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SOAS Studies in Music

About the Book Series

The SOAS Studies in Music Routledge Book Series is one of the world’s leading series in the discipline of ethnomusicology and global music studies. Our core mission is to produce high-quality, ethnographically rich studies of music-making worldwide, with particular interests in Asia and Africa. We publish monographs, edited volumes, and translations that explore musical repertories and performance practice, critical issues in ethnomusicology, sound studies, historical and analytical approaches to music across the globe. We recognize the value of applied, interdisciplinary and collaborative research, and our authors draw on current approaches from musicology, anthropology, history, and digital humanities.

Series Editors

  • Professor Rachel Harris (SOAS University of London)
  • Dr Richard Williams (SOAS University of London)

Editorial Board

  • Professor Kwasi Ampene (University of Michigan)
  • Professor Linda Barwick (University of Sydney)
  • Professor Angela Impey (SOAS University of London)
  • Dr Peter McMurray (University of Cambridge)
  • Dr Moshe Morad (Tel Aviv University)
  • Professor Suzel Reily (Universidade Estadual de Campinas)
  • Professor Henry Spiller (University California Davis)
  • Dr Marié Abe (University of Berkeley California)

79 Series Titles


Cabo Verdean Rhythms Kolá San Jon, Spatialization, and the Performance of Creolidade

Cabo Verdean Rhythms: Kolá San Jon, Spatialization, and the Performance of Creolidade

1st Edition

By Martin Ringsmut
June 19, 2025

Cabo Verdean Rhythms examines the rhythms, movements, and performances of Kolá San Jon, a performative tradition central to Cabo Verde’s Festas Juninas, as a lens for understanding the ongoing negotiations of social and cultural boundaries in Cabo Verde. The book examines Kolá San Jon as a site of ...

Fiddles in Luso-Afro-Brazilian Cultures Transatlantic Aesthetics

Fiddles in Luso-Afro-Brazilian Cultures: Transatlantic Aesthetics

1st Edition

By Luiz Moretto
October 21, 2024

Fiddles in Luso-Afro-Brazilian Cultures presents fresh data and debates drawn from extensive research to broaden the study of African music by focusing on fiddle playing, exploring rhythm aesthetics and tonal systems within cultural contexts. Focused on Cape Verde, Mozambique and Brazil, the ...

The Gift of Song Performing Exchange in Western Arnhem Land

The Gift of Song: Performing Exchange in Western Arnhem Land

1st Edition

By Reuben Brown
October 17, 2024

The Gift of Song: Performing Exchange in Western Arnhem Land tells the story of the return of physical and digital cultural materials through song and dance. Drawing on extensive, first-person ethnographic fieldwork in western Arnhem Land, Australia, Brown examines how Bininj/Arrarrkpi (Aboriginal ...

Reform, Notation and Ottoman music in Early 19th Century Istanbul EUTERPE

Reform, Notation and Ottoman music in Early 19th Century Istanbul: EUTERPE

1st Edition

By Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol
October 07, 2024

Reform, Notation and Ottoman Music in Early 19th Century Istanbul: EUTERPE presents the first complete set of transcription and edition of Euterpe (1830) from Byzantine neumatic notation into the modified staff notation used by classical Turkish music and is accompanied by a substantial examination...

The Art Song in East Asia and Australia, 1900 to 1950

The Art Song in East Asia and Australia, 1900 to 1950

1st Edition

Edited By Alison McQueen Tokita, Joys H. Y. Cheung
October 07, 2024

This book explores art song as an emblem of musical modernity in early twentieth-century East Asia and Australia. It appraises the lyrical power of art song – a solo song set to a poem in the local language in Western art music style accompanied by piano – as a vehicle for creating a localized ...

Disaster Songs as Intangible Memorials in Atlantic Canada

Disaster Songs as Intangible Memorials in Atlantic Canada

1st Edition

By Heather Sparling
August 26, 2024

Disaster Songs as Intangible Memorials in Atlantic Canada draws on a collection of over 600 songs relating to Atlantic Canadian disasters from 1891 up until the present and describes the characteristics that define them as intangible memorials. The book demonstrates the relationship between ...

Music and Temple Ritual in South India Performing for Śiva

Music and Temple Ritual in South India: Performing for Śiva

1st Edition

By William Tallotte
August 26, 2024

Music and Temple Ritual in South India: Performing for Śiva documents the musical practices of the periya mēḷam, a South Indian instrumental ensemble of professional musicians who perform during the rituals and festivals of high-caste (Brahmanical) Tamil Hindu temples dedicated to the Pan-Indian ...

Musical Collaboration Between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous People in Australia Exchanges in The Third Space

Musical Collaboration Between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous People in Australia: Exchanges in The Third Space

1st Edition

Edited By Katelyn Barney
August 26, 2024

This book demonstrates the processes of intercultural musical collaboration and how these processes contribute to facilitating positive relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Australia. Each of the chapters in this edited collection examines specific examples in diverse ...

Rhythm, Ancestrality and Spirit in Maracatu de Nação and Candomblé Repercussions

Rhythm, Ancestrality and Spirit in Maracatu de Nação and Candomblé: Repercussions

1st Edition

By Lizzie Ogle
June 18, 2024

Rhythm, Ancestrality and Spirit in Maracatu de Nação and Candomblé: Repercussions examines how the highly percussive carnival practice of Maracatu de nação – an Afro-Brazilian musical and spiritual tradition originating in the north- eastern state of Pernambuco – has evolved in relation to the ...

Archaic Instruments in Modern West Java: Bamboo Murmurs

Archaic Instruments in Modern West Java: Bamboo Murmurs

1st Edition

By Henry Spiller
May 27, 2024

Archaic Instruments in Modern West Java: Bamboo Murmurs explores how current residents of Bandung, Indonesia, have (re-)adopted bamboo musical instruments to forge meaningful bridges between their past and present—between traditional and modern values. Although it focuses specifically on Bandung, ...

Jiuta Sōkyoku Lyrics and Explanations Songs of the Floating World

Jiuta Sōkyoku Lyrics and Explanations: Songs of the Floating World

1st Edition

By Christopher Yohmei Blasdel
May 09, 2024

Jiuta Sōkyoku Lyrics and Explanations is a compendium of seventy-three representative songs from the well-known genre of traditional Japanese Edo-period sankyoku ensemble music. Including extensive annotations along with commentaries and notes on their musical and performative aspects, the ...

Sonic Ruins of Modernity Judeo-Spanish Folksongs Today

Sonic Ruins of Modernity: Judeo-Spanish Folksongs Today

1st Edition

By Edwin Seroussi
January 29, 2024

Sonic Ruins of Modernity shows how social, cultural and cognitive phenomena interact in the making and distribution of folksongs beyond their time. Through Judeo-Spanish (or Ladino) folksongs, the author illustrates a methodology for the interplay of individual memories, artistic initiatives, ...

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