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From: gaia@portia.Stanford.EDU (fai to leung)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Meaning of music
Message-ID: <1990May29.050805.29414@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 29 May 90 05:08:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: portia.1990May29.050805.29414
References: <1990May25.082956.27866@portia.Stanford.EDU> <12542@becker.UUCP>
Organization: AIR, Stanford Universit
Lines: 27

In article <12542@becker.UUCP> bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker) writes:
>	The use of the word "wala" usually can be
>	traced to French influence - it's a corruption
>	of "voila". In English it becomes usually
>	dialectal for  "aha", "taa-daa", or other
>	expletives. Thus "walawala" is likely an
>	emphatic form.

It can be traced further to the Great Deluge.  In Codex Araratus, Anonymous
Nautilus I described the word as "the very last sound that the survivors
heard at that tragic moment: (Folio R-VI v)
walawalawa...wala...lawala..."voila"...wala."voila"..walawalawala..."voila"
...walawala...."voila"..."voile"...walawala...."  According to "On the 
Origin of Speeches" by the late Sir James Issacson, the first word that
utterred by the surviors when land was at sight: "aha", and that of their first
step on the dried land "taa-daa". 

>	The fact that "wala" has a history of
>	linguistic association parallels the fact
>	of musical association - a lot of musical
>	"ideas" are not new at all, rather conscious
>	or unconscious reworkings of older forms
>	that are well understood.

Indeed.  Furthermore, somewhere down the line of inquiry lies two obvious
and important constants, namely the phyiscal laws of nature, and the 
physiology of the human vocal and aural apparatus.