Design in Acehnese dance, music, and visual arts is guided by four general concepts of space. The upstream-downstream concept, governed by the centuries-old tendency to travel to the forests upstream and the coastal towns downstream, is associated with Animist-Hindu-Buddhist mysticism and commercial success respectively, resulting in methods of creating arts and crafts that belong either to upstream or downstream areas or both (in the latter case, for example, in the making of the great frame drums). Traces of the cardinal directional concept of space, with a similar Animist-Hindu-Buddhist background, link the directions to dominant colours used in artists' costumes, performance arena backdrops, embroideries, paintings, and other arts and crafts. The geometric concept governs formations of dancer-musicians and musician-dancers in a performance arena, as well as some traditional visual art designs and some modern paintings. Probably dating back to the pre-Dông-son era (before c. 300 B.C.E.), this concept is expressed in various linear, circular, square, and concentric designs. Finally, the central-point-in-a-circle concept of space is believed to have its parallels in Perso-Arabic thinking and points to Aceh's links with Persian, Moghul, Turkish, and Arabic cultures over the past millennium. It governs mosque-centred town planning, some visual art designs and some formations of dancers and musicians who circle around their leader at the centre point. Parallels between the Acehnese performing and visual arts lie in their application of the principle of freedom versus form. The creative invention and free ornamentation of leading singers and dancers contrast with the melodic and textual symmetry, disciplined compactness, and cyclic redundancy of their group followers, just as the artistic creator of a visual artwork invents an original design within stylistic limits while also using some cyclically repetitive border designs.

This paper studies the system and development of the yuebu, an official court music system during the Tang dynasty. Research on the music of the Tang dynasty has been quite abundant, mostly on the yanyue (court banquet music that was administered by the yuebu), with notable studies by scholars such as Ren Bantang (1982), Kishibe Shigeo (1973), Wang Xiaodun (1995), and Shen Dong (2000). However, previous research on music of the Tang dynasty emphasised acculturation and assimilation between China and cultures from bordering western countries; they did not look at music of the Tang court from the perspective of the yuebu as a complex bureaucratic system. Our interest focuses on yuebu as a functioning system that reflected a historically important route of transmission of traditional Chinese music. Through examining the cultural integration of several dynasties encompassing a period lasting more than three hundred years from the Han to the early Tang dynasties, as well as migration and training of the musicians of the yuebu and their method of musical transmission (particularly transmission within the family unit), this paper aims to gain an insight into the historical basis and cultural meaning of the yuebu. The discussion consists of two parts. Part one introduces the classification and the nature of the yuebu. On the one hand, as an official musical organisation in the court, the music repertory of the yuebu was the result of combinations of a variety of musical cultures from the Han to the Tang dynasties. On the other hand, as a bureaucratic organisation, yuebu represented a system consisting of “yue (music), qi (instruments), gong (musicians), and yi (uniform)”, legally sanctioned under the “yuelin (law on music)”. Part two concerns itself with the development of the yuebu in the Tang dynasty through scrutinizing the impact of migration and the training of musicians, and musical transmission during the pre-Tang era (namely, the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern, and Sui dynasties). From this, the paper ventures to explore, with a musicological approach, the typical means of propagating music traditions in China via training and transmission within a relatively closed system that was self-protecting and maintained within the family unit.

This paper is one of the results of my ongoing diachronic investigations concerning the music of hereditary shamans on Chindo, an island in south-west Korea. My first field research on the music there was carried out in the early 1980s for a year; this work resulted in my dissertation (Park 1985). About twenty years after my first fieldwork, during the summers of 2000-2001, I made a number of trips back to Chindo, focussing on more specific issues, such as change, improvisation, and comparative analysis. A recent publication of mine (Park 2003) deals with the general nature of the changes the tradition has undergone. The present paper deals specifically with changes in improvisational practice.

This description of the possession dance of the goddess Ame no Uzume no Mikoto in the eighth century Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) A.D. 712, to entice the sun goddess from her place of hiding, is held as the origins of kagura—a ritual dance performed by miko—female shrine attendants. The connection between myth and ritual is made early in Japanese history with the early ninth century Kogo shûi—a record of court rites stating that the successors of Ame no Uzume no Mikoto were an already extinct female priestly group, Sarume Kimi no Uji, and they in turn passed their skill on to the miko.

This paper explores the highly complex interactions of Tahitian musicians and dancers in performance. More specifically, it examines the art of cueing as both a musical action and a social process that fulfils the artistic needs of the performance while simultaneously reinforcing Tahitian constructs of social hierarchy and dominance. In Tahiti, cueing is power—sound power—and, by extension, social relations made audible.

Qingming—literally pure and brightness—is an annual Chinese ritual during which families honour their ancestors by visiting their graves. This practice was observed in China as well as in overseas Chinese communities. Described by a local writer as one of the important “family traditions” in Hawai'i, this annual ritual has been observed by local Chinese since their arrival in the nineteenth century (Clarke 1994). Every year during Qingming, all Chinese associations on the islands will sponsor ceremonies either at the Chinese cemetery or the association clubhouse to pay respect to their ancestors. This traditional ceremony, similar to other kinds of annual ethnic celebrations in Hawai'i, such as the Korean chusok harvest festival, Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn festivals, Portuguese Holy Ghost festival, and the Japanese and Okinawan obon festival, has been regarded as a high profile event of the Chinese community by local residents. Despite their origin as traditions brought to Hawai'i by immigrants, this type of ethnic family traditions has emerged as an integral part of the local culturescape, reflecting the multiethnic make-up of Hawaiian society since the plantation days at the turn of the twentieth century (ibid.).

GI songs or shinchū-gun songu in Japanese are legacies of the U.S. occupation of Japan, which started in 1945 with Japan's defeat in the Pacific War. Although the occupation officially ended in 1952, many American soldiers continued to arrive and remained in Japan even after 1952. This was due to the outbreak of the Korean War (1950-53), which made Japan America's advance base. GI songs generally refer to compositions addressed to American soldiers stationed in Japan during this occupation period and through the 1950s.