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.