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.

The first complete music reference for the region, this volume covers all the nations of modern Southeast Asia: Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines in thirty-five articles, written by twenty-seven expert contributors.

This encyclopedia/CD-ROM package leads readers on a musical expedition into the cultures of many of the 242 ethnic groups of Southeast Asia. Articles by international contributors with direct fieldwork and performing experience document music as a cultural phenomenon vital to all aspects of Southeast Asian life. Opens with an overview of the entire region, then turns to themes and concepts common to the region as a whole, and investigates musical practices in each region, with articles on topics from religious music to rock. Includes b & w photos and maps, discographies, a filmography, and CD-ROM of music. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This volume explores not only the close ties that link the cultures and musics of East and Northeast Asia, but also the distinctive features that separate them.