MUSC 3045 - World Music Across Cultures: Advanced: Asia

'The Archive of Indian music (AIM) digitizes and preserves Indian gramophone records across a range of genres including classical Hindustani and Karnataka music, folk, theater and early cinema.

The Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) was established in 1982 by the American Institute of Indian Studies with the aim of developing a centralized archive of collections of Indian music and the performing arts and to stimulate the study of ethnomusicology in India.

400 phonograph cylinder recordings recorded in 1901-1904 by Laufer on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History, under the direction of Franz Boas, Laufer recorded popular genres in Beijing and Shanghai that have since undergone great change. Scholars assert that these are among the earliest recordings made in China.

CVMA is a non-profit and self-funded community formed in pursuit of sharing and protecting Cambodian music created during pre-Khmer Rouge, Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea, Pen Ran and others.

A collection of over 100,000 folk songs composed and sung by the women of Maharashtra over generations, while toiling at the jāte (English: grindmill, IPA: zɑːt̪ə) at home and performing other household tasks. Some 3,302 performers across more than 1,000 villages were involved in this phenomenal recording of a poetic-musical legacy.

The Travelling Archive shares extracts from a growing collection of folk music of Bengal, as well as other places within the Indian Subcontinent. Also includes excerpts of archival film footage from Kenduli and audio recording from Santinketan and Calcutta recorded by Arnold Ardiaan Bake.

WesScholar (Wesleyan's digital repository), currently hosts materials to accompany Mark Slobin's book, "Music at Wesleyan."

The Kennedy Center houses this series of live videos and recordings of traditional Chinese music.

Bunraku is a traditional Japanese theater that combines traditional music, singing, and puppetry. In this short film, this traditional art form is used to tell a parable about destruction and inevitability -- also Godzilla.

A performance from the Edo Museum in Tokyo Japan showing casing traditional instruments and music.

The rich sonorities and compelling melodies of Chinese music are invoked on string instruments consisting of the erhu and related two-string fiddles, pipa (lute), zheng (long, plucked zither), ruan (moon guitar), and yangqin (hammered dulcimer). The ensemble Music from China performs masterworks from the Chinese classical and folk repertoire with an array of stylistic variations, timbral colors, and musical imagery. The program includes such immortal classical compositions as Ambush on Ten Sides, a powerful re-creation of a third-century battle scene, and the romance with nature of A Moonlit River in Spring. Folk music selections span China's broad landscape, from the urban sophistication of Shanghai and Guangzhou (Canton) to the vast expanse of the Mongolian steppes.

One of the top-ranking taiko groups in Japan performs thundering taiko drumming infused with traditional Japanese dance as nearly 30 drummers and dancers take the stage. Presented with the support of the Embassy of Japan and the National Cherry Blossom Festival.