The power of African music to critically engage with new experiences is demonstrated in its ongoing responsiveness to the historical and power dynamics of colonialism. The overlaps between precolonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods in terms of the social and political experiences that define them provide the context for my analysis of what I call the African musical postcolony. By linking musical form, styles, and biographies to social and political developments, I show how the complex and overlapping relationships between the different phases of African history are reflected in the ways in which African musicians engage with issues of power and the politics of difference.

Inuit female singer-songwriters in Canada use truth-telling and narratives to offer settler listeners insight into Inuit perspectives on social issues affecting Inuit. A sensitive issue that Elisapie Isaac, Kelly Fraser and Susan Aglukark engage in their songs and social commentary is the suicide crisis of Inuit. Addressing Inuit suicide, its prevalence and the community’s response to it, these musicians unsettle listeners and challenge settlers to engage with and better understand difficult issues during this period of state-sanctioned reconciliation between Indigenous and settler peoples in Canada. This article explores the ethics of listening and responsibility that listening holds for settler audiences.

The plucked selo, a three-stringed variation of the cello, in langgam Jawa kroncong music was originally inspired by Javanese gamelan kendhang drumming. By the 1960s, however, Ki Nartosabdho had developed a style of kendhang playing that imitates the selo, often called kendhang gaya selo (selo-style drumming), bringing this musical exchange full circle. Not every piece, however, is considered suitable for this rhythmic treatment. In this article, we examine musical exchanges in a song form known as langgam Jawa between the selo and the Javanese kendhang, and investigate when drummers decide to use kendhang gaya selo in gamelan settings.

Trommeslåtter (drum tunes) have played a vital role in Norwegian traditional music for several hundred years. This article examines the development and performance of drum tunes in Norway, with a special focus on the work of Johannes Sundvor in transcribing drum music. We present several examples and analyse tunes from Sundvor’s collection. We also demonstrate how this Norwegian drum tradition is related to a tradition of European military drumming. The article concludes with a discussion of aspects of interpretation and an outline of the status of drum tunes today.

This research focuses on the embodied transmission of kamigatamai—a traditional dance genre in Japan known for its subtle minimalist movements that put an emphasis on the inner expression of the practitioners. Primarily based on the researcher’s fieldwork from 2022 to 2023 at the regular classes given by Kyoto-based master Nao Yoshimura, it investigates kamigatamai as a manifestation of the Japanese aesthetic concepts of ma/yohaku—deliberate nothingness created within/via an artwork (emptiness, stillness, silence) so that a clearance is created for the potential emanation of profound senses/meanings—and kokoro—a state of spontaneous becoming experienced via oneness with all.

The Igbo of Nigeria, a patriarchal ethnic nation, promotes gender binaries cultivated through cultural and social ideologies and contexts. Existing studies reveal how distinctions between the male and female sexes are deliberately entrenched, promoted and fairly accepted within the society through binary gender identities in all human endeavours. Paradoxically, however, the same culture seems to accept a form of oddity and subversive indigenous music, dance and costume culture presented as Adamma masquerade. This paper, by means of ethnographic, descriptive analysis and culture-owner interactions, interrogates the oxymoronic or self-contradictory notions on gender identities expressed through Adamma music and dance genre.

This article sets out the results of research into effort in Dhrupad, a genre of Hindustani music. I examine gestural interactions with imaginary objects that vocalists outline when engaging with melodies. The study takes an embodied cognition stance and applies thematic analysis and inductive coding to original interviews with Dhrupad musicians in India, the UK, and the Netherlands. My findings demonstrate that from the singers’ cognitive perspectives, their hand movements are deeply connected to their voices. I also offer insights on the relationships between bodily movement, sound, and imagery that are used to inform the development of effort inference models.

This article assesses the connections between 17th-century Hispanic American religious Villancicos de negro (also known as guineos or negrillas), along with secular theatre from the Modern Age, and the living Mexican tradition of Son Jarocho, particularly the Jarocho dance–song (son) known as Son de los Negritos. Therefore, I implement a methodology that links perspectives from historical musicology and ethnomusicology. This concatenation considers the continuity and memory in oral and written tradition. By doing so, I seek to discuss the impact of these transatlantic repertoires on the historical Afro-descendant communities in Mexico and the Spanish Empire of the Modern Age.

This article revisits the concepts of makam modality and chordal harmony, and argues for viewing interwar rebetiko as a musico-cultural amalgamation. I explore the transcendence of the theoretical incompatibility beyond the East–West dichotomy by employing the Foucauldian concept of heterotopia as a de-ideologised analytical tool. I conduct a case study of makam Sabâ and pertinent harmonisation on the guitar, by analysing two representative historical recordings from the 1930s and interpreting them within the contemporaneous musico-cultural context. As a result, I contend that the terms “equal-tempered makam” and “idiosyncratic harmonisation” mirror expressions of modal heterotopia within interwar rebetiko.

Despite huge devastation of land in southeastern Nigeria, music scholarship in that region is yet to engage environmental crisis. This paper explicates environment through the concepts and practices of mbem, an indigenous musical style of the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria. Employing ethnomusicological and ecomusicological approaches, I argue that respect, cooperation and reciprocity, principles of Igbo Indigenous Ecological knowledge system, inform Igbo environmental perspectives and constitute sustainable environmental practices. This article contributes new theoretical perspectives to contemporary global debate on environmental sustainability, spiritual ecologies, and culture by its transdisciplinary conversation between music, environment, decolonialism, spirituality, and society in Igbo community.