The Routledge Handbook of Asian Music: Cultural Intersections introduces Asian music as a way to ask questions about what happens when cultures converge and how readers may evaluate cultural junctures through expressive forms.
The volume's thirteen original chapters cover musical practices in historical and modern contexts from Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, including art music traditions, folk music and composition, religious and ritual music, as well as popular music. These chapters showcase the diversity of Asian music, requiring readers to constantly reconsider their understanding of this vibrant and complex area. The book is divided into three sections:
- Locating meanings
- Boundaries and difference
- Cultural flows
Contributors to the book offer a multidisciplinary portfolio of methods, ranging from archival research and field ethnography to biographical studies and music analysis. In addition to rich illustrations, numerous samples of notation and sheet music are featured as insightful study resources. Readers are invited to study individuals, music-makers, listeners, and viewers to learn about their concerns, their musical choices, and their lives through a combination of humanistic and social-scientific approaches.
Demonstrating how transformative cultural differences can become in intercultural encounters, this book will appeal to students and scholars of musicology, ethnomusicology, and anthropology.
About the Author: Lee Tong Soon is a Professor of ethnomusicology and Asian studies at Lehigh University and the General Editor of the Yearbook for Traditional Music (International Council for Traditional Music). His primary area of teaching and research is Asian music and its diaspora, particularly on the music of the Chinese, Malay, and Peranakan communities in Singapore, Malaysia, and England. He is the author of Chinese Street Opera in Singapore (2009).
