Music in Mainland Southeast Asia: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (review)

This excellent book, borne among the installments of the Global Music Series, presents an ethnomusicological overview of mainland Southeast Asia that often transcends its primary intent to serve as an introductory text as well as the limitations of its basic overall structure. Though it will undoubtedly prove insightful and reliable to the typical undergraduate student encountering this region for the first time, there are certainly more than a few nuanced and thought-provoking morsels for those more familiar. Be that as it may, the text itself is situated within a slight conceit on a large scale that often poses trouble for the author. Namely, for those working in Southeast Asia, the “mainland” does not form a cohesive whole easily presented as such and is more often than not mistakenly grouped as those areas not among “insular” Southeast Asia. This point bears mentioning here because Douglas was perhaps assigned a duty that results in some cognitive dissonance for this reader. Those three words, “Mainland Southeast Asia,” may certainly be combined, but the textual task itself is not so simple. Douglas triumphantly avoids some pitfalls but lands squarely in a couple, detailed below.

The book begins with an introduction in which the author makes four essential promises to the reader. First, he endeavors to introduce and investigate musical traditions that are well known but also others that are less commonly known. One reads this as a meta-narrative for the field, especially with regard to this very geographical region, wherein new adventures remain for the intrepid researcher. But the earnest effort to resist existent narratives that favor particular traditions is refreshing indeed. Secondly, Douglas asserts that musical culture will be presented in contexts besides those of performance for pure enjoyment, namely, social, religious, and political settings. Thirdly, and in following with the structure of the Global Music Series as a whole, the author establishes three major themes for the entire work: diversity, political struggle, and globalization. Each is presented separately as a framing device for a major chapter of the text. Finally, to be certain that his bases are covered, Douglas promises counter examples that potentially challenge some structures he presents within the book, especially from among various contemporary music scenes.

Structurally, the text begins with two chapters of material that serve, more or less, as introduction to the final three chapters that cover Douglas’s three major themes. Chapter 1, “Diversity and Commonality,” begins with three lyrical narrative vignettes from the author’s personal experiences as touchstone for a broad introduction to mainland Southeast Asia. Though they may potentially entice the reader by their humanistic approach, the style of the vignettes is somewhat problematic to this reader. The author does not break entirely free from the scholarly voice, nor does the shift to the creative nonfiction tone necessarily offer much of a glimpse of what may be at stake for a reader just diving into the text and region for the first time. In that sense, they are free-floating narratives, pleasant musical experiences but somewhat without an anchor.

As for the core of the first chapter, Douglas thoughtfully constructs a reasonable conception of mainland Southeast Asia for the reader from a range of social, political, and religious content. There is no escaping the delineation of nation-states in communicating about the region to the novice, yet the author poses thoughtful alternatives to the reader that serve to push borders away for a better understanding of the people and musical traditions that transcend such boundaries. The chapter offers religion as a means of organizing the reader’s imagination around the region. There is notably some benefit to the accentuation of Buddhism (Theravada and Mahayana), especially with regard to achieving some human connection to the region. This is most wonderfully articulated from among...