A wide range of performing arts and practices of the Asian diasporas across the world are examined by scholars of Asian studies, theatre studies, anthropology, cultural studies, dance ethnology and ethnomusicology.

In an age of globalization, performance is increasingly drawn from intercultural creativity and located in multicultural settings. This volume is the first to focus on the performing arts of Asian diasporas in the context of modernity and multiculturalism. The essays locate the contemporary performing arts as a discursive field in which the boundaries between tradition and translation, and authenticity and hybridity are redefined and negotiated to create a multitude of meaning and aesthetics in global and local contexts. With contributions from scholars of Asian studies, theatre studies, anthropology, cultural studies, dance ethnology and musicology, this truly interdisciplinary work covers every aspect of the sociology of performance of the Asian diasporas.

This book illustrates how ethnographic investigation of musical performances might contribute to the analysis of diaspora. It embraces diverse examples such as 'mourning and cultures of survival' amongst Aboriginal and Jewish communities in Australia, remembering a Kazakh 'homeland' in Western Mongolia, celebrating Diwali in New Zealand and the circulation of musical performances in Mozambique, Portugal and the UK. Some of the topics discussed in Musical Performance in the Diaspora include: the expression and shaping of diasporic and postcolonial identities through performance musical memory in diasporic contexts the geographies of performance the politics of 'new' forms of diasporic music-making. This book presents a rich array of theoretical approaches and wide ranging ethnographic case studies to reconsider and challenge discourses that have favoured uncritical notions of diasporic 'hybridity' and to broaden current analyses of performance in the diaspora.

"Performing the Intercultural City explores how Toronto--a representative global city in the first country in the world to adopt a policy of official multiculturalism--stages its diversity through its many intercultural theater companies and troupes. By examining the ways in which Indigenous, Filipino, Latino/a and Afro-Caribbean Canadian theater in Toronto has developed play structures based on culturally specific forms of expression, Performing the Intercultural City analyzes the ways in which theater companies from a variety of marginalized communities of color in Toronto have worked across cultural difference to produce a new kind of intercultural performance"--

P’ansori is the quintessential traditional Korean musical drama, in which epic tales are sung and narrated by a solo singer accompanied by a drummer. Drawing on her extensive research in Korea and its diasporas, Haekyung Um describes and analyses the creative processes of p’ansori, weaving into her discussion musical, social and cultural aspects that include the evolution of p’ansori performance, origins and historical development, textual and musical materials, stylistic features of different p’ansori schools, transmission of knowledge, aesthetics, and changing interpretations of tradition. Also explored is the complexity of historical and contemporary influences that give shape to p’ansori as a ’living tradition’ across the ages and into the present, and as a cultural icon with an enduring narrative and emotional impact. Social, economic and political dynamics are created in the nexus of traditional feudal values, colonial modernity and nationalism. The impact of aspects of late modernity such as technology, mass media, migration and globalization, has transported p’ansori into digital and transnational domains. By bringing all these creative and contextual processes together, Haekyung Um explains how a tradition is created, maintained and redefined by the dynamic interactions of agents, values, meanings, strategies, identities and artistic hybridity.

This book traces the particularities of music migration and tourism in different global settings, and provides current, even new perspectives for ethnomusicological research on globalizing musics in transit. The dual focus on tourism and migration is central to debates on globalization, and their examination—separately or combined—offers a useful lens on many key questions about where globalization is taking us: questions about identity and heritage, commoditization, historical and cultural representation, hybridity, authenticity and ownership, neoliberalism, inequality, diasporization, the relocation of allegiances, and more. Moreover, for the first time, these two key phenomena—tourism and migration—are studied conjointly, as well as interdisciplinary, in order to derive both parallels and contrasts. While taking diverse perspectives in embracing the contemporary musical landscape, the collection offers a range of research methods and theoretical approaches from ethnomusicology, anthropology, cultural geography, sociology, popular music studies, and media and communication. In so doing, Musics in Transit provides a rich exemplification of the ways that all forms of musical culture are becoming transnational under post-global conditions, sustained by both global markets and musics in transit, and to which both tourists and diasporic cosmopolitans make an important contribution.

This is the first systematic study of networks of performance collaboration in the contemporary Chinese-speaking world and of their interactions with the artistic communities of the wider East Asian region. It investigates the aesthetics and politics of collaboration to propose a new transnational model for the analysis of Sinophone theatre cultures and to foreground the mobility and relationality of intercultural performance in East Asia. The research draws on extensive fieldwork, interviews with practitioners, and direct observation of performances, rehearsals, and festivals in Asia and Europe. It offers provocative close readings and discourse analysis of an extensive corpus of hitherto untapped sources, including unreleased video materials and unpublished scripts, production notes, and archival documentation.