Studies on Music and Dance Cultures in Laos

This volume consists of revised, extended and translated articles written by the author in the last ten years about music and dance cultures in Laos partly published and dispersed in academic literature. The main sources are mentioned at the beginning of each section. Since Laos is home to many cultures with a large range of individual varieties, the twelve articles cannot cover them in any aspect. They are only a beginning in exploring a remarkable amount of data collected in the last two decades all over the country and brought into a wider academic context of studies on mainland Southeast Asia. It is hoped that this volume encourages following researches to be conducted by a growing academic generation in Laos and other Asian countries.

Prof. Dr. Gisa Jähnichen, born in Halle (Saale), Germany, currently working on musicology, anthropology, and audiovisual archiving, was doing research over more than 25 years in South East Asia. She is teaching at various universities in Europe and Asia, among them Universiti Putra Malaysia, encouraging many of her students in developing their observation and description skills in different research areas.

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Gisa Jähnichen:Gisa Jähnichen, ecomusicologist, currently working at Shanghai Conservatory of Music and being an IASA ambassador engaged in audiovisual archiving around the globe, especially in Asia.Kongdeuane Nettavong:Kongdeuane Nettavong is a devoted librarian, writer and artist, born in 1947 in Northern Laos. Among many projects of importance to the development of her home country, she initiated the Archives of Traditional Music in Laos (ATML) Project, which records sound and audiovisual documents of the many minority ethnic groups in Laos and encourages the training of the new generation in traditional music. A music lover who plays the khen, she is president of the Khen Club, which manages the centre for teaching the new generation how to play the instrument. Educating the young generation and helping in transforming knowledge into social progress is her main focus. She was over decades the director of the National Library of Laos and continues raising funds and supporting projects that improve the intellectual infrastructure of Laos.