Vocal Music

From the text:

The Igorot has vocal music, but in no way can I describe it — to say nothing of writing it. I tried repeatedly to write the words of the songs, but failed even in that. The chief cause of failure is that the words must be sung — even the singers failed to repeat the songs word after word as they repeat the words of their ordinary speech. There are accents, rests, lengthened sounds, sounds suddenly cut short — in fact, all sorts of vocal gymnastics that clearly defeated any effort to “talk” the songs. I believe many of the songs are wordless; they are mere vocalizations — the “tra la la” of modern vocal music; they may be the first efforts to sing.