Whether in Ireland or elsewhere, most people first encounter Irish traditional music in public spaces such as pub sessions or concerts, or through the recorded traces of music-making produced for a listening public.1 For those who become more involved in the scene as players, dancers, or avid listeners, festivals, schools, non-profit organisations, archives, and other instruments of the public sphere of Irish traditional music shape perceptions of the genre’s style, history, and participants. But while public and semi-public music-making has been a vital part of the transnational Irish traditional music scene for at least a century, the genre’s self-understanding still relies on its associations with a domestic, private past. In this article, I locate the roots of this contradiction in the historiographical problems presented by the 1935 Public Dance Halls Act—a piece of legislation that has had profound effects on musical practice and discourse in Ireland.2 I examine the ways this law and the frequent retrospective overemphasis of its effects have contributed to the idealisation of Irish traditional music as rooted in a domestic, rural, and lower-class past. Combined with social and governmental restrictions on the activities of women during most of the twentieth century, this alignment of domesticity with imagined “authenticity” has shaped the reception of women’s public Irish traditional musical performance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

At Oakland’s Circle Left contra dance, I notice my hands fumbling as I take “hands four” with my partner and our neighbour couple to form one of many foursomes in a long line of contra dancers. My partner and I place our hands facing palm up expecting to find a hand to hold facing palm down. In “traditional” contra, it is the person in the “lady” role who places their hand palm down on the hand of the person in the “gent” role. But this time it is I, a cisgendered male,1 who am in the wrong, since we decided before the dance that I am dancing the “raven” part, traditionally the “lady,” and my partner is dancing the “lark,” traditionally the “gent.” I correct myself and place my hand upon theirs. When I adopt the “raven” role, thirty-three years of contra dancing, that is, thirty-three years of gendered behaviour that have contributed to how I have learned to be male, are slightly difficult, but, as it turns out, not too difficult to unlearn. As we advance down and back up the hall, I make other, less minute mistakes, some that have to do with the new role expectations and some that are just part of a customary failure at executing dance moves perfectly. Like “traditional” contra dance, Circle Left (Figure 1) is a communitarian, participatory activity, and forgiveness is quickly given with a smile.

Since 1976, [our] goal has been to fight against the Franco/tourist mono-culture with its flamenco, bulls, sangria and the Phalangist Sección Femenina regional folklorism with its coros i danzas and white shirts and red kerchiefs that are still part of the San Fermin costume to this day. As we became interested in [the xeremies], we found ourselves with a problem: the majority of the musicians were very old people, and in order to restore its dignity, we decided [that] we would collect what was left of the musical formation and ensure its secular presence in village celebrations. And I think that something came out of it. Otherwise, look around you. What it used to be and what it has become: what a difference! (Rotger and Rubio 2015)

This paper examines the dances of the Jewish people in Eastern and Central Europe, from medieval times to the present. Included in its scope are: dances developed in the community Tanzhaus—an institution found in every ghetto in Europe, a place for weddings and major festivities and for recreational activities on the Sabbath; dances characteristic of the Jewish craft guilds, with occupational earmarks; dances of the Hassidim, a sect (originating in the Carpathian Mountains) the members of which made melody and dance a form of worship. These dances, performed by men only, were varied for special occasions and marked by a definite style. With the development of the Hassidic Movement, the dances spread rapidly, crossing numerous geographic boundaries. It will be shown how dances changed in form and adapted themselves to new localities, as communities of Jews migrated to the Western Hemisphere and to Israel.

The dictionary to which the title refers is the Explanation of the Written Characters (Shuo Wên Chieh Tzŭ), compiled by Hsü Shên of the Later Han Dynasty, and dating from about 100 A.D. It would be wrong to suppose that this dictionary mirrors the Chinese spoken language of the first century, for one of the author's objects was to provide ready access to archaic words. Nevertheless, the dictionary presents us with a vocabulary, albeit a literary vocabulary, at a point in time; and it seemed profitable to work through it in search of terms relating to music, musical instruments, and dance. In the course of this search, a fourth category of entries relevant to the field of interest was discovered, that of sounds. At the end of the search, more than two hundred items had been noted, many of which were interrelated. They could be re-classified in various ways; and from the collection as a whole there emerges not only a picture of the world of music of a Chinese scholar of the first century, but a more general picture of the world of natural sounds, of the classification of sounds, and of the place of musical sounds in this classification.

In 1960–61, the Northern Kunqu Opera Troupe of China (Beifang Kunqu Juyuan; hereafter, Beikun) created Escorting Lady Jing Home (Qianli Song Jingniang; hereafter, Escorting), a masterpiece of kunqu theatre that is still regularly performed and enthusiastically embraced by twenty-first-century audiences (Chen 2010). Dramatizing a journey that Zhao Kuangyin (926–976), the founder of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1125), allegedly took with Lady Jing, Escorting tells a substantive story that has deeply touched Chinese hearts and minds, and triggered numerous discussions, both causal and serious. The story has not only appeared on kunqu stages, but has also been performed as cartoons, TV shows, movies, and regional Chinese operas. There is even a Jingnianghu (Lake Lady Jing)—a tourist theme park built at a scenic site outside Handan in Hebei Province, China—celebrating Jing's historical/fictional trip home.

It may appear strange that the two brothers Djordević, who were in their lives and work quite separate, are taken together in this article. Professor and academician Dr. Tihomir R. Djordjević (4 March 1868 - 28 May 1944), the great Serbian ethnologist, folklorist, cultural historian, sociologist, museologist, and Balkanologist (as such, a specialist on Gypsies above all) worked in the realm of the social sciences. Vladimir R. Djordjev̌ić (2 December 1869 - 22 June 1938), composer, melographer, organologist, biographer of Serbian musicians, bibliographer of Serbian music, conductor, theoretician, and music pedagogue was active in the field of music.

This article is an ethnomusicological inquiry into music in Chinese martial arts film. Film is a form of cultural performance in modern society. It conveys codified cultural messages, transforms social values, dramatizes myths, and comments on social conflicts. Film also engenders discourse that facilitates the building or rebuilding of personal and collective identities. As an ethnomusicologist, I am interested in the ways in which film music, like music in cultural performance, reflects the modern needs and desires of people crossing geographical and cultural boundaries. To study music in global cinema is to study how a modern form of performance interacts with its cultural heritages and contemporary sociocultural changes. Furthermore, the study of Chinese martial arts film music is an attractive topic in that it allows interdisciplinary dialogues among scholars in ethnomusicology, film studies, cultural studies, and Asian studies.

During two recent field expeditions to the Atlantic coast region of Colombia (October 28th-November 14th, 1964, and March 5th-21st, 1965) only one active player of the musical bow came to my attention. This player, Rafael Terán Valdés, is a native and resident of Palenque de San Basilio, Departamento de Bolívar, a village known in the region as the primary centre of African influence. Palenque was settled in the first decade of the seventeenth century by fugitive Negro slaves from the coastal capital, Cartagena de Indias, at that time a principal dispersion point for slaves brought from Africa. Negroes from many African tribes formed the population of Palenque which maintained its independence throughout the period of Spanish rule. Its isolation for a long period resulted in the formation of a mixed pan-African and Spanish culture. Study of the Spanish dialect spoken in Palenque has indicated the existence of words of possible African origin. Many such words are found in the song texts of the lumbalú, a funeral ceremony. However, the singers no longer know the meaning of these words.