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Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan explores a diversity of musics performed in Japan today, ranging from folk song to classical music, the songs of geisha to the screaming of underground rock, with a specific look at the increasingly popular world of taiko (ensemble drumming). Discussion of contemporary musical practice is situated within broader frames of musical and sociopolitical history, processes of globalization and cosmopolitanism, and the continued search for Japanese identity through artistic expression. It explores how the Japanese have long negotiated cultural identity through musical practice in three parts: Part I, "Japanese Music and Culture," provides an overview of the key ch...
This study situates musical analysis in the context of its creation, demonstrating that traditional Japanese music is an active socio- cultural system that has been reproduced in Japan from the seventeenth century to the present day.
The Musical Playground is a new and fascinating account of the musical play of school-aged children. Based on fifteen years of ethnomusicological field research in urban and rural school playgrounds around the globe, Kathryn Marsh provides unique insights into children's musical playground activities across a comprehensive scope of social, cultural, and national contexts. With a sophisticated synthesis of ethnomusicological and music education approaches, Marsh examines sung and chanted games, singing and dance routines associated with popular music and sports chants, and more improvised and spontaneous chants, taunts, and rhythmic movements. The book's index of more than 300 game genres is ...
Henry Johnson is an ethnomusicologist at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he teaches and undertakes research in Ethnomusicology and Asian Studies.
Made in Japan serves as a comprehensive and rigorous introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary Japanese popular music. Each essay, written by a leading scholar of Japanese music, covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Japan and provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music, followed by essays organized into thematic sections: Putting Japanese Popular Music in Perspective; Rockin’ Japan; and Japanese Popular Music and Visual Arts.
For the first time, using an interdisciplinary, theoretical and ethnographic approach, the editors have brought together a rich collection of current research on contemporary Japanese performance practices. Topics covered include theatre, music, art, fashion and technology, media, architecture and tourism. Well illustrated, Performing Japan will provide added-value in introductory courses on the Japanese language, history, or culture, as well as Asian Studies in general. In addition, it offers valuable comparative references in the context of theatre, music and dance classes which either introduce Japanese forms or focus entirely on the performing traditions of Japan. The fourteen contributors include Joy hendry, Roy Starrs, Peter Eckersall, Kimi Coaldrake, Henry Johnson and Jerry C. Jaffe.
"Malm's scholarship is impeccable... Of equal importance is the fact that he is an excellent performing musician who has studied extensively in Japan." -Choice
The island is a powerful metaphor in everyday speech which extends almost naturally into several academic disciplines, including musicology. Islands are imagined as isolated and unique places where strange, exotic, different and unexpected treasures can be found by daring adventurers. The magic inherent within this positioning of islands as places of discovery is an aspect which permeates the theoretical, methodological and analytical boundaries of this edited book. Showcasing the breadth of current musicological research in Australia and New Zealand, this edited collection offers a range of subtle and innovative reflections on this concept both in established and well-charted territories of music research.
This is the sixth volume in a series of books devoted to the history, documentation and analysis of music in Asia. Four essays are dedicated to documents from the past: fifth-century Korean tomb paintings; tenth-century Chinese scores for lute; eighth-century Japanese documents; early Chinese sutras on the perception of sound. The remainder concern contemporary documents: the notations of the Japanese end-blown flute (shakuhachi) and lute (biwa) and their relationship to performance; acoustical analysis of contemporary shakuhachi. The focus on musical documents, whether ancient or modern, provides a unifying thread which renders this volume unique in the ethnomusicological literature on East Asian music.
Using illustrative examples from a variety of traditions, Benjamin Brinner first examines the elements and characteristics of musical competence, the different kinds of competence in a musical community, the development of multiple competences, and the acquisition and transformation of competence through time. He then shows how these factors come into play in musical interaction, establishing four intersecting theoretical perspectives based on ensemble roles, systems of communication, sound structures, and individual motivations. These perspectives are applied to the dynamics of gamelan performance to explain the social, musical, and contextual factors that affect the negotiation of consensus in musical interaction. The discussion ranges from sociocultural norms of interpersonal conduct to links between music, dance, theater, and ritual, and from issues of authority and deference to musicians' self-perceptions and mutual assessments.