From the Editor Ricardo D. Trimillos Aloha kākou! Issue 49(2) reflects the changing relationships of scholarship and performance over the past six decades in ethnomusicology. One branch of the field, attributed to Ki Mantle Hood and his institute at UCLA, advocates performance learning as a useful avenue for understanding and attaining insight into an unfamiliar musical culture. The "learning to perform as a means to understanding," a research tool principally for the foreign scholar, has transformed over the years. A diversity of positionalities, including such categories as performer-scholar and scholar-performer, is evident among authors in this issue and is informed by globalization, internationalization, and migration. Some researchers do learn to perform as a research activity, as did Benjamin Fairfield for his study on minority traditions in Thailand. Others have achieved "concert-level" competency; Jonathan Roberts has participated as penggérong (male chorus singer for gamelan) in Java and in the United Kingdom. In contrast, foreigners may become part of a community of practitioners from which the research emerges, as is the case of Jasmine Hornabrook, who writes on Hindu ritual practices in the diaspora. The increasing internationalization of the field over these same decades has led to an increase in indigenous voices, further expanding types of positionality. Two such voices in this issue include Oyuna Weina, who writes on the long-song genre of her Inner Mongolia homeland, and Sumarsam, whose monograph on the interaction of Javanese musical culture with the West is reviewed by Philip Yampolsky. Beyond various author positionalities, the issue contains a variety of methodologies and approaches. Oyuna Weina draws on indigenous cultural experience and insights as a performer for her account, "'You Can't Sing Urtyn Duu If You Don't Know How to Ride a Horse': Urtyn Duu in Alshaa, Inner Mongolia." She problematizes the Mongolian "long-song" genre and its transition from community activity in its traditional pastoral highland setting to concert presentation on a proscenium stage for a contemporary listenership that has become sedentary, urban, and divided by the vagaries of nation-states. The account privileges indigenous ways of knowing and speaking about the history of the genre and its practice. She comments on generational change in such musical features as ornamentation and tempo. Urtyn duu as viewed by its practitioners [End Page 1] (including the author) continues as a vibrant and dynamic genre that has responded to the challenges of modernity through ways that are creative and culturally informed. The second article discusses a vocal element of Javanese gamelan that has received minimal scholarly attention thus far. "Bringing the Music Out, Bringing the Listener In: The Gérong in Javanese Gamelan" by Jonathan Roberts argues for the importance of the gérong male chorus both to the ensemble and to the audience. This vocal force has been eclipsed by the musical and the literal elevation of the female solo singer, pesindhèn, as an electronically amplified sound source and as a physical object of audience desire positioned on a raised platform. Roberts comments on each named function of sound making by the male chorus and the relationship of each to the musical architecture. He presents a fascinating argument for gérong as an agent of meta-narrative. Like Weina in her ordering of the Mongolian material, Roberts references his own performance experience, albeit within the analytical frame of his study. "Ethnic and Village Unity: Symbolized or Enacted? Lahu Music-Dance and Ethnic Participation in Ban Musoe, Thailand" by Benjamin Fairfield examines a calendrical festival for this minority population. He finds strong community agency functioning within a contemporary environment informed by the Thai nation-state, by adventure tourism, and by Christian evangelization. Despite these seemingly intrusive forces the Lahu continue a traditional practice that effectively validates different levels of identity, for example, village, provincial, and ethnie, and valorizes an indigenous perception of "fun." Fun as a major characteristic of collective experience resonates with ludic sentiments in other parts of Southeast Asia, such as the notion of rame in Indonesia and kasayahan in the Philippines. Drawing on ideas from Thomas Turino, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Steven Feld, Fairfield situates the Ban Musoe and their New Year event within a broader, comparative...
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May 15, 2024
Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković + 1
Open Access
