No Marketing Blurb

Gamelan is the first study of the music of Java and the development of the gamelan to take into account extensive historical sources and contemporary cultural theory and criticism. An ensemble dominated by bronze percussion instruments that dates back to the twelfth century in Java, the gamelan as a musical organization and a genre of performance reflects a cultural heritage that is the product of centuries of interaction between Hindu, Islamic, European, Chinese, and Malay cultural forces. Drawing on sources ranging from a twelfth-century royal poem to the writing of a twentieth-century nationalist, Sumarsam shows how the Indian-inspired contexts and ideology of the Javanese performing arts were first adjusted to the Sufi tradition and later shaped by European performance styles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He then turns to accounts of gamelan theory and practice from the colonial and postcolonial periods. Finally, he presents his own theory of gamelan, stressing the relationship between purely vocal melodies and classical gamelan composition.

Farish A. Noor might just be Malaysia's hippest intellectual. His gifts are on full display in these expanded versions of public lectures that he delivered at The Annexe Gallery, Central Market Kuala Lumpur in 2008 and 2009. Find out how 'racial difference' became such a big deal in Malaysia, and contrast this against the way our distant ancestors lived. Discover the hidden stories of the keris, Hang Tuah and PAS. There's also quite a bit of sex. Erudite, impassioned and sometimes plain naughty, What Your Teacher Didn't Tell You is a stimulating plunge into aspects of our past that have been kept from us. There's even a bonus chapter! Illustrated with dozens of sepia-toned photographs, many from the author's collection of antiques.

Covers Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Vietnam.

The world's most comprehensive, well documented and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive subject and geographical index. 234 photographs and illustrations - mostly color. Free of charge in digital PDF format on Google Books

The world's most comprehensive, well documented, and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive subject and geographic index. 231 photographs and illustrations - mostly color. Free of charge in digital PDF format.

The world's most comprehensive, well documented, and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive index. 372 photographs and illustrations. Free of charge in digital format on Google Books.