Böcker i SOAS Studies in Music-serien

Tradition and Creativity in Korean Taeg¿m Flute Performance describes the taeg¿m as a representation of Korean culture in the contemporary world.

With the abrogation of the Zen Buddhist Fuke sect during Japan’s modernisation process in the late nineteenth century, the raison d’être for the shakuhachi (Japanese vertical bamboo flute) as a spiritual tool for mendicant monks suddenly vanished. Thereafter, playing the shakuhachi changed from spiritual practice to professional musicianship or musical hobby. The fact that the instrument had been modified and ’improved’ has been a well-kept secret. The old style shakuhachi, now named jinashi shakuhachi, became a marginalised instrument for eccentrics. However, during the past decade it has gained popularity, especially outside Japan, where it is considered to be ’the real thing’ as opposed to the modernised jinuri shakuhachi. Kiku Day examines how the jinashi shakuhachi, although constructed according to the principles current prior to the Meiji Restoration, itself has been modified to adapt to the needs of modern players. In order to place the instrument into the modern world in its own right, the author, a professional jinashi shakuhachi player, describes her recent collaboration with five international composers on a performance project with the aim of creating a new repertoire. This process of cross cultural creation is described against the background of action research, Theory U, and the theory of flow.

Musical improvisation is a complex form of creative human expression. In this book, Sabina Rakcheyeva explores the logical outcomes of performance, relating them to existing theories and expanding those theories with new findings. Rakcheyeva begins with an examination of the attributes of musical improvisation, how it is practised, its logic, the creativity of the process and the role of the audience in performance. The book's second half is devoted to a description of a performance-based research project involving the author, a violinist, and members of her ensemble. A self-referent endeavour involving cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary analyses, investigates aspects of improvisation in recent musical practice, juxtaposing this onto the author's own performance experience and elaborating, in particular, on how improvisation encapsulates processes of imagination, creation, and collaboration among musicians from different music backgrounds. Taking the music performance to a next stage, the author explores the ways of how musical collaboration as a tool of public engagement can contribute to promoting understanding and preventing and resolving conflict, in a search of methodology for improving the effectiveness of current practices

The 'Special Period' in Cuba was an extended period of economic depression starting in the early 1990s, characterised by the collapse of revolutionary values and social norms, and a way of life conducted by improvised solutions for survival, including hustling and sex-work. During this period there developed a thriving.

Through an analysis both broad and deep of primary and secondary sources, ethnography, iconography and current performance practice, this enquiry undertakes a critical approach to the history of kathak dance and presents new data about hereditary performing artists, gendered contexts and practices, and postcolonial cultural reclamation.

Dedicated to the late Gerard Behague, this anthology offers perspectives on the evolving legacy of performance ethnography in socio-musical analysis and reflects the heritage but also contemporary trajectories of Behague's scholarly concerns. Prefaced by an essay outlining key developments in the ethnography of performance paradigm.

This anthology addresses the modern musical culture of interwar Osaka and its surrounding Hanshin region. It is the first to draw together research on the interwar musical culture of the Osaka region and addresses comprehensively both Western and non-Western musical practices and genres.

"First edition published by Ashgate 2004."

Explains how musical art is an essential part of the identity of the Japanese geisha rather than a secondary feature. This book details the musical genres and traditions with which geisha have been involved during their artistic history, as well as their position within the traditional arts society.

Addressing a number of issues regarding the nature of musical creativity, the author explores both the discourses through which ideas about creativity are constructed, exchanged and negotiated within this tradition, and the practice by which new music comes into being.

The ??yat al-ma?l?b by Ibn Kurr is the only theoretical text of any substance that can be considered representative of musicological discourse in Cairo during the first half of the fourteenth century CE. Owen Wright provides the first modern edition of the text itself, together with a detailed glossary.

The musical genre of taarab is played for entertainment at weddings and other festive occasions all along the Swahili Coast in East Africa. In this study Janet Topp Fargion traces the development of the genre in Zanzibar, from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth.

D?ph?, or d?ph? bhajan, is a genre of Hindu-Buddhist devotional singing, performed by male, non-professional musicians of the farmer and other castes belonging to the Newar ethnic group, in the towns and villages of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Richard Widdess describes the music and musical practices of d?ph?.

P'ansori is the quintessential traditional Korean musical drama, in which epic tales are sung and narrated by a solo singer accompanied by a drummer. Drawing on her extensive research in Korea and its diasporas, Haekyung Um describes and analyses the creative processes of p'ansori, weaving into her discussion musical.

The early-Republican era (1923-1938) was a major period of musical and cultural change in Turkey. Representing more than twenty years of research, Alaturka: Style in Turkish Music is a study of the significance of style in Turkish music and, in particular.

The last quarter of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first saw a steady stream of new songbook publications and recordings in Yiddish - newly composed songs, well-known singers performing nostalgic favourites, American popular songs translated into Yiddish, theatre songs, and even a couple of forays into Yiddish hip hop.

Ma'luf, which literally means 'familiar' or 'customary,' bears the auditory traces of music brought to North Africa by Muslim and Jewish refugees escaping the Christian reconquista of Spain between the tenth and seventeenth centuries.

Explores the policy, ideology and practice of preservation and promotion of East Asian intangible cultural heritage, focusing on music traditions. This title intends to situate considerations of Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan together - states that were amongst the first to establish legislation and systems for indigenous traditions.

Marie-Galante is a small island situated in the Caribbean to the south of Guadeloupe. This book focuses on kadril dance and gwo ka drumming, two musical practices on the island with which Marie-Galantais construct unique perceptions of self in relation, specifically, to Africa and France.

Provides an analysis of the hereditary mudang institution and its rhythm-oriented music, focusing on the Kim family of mudang. This book studies the tradition, using materials from fieldwork (1999-2000) alongside interviews with two family members. It includes quotes from the ritualists to help reveal their characters, opinions and beliefs.

In the Central Himalayan region of Garhwal, the gods (devtas) enjoy dancing and come on to their mediums when musicians play and 'make' them dance. This book examines music and musical practice in Garhwal from an analytical perspective that explores the nexus between musical sounds and performance events.

Providing assessments of John Blacking's work, this book talks about the manipulation of traditional performance settings in pursuit of political or social strategies; children's music acquisition as an indicator of the innate musical capacity of humans; the biology of music making; the creation of pleasure, pain and power during dance; and more.

Nnwonkoro is a genre of women's song found among the Akan speaking peoples of Ghana. Based on extensive field work this book investigates the nature of composition in oral culture, together with issues such as the scope of the poetic imagination and the transformation process that accompany's modernisation.

Serves as a musical ethnography of a Quechua-speaking community of Northern Potosi, in the Bolivian Andes. This work explores how music permeates the lives of this group of herders and agriculturalists. It delves into the meanings ascribed to sound; charts unfamiliar aesthetic territories; and suggests how modernity can contribute to indigeneity.

What is it about the history, geographical position and cultures of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia that has made music such a potent and powerful agent? This book looks at the complex relationship between music and power across a range of musical genres and countries.

Japanese folk performing arts incorporate a body of entertainments that range from the ritual to the secular. They may be the ritual dances at Shinto shrines performed to summon and entertain deities. This title provides an introductory guide to the major performance types as understood by Japanese scholars.

An examination of the music of the Balinese gender wayang, the quartet of metallophones - gender - that accompanies the Balinese shadow puppet play - wayang kulit. It tackles a number of core ethnomusicological concerns, including the relationship between composition and improvisation, and also highlights issues specific to Balinese music.

Traces the formation the Twelve Muqam, a set of musical suites linked to the Uyghurs, who are one of China's minority nationalities, and culturally Central Asian Muslims.

Analyses a single recording of classical Persian music made by Touraj Kiaras, a distinguished singer, accompanied by four noted instrumentalists. This book presents an analysis that identifies salient structural features, whether of the individual components or of the whole, in a way accessible to the western reader.