This book presents ethnomusicological articles based on papers read at an international symposium held in the Department of Music Anthropology of the University of Tampere, Finland. The special themes of this symposium were associated with problems of genres, syntax, sound and performance as ethnomusicological research problems in the study of the musical practices of the Eurasian indigenous North. This vast area includes both the Uralic and Turkic peoples of Western Siberia, but also the Uralic and Finno-Ugrian peoples of European Russia and Scandinavia.

The idenitification of the generic categories of the forms of traditional expressive communication is exemplified with new information from ethnographic fieldwork. How are the traditional forms of acoustic expression categorised generically from the point of view of the traditions themselves? The performance practices of traditional forms of music and dance are a related issue.

The study of the syntax of traditional expressive communication sheds light on this communication in the realm of musical structure. What elements consitute sung expression? Studying syntax illuminates the order of traditional forms of expression.

The study of sound is another way to understand traditional acoustic expression. This research orientation must lean on multidisciplinary innovations achieved, for example, in speech studies. In some indigenous singing styles, especially in Turkic southern Siberia, variational range of vocal sound actually seems to be of generic relevance.