From the (soon to be ex-) Editor

As this is the last issue of Asian Music that will carry my name as editor, I feel I should preface the issue with a few comments about where the Journal has been, and where it is going.

At the time that I assumed the editorial responsibilities of Asian Music, the Journal's editorial team consisted of a managing editor and a production editor, along with two review editors. Th e managing editor coordinated the receipt, review, selection, and editing of articles. Th e production editor coordinated the preparation of camera-ready copy for printing and distribution of the final product in the form of an issue of Asian Music to members of the Society for Asian Music. Th e Journal was run on a shoestring budget, with income to the Society essentially restricted to subscriptions to the Journal. Th e production editor at the time, Martin Hatch, had been devoting his energies to the Journal in an editorial capacity for close to 15 years, and was in dire need of relief. I offered to take over the responsibility of getting new Journal issues into camera-ready form before sending them to him to lessen his workload a bit. I soon regretted doing so, as the process of formatting each article to the level of camera-readiness became an onerous and excessively time-consuming task, and looked for an alternative arrangement to set the Journal on a new course. I approached the Journals Division of the University of Texas (UT) Press with a proposal that it review Asian Music for possible inclusion among the journals that they publish. My proposal was reviewed by their Board of Directors and, as readers are aware, accepted. With this development, the need for a production editor disappeared, Marty Hatch received his reprieve, and the managing editor title was reduced simply to "editor."

Soon aft er taking over the production responsibilities of the Journal, the Journals Division manager, Sue Hausmann, proposed that the Society make Asian Music available for electronic downloads through JSTOR, ProQuest, and Project Muse. The Board of the Society for Asian Music debated this idea. Some members expressed concern that such a move might result in the loss of subscriptions to the Journal, leading to a situation where production costs would outweigh income, which would impact the Society in a most negative way. Arguments to the contrary prevailed, and the requisite legal documents allowing the UT Press and the Society for Asian Music to contract with the digital distribution agencies were signed. Over the last 3 years, these contracts have generated increasingly large amounts of revenue for the Society for Asian Music, allowing for positive initiatives such as the establishment of the Martin Hatch Award for the best student paper on a topic of Asian Music delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), the establishment of a significant event in the form of an invited keynote speaker to deliver a major presentation arranged by the Society for Asian Music in conjunction with the SEM conference program, and, now, the possibility of a supplemental research grant to be awarded to a doctoral student planning dissertation research in an Asian country. All of these developments, along with the professionalization of the appearance of the Journal, would not have been possible had I not approached the UT Press with the proposal to have Asian Music reside under their copyright, and I take great pleasure in observing how successful the association of the Society for Asian Music with the University of Texas Press has been. I would like here formally to express my thanks to my contacts at the UT Press—Sue Hausmann, Karen Crowther, and her successor, Stacey Salling—for their help in making all of these positive developments possible. I also wish to thank all of my colleagues who lent their expertise to the mission of this journal by serving as reviewers of submissions. As a result of their critical and constructive reviews of submitted papers, the Journal contents over the course of the years I have served as editor have been maintained at a high standard. Of...