Chilean musical and political themes were an important element of East German life during the socialist presidency of Salvador Allende (1970–1973) and the violent military dictatorship (1973–1990) that overthrew him. The musical movement nueva canción (new song) was critical in mobilising solidarity with Chile around the world. In East Germany, the state-sponsored Singebewegung (singing movement) and the Liedermacher*innen1 (song makers) who were sometimes more openly critical both performed Chilean themes and covers. In addition to promoting solidarity, both groups drew on the musical identity of this group to arouse political participation towards different ends.

This article analyzes the internationalization of Mozambican music within the “World Music” market during the country’s transitional period from a single-party socialist-led system to a multiparty, liberal one (1987–1994) in relation to the country’s nation-building process. The comparative examination of three cases—Orchestra Marrabenta Star de Moçambique, the song “Baila Maria” by Grupo RM (Amoya), and Real World Records’ albums by Eyuphuro and Ghorwane—shows that the “World Music” market not only served as an escape valve from the country’s lethargic phonographic industry but also emerged as a privileged channel to promote Mozambique’s official musical policy abroad during a crucial civil war-torn period.

What is music? In my view, this is the most basic question in all musicologies, be it the so-called systematic and comparative musicology (according to Guido Adler's founding article of 1885), the historical musicology of “Western art music,” ethnomusicology, or other existing as well as possible musicologies, as far as they are oriented towards a generalizable term such as the term “music” is.

In this article, I show how the Dialita women’s choir uses music to contest the ongoing denial of state-sponsored violence that followed the Indonesian tragedy of 1965–66, particularly as it impacted women. More specifically, Dialita uses their experiences and positionalities as women to perform an alternative collective memory for younger generations of Indonesians. Composed in prison, Dialita’s musical repertoire memorialises the affects and effects of imprisonment, exile, trauma, and survival. Due to government censure and public condemnation, the songs had been silenced by the Indonesian state and hidden underground from the public since the Indonesian tragedy. In the early 2000s, the women of Dialita formed a musical group and courageously began performing in public, collaborating with young musicians and recording the songs. I contend that women’s collective singing is an act of critical remembrance, opening a new front in struggles for truth and reconciliation, especially when juridical appeals and strategies have been rebuffed.

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.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country as general descriptions of the nation that celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1995 often state. Yet scholarship, including that on music, has often drawn attention away from the prominence of Islam in Indonesia to such things as spirit cults of the abangan culture of the countryside or the traces of Hindu-Buddhist influence in court-derived priyayi culture. Of course Islam in Indonesia, particularly in Java, is comparatively reticent when compared to its more assertive expression in neighboring countries, but this should not obscure its fundamental presence and importance. In this paper, I will report on my ongoing exploration of gambus, an Indonesian performance complex of Yemeni derivation with a prominent place in Indonesian Islamic culture.

The Batak live in the countryside around Lake Toba in Northern Sumatra. According to linguistic and some other cultural differences they are divided into the subgroups Toba, Karo, Simalungun, Pakpak and Angkola/Mandailing. All Batak are obliged to the same adat, the traditional code of social behaviour which governs the relations among the three kinship groups (Simon 1982, 1984, 1987). The old-religious beliefs and customs of the Batak, upon which Christianity and Islam have been superimposed, are still an important part of adat ceremonies. I will confine myself here to certain old-religious implications of the ceremonial gondang music as found among the Toba and Karo.

I feel privileged to have been invited to open this session here in Jerusalem this afternoon. You, my friends and colleagues gathered from many parts of the world, may at this moment be feeling as I do, that we live in a very remarkable time: remarkable especially for the opportunities it gives us of meeting people from different civilizations. Today, indeed, our musical traditions, so different in their origins, form and content, are in growing communication; and, on the face of it, there would seem to be unprecedented opportunities for preserving and renewing regional music in its traditional forms. These traditional forms are those of folk music, liturgical music and learned music, but exclude the popular and individualistic repertoire. Before speaking of preservation and renewal, however, we must first recognize the existence of powerful forces which are working only for music's confusion and destruction. For the advances in technology and communications made by Western industrial society have been used for very different ends.

In an earlier paper (McLean 1961)—presented at the IFMC Vienna Conference in 1960—I emphasized what seemed to me to be an extreme conservatism associated with the transmission of traditional Maori singing—or waiata—style. I outlined some of the evidence for this, and indicated ways in which accuracy of transmission was attained in practice. As a sequel, I should like now to examine Maori concepts of accuracy more closely, and go on to consider anomalies presented by such phenomena as traditionally approved reworkings of waiata texts, the undoubted existence of melodic variants of particular songs, and an evident current trend towards accelerated change in waiata singing style itself.