Music and Performing Arts of Asia and the Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018. vii, 217 pp. (Illustrations.) US$52.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-7376-9.
There is an inherent paradox in examining in a bounded publication a phenomenon (musicking) “always in flux” (11). The solution that each writer provides in this volume is to consider music as process—a wave—rather than just product, whether embodying a cultural ideal, or expressing a relationship to a particular environment that both influences and is itself influenced by that environment, and to either examine that process from back then until now, or take a snapshot of a finite period from the past. The collection explores issues of displacement, of the creative possibilities arising from mobility, of the influence in the regions of Western art music, and of the influence in Japan of Japanese Americans. Authored by “veteran ethnomusicologists” (2), it is an explicitly non-festschrift celebration on the occasion of Ricardo Trimillos’ 75th birthday by colleagues he knew and influenced; fitting, perhaps, that it is reviewed here by one such former colleague.
Henry Spiller examines the movement of the Sundanese angklung (bamboo frame rattle), from rural beginnings with one note per player, to urban expansions featuring several notes per player, to several notes per instrument to a robotic all-in-one ensemble. From symbolizing cooperative behaviour, to allowing women to play with dignity, to players having fun while playing arrangements of popular American music—the instrument’s embrace with modernity has shifted focus from performance occasion to sonic output: exotic sounds playing familiar music. Andrew Weintraub documents Indian Dangdut film music in Indonesia. This musical medium of acknowledged foreign origin has become part of a national repertoire, usefully exposing the common unspoken but hitherto untested assumption that a national style has a national origin.
In contrast to these more focused studies, David Harnish plots the historical movements of inward and outward musical influences in Bali and Lombok in a succession of summaries of specific vocal styles and instruments, juxtaposed with two personal accounts of performances he witnessed. Frederick Lau succinctly plots four courses of the Chinese instrumental melody “Molihua” in its rise from the folk tradition to national icon, examining the cultural architecture that shaped its progress. R. Anderson Sutton tracks the rise and development of small groups of musicians, some trained in both Western and Korean music, in the revitalization of traditional Korean music using, for example, improvisation to express the “aggression, daring and speed of the 21st century South Korean temperament” (107) within a non-commercial environment.
Kati Szego examines the use of Hawaiian music and dance by the Honolulu Police Department and Honolulu Fire Department between the 1950s and 1970s. The one was consciously employed as a soft power substitute for local perceptions of corruption, intimidation, and coercion, changing public perception through attractive, non-coercive images and also giving a “Hawaiian stamp on an American institution” (130) shortly after Hawai‘i achieved statehood. The other used choral singing, later adding hula, to express Hawaiian masculinity in a form that reduced possible racist fears among continental Americans and encouraged greater acceptance within the communities it served. Deborah Wong deconstructs two performances of Japanese taiko drummer Kenny Endo’s composition Yume No Pahu, “Dream of a Sacred Drum,” in which, out of respect, a Japanese djembe drum proximates the pahu but beats Tahitian rhythms and a Hawaiian mele inoa chant is played instrumentally but not sung. Multiple layers of exoticism and politicized metaphor foreground matters of panethnic identity that Wong calls “allyship” (164).
Christine R. Yano summarizes the history of the ukulele in Japan and the leading role played by Japanese Americans, and analyses the ways in which Japanese engage with the instrument in search of happiness and wellbeing from this affordable, simple, and portable device whose association with Hawai‘i’s utopian imagery creates a “plucked paradise” (171). And Ricardo D. Trimillos analyses the multiple ways in which Israel Kamahawiwo‘ole’s rendition of “Over the Rainbow” entextualizes meaning as a statement supporting Hawaiian Sovereignty by the use of formal literary and musical structures, and performative styles.
The inevitable variation in contributor perspective in such a sample only reflects the breadth of the “wave” phenomenon and the ability of ethnomusicology itself to identify and address its ever-changing complexities. The binding agent is a shared focus examining the How? and Why? questions that alone can accommodate a music feast in constant process, or rather, an ever-breaking wave. The book is a valuable addition to a topic ever in process and a fitting salute to the wavemaker himself.
Richard Moyle
University of Auckland, Thames, New Zealand