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  • From the Editor
  • Ricardo D. Trimillos

Aloha kākou! I am pleased with the range of geo-cultural areas, topics, and approaches contained in this issue. Among the articles and reviews are representations of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. The steady flow of manuscripts we are receiving reveals this selfsame diversity. Of special note are the increasing numbers of Asian and Asia-resident authors within our pages. Such ongoing growth and development for Asian music research is encouraging, and is reflected in Asian Music and its mission.

The present issue foregrounds, and therefore brings to our attention, three themes of current significance:

  1. 1. Revisiting previous research studies in current scholarship;

  2. 2. Engaging elements of music-as-sound and musical analysis in research studies;

  3. 3. Considering individual agency within collective cultural expression.

The motivations for revisiting previous studies are diverse. Terence Lancashire rehearses the almost-canonical taxonomy for Japanese folk music established a half-century ago by Yasuji Honda and its present interrogation by a younger generation of Japanese scholars. In a more intimate instance of revisitation, Jeffrey W. Cupchik acknowledges the immediate reference for his essay on Tibetan ḍamaru practice to be the 1979 Asian Music article coauthored by Rinjing Dorje and Ter Ellingson.

Although those of us who are ethnomusicologists often invoke the mantra "music in its cultural context," of late the field has tended to concentrate on cultural context rather than music. Therefore, I consider as signal those studies that engage music-as-sound and make it integral to analyses of societal constructs and practices. The Cupchik study on Tibet considers it from perspectives of aesthetic, organology, and transmission. John Napier's analysis of Rājasthani kathā reveals a nuanced complexity underpinning melodic repertory that initially appears simple, repetitious, and limited.

Finally, individual agency impacts many levels of music and its knowledge making, although we more often characterize a music as a collective, that is, as a culture. The theme is variously addressed here. Napier points up individual agency (and concomitant skill) in the shaping of a performance event of [End Page 1] Rājasthani storytelling by actors from within its musical universe and Cupchik foregrounds individual teachers and lineages in Tibetan tradition. As a novel and dramatic contrast, Lisa Burnett takes into account individual agency external to that universe—the signature and imprimatur of Premier Kim Jong-Il for mass festival performances in North Korea.

The Review section considers research in Southeast Asia and issues of cultural rights and entitlements.

We hope you find the diversity in subject matter and approach interesting as well as informative. As counterpoint to the present issue 44(1), upcoming 44(2) is planned as a special number with a specific focus—popular and commercial music of Indonesia. [End Page 2]

Ricardo D. Trimillos
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
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