This is the sixth volume in a series of books devoted to the history, documentation and analysis of music in Asia. Four essays are dedicated to documents from the past: fifth-century Korean tomb paintings; tenth-century Chinese scores for lute; eighth-century Japanese documents; early Chinese sutras on the perception of sound. The remainder concern contemporary documents: the notations of the Japanese end-blown flute (shakuhachi) and lute (biwa) and their relationship to performance; acoustical analysis of contemporary shakuhachi. The focus on musical documents, whether ancient or modern, provides a unifying thread which renders this volume unique in the ethnomusicological literature on East Asian music.

In this fourth volume of studies in the historical musicology and organology of Asia, Jonathan Condit completes his survey of Korean scores in mensural notation, and Roger Blench examines the morphology and distribution of sub-Saharan musical instruments of North African, Middle Eastern, and Asian origin.

The fifth volume of Musica Asiatica is a collection of essays on the music of East Asia.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Garland Handbook of Southeast Asian Music is comprised of essays from The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: Volume 4, Southeast Asia (1998). Largely revised and updated, the essays offer detailed, regional studies of the different musical cultures of Southeast Asia and examine the ways in which music helps to define the identity of this particular area. Part one provides an in-depth introduction to the area of Southeast Asia and explores a series of issues and processes, such as colonialism, mass media, spirituality, and war. The articles in this section are important in gaining historical, political, and social perspective. Part two focuses on mainland Southeast Asia, with essays representing Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Burma, Peninsular Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, and the minority peoples of mainland Southeast Asia. Part three focuses on island Southeast Asia, dividing the area into three sections: Indonesia, the Philippines, and Borneo. In addition to offering a detailed study of the music of each area, it also offers recent perspectives on the gamelan and theater traditions of Indonesia. Questions for Critical Thinking at the end of each major section guide and focus attention on what issues – musical and cultural – arise when one studies the music of Southeast Asia – issues that might not occur in the study of other musics of the world. An accompanying compact disc offers musical examples from Southeast Asia.