The 35 million Sundanese of West Java are known in Indonesia for their sense of humor, the conservatism of their Muslim religious practices, the sadness of their music, and their relatively relaxed codes of behavior that allow for raucous laughter, broad physicality in musical performance, and strong innuendo in song lyrics (Williams 1993). The Sundanese also have well-established performing arts specific to the area, as well as a specific set of gender-based conventions in organizing their living arrangements. Although the links between gender, spirituality, home life, humor, and music may not seem readily apparent, the bridges between them become clearly demarcated through an examination of the ways in which physical and musical domains are divided along gender boundaries. In this article I examine some of the multiple domains of Sundanese men and women, not only within the boundaries of their homes but also on performing stages and within musical repertoires, revealing the tensions between the sexes and highlighting the areas in which men and women can meet and communicate both socially and musically.

Jaap Kunst (1891-1960) schreibt zu Beginn seines Buches Musicologica:

“To the question what is the study-object of comparative musicology, the answer must be: mainly the music and the musical instruments of all non-European peoples, including both the so-called primitive peoples and the civilized Eastern nations. Although this science naturally makes repeated excursions into the field of European music, the latter is, in itself, only an indirect object of its study. The name of our science is, in fact, not quite characteristic; it does not ‘compare’ any more than any other science. A better name, therefore, is that appearing on the title page of this book: ethnomusicology.”

In the 1980s a type of bagpipe, formerly used in parts of Dalarna (Dalecarlia), Sweden, was brought out of the museums, spread all over the country and played again as never before. The very few known traditional bagpipers were rediscovered and their music and life-histories reconstructed to suit new purposes. The subject of this paper is to describe and analyze this process, when parts of a common historical and cultural heritage were transformed and used in contemporary society as objects of identification.

A Tanzanian Roman Catholic priest, the late Stephen B. G. Mbunga (1927–1982), has played a significant role in the history of church music in Tanzania through his compositions, involvement in music performance as a choral conductor, and scholarly writing on various aspects of church music. He is best known by scholars of the music of Tanzania through his work on the localization of church music there. In his 1963 book entitled Church Law and Bantu Music: Ecclesiastical Documents and Law on Sacred Music as Applied to Bantu Music, which was his doctoral dissertation (a work completed at and submitted to Propaganda University in Switzerland), he strongly defends the use of African music in Roman Catholic Church services in Africa. After interpreting Roman ecclesiastical laws and various directives given by top officials in the Roman Catholic Church, Mbunga argues that the use of African music in the Roman Catholic Church is consistent with and can be accomplished in accordance with these laws and directives concerning church music (see Sanga 2011:35–37). He also proposes practical ways through which musicians can undertake the task of composing African music that is appropriate for Roman Catholic Church services.

Cultural brokers at national and local levels, recognizing the lucrative potential of tourism, have learned to construct commoditized cultural packages for tourist consumption. In this paper I examine one such packaging phenomenon, and ask, “What is the effect of the commoditization of culture for purposes of tourism on local communities?” This paper investigates how a traditional step dance practice in North Kerry, Ireland, was contemporized and commoditized in the 1980s by Siamsa Tíre, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, with a view to informing cultural understandings of Ireland and attracting tourists. Examining the impact of cultural tourism on the development of Siamsa Tíre, I argue that Siamsa Tíre's appropriation and re-presentation ofthe local Molyneaux traditional style of step dancing produced something new and gave the Molyneaux style a new lease on life at a time when this traditional dance practice and its associated rural contexts of performance were in decline.

In most of the world, through most of history, music has been conceived as a set of practices and techniques, expressive or religious behaviours, and adaptable repertoire resources, or as an integral part of some larger phenomenon such as theatre or healing. Over the last two hundred years, however, music has increasingly been reconceived as consisting of autonomous musical works. This has surely been one of the most important developments in musical history worldwide; yet it has been relatively little studied.

As some readers may know, I have recently published a book entitled Pioneers of Ethnomusicology. In it I try to answer the questions

In his recent book, Music in Human Life: Anthropological Perspectives on Music (1993), John Kaemmer stated:

A musical competition is a social event as well as a musical one, raising great interest in the community. Its particularly exciting atmosphere, the enthusiasm of both participants and observers, and the social honour bestowed upon the winners encourage the musicians to polish and elaborate their competence and performance styles, and sometimes to create new performance tactics. Previous studies of musical competitions suggest that rivalry and competition in the performing arts—which are deeply rooted in their social settings and carry the creative impulse to transform performing styles—can be found around the world, although their cultural, social, and historical contexts, as well as the changes that result from the competitions, are widely divergent (see Gunderson and Barz 2000; Gunderson 2003). Competitions have also had a significant impact on the development of music in Indonesia, especially in conjunction with official cultural policy. In President Suharto's New Order (Orde Baru) Indonesia, various levels of government held competitions to preserve (melestarikan) and develop (perkembangkan) the traditional performing arts, in accordance with the national cultural policy (Sutton 1991, 1995; Lindsay 1995; Yampolsky 1995; Bakan 1999; Tenzer 2000; Williams 1999,2003; Harnish 2007). This focus on the arts has continued into the period of political reformation (reformasi) since 1998. Competition has been an effective vehicle of cultural ideology through its potential to transform performing style and to change aesthetic value. However, the results of the competition do not always conform to the intentions of the government. A competition involves people with a wide range of purposes and viewpoints, who interpret the event and react to it differently according to their positions, whether as participants, teachers, judges, organizers, or audience members. As R. Anderson Sutton reported regarding the Pekan Kebudayaan Sulawesi Selatan (South Sulawesi Cultural Week) in 1993, festivals or competitions “have contrasting, even conflicting meanings for the different people involved” (Sutton 1995:687). In reality, these various interpretations of the event intertwine to create a tense but influential context for the performing arts.

Over a large area of south-western Bulgaria, songs are mostly two-part. The first voice sings the melody; the second voice is smooth or slightly more florid, mostly on the tonic and adjacent degrees of the scale. This area can be divided into four regions, differentiated by the styles of singing in two-part songs: Pirina region, the region to the centre of western Bulgaria, and the Velingrad and Ihktiman Pazardjik regions. Each of these regions shows a different structure of two-part songs. The differences lie in harmonic and rhythmic structure, and in the range of the second voice.

The most widespread style is that of the Pirina region, characterized by the comparative restriction of the second voice.

Typical of the Velingrad region are the songs with a vigorously moving second part, ranging mainly between the first, third and fourth degrees of the scale and the leading note. Typical of the Ikhtiman region (the smallest of the four) are two-part songs with an elaborately ornamented second part woven round the melody and reaching the tonic a little before the first voice.

Important goals of ethnomusicology are to arrive at an understanding of the relations between the musical traditions and their corresponding culture—these are often internal and very subtle connections—and to contribute to the study of ethnic histories. Only when we enter the realm of history do we become interesting to students of other humanistic subjects. The entry of ethnomusicology into history may be as complex and responsible an action as man's entry into space.

This article examines historical associations between music and war on the Polynesian island of Rapanui (Easter Island; figure 1). Throughout Polynesia, bellicose themes appear in the lyrics of songs commemorating legendary battles and warriors, as well as in depictions of combat in staged and un-staged performances appealing to tourist and indigenous audiences alike. On Rapanui, spears, clubs and other artefacts of war embellish performances by contemporary music and dance ensembles, together with dance moves that imitate martial activity. One recently successful ensemble has even taken the name Matato'a (an ancient term meaning ‘warrior’ or ‘guardian') as a means of symbolizing their cultural guardianship. While these performances are aimed at the tourist market, they are not devoid of local significance. Indeed, the recent push to generate a diverse repertoire of Rapanui music for cultural performances has arguably assisted in the revitalization and preservation of precontact songs, chants, and dances that would otherwise be consigned only to the memories of Rapanui elders and the dusty pages of obscure ethnographic works.

Continuity and revival have been subjects of scholarly discussion for quite some time (for example, see Bausinger and Brückner 1969), frequently in connection with phenomena such as tradition and innovation, identification and change, authenticity, and festivals.

Until recently, few ethnographies have paid any attention to the music of and participation in musical activities by children and young people. This statement is particularly true of Amerindian peoples. A major aim of my two field trips to Dogrib territory in 1984 was to obtain songs used and maintained by children and to observe the participation of children in the musical events of the communities. Although I did not find many songs that had been used specifically by children, I did record two examples. In addition, contrary to reports I had read on the Ti Dance, the main traditional musical event among the Dogrib, I observed active participation of children and youths, particularly in starting this event.

The Dundo Museum, in the town of that name which is the administrative certtre of the Companhia de Diamantes de Angola, in Lunda (Portuguese West Africa), was founded by that Company in 1945, based on an ethnographic collection composed already at that time of several hundreds of objects representative of the native populations of that vast district situated in the very heart of Africa.

Research carried out by Ernesto De Martino (1908-65) in the field of the anthropology of music in the 1950s is of outstanding importance in Italian scholarship and deserves attention both from an historical perspective and for the particular approach his work proposes to the study of the human dimension in music. De Martino made the most original contributions to the progress of anthropological studies in Italy in the post-war period and worked out some of his more interesting theoretical proposals through the study of musical phenomena of southern Italy. Two volumes are particularly representative of his output: Morte e pianto rituale (Death and Ritual Mourning), published in 1958, and La terra del rimorso (The Land of Remorse), a book devoted to the phenomenon of tarantism, which appeared in 1961. The publication dates of these works are important because they belong to that crucial period in the history of musical studies when the discipline established in the first half of the century under the name of “comparative musicology” changed its name to ethnomusicology. At the same time, a new trend in scholarly research was established with the primary goal of assimilating the study of music within the larger framework of the study of culture. De Martino's volumes were published during the ten-year period that separates David McAllester's Enemy Way Music (1954) and Alan P. Merriam's The Anthropology of Music (1964). This synchronism becomes especially interesting when one considers that no direct relationship existed between the trends that were developing in American ethnomusicology and the works of De Martino, who was educated in philosophical studies and whose main field of research was the history of religions. From this perspective, the consideration of De Martino's work can broaden our view of an important period in the history of musical studies. For although the point of departure of his work was different from those adopted by Anglo-American scholars, De Martino's results were also a clear endorsement of the anthropological approach to the study of musical phenomena, and they were proposed at a time when the same interests began flourishing in the scholarly world at large.