Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music

Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music is an innovative publication series for musical traditions whose transmission is oral or relies only in part on notation as the starting point for improvisation. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music volumes explore non-Western, folk, and popular musics, as well as classical and sacred musics outside the Western canon, and they represent the complex processes of change at the borders between cultures, genres, and historical moments. A critical edition in this series is determined both by critical theory from ethnomusicology and the social sciences that deal with cultural context and by paleographical and editorial practices establishing the musical text.

The early volumes in the series amply demonstrate how Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music opens new areas of scholarly and musical inquiry. The three volumes of Kay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery's Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant examine a liturgical tradition whose notational system connects contemporary practices to the history and social structures of the Ethiopian Christian Church, both in Africa and in modern diasporas. Hans Nathan's Israeli Folk Music makes available for the first time a volume of songs intended to serve as the model for an Israeli national music. Bell Yung's Celestial Airs of Antiquity comparatively represents fifteenth-century notated repertoires with transcriptions of twentieth-century performances, documenting Chinese music history over five centuries.

Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music encourages scholars to rethink the critical edition as a crucial component in the current rapprochement between ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and cultural studies. As new media make it possible to experience musics from throughout the world, as oral traditions have become essential to the globalization of local musical practices, and as popular musics give postmodern meaning to historical diasporas, so too does Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music invite music scholars to conceive of editions that will contribute fundamentally to some of the most critical debates of our day.