show how experiences with the landscape can lead to the analysis of songs. I start by describing how people position themselves socially, both at home and on the road. Having a place at home and on the way is negotiated every day according not only to age and gender, but also to the recognition of honorable actions. Two episodes follow. The first one recounts the opening up of an obstructed road by the Shimhalis. I show the relation between peoples' gestures and their social-spatial place in society, and how the sounds made by the younger men's actions give rise to the elders' interjections. I describe the sounds of the rock (that obstructs the road) and the interjections of the elders as rhythms that respond to one another and participate in a dynamic of perception and action whereby people break the rock, remake the road and perpetuate their collectivity. I argue that these kinds of collective events frame the collective emotion from which laudatory poems are composed. The second episode is about the singing of such a poem by a shepherd during a journey to the summer pastures. It shows how journeying through the landscape frames the context of singing and points out the analogy between the narration of the poem and the daily progression of the people on their pathways.

## The Home and the Pathway: The Rhythms of Social Progression

Each of my visits in the Shimshal Valley started with tea. When my companions and I were walking in the village, we used to meet their relatives who always invited us to have tea at their home. On one such occasion I focused my attention on the architecture of the house and the positions that people adopted and readopted every time a host or a visitor entered or left the room. I thus learnt that at such gatherings inside houses, all individuals take up a position according to their age and gender and must adjust that position with respect to the presence of others. These two horizontal axes are crossed by a third axis, vertical this time, connecting the hearth to the skylight, called *ritsən* which is usually the only window of the house.³ This vertical axis is visible all day in the smoke of the fire rising towards the sky, when the women cook food. It is the channel through which the Shimhalis invoke Allah and the name of their Imams. In daily life, these invocations take place to make wishes. An example is my visit in March 2014 to Atefeh, a widow whose son works for a tourism company in Lahore. She had not seen him for several months and I asked about his situation. She looked up at the *ritsən* and turned her hand (ðast γirvən) several times from right to left. This gesture is a positive action made to produce an effect of the same order. It is considered typically feminine. Mothers perform it to keep their sons and daughters from harm and to show them their love. I noted that people constantly
embody the vertical axe by keeping their chest as straight as possible.⁴ These three foundational axes (gender, age, and verticality) are the lines of life along which each person grows up and finds a place at every moment of his or her life. Upon every entry of a person into a house, such as a family member or a visitor attending a family gathering, those who are already present must rearrange their position. The axes are thus created and recreated upon each new arrival and each new departure, and no person's place within these axes is ever fixed.

The more familiar I became with the members of the family who welcomed me and the people whom I encountered while walking in the village, the more I ventured to participate in the work in the fields and accompany the shepherds from the orchard to the enclosure. Whilst walking with the locals, I had the opportunity to work on water canals and to migrate with the livestock. Generally, during the journey to the field or while leading their flocks on the mountain pathways, people meet up and start off on the road together; they follow one another and form a line. To determine their position in this line, they follow the same modus operandi that applies to sitting at home, according to the three fundamental axes. On roads and mountain paths, men always precede women and elders always precede their juniors. Once again, each person's position within the line is dynamic or fluid, as it always depends on the presence of others. Lines form and dissolve throughout the day every time people follow and leave pathways. Walking on a pathway or going to the fields following the irrigation canals immediately implies being ready to face danger and to take care of those who follow you. This profound attention to others is known as *nang* in Wakhi, meaning “to stand by someone.” When walkers cross a river in flood, repair a road or face snowfall in the cold, their gestures (learned and contextualized movements) are articulated according to the place that is attributed to them by the others.

The return journeys (someone goes somewhere for a certain period of time and then comes back to the point of departure) and the comings and goings within the house (the fact of crossing the threshold of a family home) can be seen as rhythms: periodic intervals interconnected over longer periods of time. This periodicity also features the ways in which each person's position along the three foundational axes changes over time, throughout the day and throughout their lives, with implications for the gestures they modify accordingly.

During the walk and during reparation work, one particular person is essential: the guide. People who lead humans and herds in the mountains are called *misi*, which literally means “nose.” It can be translated into English as “the one who is ahead of me” or “the one who precedes me.” *Misi* is the one who takes the lead of the walkers, and who chooses the best path to follow as well as the pace of the walk. The position (or location) of this person is both perilous and commands respect (*izzat*) because he is exposed to falling rocks and landslides that block the trails and destroy places of refuge. Guiding the followers on safe paths means facing the danger that may arise. Because the guide makes such important decisions on behalf of others, the guide figure assumes authority.
Bayd Shireen Shah

<table><caption>Fig. 1: “Bayd Shireen Shah.” Example of Wakhi oral poetry sung by Asim in the pasture of Shuwurt on 16 October 2016 (discussed below). Mock translates and discusses a similar rendering of this poem (1998:138–9). His translation underlies the presentation of Asim’s song in this figure.</caption><tr><td>Warding duniya yi bi-γələt trem gulistan məri γəlimət-əy</td><td>This sparkling world, this flawless world, is for me a garden and a treasure (repeat)</td></tr><tr><td>Ayɛ tuməri bi-γələt trem zayqa səkəri mušqət-əy</td><td>It is so beautiful, so pure, that here for us it is difficult (repeat)</td></tr><tr><td>Ayɛ tuməri bi-γələt trem zayqa səkəri mušqət-ə</td><td>It is so beautiful, so pure, that here for us it is difficult</td></tr><tr><td>Yem wəxtəb wizit xuš tabistani bə γəfč qimət-əy</td><td>The precious time will come of the happy summer (repeat)</td></tr><tr><td>Yem wəxtəb wizit xuš tabistani bə γəfč qimət-əy Səylanəb rɛçən širin lal-əy sək tər vilayət-əy</td><td>The precious time will come of the happy summer Together we will go to the warm lowlands, my dear brother (repeat)</td></tr><tr><td>Buləybulay širin gul bənəfšə žu nazamin-əy</td><td>The sweet nightingale, the primrose, my dear one</td></tr><tr><td>Səylanəb rɛçən širin lal-əy sək tər vilayət-ey</td><td>Together we will go to the warm lowlands, my dear brother</td></tr><tr><td>Gul bənəfšə-əy bɛ səpəržitk mažər də žu izzət-əy</td><td>The primrose has decorated itself for me, in its honor (repeat)</td></tr><tr><td>Buləybulay širin gul bənəfšə žu nazamin-əy</td><td>The sweet nightingale, the primrose, my dear one</td></tr><tr><td>Gul bənəfšə-əy bɛ səpəržitk mažər də žu izzət-əy</td><td>The primrose has decorated itself for me, in its honor</td></tr><tr><td>ðəstaəb yowəy gom žu zəmana-yi bi izzət-əy</td><td>I'll gather it in a bouquet, my time has no honor (repeat)</td></tr><tr><td>Buləybulay širin gul bənəfšə žu nazamin-əy</td><td>The sweet nightingale, the primrose, my dear one</td></tr><tr><td>Hər gərdaniš kətɛtk badurə žu nəfəsi-əy</td><td>That brave one (Balti) slings his rifle over his shoulder (repeat)</td></tr><tr><td>Buləybulay širin gul bənəfšə žu nazamin-əy</td><td>The sweet nightingale, the primrose, my dear one</td></tr><tr><td>Hər gərdaniš kətɛtk badurə žu nəfəsi-əy</td><td>That brave one slings his rifle over his shoulder</td></tr><tr><td>Təy ki da səfar žu lolvəy jonər-i pənki-əy</td><td>When he is on a journey, he helps his brothers (repeat)</td></tr><tr><td>Buləybulay širin gul bənəfšə žu nazamin-əy</td><td>The sweet nightingale, the primrose, my dear one</td></tr></table>

During the last months of my research, when I was more conversant in Wakhi language, I realized that some of the songs my companions used to sing on the way to the pastures or in the refuges, during the night before a wedding, were related to the walk. Walking along the way is conducive to the composition of poems praising fellow travellers who have been able to accomplish their task and return home safely. The poems considered here belong to the praising genre (*stownəy bayd*), according to Mock’s classification (1998). To my knowledge, Mock produced the most complete work on Wakhi oral poems. In his PhD thesis, he shows how the background knowledge and the patterns of Wakhi language construct reality through their referentiality. For example, Wakhi toponyms can refer to the vegetation of an area, its
usage, or its natural characteristics. Wakhi toponyms are used in the same way in all Gojal (Upper Hunza Valley) and can be easily imagined by any Wakhi speaker even if they have never visited the place mentioned (Mock 1998:42–4). Moreover, Wakhi speakers can use their grammar to specify in detail the spatial relations between the people or things they are talking about. Both Mock and Elena Bashir show, for example, that adverbial demonstratives can be formed from demonstratives that specify three degrees of proximity (here, there, over there) and prepositions refer- ring to the direction or the location in the space (above, horizontal, below) (Mock 1998:xi–xiii; Bashir 2009:831–2).

Figure 1 exemplifies some of the referential capacities of poetry to place as dis- cussed by Mock and Bashir. In this poem, the word *gulistan* is commonly used to describe a fertile area in Gojal, while the word *trem* describes the spatial relation be- tween the speaker and something near and horizontal, that is, something very close. Mock explains how the referentiality of this poem should enable Wakhi listeners dwelling in Gojal to imagine a landscape in the pastures in winter in which they are immersed. In addition to these patterns of referentiality that Mock discusses, I would like to highlight in this poem the progression of the narration in this poem, stanza after stanza, that is reminiscent of a walk or at least a journey. This observation of the intrinsic relation between walking and singing leads to new questions: what are the effects of singing on the listeners? In which context does a singer begin to sing? What are the grounded experiences in which poetics arise? I propose to explore these questions in the following two episodes.

## The Rhythm of the Gestures and the Sounds of the Rock

On 23 September 2015, Bilal and I wake up at one of our favourite hotels in the Hunza Valley where we used to meet before taking the road to Shimshal. He and I used to purchase food and materials at the market. From the terrace, we see the Na- gar River below, flowing into the Hunza River beneath the peaks of the Rakaposhi (7,788 m). The confluence of the two rivers is shrouded in fog, and dense mist de- scends from nearby glaciers and disperses into white streaks on the mountain slopes. From the heights of Karimabad, Bilal looks with caution at a dark and heavy sky. With a serious face, he grabs one of his two phones and calls his brother-in-law Jalil. Bilal and Jalil arrived in Karimabad the day before with two hikers from Shimshal. Bilal calls a taxi. We all go together to the Continental Hotel of Aliabad where Jalil is waiting for us. People are gathering on the front steps. I understand that we are not the only ones to take the road. Hazin, one of Shimshal’s three jeep drivers, prepares his vehicle and loads the few bags on the roof. Bilal and I decide to go to the market to buy food. When we come back, Hazin’s cargo-jeep is gone. Jalil, Bilal and I leave Aliabad too for the Upper Hunza Valley, also called Gojal. After a few kilometres we stop in front of a house in the village of Shishkat. Two young men from Jalil’s family get into the car: Sikandar and Jahan. Both have a small backpack that they put in the
trunk from inside the car. Sitting down on the back seat, Bilal exclaims: “bismillah!” (“In the name of God!”), as a means of protection. Jalil starts the car and we move on. We head to the east and leave the main road for a dirt and gravel one leading into the Shimshal Valley.

The car descends to the right bank of the Hunza River and crosses a wooden suspension bridge supported by metal cables thrown from four stone pylons. The clouds have almost passed the mountain peaks and now reflect a dazzling light. It is starting to get hot. The sky clears and we emit a moist human warmth in the wet pickup. We follow the riverbank. Jalil rolls forward slowly, steadily leaning towards his steering wheel to better scrutinize the rock wall. Little cairns or small mounds of pebbles called *saman* mark every bend along the road and attract our attention. In the back seat, Bilal, Sikandar and Jahan are in conversation, but look straight ahead. After roughly 30 meters we have to stop. Scattered stones obstruct the road. Without anyone ordering them to do so, Sikandar and Jahan get out of the car, grab the stones and throw them down the cliff. On their return, Bilal exclaims “Šukriya Hazirimam” (“thank you Imam of the present time”). The further we go, the more often Sikandar and Jahan get out to clear the road. Eventually they do not get back into the car, but walk in front of us, removing the bigger stones here and there while Jalil avoids the smaller ones and adapts his speed to roll gently on small piles of gravel.⁵

We are now shaving the wall. The gravel that emerged from the sediments gives way to rocks held by a few stones and greasy black soil. Bilal tries to reassure me: “There is ... a little tension, huh. So uh...” After a few hundred metres we meet the cargo-jeep driven by Hazin and the jeep of the company NATCO,⁶ which had stopped before two rocks that had fallen from the heights in the middle of the road. A pile of rubble attracts the attention of the younger men who have just got out of the cars. They examine the mountainside, trying to find places from which stones might fall. To stand there is to expose oneself to danger. Very quickly, the juniors form a circle around the smallest rock in order to have a better look. If they manage to break it, the path will be open again and the cars will be able to drive around it. One of the young men takes hold of a solid and compact stone. He climbs on the rock, raises the stone over his head with his hands, and lets it fall by throwing it with all his might to amplify its impact as much as possible. The sound is muffled. The stone bounces on the still rock and does not open any fissures. It is necessary to strike a vein in the rock or to break it by accentuating a crack. The young men examine the rock's surface, looking for a fissure. Jalil takes the solid stone and throws it at the side of the rock. A sharper and more promising sound invites first a young man and then Sikandar to retry the smashing under the encouragement of Hazin who forcefully and distinctly shouts “šabaš!” (Bravo!). Elders point at the weak point and younger men smash again and again.

One of the young men takes the lead and repeatedly throws the stone at the side of the rock that seems the most fragile. His fatigue then urges a second young man to take his place. Hazin tells a third one to take his stick and sweep away the chips that stand out from the rock and hamper the work. When the throwing of stones
stops, one of them tries to loosen pieces of rock with a wooden stick and to wiggle
the unstable pieces. The others continue to look at the rock while scanning the cliff
whence little stones could fall. We have been in danger for a long time and nothing
seems to break the rock. Six young men are trying to lift it. Nothing can be done.
The stone throwing resumes. The same young men try again, helped by the “šabaš!”
of the elders. They target the veins that look like strata. After about fifteen launches,
the solid stone breaks in two. Another solid stone is quickly found and the striking
resumes without success. However, many little bits of the rock have already been re-
moved. Ten young men try to lift it again. It must be thrown into the river. They look
here and there for a grip to slide a hand, a finger; they find strength by pushing with
their thighs, putting their foot on a stone to use it as a fulcrum. All shout at the same
time, on the same tone. The rock is lifted slightly. Some young men immediately run
to pull the rock towards themselves while the others continue to push it. It falls over.
The other side of the rock seems much more fragile. One, two, and then three young
men launch the solid stone, running to grab it and restart the smashing as soon as
possible. We must finish, quickly. This time, whole pieces come off and on the third
stroke, Jalil breaks the block in two under applause and shouts. A few final strikes
further reduce the bigger part of the rock. The young men push the pieces to the bot-
tom of the road and let them fall down into the river. They clear the road, throw some
rocky pieces onto the riverside and use the others to build some cairns (saman) to
mark the edge of the ravine. The obstacle is reduced to crumbs and the crumbs now
mark the road. Drivers who, alone in their vehicles, negotiate a passage between the
second rock and the precipice are applauded.

The cutting of the rock requires people to assume their spatial and social place in society. Here too, they all act according to their social position. Striking is a task for the younger men. It requires strength, skill, and perceptive acuity. Only a few venture to try, under the benevolent eye of the elders who praise their well-posed actions and well-placed strikes with interjections. The elders, just like their juniors in the circle, participate fully in the action by pointing to the rock's surface. They propose verbally what to do. They have their eyes on the many sides of the rock that cannot be seen by the younger man standing on it. This goes for every young man and elder watching him. Elders and their juniors get a sense of the rock together. Each man can see only certain parts of the rock from a certain place and hear the sound of the stone hitting the rock. The one who throws the stone is assisted by the attention of everyone standing around. From time to time they look at the rock's surface and remain attentive to the sounds that the pebbles make when falling.

This collective experience shows the relations between the sound of the rock be-
ing smashed and the human vocal interjections. The people's shouting is entangled
with the smashing sounds, as are their movements against the texture of the rock. As
Collot (2012:55) notes, perception relates to the intimate involvement of the person
in the world, with things. Being is no longer in front of things or facing the world
but exists with them or with it. A being is a being in the world. Merleau-Ponty (2004
[1945]) argues that the perceiving subject knows the things that surround them by
the experience through their body. This experience is therefore pre-objective. It pre-
cedes knowledge (or objectification), since it gives birth to it.

Thus there is a paradox of immanence and transcendence in perception. Immanence,
because the perceived object cannot be foreign to him who perceives; transcendence,
because it always contains something more than what is actually given. And these two
elements of perception are not, properly speaking, contradictory. For if we reflect on
this notion of perspective, if we reproduce the perceptual experience in our thought,
we see that the kind of evidence proper to the perceived, the appearance of "some-
thing," requires both this presence and this absence. (Merleau-Ponty 1964:16)⁷

The perception of something that is visible (the surface of our rock) always as-
sumes something else that is not (the other sides of the rock). According to Merleau-
Ponty, the meaning of perception does not depend on representation. Perception is
not a process whereby an image of an object is gradually recognized by the senses.
The meaning of a thing is practical. What is given in the perception of the visible
and invisible parts of a thing does not derive from intellectual deduction, but from a
"horizontal synthesis" (Merleau-Ponty 1964:15). Each thing can be perceived from
multiple angles and each time this happens, the visible and perceived part gives
access to the knowledge of the thing as a whole (ibid.). Merleau-Pontian phenom-
enology invites us to reflect on a person's practical engagement with things. Things
appear to people from multiple angles as they move through a world that continues
to unfold and reveal itself to them.

During all the encounters between the people and the rock, hearing and see-
ing are linked senses through which elders and younger men know the thing they
are smashing collectively through strokes and praise. According to Ingold, just like
seeing depends on light, hearing depends on sounds. He proposes that we under-
stand sounds not as objectified things but as "the medium of our perception" (Ingold
2011:138), similar to light. Light and sounds are the fluxes of the medium in which
we perceive, they modulate our perception of things. The question is not to interpret
visual or aural material which may have been reproduced or recorded, but to under-
stand the process whereby people experience the visible and audible world through
seeing and hearing in the fluxes of the medium (2011:136–8). The falling rock, the
landslides of stones and the piles of earth are the result of the thick cloud mass that
has infiltrated the Hunza Valley. The humidity carried by the winds mingles with
the earth, which then dries up under the first clearings and separates itself from the
stones that roll onto our road. Wet winds regularly trigger landslides, which is what
Bilal feared from the heights of Karimabad. We could only expect a road full of
pitfalls. Rockfalls and landslides are thus predictable by those who are watchful of
atmospheric changes. The tension that Bilal shares with me goes hand in hand with
everyone's attention on the horizon of the road which, constantly changing, reveals
new obstacles. Before entering the gorges of Karakoram, one must be careful and
ask for God's protection. The rock we encounter does not simply block a connection
between two locations but interrupts the inhabitants' vital movements. The cliffs are
steep and the banks of the river are submerged. There is no way to continue other than breaking the rock.

To break the rock, the younger men take turns to leave the circle and re-enter it. Over and over, they continue to do so under the encouragements of the elders and the advice of their peers. The sounds as the rock is struck, the repetitive movements of smashing the rock, and the vocal interjections of the elders weave a dense fabric of sound, movement and collective action. Listening to sounds frames a shared experience in a shared space. Adopting a Gibsonian approach, Martin Clayton (2001) suggests that auditory information is meaningful thanks to the affordances perceived by the listeners. According to him, this information indicates the source of an event and enables people to coordinate their actions:

> [B]y synchronizing our attentional rhythms to those we detect in an auditory stimulus (such as the sounds produced by another human), we can achieve not only synchronization of action (as in dance) but a profound sense of connectedness to other people and (...) to spirits, Gods, ancestors. (Clayton 2001:8)

Moreover, listening to sounds leads to a speech-act. The expression of the word šabaš! by the elders resonates with the younger men's movements. Interjection is the immediate response to a well-placed strike. When Hazin shouts, he is responding to his impression of a young man's blow on the rock. Michel Collot argues that many theoreticians consider exclamations as the germ of poetic speech (Collot 2005 [1997]:15). Poetry comes from emotion, which he defines as

> a movement that makes the subject who experiences it come out of themselves. It is exteriorized by physical manifestations and is expressed by a modification of the relation to the world. The emotional being is overwhelmed, from within as much as from outside. (ibid.:11; translation by the author)⁸

Collot adds that while a poem is born of emotion, it is composed after reflection (ibid.:26). However, interjection and exclamation fall short of any reflection. They are the answer or the immediate and pre-reflexive expression of a subject who is not detached from the world and of his/her experience of it. In other words, this is not the production of a word in order to refer to an idea, but a bodily expression which, under the influence of emotion, gives birth to a sound. They are situated at the interface of meaning and sensibility, the signified and the signifier (ibid.:14). “Šabaš” is not a term referring to encouragement, it is encouragement itself. The elders express an encouragement that responds to the rhythm of the young men’s strikes. The rhythm of the strokes and the rhythm of the praise respond to each other. They resonate with each other. Thinking of the flow of the medium and the gestures of the people in terms of rhythm brings to mind Lefebvre, who defines rhythm as the generation of difference by the interference of cyclic or cosmic repetitions (days, nights, seasons, etc.) as well as linear ones, that is, (human) actions (Lefebvre 1992:14, 16–7). In gold, in his study on the cutting of a wooden plank, points out that the act of sawing is never the same. Yet it is repeated. Like the cutting up of our rock, the young man’s strike is repeated, but is never the same. Ingold explains that the difference in action is a response to the perception of the material being cut. Every movement, every
strike in the case that concerns us here, is thus the coupling of action and perception (Ingold 2011:58). Every strike suggests the perception of the rock lines on which the stone must fall. But, above all, it is a response to the perceptions of other young men who turn the rock around, to the encouragement of the elders who punctuate the strikes, to the rock that moves with each strike, and to the other stones that may fall. Through Ingold, we could immediately recognize that a rhythm is the repetition of an action corrected every time, because it resonates with all the rhythms in which the practitioner is immersed (ibid.:60).

Praising has a major role in Shimshalis' perpetuation of social life. People act according to their social place, and their actions justify the social place they have. Walking and social progression are thus entangled: the event calls people to fulfil their social role, and their actions enable them to find a corresponding place in the community.

Any collective work in Shimshal, such as making a pathway or building a mountain hut, an irrigation channel or a classroom, is the matrix of laudatory exclamations and interjections. “Ah badur!” (“Ah the brave one!”), or “žt jon” (“my dear one”) punctuate the return journey of the migrating shepherds who encourage themselves to reach their destination as they walk difficult paths with their livestock. Some other praises, such as “xub!” (“Good!”), are only expressed by elders, while women mostly circle their hands in the direction of those they meet on the way, as a sign of respect and to protect them. From these collective experiences, the villagers compose and sing laudatory poems to punctuate their walk. Let us see how these songs are related to walking and the rhythms of the movements through which individuals progress socially. I now proceed to describe a context in which a song is sung and, more broadly, the ways in which laudatory poems are sung during a walk.

## The Walk and the Verses of the Poems

Shimshal Valley, the morning of 10 October 2015. Bilal and I prepare our bags. Two young men pass through a gap in the wall surrounding the house. We are going to the summer pastures. Bilal is eager for Mazammal and Azar to be with us. All three are from the same clan. They have been friends (*dust*) since childhood. They have already spent several months in the mountains as shepherds for the community (*špūn*) and are engaged in a mutual aid relationship (*kəryar*) in agricultural work every year.

As usual, Jamsheed, Bilal's father, comes to greet his son and the group that is going to the summer pastures. Our bags and belongings are nearly ready for departure. Jamsheed throws us a “yɛ baf!,” which in this case means “good luck.” It is the equivalent of a more solemn form of salutation also used in this case: “safar məbarək,” that is to say, “have a good trip,” with the hope of a successful round trip without hindrances. On departure, Mazammal quickly whispers “Hazirimam yi farišta” (“Imam of the time, the angels”) which is also a formula expressed to attract luck and to avoid misfortunes. We walk towards the Tang Valley. On the way, the
wife of one of Mazammal’s brothers greets us from a distance, turning her right hand over her head (*ðast ýirvən*), a sign of respect and protection. We stop at Kuk (Source) where we readjust our bags and fill our plastic bottles with water. On the other side of the bridge, on the right bank of the river and at the foot of the mountain, we meet a group of three shepherds: Asim, an elder of the village, is going to the pastures of Pamir to bring back his yaks to Shimshal. Hamza and Osman, two of his *stiktin* (kinsmen), are doing the trip with him, because they must fulfil their shepherd’s duty for a few days (*sur*). Like us, they will stop at Past Furzin (“after the furzin trees”).

After appropriate greetings in form and manner, Asim adjusts the ropes that hold his luggage on the back of one of his donkeys and continues his path, placing his feet where his two parents imprinted theirs. After a short rest, sitting on the rocks bordering the banks of the river, we continue our way. Our path—a broad sand strip ploughed by men and their flocks—bends between the rocks and the stones of the river’s edge. Mazammal and Azar do not speak. With their backs bent under the weight of the bags, they move forward. Their steps would seem regular, like clock-work even, if we did not have to pay attention to the few pebbles that could make us slip. We quickly catch up with Asim. He turns around, exclaiming: “ýafč kšurui awal! ýafč baf!” (“It’s a good start! Very good!”). Bilal immediately joins the elder and both take the lead. We follow them. Asim begins a long discussion punctuated by the injunctions of Bilal; these punctuations coincide with their footsteps on the ground. The conversation and the walk resonate, on and on.

We arrive at the first shelter, below Gar-e-Sar. Asim’s two parents are waiting for him inside. Without knowing that Mazammal and Azar have already gone ahead to the shelter of Gar-e-Sar, I enter the house and find one of Asim’s parents making a fire to heat some water for tea. Asim enters the refuge, followed by Bilal. While they are talking, I take a picture of a flower drawn schematically on the upper part of one of the pillars of the house. Immediately, Asim sings a poem that begins with this first verse “gulistan-er kert-em səfar” (“I travelled to the flower garden”). The repetition of each verse clearly tells me that it has been composed recently: it differs from the more complex structure of older poems. This is the first time I listen to this poem, but I recognize the common themes of the praising genre (*stownay bayd*). Several verses mention the places that must be crossed to reach the pastures from the village of Shimshal, and others praise the bravery of the friends with whom we walk and without whom it would be impossible for us to reach our destination and return home safely. We leave Asim’s parents’ house and arrive in Gar-e-Sar about twenty minutes later.

Looking north from Gar-e-Sar, one can see an immense area of ochre sand dotted with greyish and brownish stones. We begin the slow ascent following a small path, whitened by the footsteps of shepherds, winding up to the summit. We follow one another in single file. Bilal is our guide (*misi*). He leads the walk, sets the pace. The rhythm of the walk is now slower, to avoid getting out of breath. Two hours later, we put our bags down and sit on large, flat stones placed in a circle. Asim and his parents join us a few minutes later. Tang Valley’s paths are particularly narrow. They
were arranged on straight cornices. In a few places they were carved by pickaxe and dynamite to easily carry herds of *kla* (goats and sheep) and young yaks. On the right are the rocks, on the left lies a precipice with the Shimshal River deep down below, fed by the meltwaters of the glaciers. Precedence requires everyone to let Asim take the lead. However, it is essential to follow at the same pace. Moreover, Osman and Hamza's yaks will go first, followed by Asim and his two donkeys. I precede Bilal and then come Mazammal, Azar and our host. The encouragement of Asim and his kinsman to drive the donkeys and yaks punctuates our march and prompts our brief conversations. Walking motivates the expression of speech. More than that, from time to time it brings up the memory of a verse, a tune, and Asim hums along the way. We reach Past Furzin at dusk. Azar and Osman prepare bread and lentils under the light of their headlamps. After the meal, Asim resumes in a clear voice the poems he hummed earlier. As young men must do, we honour our older companions, Asim and his family, by leaving them alone in the house. We stay in a tent on the roof of the house and we sleep through the night.

Before the first light of dawn, Bilal, Azar, Mazammal and I leave the refuge. The three friends know the road well and wish to advance quickly. We will stop at the Arbab-e-Pèriën refuge and reach the summer pasture of Shuijerav (Black River) on 12 October. To the east an escarpment leads to the Shimshal Pass and further to the Braldu and Shaksgam Valleys. On the horizon, we can see small houses joined to one another. Shepherdesses have been living there since July to look after the herds of the entire lineage of their husbands and sometimes even those of other lineages. Every day, they take their herds to graze either north of the valley, or south, where the grass is still green. In the evening, they bring them back to a large enclosure in the north, surrounded by multiple small stone shelters. In recent days, more and more shepherds have been arriving from the village. Every evening, when goats and sheep are gathered, they go around the paddock several times to see to animals belonging to their family and to gather their flocks.

On 16 October Bilal, Azar, Mazammal and I walk towards the Shimshal Pass east of Shuijerav. Our first steps are slow, we must first find our way along an escarpment. At the top, a wide and lush valley runs east. Meltwaters flow from the ice into two large lakes at the bottom of the pass (4,721 m). The fertility of these pastures is evident in the darkness of the waterlogged land. The first snow has fallen and announces the imminence of autumn transhumance. Hundreds of yaks graze on the high plateau, sniffing for grass under the snow and drawing thin lines of black mud across the valley.

In Shuwurt, Azar, Bilal and Mazammal hardly have time to put down their bags and prepare bread, since a thousand yaks are advancing towards us and towards the enclosure. Six shepherds stretch a line behind the flock and pull back the animals that are trying to turn back, raising their shepherd's staff to the sky, mimicking the throw of a stone, uttering a rhythmic shout "he-he-hey" that is suddenly heavier when a yak comes out of the ranks: "br-BR! Ha! HA-HA!" When they see the yaks, Azar, Mazammal and Bilal start moving, without running, to lend the shepherd a
hand. The flock is now close to the enclosure's gate, encircled by the shepherds who extend their arms to contain the animals. The yaks pass through the gate two by two or three by three. They trot and follow one another onto the muddy, black earth that is fertilized and ploughed by their hooves. All evening, the shepherds and my three companions stay in the enclosure to catch the new-borns and tie them to a stone so that their grunts will attract their mothers. The ewes will be milked in the morning, shortly after 4am.

The next day, the enclosure gate is opened and the yaks return to the two lakes below the pass by themselves. The shepherds stand in the background, letting the broad and long flock out of the paddock. Then everything starts to accelerate. The yaks that munch on the few grasses in front of the enclosure are targeted by the cries of the shepherds and their stone throwing, and within a few minutes the flock disappears into the distance, leaving multiple lines intertwined in the snow. On the horizon, the silhouette of a shepherd is gradually detached from the snowy meadow. With his face hidden under a scarf, he moves forward, raising his stick again to prod his two donkeys. It is Asim.

At the sight of the shepherd, Mazammal and Azar descend to Shuwurt to prepare the welcome he deserves. I join them a few minutes later in the shelter, after taking some pictures. When I come back, smoke is already coming out of the fireplace. Bilal, as a provider, has lit the fire to prepare the bread. The shepherd's two donkeys stand, harnessed to ropes grounded by stones. It is dawn, but there is no opening to let in the light and we can hardly see ourselves in the cold, smoky little house. Asim takes the place of the guest next to a fire that is barely warming us. With our legs against each other and our hands clasped together, we hear the comforting sound of the boiling of the meat and the lid of the pan that jiggles regularly.

Without waiting, Asim leaves the room and stands, near the refuge, on top of a rock from which one can clearly see the Braldu Valley. He begins to sing one of Shimshal's most famous poems. It pays tribute to Balti, who was the village chief (*arbab*) in the 1960s. In this poem, Asim takes up the words of the poet Shireen Shah who composed these verses during a transhumance with the *arbab*, as Mock also pointed out (1998:137). These words are presented and translated in Figure 1.

Walking through snowy summer meadows as autumn approaches arouses multiple feelings. How can one convey them to others, if not by singing a poem, a codified form of expression? Walking and feeling the cold evokes the memory of verses from a poem composed to describe similar feelings. The countryside is covered with snow and men think about the time when they will leave the cold of their winter pastures to reach their warm and welcoming home, a well-deserved return after long months spent tending the herds, with the only comfort being the sharing of the animals hunted by the clever *arbab*.

How does singing relate to walking? Each stanza is composed of two or more verses in which the rhyme is on the last syllable. A third verse, identical to the end of each stanza, is the main refrain. The first two verses express an admirable action in a certain process: a roundtrip, the one that people were used to doing with the
flocks every year. The refrain punctuates the narrative development of a situation that remains as it is in all circumstances: those who advance are worthy of praise. In Shimshal, this means that they deserve a spatial place on the foundational axes.

I never heard a poem sung in the same way, for a simple reason: the singing of poems in Shimshal is based on repetition of verses, and the stanzas can be rearranged in multiple ways. That brings us to my second comment. The second verse of each stanza is taken as the first verse of the next one—a pattern discussed by Mock (1998:111,135). Moreover, in the same stanza, the second verse and the chorus are often repeated. The first verse is more rarely repeated. The chorus, the repetition of the second verse and the direct repetition of verses in a stanza seem to me to participate fully in the rhythm of the song. In addition to its formal aspect, the direct repetition of a verse by the singer seems to be motivated by its importance, or its beauty, that is, to be a response to the enthusiasm aroused by those who listen to it and encourage it, or support it at the beginning of the next verse. The singing of poems is set in this creative realm. The same poem, sung by different villagers, may vary by the repetition of the verses, but also the number of verses, the intonation. In this sense, rhythm of repetition is the dynamic that develops between the singer and those around him. Asim repeats the lines of the poem to remember them, and then recomposes it as he sings.

## Conclusion: Opening Ways through Walking and Singing

In this article, I have addressed the issue of dwelling on the basis of the movement by which people appropriate their valley and find their place within their society: their return journeys (going somewhere to do something and coming back) coupled with their comings and goings within the home (crossing the threshold). The phenomenological approach adopted here enabled me to understand how sounds perceived during collective actions frame a shared place and generate the matrix from which praise songs are composed. These songs are sung during the walk and gather people together in a shared place, in addition to generating a melodic line as a pathway on which listeners walk.

Collective activities such as making and repairing mountain pathways, shelters, huts and irrigation channels are the most common in Shimshal. In participating in such events, people gain in honourability (*izzat*). In these contexts, seeing enables people to individually scrutinize the rock's texture and discern its fissures, while hearing sounds is a way to know the rock's resistances. Hearing immerses everyone in the same shared space framed by the rock sounds and enables them to synchronize their actions and to collaborate according to their place within the community. The same comment can be applied to singing a praise poem. The repetition of verses entrains people together in a place and evokes a social rhythm very similar to the interaction between the elders and the younger men smashing the rock. What binds them is that they both constitute a socially negotiated exchange of sound and movement
that is subject to periodicity in which people are “locked into the same experience” (Clayton 2001:3): a shared experience of time and space.

While both cases (collective actions and singing a poem) are pragmatically com-
parable, they are part of a process from which interjections expressed while working
give rise to the composition of songs sung while walking. In the first episode, the
shared sonic space immerses the people in a particular emotional atmosphere. By
shouting, they express encouragements and contribute to this atmosphere. Lauda-
tory poems stem from the emotion felt through performing remarkable actions. To
narrate these events in their songs, poets position them. This is how a poem becomes
a line punctuated by places in which honourable actions were carried out; a melodic
line along which a listener walks. Taking a path evokes a poem and singing a poem
opens pathways. The poem continues the walk and motivates the listeners to walk
again, to reach their home.

Back home, in Shimshal, the social rhythm of collective works coincides with
Shimshalis adjusting their position in a house or on a mountain path according to
the three axes and the other people present. People position themselves in time and
space along these horizontal and vertical axes according to their age, their gender
and their status, whether they physically position themselves in space, interlock vo-
cal interjections with rock-smashing, or interrupt and initiate walks with the singing
of poems.

Notes

* In this article I have adopted the Wakhi system of transliteration proposed by John Mock in his thesis (1998:32–7). Mock claimed to be inspired by the work of Grünberg and Steblin-Kamen-sky (1976). He nevertheless made some changes that took into account certain particularities of Wakhi as it is spoken in the north of the Hunza Valley.

1 Kreutzmann notes that the valleys of the Karakoram mountains “represent a typical subtropical steppic high mountain area” (2000:93). According to this author, the Karakoram Range forms a barrier “between the monsoon-dominated lowlands of the Indian subcontinent and the arid belt of Central Asia with its huge desert basins of the Tarim and Fergana” (ibid.).

2 Agriculture calls for kinship ties of lineages (*sukthin*), while transhumance cycles require the involvement of entire clans (*rum*).

3 The terminology I am using comes from Anne-Marie Vuillemenot's monograph on the life of shepherds in Kazakhstan (Vuillemenot 2009:15).

4 The vertical axis is also mobilized by elders and those officiating during certain ceremonies, such as weddings (*tuy*) or the sowing festival (*taým*), during which they throw some flour though the *ritsan*.

5 The Shimshal road was built between 1982 and 2003 by the villagers themselves, with the support of the Pakistani Government and the NGO Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, which provided resources and/or contractors.
6. NATCO means *Northern Areas Transport Corporation* and is one of Pakistan's main transport companies. The name is related to the province of the north now called Gilgit-Baltistan.

7. “Il y a donc dans la perception un paradoxe de l’immanence et de la transcendance. Immanence, puisque le perçu ne saurait être étranger à celui qui perçoit ; transcendance, puisqu’il comporte toujours un au-delà de ce qui est actuellement donné. Et ces deux éléments de la perception ne sont pas à proprement parler contradictoires, car, si nous réfléchissons sur cette notion de perspective, si nous reproduisons en pensée l’expérience perspective, nous verrons que l’évidence propre du perçu, l’apparition de “quelque chose” exige indivisiblement cette présence et cette absence”” (Merleau-Ponty 2014 [1947]:40–1).

8. “un mouvement, qui fait sortir de soi le sujet qui l’éprouve. Elle s’extérieurise par des manifestations physiques et s’exprime par une modification du rapport au monde. L’être ému se trouve débordé, du dedans comme du dehors”” (Collot 2005 [1997]:11).

## Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the editors of *the world of music (new series)* and Richard Wolf whose comments enabled me to deepen my reflection, as well as Liz Carey-Libbrecht for her rigorous language editing which enhanced the quality of my text. I am also grateful to the shepherds with whom I walked the mountain paths of the Shimshal Valley and from whom I learned the importance of praise, discussed in this article.

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the world of music (new series)
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• Arts and Humanities Citation Index®

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> Barbara Titus, *Introduction: Dwelling in Musical Movement*

> Rachel Beckles Willson, *Orientation through Instruments: The 'ūd, the Palestinian Home, and Kamīlyā Jubrān*

> Birgit Abels, *A Poetics of Dwelling with Music and Dance: Le hip hop as Homing Practice*

> Anna Lisa Ramella, *States of Play/ing: Sonic Dwellings on a Music Tour*

> Thibault Fontanari, *Making Pathways while Walking and Singing in Shimshal Valley, Pakistan*

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