Music = Cultures in Contact: Convergences and Collisions

by Margaret J. Kartomi, Stephen Blum

Contact between cultures may also lead to rejection as well as suppression of certain types of music. This process leads to such unfavorable circumstances as abandonment of entire works, genres or concepts or loss of instruments; yet such conflicts may also generate new and more positive creative achievements. Contributors include Andrew Alter, Tan Sooi Beng, Zdravko Blazekovic, Stephen Blum, Lê Tuân Hùng, Margaret J. Kartomi, Marcello Sorce Keller, Margarita Mazo, Bruno Nettl, Don Niles, William Noll, Jann Pasler, Ankica Petrovic, Chris Saumaiwai, John M. Schechter, Graeme Smith, Doris Stockmann, Sumarsam, and S. Venkatraman. Music -- Cultures in Contact examines how and why change occurs in musical culture, particularly change engendered by contact between two or many impinging cultures, sub-cultures or classes within a culture. This contact can have positive or negative effects. It may result in an influx of new musical ideas, leading to a greater level of crea

306 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

About the author

Margaret Kartomi is Professor of Music at Monash University, where she pioneered the teaching and research of Asian music. She trained as a pianist, composer, musicologist and ethnomusicologist at Adelaide and Humbolt Universities. Over the past 30 years she and her Monash students have been researching the music of many parts of Asia. She is author and/or editor of several books including On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments for the University of Chicago Press (1990).

Professor Kartomi has also published various research articles on Indonesian, other Southeast Asian, Australian Aboriginal and European music, as well as on musicological/ethnomusicological theory. Recently, her field recordings from 24 of Indonesia’s 27 provinces were presented to Indonesia’s Secretary-General of Culture for deposit in the National Library in Jakarta. She has twice been elected President of the Musicological Society, is a Council member of the Society for Ethnomusicology and is an Editorial Board member of the University of Chicago Press Ethnomusicology Monograph Series. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1984 and in 1991 was a Member of the Order of Australia for servies to music.