In my mind I've been running thorugh some doo wop I've heard. It seems to me that a characteristic of it can be that the singers are pulling the tune apart, note by note, in divergent lines of harmony, and then bringing them back together at certain points only to diverge again.

It made me think of the familiar Doxology (Old Hundredth) which is SO CHORDAL, with a chord change required on almost every note, that you can't quite get it right on a regular-set-up autoharp. The beauty of that Dox is precisely the pulling into different strands, using harmony (doubled on organ) to get some really cool effects.

As for heterophony as a precursor or poor relation-- I can see how people singing in it might discover, spontaneously, things that sounded good, to replicate deliberately, which might tend toward what we know today as harmony. But I can also see that being completely unnecessary, because it's quite lovely the way it is.

In slave times, people were bought and sold, qathered and dispersed.... the spontaneous formation of harmony through repeated occasions for specific individuals to sing together might not have been the usual experience. I do not know how and why heterophony and improvisation are such foundation characteristics of African music-- maybe tribal movements and clan/tribe meetings?

It's just a word, as "polyphony" and "harmony" are just words. How it's used, what it signifies, of course would vary with the genre and the culture about which one uses the word.

Another place you hear it, of course, is among kids singing at daycare. As they get older, they are made to learn another way.

One thing heterophony is NOT is "cacophony." A simple anaology is those kids in daycare. Well-led, they will sing heterphony. If they haven't had their naops and enough attention, I am sure it might come out as cacophony.

~Susan
momentarily-fascinated-with-all-things "-ophony".