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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


Paradosiaká: Music, Meaning and Identity in Modern Greece

Paradosiaká: Music, Meaning and Identity in Modern Greece

1st Edition

By Eleni Kallimopoulou
January 31, 2020

Since the 1980s, musicians and audiences in Athens have been rediscovering musical traditions associated with the Ottoman period of Greek history. The result of this revivalist movement has been the urban musical style of 'paradosiaká' ('traditional'). Drawing from a varied repertoire that includes...

Perspectives on Korean Music Volume 1: Preserving Korean Music: Intangible Cultural Properties as Icons of Identity

Perspectives on Korean Music: Volume 1: Preserving Korean Music: Intangible Cultural Properties as Icons of Identity

1st Edition

By Keith Howard
October 29, 2019

As Korea has developed and modernized, music has come to play a central role as a symbol of national identity. Nationalism has been stage managed by scholars, journalists and, from the beginning of the 1960s, by the state, as music genres have been documented, preserved and promoted as 'Intangible ...

Songs from Kabul: The Spiritual Music of Ustad Amir Mohammad

Songs from Kabul: The Spiritual Music of Ustad Amir Mohammad

1st Edition

By John Baily
April 16, 2019

This book presents the vocal art music of Kabul as performed by Ustad Amir Mohammad. At the heart of Kabul's vocal art music is the ghazal, a highly flexible song form using Persian (or Pashto) texts derived from a variety of sources. Much of this poetry is in the Sufi tradition, with frequent ...

The Music of Malaysia The Classical, Folk and Syncretic Traditions

The Music of Malaysia: The Classical, Folk and Syncretic Traditions

2nd Edition

By Patricia Matusky, Tan Sooi Beng
March 07, 2019

The Music of Malaysia, first published in Malay in 1997 and followed by an English edition in 2004 is still the only history, appreciation and analysis of Malaysian music in its many and varied forms available in English. The book categorizes the types of music genres found in Malaysian society and...

Sounding the Dance, Moving the Music Choreomusicological Perspectives on Maritime Southeast Asian Performing Arts

Sounding the Dance, Moving the Music: Choreomusicological Perspectives on Maritime Southeast Asian Performing Arts

1st Edition

Edited By Mohd Anis Nor, Kendra Stepputat
February 07, 2019

Performing arts in most parts of Maritime Southeast Asia are seen as an entity, where music and dance, sound and movement, acoustic and tactile elements intermingle and complement each other. Although this fact is widely known and referenced, most scholarly works in the performing arts so far have ...

The Women of Quyi Liminal Voices and Androgynous Bodies

The Women of Quyi: Liminal Voices and Androgynous Bodies

1st Edition

By Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson
February 07, 2019

Why has the female voice—as the resonant incarnation of the female body—inspired both fascination and ambivalence? Why were women restricted from performing on the Chinese public stage? How have female roles and voices been appropriated by men throughout much of the history of Chinese theatre? Why ...

Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain

Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain

1st Edition

By Matthew Machin-Autenrieth
February 05, 2019

Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain explores the relationship between regional identity politics and flamenco in Andalusia, the southernmost autonomous community of Spain. In recent years, the Andalusian Government has embarked on an ambitious project aimed at developing ...

Iranian Classical Music The Discourses and Practice of Creativity

Iranian Classical Music: The Discourses and Practice of Creativity

1st Edition

By Laudan Nooshin
February 12, 2018

Questions of creativity, and particularly the processes which underlie creative performance or ’improvisation’, form some of the central areas of interest in current musicology. Yet the predominant discourses on which musicological thought in this area are based have rarely been challenged. In this...

Indigenous Religious Musics

Indigenous Religious Musics

1st Edition

By Graham Harvey, Karen Ralls-MacLeod
November 23, 2017

Celebrating the diversity of indigenous nations, cultures and religions, the essays which comprise this volume discuss the musics performed by a wide variety of peoples as an integral part of their cultural traditions. These include examinations of the various styles of Maori, Inuit and Australian ...

India's Kathak Dance in Historical Perspective

India's Kathak Dance in Historical Perspective

1st Edition

By Margaret E. Walker
July 13, 2017

Kathak, the classical dance of North India, combines virtuosic footwork and dazzling spins with subtle pantomime and soft gestures. As a global practice and one of India's cultural markers, kathak dance is often presented as heir to an ancient Hindu devotional tradition in which men called Kathakas...

Soundscapes from the Americas Ethnomusicological Essays on the Power, Poetics, and Ontology of Performance

Soundscapes from the Americas: Ethnomusicological Essays on the Power, Poetics, and Ontology of Performance

1st Edition

By Donna A. Buchanan
June 30, 2017

Dedicated to the late Gerard Béhague (1937-2005), whose pioneering work in Latin American music, popular culture, and performance studies contributed extensively to ethnomusicological discourse in the 1970s-1990s, this anthology offers comparative perspectives on the evolving legacy of performance ...

Dancing with Devtas: Drums, Power and Possession in the Music of Garhwal, North India

Dancing with Devtas: Drums, Power and Possession in the Music of Garhwal, North India

1st Edition

By Andrew Alter
June 14, 2017

In the Central Himalayan region of Garhwal, the gods (devtas) enjoy dancing. Musicians - whether ritual specialists or musical specialists - are therefore an indispensable part of most entertainment and religious events. In shamanistic ceremonies, their incantations, songs and drumming 'make' the ...

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