About
- East AsiaThere are five distinctive cultural areas in this geographical region: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Korean, and Japanese. In the Chinese cultural area, Tibet and Inner Mongolia are autonomous regions within the People's Republic of China. East Asian cultures have long interacted with one another through trade, diplomatic and cultural exchange, warfare, and religious pilgrimages. As a result, in the sphere of music, there has been much borrowing and exchange of musical instruments, styles, scales and modes, and ideas. In what follows, the official Chinese pinyin system is used in the transliteration of Chinese names and terms.
- South AsiaThe region called South Asia is centered on India and includes the countries on its periphery with which India has close cultural and historical ties. While the term South Asia implies a unit with more than mere geographic contiguity among its constituents, it does not signify ethnic, cultural, linguistic, or musical uniformity any more than does the term Europe. Within this region, therefore, there is a musical diversity based on class, ethnicity, religion, and education, as well as a contrasting unity that is aided by modern media and marketing.
- Southeast Asiageographic region south of East Asia and east of South Asia, situated between 30° north and 10° south latitude, consisting of 1.7 million square miles of land and more than twice that amount of seas. This area encompasses present-day Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia (Kampuchea), Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
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Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Books
Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest
Music and dance play a central role in the "healing arts" of the Senoi Temiar, a group of hunters and horticulturalists dwelling in the rainforest of peninsular Malaysia. As musicologist and anthropologist, Marina Roseman recorded and transcribed Temiar rituals, while as a member of the community she became a participant and even a patient during the course of her two-year stay. She shows how the sounds and gestures of music and dance acquire a potency that can transform thoughts, emotions, and bodies.
Thai Classical Singing
Thai classical singing is a genre that blossomed during the golden age of music in the royal court at Bangkok during the nineteenth century. It took a variety of forms including unaccompanied songs used for narration in plays, instrumental music that was used to accompany mimed actions, and songs of entertainment accompanied by an instrumental ensemble. Today, Thai classical singing is found widely outside the court, and its influence is evident in many traditional songs. This book is the first in English to provide a detailed study of Thai classical singing. Dusadee Swangviboonpong discusses the historical background to this long-established genre, the vocal techniques that it employs, the contexts in which it is performed, the degree of improvisation that performers use, the setting of texts and the methods used to teach the songs. Teaching methods still tend to focus on oral transmission, although there have been recent attempts by the Thai authorities to standardize the way singing is taught and practised. These controls are, argues the author, a threat to the the variety in style and approach that has characterised this music and kept it alive. The book features transcriptions of Thai classical songs and a glossary of Thai terms, so making it a useful introduction to the genre.
Indian Music
In this book, first published in 1972, Indian music is given the comprehensive treatment it so richly deserves. The author brings a wealth of association with the country and its music into focus with a general introduction to the cultural and spiritual environment, and to the techniques, instruments and methods of the Indian musician.
Chinese and Japanese Music-Dramas
Chinese and Japanese Music-Dramas is the result of a conference on the relations between Chinese and Japanese music-drama held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, on October 1–4, 1971. In addition to the Association for Asian Studies, four U-M departments participated in the conference: the Center for Japanese Studies, the Center for Chinese Studies, the School of Music, and the Speech Department. One important inspiration for the creation of such an interdisciplinary conference was the fact that each participant had found, after years of individual research on music-drama in East Asia, consistent frustration caused by attempts to deal on their own with multiple cultural and technical problems. Another motivating force was an awareness among many members of the four disciplines involved that the topic is in fact one of the largest untouched fields of scholarly endeavor in both Asian and theatrical studies. The collection opens with J. I. Crump’s exploration of the Ming commentators who began to subject Yüan musical drama to the same critiques as other literature from the past. In the second chapter, Rulan Chao Pian looks to the structure of arias in Peking Opera for clues about what distinguishes this art form. William P. Malm turns to three key sources for the performance conventions of Japanese Noh drama to glean any Sino-Japanese music relationships that exist in technical terms and practices. In the fourth essay, Carl Sesar analyzes a Noh play that stages the tension between Chinese influence and Japanese originality. Roy E Teele concludes the volume with a formal study of Noh play structure to assess lineages of influence from Chinese dramatic forms.
Dance of Life
Popular music and politics in Southeast Asia
Balinese Music
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Through composer and musicologist Colin McPhee's passionate and detailed writing about his time in Bali it becomes immediately evident how strongly the country impacted the course of both his career and life. Seduced by recordings of Balinese music he heard in Paris in the 1920s, McPhee traveled to Bali, ultimately remaining there for six years.
While there, he not only studied Balinese music and culture, he also documented Bali's rapidly changing traditions. This film blends some of the composer's most meaningful words regarding Bali and the time he spent there with observations and praise from fellow composers such as John Cage and Aaron Copeland.
Indian Music
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Classical music has origins in religion and spirituality; learn about raga. Folk music originates in rural areas and reflects culture and geographical location. Bollywood music has traditional and Western components; singing is the most enduring element.
Chinese Folk Music
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowWhether they were crafted to spread Mao’s message of class struggle or spun from the fabric of everyday life, Chinese folk songs carry with them immense historical and cultural importance. This program examines a wide range of songs and melodies from the country’s pre-Communist era to the Cultural Revolution, energized by a rich progression of archival footage, photographs, interviews, and present-day renditions sung in homes and on street corners. The origins, meanings, and political impact of several well-known songs are described, along with an illustration of jianpu, the traditional Chinese system of musical notation, and the distinction between haozi, or workmen’s songs, and the urban style known as xiaodiao.