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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


Fiesta de diez pesos: Music and Gay Identity in Special Period Cuba

Fiesta de diez pesos: Music and Gay Identity in Special Period Cuba

1st Edition

By Moshe Morad
November 07, 2016

The ‘Special Period’ in Cuba was an extended era of economic depression starting in the early 1990s, characterized by the collapse of revolutionary values and social norms, and a way of life conducted by improvised solutions for survival, including hustling and sex-work. During this time there ...

Brass Bands of the World: Militarism, Colonial Legacies, and Local Music Making

Brass Bands of the World: Militarism, Colonial Legacies, and Local Music Making

1st Edition

Edited By Suzel Ana Reily, Katherine Brucher
October 19, 2016

Bands structured around western wind instruments are among the most widespread instrumental ensembles in the world. Although these ensembles draw upon European military traditions that spread globally through colonialism, militarism and missionary work, local musicians have adapted the brass band ...

Korean Musical Drama: P'ansori and the Making of Tradition in Modernity

Korean Musical Drama: P'ansori and the Making of Tradition in Modernity

1st Edition

By Haekyung Um
September 30, 2016

P’ansori is the quintessential traditional Korean musical drama, in which epic tales are sung and narrated by a solo singer accompanied by a drummer. Drawing on her extensive research in Korea and its diasporas, Haekyung Um describes and analyses the creative processes of p’ansori, weaving into her...

War, Exile and the Music of Afghanistan The Ethnographer’s Tale

War, Exile and the Music of Afghanistan: The Ethnographer’s Tale

1st Edition

By John Baily
September 22, 2016

In the 1970s John Baily conducted extensive ethnomusicological research in Afghanistan, principally in the city of Herat but also in Kabul. Then, with Taraki’s coup in 1978, came conflict, war, and the dispersal of many musicians to locations far and wide. This new publication is the culmination of...

Taarab Music in Zanzibar in the Twentieth Century A Story of ‘Old is Gold’ and Flying Spirits

Taarab Music in Zanzibar in the Twentieth Century: A Story of ‘Old is Gold’ and Flying Spirits

1st Edition

By Janet Topp Fargion
September 08, 2016

The musical genre of taarab is played for entertainment at weddings and other festive occasions all along the Swahili Coast in East Africa. Taarab contains all the features of a typical 'Indian Ocean' music, combining influences from Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, India and the West with local ...

Music as Intangible Cultural Heritage Policy, Ideology, and Practice in the Preservation of East Asian Traditions

Music as Intangible Cultural Heritage: Policy, Ideology, and Practice in the Preservation of East Asian Traditions

1st Edition

Edited By Keith Howard
September 06, 2016

Focussing on music traditions, these essays explore the policy, ideology and practice of preservation and promotion of East Asian intangible cultural heritage. For the first time, Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan - states that were amongst the first to establish legislation and systems for indigenous...

Music, Modernity and Locality in Prewar Japan: Osaka and Beyond

Music, Modernity and Locality in Prewar Japan: Osaka and Beyond

1st Edition

Edited By Alison Tokita, Hugh de Ferranti
September 06, 2016

This anthology addresses the modern musical culture of interwar Osaka and its surrounding Hanshin region. Modernity as experienced in this locale, with its particular historical, geographic and demographic character, and its established traditions of music and performance, gave rise to ...

Alaturka: Style in Turkish Music (1923–1938)

Alaturka: Style in Turkish Music (1923–1938)

1st Edition

By John Morgan O'Connell
August 26, 2016

The early-Republican era (1923-1938) was a major period of musical and cultural change in Turkey. Alaturka: Style in Turkish Music is a study of the significance of style in Turkish music and, in particular, the polemical debate about an eastern style of Turkish music (called, alaturka) that ...

Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia

Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia

1st Edition

Edited By Laudan Nooshin
August 26, 2016

What is it about the history, geographical position and cultures of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia that has made music such a potent and powerful agent? This volume presents the first direct look at the complex relationship between music and power across a range of musical genres ...

The Ma'luf in Contemporary Libya An Arab Andalusian Musical Tradition

The Ma'luf in Contemporary Libya: An Arab Andalusian Musical Tradition

1st Edition

By Philip Ciantar
August 26, 2016

The musical tradition of Ma'luf is believed to have come to North Africa with Muslim and Jewish refugees escaping the Christian reconquista of Spain between the tenth and seventeenth centuries. Although this Arab Andalusian music tradition has been studied in other parts of the region, until now, ...

Ancient Text Messages of the Yoruba Bata Drum Cracking the Code

Ancient Text Messages of the Yoruba Bata Drum: Cracking the Code

1st Edition

By Amanda Villepastour
July 18, 2016

The bata is one of the most important and representative percussion traditions of the people in southwest Nigeria, and is now learnt and performed around the world. In Cuba, their own bata tradition derives from the Yoruba bata from Africa yet has had far more research attention than its African ...

Gurudev's Drumming Legacy Music, Theory and Nationalism in the Mrdang aur Tabla Vadanpaddhati of Gurudev Patwardhan

Gurudev's Drumming Legacy: Music, Theory and Nationalism in the Mrdang aur Tabla Vadanpaddhati of Gurudev Patwardhan

1st Edition

By James Kippen
March 18, 2016

The 1903 Mrdang aur Tabla Vadanpaddhati is a revelatory text that has never been translated or analysed. It is a manual for playing the two most important drums of North Indian (Hindustani) music, the pakhavaj (mrdang) and the tabla. Owing to its relative obscurity, it is a source that has never ...

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