Based on extensive research in India and Pakistan, this new study examines the ways drumming and voices interconnect over vast areas of South Asia and considers what it means for instruments to be voice-like and carry textual messages in particular contexts. Richard K. Wolf employs a hybrid, novelistic form of presentation in which the fictional protagonist Muharram Ali, a man obsessed with finding music he believes will dissolve religious and political barriers, interacts with Wolf's field consultants, to communicate ethnographic and historical realities that transcend the local details of...

Out of Bounds examines Kay Kaufman Shelemay's impact as a pioneer of musical diaspora studies on a generation of scholars. The wide-ranging essays treat such diverse topics as cantorial life in America, gender and fertility among Ethiopians in Israel, transnational performance itineraries of griots and Korean drummers, and video games.