The traditional musics of China, Japan and Korea have been an important source of inspiration for many Western composers. Some, like Chou Wen-chung and John Cage, have moved beyond superficial borrowing of "Eastern" musical elements in earnest attempts to understand non-Western principles of composition. At the same time, many Asian composers, often trained in the West or in Western music traditions, have been using Asian elements to create works of unique musical synthesis. As a result of such cultural interpenetrations, the landscape of Western art music has been irreversably altered....

Music in China is one of many case-study volumes that can be used along with Thinking Musically, the core book in the Global Music Series. Thinking Musically incorporates music from many diverse cultures and establishes the framework for exploring the practice of music around the world. It sets the stage for an array of case-study volumes, each of which focuses on a single area of the world. Each case study uses the contemporary musical situation as a point of departure, covering historical information and traditions as they relate to the present....

This volume attempts to position music as at once ritual and entertainment, esoteric and exoteric, tradition and creativity, within the cultural geographies of Hawai`i, Asia, and the Pacific. In doing so, it situates music at the very core of global human endeavours.

During the turbulent decades of the 1970s and 1980s, Papua New Guinea gained political independence. It was an exciting time for a diverse group of pioneering musicians who formed a band they named "Sanguma". Australian ethnomusicologist Denis Crowdy argues that the Sanguma band's music was a vital form of cultural expression in sync with sociopolitical change then taking place in PNG.

Fragrant tropical flowers, opulent batik fabrics, magnificent bronze gamelan orchestras, and, of course, aromatic coffee. Such are the exotic images of Javas. Through close readings of the careers of four "javaphiles", Javaphilia: American Love Affairs with Javanese Music and Dance explores a century of American representations of Javanese performing arts by North Americans.