From the Editor

Aloha kākou! The articles and reviews in issue 46(1) encompass a broad geographic span of Asia, extending from insular East Asia (Kikaijima) to West Asia (Armenia). The issue presents different perspectives on two central themes: place-based identity and sources of authority. Place-based identity provides one underlying theme for Anna Stirr’s attention to a vocal genre as a performance metaphor for the state of Nepal; for Henry Johnson and Sueo Kuwahara’s reportage of multiple drumming traditions coexisting on the small island of Kikaijima; and for Mercedes Dujunco’s insightful review of Rachel Harris’s study of the Sibe, a resettled Chinese minority maintaining a place-based culture in a diasporic locale since the eighteenth century. A second shared theme concerns the efficacy of the authoritative source, whether written or performed. Three coauthors—Matt Rahaim, Srinivas Reddy, and Lars Christensen—revisit a classic Sanskrit text on music and propose a novel and alternative reading of it based upon musical practice as well as extant “authoritative” texts. Contextualizing text in another way, Sunhee Koo considers the dilemma of Koreans in the Yanbian diaspora who negotiate between two and sometimes three authoritative sources. In a postmodern framework Stirr considers Nepali language as song text and its assumed authority. Each major article provides other directions of inquiry in addition to these two main themes.

The study of Nepali song focuses on the public sphere rather than the state as a domain for meaningful interaction and development. Stirr interrogates a Nepali national consciousness and shows us how language as performed song text and as aural/oral experience informs that consciousness. Her dual role as researcher and performing musician in the Nepali music industry generates a discussion of various aspects of language and musicking from South Asia.

A Sanskrit treatise may appear to be more the purview of historical study than ethnomusicology However, in their contribution “Authority, Critique, and Revision in the Sanskrit Music-Theoretic Tradition: Rereading the Svaramela-kalānidhi,” Rahaim, Reddy, and Christensen present a convincing argument for such a treatment. Pursuing the theme of authority, the authors locate the treatise at the nexus of two epistemologies—traditional India and colonial modernity. By so doing they present a template potentially useful for other “historical” texts. The treatise itself is a fascinating resource for indigenous taxonomies and notions of music theory.

In her study on diasporic Koreans in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Koo problematizes the effect of multiple external authorities on the development and maintenance of a Yanbian Korean music practice. The separate careers of three kayagŭm (zither) artists illustrate different responses to the various cultural policies promulgated by the PRC, North Korea, and South Korea on Yanbian musicians. Perhaps because of these competing authorities, the community has developed a musical discourse of “Yanbian color,” indicative of a nascent, self-sufficient subcultural identity.

The final article reminds us of the complexity of musicking even in small and ostensibly marginalized populations. The Japanese island of Kikaijima is marginal to others in its archipelago, which itself is subsumed by the larger entity of Okinawa and the even larger collective of Japan. The authors examine three distinct taiko drumming practices on the island and argue that each is the result of the Kikaijima cultural tradition of travel and sojourning, which have effected continuous contact between islanders and external practitioners. The authors conclude that rather than being isolated, Kikaijima constitutes a crossroads of indigenous, adapted, and imported drumming practices.

The review essay by Sunmin Yoon about two studies of Inner Asia insightfully contrasts different approaches to research and the rewards of each. The issue concludes with a discussion of a recording of the Armenian symphonic work Oratorio. Esra Berkman locates it within the troubled history of Armenia until its emergence as an independent country in 1991 and references our two themes of place-based identity and authority.