Books in the SOAS Studies in Music series

The bata is one of the most important and representative percussion traditions of the people in southwest Nigeria, and is now learnt and performed around the world. The author explains how the bata drummers' speech encoding method links into universal linguistic properties, unknown to the musicians themselves.

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.

In this work, the author examines timba, a contemporary Afrocuban dance music style that has become popular since Cuba's post-Soviet economic crisis, and shows how this music has come to represent the sound of a crisis that is not only economic but also social and political in nature.

Since the early 1990s, Okinawan music has experienced an extraordinary boom in popularity throughout Japan. In particular, the Yaeyama region in the south of Okinawa has long been known as a region rich in performing arts. This title explores some of the reasons for the high profile of Yaeyaman music, both inside and outside Yaeyama.

Examines how traditional and modern elements interact in the practice, reception and functions of wind music, or shengguan, at monasteries in Wutaishan, one of China's four holy mountains of Buddhism. This book provides an insight into the political and economic history of Wutaishan and its music.

Taiwan aboriginal song has received extensive media coverage since the launch and settlement of a copyright lawsuit following pop group Enigma's allegedly unauthorized use of Amis voices in the 1996 Olympics hit, "Return To Innocence". The author explores the relationship of this song culture to contemporary Amis society.

Brings a significant, but less widely-known, Jewish repertoire and tradition to the attention of both the Jewish community (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Oriental) and the wider global community. This book showcases thirty-one songs and includes English translations, complete Hebrew texts, transliterations and the music notation for each song.

Icelandic men engage in everyday vocal practices where singing, literally for one's Self, is an everyday life skill set against a backdrop of unique natural, historical, economic and social phenomena. Their sagas of song and singing are the subject of this book.

Explores the relationships between language and music in the performance of four narrative genres in the city of Tianjin, China, based upon original field research conducted in the People's Republic of China in the mid 1980s and in 1991. This title is suitable for scholars in Chinese literature and music.

Presents a study of Chinese shawm bands in their ceremonial and social context. Based in a county in Shanxi province in northwestern China, this work describes the painful maintenance of ceremonial and its music there under Maoism, its revival with the market reforms of the 1980s and its modification under the assault of pop music since the 1990s.

Music is a frequently neglected aspect of Japanese culture. This work covers various genres including court music, Buddhist chant, theatre music, as well as contemporary music and connections between music and society in different periods. It presents a balanced and provocative approach that comprehensively treats Japanese musical culture.

Music can and does change our perception of our "selves" and our world. This text concerns particular musics of particular people at particular times or events. It interfaces music and religious traditions, using multi- and interdisciplinary approaches.

Gives an impression of music-making in daily life in the poor mountainous region of Shaanbei, northwest China. This book and DVD, gives the background to the area and music-making in society. It also discusses the lives of bards and shawm bands respectively, describing modifications in their ceremonial activities through the 20th century.

Asks what Koreans consider makes music Korean, and how meaning is ascribed to musical creation. This book documents how identity has been negotiated by musicians, composers and audiences. It charts the development of the Korean music scene over the past several years.

Because of the paucity of European-language studies of Thai classical singing the author has made this study particularly wide and covers a range of topics and aspects of the genre in the hope that it will encourage deeper research into the subject.

Demetrius Cantemir has several reputations, for Romanians he is a national cultural figure; on the intellectual map of 18th-century Europe he is seen as an important historian; and in Turkey, he is recognized for his music. This text examines Cantemir's life and studies his work in these fields.

"Mrdang aur Tabla Vadanpaddhati", a revelatory text published in 1903, is a manual for playing the pakhavaj (mrdang) and the tabla. This book is a translation of this text, and examines its implications for rhythmic and metric theory. It illuminates the process by which 'tabla theory' was created in the early 20th century.

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

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.