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In Austronesia--the region that stretches from Madagascar in the west to Easter Island in the east--music plays a vital role in both the construction and expression of social and cultural identities. Yet research into the music of Austronesia has hitherto been sparse. Drawing together contemporary cultural studies and musical analysis, "Austronesian Soundscapes" will fill this research gap, offering a comprehensive analysis of traditional and contemporary Austronesian music and, at the same time, investigating how music reflects the challenges that Austronesian cultures face in this age of globalization.
List of contents
Contents - 6 List of Tables and Illustrations (by Chapter) - 8 List of Audio-visual Resources (by Chapter) - 14 Introduction - 16 1 Creating Places through the Soundscape - 26 2 Sundanese Dance as Practice or Spectacle - 46 3 Malay-Islamic Zapin - 72 4 The Contemporary Musical Culture of the Chinese in Sabah, Malaysia - 86 5 To Sing the Rice in Tanjung Bunga (Eastern Flores), Indonesia - 104 6 Tromba Children, Maresaka, and Postcolonial Malady in Madagascar - 136 7 Fractals in Melanesian Music - 156 8 'Singing Spirits And The Dancing Dead' - 170 9 Breaking the Tikol? - 194 10 Fijian Sigidrigi and the Performance of Social Hierarchies - 206 11 Tau'a'alo: Paddling Songs as Cultural Metaphor - 224 12 Disconnected Connections - 242 13 Performing Austronesia in the Twenty-first Century - 262 14 'To Sing is to be Happy' - 278 15 Australian Indigenous Choices of Repertoire in Community CDs/DVDs - 296 Contributors - 320 Index - 324
About the author
Birgit Abels is a Cultural Musicologist at the University of Amsterdam and the International Institute for Asian Studies in Amsterdam.
