Javaphilia: American Love Affairs with Javanese Music and Dance (Music and Performing Arts of Asia and the Pacific)

An account of the First International Gamelan Festival, in Vancouver, BC (at Expo 86), almost a century later, bookends the epoch that is the focus of Javaphilia and sets the stage for a meditation on North Americans' ongoing relationships with the music and dance of Java.. By identifying aspects of Javanese music and dance that were compatible with their own tendencies, these individuals could literally perform unconventionalyet coherentidentities based in Javanese music and dance. While other Asian cultures made direct impressions on Americans by virtue of firsthand contacts through immigration, trade, and war, the distance between Java and America, and the vagueness of Americans' imagery, enabled a few disenfranchised musicians and dancers to fashion alternative identities through bold and idiosyncratic representations of Javanese music and dance.Javaphilia's main subjectsCanadian-born singer Eva Gauthier (1885–1958), dancer/painter Hubert Stowitts (1892–1953), ethnomusicologist Mantle Hood (1918–2005), a

Frederick Lau is the chair and professor of ethnomusicology and director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Hawai‘iat Mnoa.

Spiller's newest book is a fascinating read, thoughtfully conceived A. Gift For You Spiller's newest book is a fascinating read, thoughtfully conceived, and is a major contribution to scholarship in gamelan and American studies.

Javaphilia offers an insightful review of several key Americans associated with interest in Javanese artistic culture starting in the late 19th century. The book is well researched and includes many supportive photos, musical examples, extensive notes, and a bibliography.-- "CHOICE"This book is timely: the centrality of gamelan to the development of different aspects of US ethnomusicology, in fact, the development of ethnomusicology in general, and contemporary composition in particular will mean that this book will be of interest to several audiences.--Maria E. Mendonca, Henry