Igbo Speech Surrogacy: Preliminary Findings Based on the Oja Flute.

This research report presents analyses of recordings from the Ìgbò culture of southeastern Nigeria of an flute player, a female speaker, and a male speaker. After a prepared performance, the participants completed two tasks: (1) mapping speech to flute playing and (2) identifying phrases played on the flute. Contour analysis is applied to annotated recordings to study the mapping of speech tone and rhythm from voice to instrument in parallel utterances by the three participants (male, female, and flute).