Eurasian Musical Journeys

Eurasian Musical Journeys

Author: Gabriela Currie

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-05-05

Total Pages: 75

ISBN-13: 9781108823296

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This Element explores the circulation of musical instruments, practices, and thought in pre-modern Eurasia at the crossroads of empires and nomadic cultures. It takes into consideration mechanisms of transmission, appropriation, adaptation, and integration that helped shape musical traditions that are perceived as culturally and geographically distinct yet are historically linked. The four stories featured here range from the geographically diverse performing groups during the Sui and Tang era, to the elusive musical world of Kucha in the Tarim Basin; from the fragmentary history of a single instrument linked to the Turkic peoples across Eurasia, to the transcontinental circulation of sound-making automata, including the organ, on both east-west and north-south axes. Within the conceptual background of cultural encounter and exchange, this Element provides possible strategies for integrating such information into the historical tapestry of Eurasian transcontinental networks as explored in other Elements in the series.


Book Synopsis Eurasian Musical Journeys by : Gabriela Currie

Download or read book Eurasian Musical Journeys written by Gabriela Currie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-05 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element explores the circulation of musical instruments, practices, and thought in pre-modern Eurasia at the crossroads of empires and nomadic cultures. It takes into consideration mechanisms of transmission, appropriation, adaptation, and integration that helped shape musical traditions that are perceived as culturally and geographically distinct yet are historically linked. The four stories featured here range from the geographically diverse performing groups during the Sui and Tang era, to the elusive musical world of Kucha in the Tarim Basin; from the fragmentary history of a single instrument linked to the Turkic peoples across Eurasia, to the transcontinental circulation of sound-making automata, including the organ, on both east-west and north-south axes. Within the conceptual background of cultural encounter and exchange, this Element provides possible strategies for integrating such information into the historical tapestry of Eurasian transcontinental networks as explored in other Elements in the series.


Elements in the Global Middle Ages: Eurasian Musical Journeys

Elements in the Global Middle Ages: Eurasian Musical Journeys

Author: Currie, Gabriela

Publisher:

Published:

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1108912354

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Book Synopsis Elements in the Global Middle Ages: Eurasian Musical Journeys by : Currie, Gabriela

Download or read book Elements in the Global Middle Ages: Eurasian Musical Journeys written by Currie, Gabriela and published by . This book was released on with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


Musical Journeys in Sumatra

Musical Journeys in Sumatra

Author: Margaret Kartomi

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2012-06-30

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 0252093828

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Although Sumatra is the sixth largest island in the world and home to an estimated 44 million Indonesians, its musical arts and cultures have not been the subject of a book-length study until now. Documenting and explaining the ethnographic, cultural, and historical contexts of Sumatra's performing arts, Musical Journeys in Sumatra also traces the changes in their style, content, and reception from the early 1970s onward. Having dedicated almost forty years of scholarship to exploring the rich and varied music of Sumatran provinces, Margaret Kartomi provides a fascinating ethnographic record of vanishing musical genres, traditions, and practices that have become deeply compromised by the pressures of urbanization, rural poverty, and government policy. This deeply informed collection showcases the complex diversity of Indonesian music and includes field observations from six different provinces: Aceh, North Sumatra, Riau, West Sumatra, South Sumatra, and Bangka-Belitung. Featuring photographs and original drawings from Kartomi's field observations of instruments and performances, Musical Journeys in Sumatra provides a comprehensive musical introduction to this neglected, very large island, with its hundreds of ethno-linguistic-musical groups.


Book Synopsis Musical Journeys in Sumatra by : Margaret Kartomi

Download or read book Musical Journeys in Sumatra written by Margaret Kartomi and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012-06-30 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Sumatra is the sixth largest island in the world and home to an estimated 44 million Indonesians, its musical arts and cultures have not been the subject of a book-length study until now. Documenting and explaining the ethnographic, cultural, and historical contexts of Sumatra's performing arts, Musical Journeys in Sumatra also traces the changes in their style, content, and reception from the early 1970s onward. Having dedicated almost forty years of scholarship to exploring the rich and varied music of Sumatran provinces, Margaret Kartomi provides a fascinating ethnographic record of vanishing musical genres, traditions, and practices that have become deeply compromised by the pressures of urbanization, rural poverty, and government policy. This deeply informed collection showcases the complex diversity of Indonesian music and includes field observations from six different provinces: Aceh, North Sumatra, Riau, West Sumatra, South Sumatra, and Bangka-Belitung. Featuring photographs and original drawings from Kartomi's field observations of instruments and performances, Musical Journeys in Sumatra provides a comprehensive musical introduction to this neglected, very large island, with its hundreds of ethno-linguistic-musical groups.


Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China

Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China

Author: Ingrid Maren Furniss

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-07-23

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1040045030

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Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China traces the complex history of lutes as they moved from the far west into China, and how these instruments became linked to various forms of social, cultural, ethnic, and religious marginality within and at China’s borders. The book argues that the lute, a musical instrument that likely originated in the Near East or Central Asia, became a highly charged object replete with associations of ethnic and political identity, social status, and gender in China across the third to seventeenth centuries, and as such, offers a crucial vehicle for understanding interactions between the Chinese center and periphery. Using a richly interdisciplinary perspective that brings together music history, performance studies, archaeology, and art history, the author draws together the visual evidence for the history of Chinese lutes and analyzes the political and cultural dimensions of their depictions in art. In exploring the lute’s reception across time and space, this book illuminates the shifting relationships between China and cultures along its frontier, as well as the dynamics of gender and social status within China’s center. Comprehensive in scope, Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China offers new insights for scholars of pre-modern China, art history, archaeology, music history, ethnomusicology, and Silk Road and frontier studies.


Book Synopsis Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China by : Ingrid Maren Furniss

Download or read book Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China written by Ingrid Maren Furniss and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-23 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China traces the complex history of lutes as they moved from the far west into China, and how these instruments became linked to various forms of social, cultural, ethnic, and religious marginality within and at China’s borders. The book argues that the lute, a musical instrument that likely originated in the Near East or Central Asia, became a highly charged object replete with associations of ethnic and political identity, social status, and gender in China across the third to seventeenth centuries, and as such, offers a crucial vehicle for understanding interactions between the Chinese center and periphery. Using a richly interdisciplinary perspective that brings together music history, performance studies, archaeology, and art history, the author draws together the visual evidence for the history of Chinese lutes and analyzes the political and cultural dimensions of their depictions in art. In exploring the lute’s reception across time and space, this book illuminates the shifting relationships between China and cultures along its frontier, as well as the dynamics of gender and social status within China’s center. Comprehensive in scope, Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China offers new insights for scholars of pre-modern China, art history, archaeology, music history, ethnomusicology, and Silk Road and frontier studies.


Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300–1400

Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300–1400

Author: Patricia Blessing

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-05-31

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1009393383

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This study considers the textiles made, traded, and exchanged across Eurasia from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages with special attention to the socio-political and cultural aspects of this universal medium. It presents a wide range of textiles used in both domestic and religious settings, as dress and furnishings, and for elite and ordinary owners. The introduction presents historiographical background to the study of textiles and explains the conditions of their survival in archaeological contexts and museums. A section on the materials and techniques used to produce textiles if followed by those outlining textile production, industry, and trade across Eurasia. Further sections examine the uses for dress and furnishing textiles and the appearance of imported fabrics in European contexts, addressing textiles' functions and uses in medieval societies. Lastly, a concluding section on textile aesthetics connects fabrics to their broader visual and material context.


Book Synopsis Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300–1400 by : Patricia Blessing

Download or read book Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300–1400 written by Patricia Blessing and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study considers the textiles made, traded, and exchanged across Eurasia from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages with special attention to the socio-political and cultural aspects of this universal medium. It presents a wide range of textiles used in both domestic and religious settings, as dress and furnishings, and for elite and ordinary owners. The introduction presents historiographical background to the study of textiles and explains the conditions of their survival in archaeological contexts and museums. A section on the materials and techniques used to produce textiles if followed by those outlining textile production, industry, and trade across Eurasia. Further sections examine the uses for dress and furnishing textiles and the appearance of imported fabrics in European contexts, addressing textiles' functions and uses in medieval societies. Lastly, a concluding section on textile aesthetics connects fabrics to their broader visual and material context.


Staging Tianxia

Staging Tianxia

Author: Lanlan Kuang

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2024-09-03

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0253070910

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Staging Tianxia explores the ancient Chinese vision of world order known as tianxia (all under heaven) by focusing on the historical, performative, and rhetorical processes of expressive arts and cultural heritages that inform a vision of China as a historically multiethnic and cosmopolitan nation. Author Lanlan Kuang unites multimedia ethnographic research and theoretical insights from ethnomusicology, philosophy, religious studies, performance studies, and cognitive science, with a focus on Dunhuang bihua yuewu, a modern interpretation inserted into the Chinese classical dance and theatrical arts tradition. Staging Tianxia thus aims to redefine Silk Road studies and Dunhuangology, a transdisciplinary field dedicated to studying the texts and art of Dunhuang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that connected China via the Silk Road with Central Asia, South Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Staging Tianxia is a careful ethnographic study that looks at the importance of performance tradition and poetics in the arts and aesthetic theory of China.


Book Synopsis Staging Tianxia by : Lanlan Kuang

Download or read book Staging Tianxia written by Lanlan Kuang and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-03 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Staging Tianxia explores the ancient Chinese vision of world order known as tianxia (all under heaven) by focusing on the historical, performative, and rhetorical processes of expressive arts and cultural heritages that inform a vision of China as a historically multiethnic and cosmopolitan nation. Author Lanlan Kuang unites multimedia ethnographic research and theoretical insights from ethnomusicology, philosophy, religious studies, performance studies, and cognitive science, with a focus on Dunhuang bihua yuewu, a modern interpretation inserted into the Chinese classical dance and theatrical arts tradition. Staging Tianxia thus aims to redefine Silk Road studies and Dunhuangology, a transdisciplinary field dedicated to studying the texts and art of Dunhuang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that connected China via the Silk Road with Central Asia, South Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Staging Tianxia is a careful ethnographic study that looks at the importance of performance tradition and poetics in the arts and aesthetic theory of China.


Swahili Worlds in Globalism

Swahili Worlds in Globalism

Author: Chapurukha M. Kusimba

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-01-31

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1009075438

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This Element discusses a medieval African urban society as a product of interactions among African communities who inhabited the region between 100 BCE and 500 CE. It deviates from standard approaches that credit urbanism and state in Africa to non-African agents. East Africa, then and now, was part of the broader world of the Indian Ocean. Globalism coincided with the political and economic transformations that occurred during the Tang-Sung-Yuan-Ming and Islamic Dynastic times, 600-1500 CE. Positioned as the gateway into and out of eastern Africa, the Swahili coast became a site through which people, inventions, and innovations bi-directionally migrated, were adopted, and evolved. Swahili peoples' agency and unique characteristics cannot be seen only through Islam's prism. Instead, their unique character is a consequence of social and economic interactions of actors along the coast, inland, and beyond the Indian Ocean.


Book Synopsis Swahili Worlds in Globalism by : Chapurukha M. Kusimba

Download or read book Swahili Worlds in Globalism written by Chapurukha M. Kusimba and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-31 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element discusses a medieval African urban society as a product of interactions among African communities who inhabited the region between 100 BCE and 500 CE. It deviates from standard approaches that credit urbanism and state in Africa to non-African agents. East Africa, then and now, was part of the broader world of the Indian Ocean. Globalism coincided with the political and economic transformations that occurred during the Tang-Sung-Yuan-Ming and Islamic Dynastic times, 600-1500 CE. Positioned as the gateway into and out of eastern Africa, the Swahili coast became a site through which people, inventions, and innovations bi-directionally migrated, were adopted, and evolved. Swahili peoples' agency and unique characteristics cannot be seen only through Islam's prism. Instead, their unique character is a consequence of social and economic interactions of actors along the coast, inland, and beyond the Indian Ocean.


The Chertsey Tiles, the Crusades, and Global Textile Motifs

The Chertsey Tiles, the Crusades, and Global Textile Motifs

Author: Amanda Luyster

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-12-31

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1009353152

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While visual cultures mingled comfortably along the silk roads and on the shores of the Mediterranean, medieval England has sometimes been viewed – by both medieval and more recent writers – as isolated. In this Element the author introduces new evidence to show that this understanding of medieval England's visual relationship to the rest of the world demands revision. An international team led by the author has completed a digital reconstruction of the so-called Chertsey combat tiles (sophisticated pictorial floor tiles made c. 1250, England), including both images and lost Latin texts. Grounded in the discoveries made while completing this reconstruction, the author proposes new conclusions regarding the historical circumstances within which the Chertsey tiles were commissioned and their significant connections with global textile traditions.


Book Synopsis The Chertsey Tiles, the Crusades, and Global Textile Motifs by : Amanda Luyster

Download or read book The Chertsey Tiles, the Crusades, and Global Textile Motifs written by Amanda Luyster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-31 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While visual cultures mingled comfortably along the silk roads and on the shores of the Mediterranean, medieval England has sometimes been viewed – by both medieval and more recent writers – as isolated. In this Element the author introduces new evidence to show that this understanding of medieval England's visual relationship to the rest of the world demands revision. An international team led by the author has completed a digital reconstruction of the so-called Chertsey combat tiles (sophisticated pictorial floor tiles made c. 1250, England), including both images and lost Latin texts. Grounded in the discoveries made while completing this reconstruction, the author proposes new conclusions regarding the historical circumstances within which the Chertsey tiles were commissioned and their significant connections with global textile traditions.


‘Ethiopia’ and the World, 330–1500 CE

‘Ethiopia’ and the World, 330–1500 CE

Author: Yonatan Binyam

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-05-30

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1009116096

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This Cambridge Element offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the histories of the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands from late antiquity to the late medieval period, updating traditional Western academic perspectives. Early scholarship, often by philologists and religious scholars, upheld 'Ethiopia' as an isolated repository of ancient Jewish and Christian texts. This work reframes the region's history, highlighting the political, economic, and cultural interconnections of different kingdoms, polities, and peoples. Utilizing recent advancements in Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies as well as Medieval Studies, it reevaluates key instances of contact between 'Ethiopia' and the world of Afro-Eurasia, situating the histories of the Christian, Muslim, and local-religious or 'pagan' groups living in the Red Sea littoral and the Eritrean-Ethiopian highlands in the context of the Global Middle Ages.


Book Synopsis ‘Ethiopia’ and the World, 330–1500 CE by : Yonatan Binyam

Download or read book ‘Ethiopia’ and the World, 330–1500 CE written by Yonatan Binyam and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-30 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Cambridge Element offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the histories of the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands from late antiquity to the late medieval period, updating traditional Western academic perspectives. Early scholarship, often by philologists and religious scholars, upheld 'Ethiopia' as an isolated repository of ancient Jewish and Christian texts. This work reframes the region's history, highlighting the political, economic, and cultural interconnections of different kingdoms, polities, and peoples. Utilizing recent advancements in Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies as well as Medieval Studies, it reevaluates key instances of contact between 'Ethiopia' and the world of Afro-Eurasia, situating the histories of the Christian, Muslim, and local-religious or 'pagan' groups living in the Red Sea littoral and the Eritrean-Ethiopian highlands in the context of the Global Middle Ages.


Eurasian Politics: Ideas, Institutions and External Relations

Eurasian Politics: Ideas, Institutions and External Relations

Author: Mr Tulsiram

Publisher: KW Publishers Pvt Ltd

Published: 2013-06-15

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 9385714740

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The transitional politics of Eurasian space is marked by a constant struggle among three sets of ideas and institutions: the 1 is the remarkable resilience of Soviet ideas and institutions; 2, an attempt by the regimes of these states to reinvent the historical and cultural traditions of preSoviet periods; and third is an attempt by a section of the powerful elite to superimpose Western liberal ideas and institutions. There is a strange intertwining of these ideas and institutions. This book examines the extent to which the postSoviet politics has departed from the Soviet one. What are the new ideational structures emerging in these states and how far have they crystallised into institutions? What are the external influences which are shaping the institutions in the Eurasian space? And finally, what are the various dynamics of geopolitics in this region? Experts from various countries will delve into the shifting dynamics of Eurasian politics.


Book Synopsis Eurasian Politics: Ideas, Institutions and External Relations by : Mr Tulsiram

Download or read book Eurasian Politics: Ideas, Institutions and External Relations written by Mr Tulsiram and published by KW Publishers Pvt Ltd. This book was released on 2013-06-15 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transitional politics of Eurasian space is marked by a constant struggle among three sets of ideas and institutions: the 1 is the remarkable resilience of Soviet ideas and institutions; 2, an attempt by the regimes of these states to reinvent the historical and cultural traditions of preSoviet periods; and third is an attempt by a section of the powerful elite to superimpose Western liberal ideas and institutions. There is a strange intertwining of these ideas and institutions. This book examines the extent to which the postSoviet politics has departed from the Soviet one. What are the new ideational structures emerging in these states and how far have they crystallised into institutions? What are the external influences which are shaping the institutions in the Eurasian space? And finally, what are the various dynamics of geopolitics in this region? Experts from various countries will delve into the shifting dynamics of Eurasian politics.