From the Editor

Aloha kākou! In signal ways this issue engages current concerns of the Society for Asian Music, including those about our own positionality. We consider ourselves an international Society that seeks to present the diversity of scholarship about Asian music. In the past our Society has been concerned about the underrepre-sentation of voices from colleagues living and making their careers in Asia. An understanding of Asian music ideally combines a variety of viewpoints; those located within the region are critical. For articles in this issue two of the five authors reside in Asia. In addition, we recognize that our international community of researchers uses more than one form of scholarly English, and we acknowledge this diversity. That acknowledgment makes a statement about our community and the journal’s intent to be inclusive and less obsessive about the politics of language. However, we intend to continue the “obsessiveness” concerning scholarly rigor set in the past and reflected in the present issue.

As editor I hope the articles in each issue will constitute a cohesive entity for the reader, rather than simply a collection of well-written studies. In this issue I suggest the interrelationships of the five articles and their order to be in the fashion of the Malay pantun, in which an idea from one couplet provides linkage to the following couplet. Each article contains ideas or data that tie it to the preceding and/or following one. My introduction of the five articles is in the spirit of the pantun metaphor.

A relatively new approach for ethnomusicology is virtual viewing via the Internet and other electronic media. Francesca Lawson’s essay on music at the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing uses this new technique to argue that the event itself draws upon a Chinese cultural sensibility and upon historical notions of ritual. Tasaw Lu considers a similar cultural sensibility among Chinese in tumultuous twentieth-century Burma, where they constitute an ethnic minority. The author, based in Taiwan, provides a provocative analysis of a diasporic Chinese identity informed by two competing political entities—Taiwan and mainland China.

In the same way that Lu focuses upon Chinese musical practices outside the homeland, Maria Mendonça historicizes a Javanese gamelan tradition outside the homeland—one established in the Netherlands during World War II by Dutch nationals. She argues for its significance as seminal to the performance component of American ethnomusicology and its thematic of bi-musicality. In another application of historical method combined with musical analysis, Kwok-Wai Ng, located in Hong Kong, examines change in Japanese gagaku by examining musical material for the hichiriki (shawm). Referencing the earlier study on the ryūteki (flute) by Allan Marett, Ng allows for a comparison between these two melodic instruments and posits divergent histories.

In a pantun the final couplet often draws together elements from the preceding ones. Joseph Lam in his extensive consideration of masculinity and its musical manifestations during the Ming dynasty touches upon themes from preceding contributions, including music during times of turmoil and the nature of a cultural sensibility. The first article by Lawson presented an emergent methodology—virtual viewing; the final one by Lam addresses an emerging thematic—masculinity studies. The five articles are linked and come full circle as a cohesive series, beginning and ending with new and promising features for our field.

Asian Music is committed to addressing the trajectories and goals set out for us. We hope you will continue to encourage and support this commitment, both as readers and as contributors.