Asian Musicological Society

Asian Musicological Society
Name	Asian Musicological Society
Abbrev	AMS
Formation	1980s
Type	Learned society
Headquarters	Tokyo
Region served	Asia
Language	English, Japanese
Leader title	President

Contents

Asian Musicological Society is a pan-Asian learned society dedicated to the study, preservation, and dissemination of musicology across the Asian continent. The society brings together scholars from institutions such as University of Tokyo, Peking University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, National University of Singapore, and Seoul National University to foster comparative research on musical traditions including Hindustani classical music, Carnatic music, Gagaku, Noh, Kabuki, Beijing opera, Korean pansori, Javanese gamelan, Balinese gamelan, Mongolian throat singing, Tibetan Buddhism, Persian classical music, Ottoman classical music, Malay seloka, Thai piphat, Vietnamese ca tru, Filipino kulintang, and Chinese guqin.

History

The society emerged from conferences that connected researchers affiliated with Tokyo University of the Arts, University of Hong Kong, Banaras Hindu University, SOAS University of London scholars working on Korean traditional music, Japanese traditional music, Indian classical music, and Chinese traditional music. Early meetings included participants from Smithsonian Institution ethnomusicologists, British Museum curators, and members of UNESCO programs focused on Intangible Cultural Heritage. Founding figures had links to Kodály Institute, Hermann von Helmholtz-influenced musicology, and fieldwork traditions established by Alan Lomax, Zhou Xuan, and A. L. Basham-era South Asian studies. Over decades the society navigated regional tensions involving institutions such as Ministry of Culture (Japan), Ministry of Culture (China), Archaeological Survey of India, and international funders like the Japan Foundation and Asia-Europe Foundation.

The society is governed by an executive committee including a president, vice-presidents, secretary-general, and treasurer drawn from universities and museums such as Kyoto University, Fudan University, Chulalongkorn University, National Taiwan University, and Academy of Music of Uzbekistan. Its statutes reference collaboration with organizations like the International Musicological Society, World Music Association, International Council on Archives, and International Council for Traditional Music. Regional chapters correspond to areas traditionally linked to institutions such as National Centre for the Performing Arts (India), Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Vietnam Academy of Music, and Royal University of Phnom Penh. Governance procedures combine models used by Royal Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science-style assemblies, with annual general meetings and peer-elected committees.

Membership spans professors, curators, performers, and doctoral researchers from Princeton University, Harvard University, Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley, McGill University, Australian National University, University of British Columbia, University of Oxford, and regional conservatories like Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico-style institutions adapted locally. Activities include specialist working groups on topics such as ethnomusicology, organology, digital humanities, music cognition, and archival studies that collaborate with British Library, Library of Congress, National Library of China, National Diet Library (Japan), and Bibliothèque nationale de France-style partners. The society facilitates exchanges with festivals and stages including Edinburgh Festival, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Hong Kong Arts Festival, and traditional troupes from Kerala Kalamandalam and Tanka people ensembles.

The society organizes biennial conferences rotating through cities such as Tokyo, Beijing, New Delhi, Seoul, Bangkok, Jakarta, Hanoi, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, and Colombo. Proceedings and journals are published in collaboration with presses like Oxford University Press, Routledge, Cambridge University Press, Springer, and regional publishers including University of Tokyo Press and Peking University Press. Special issues have featured work on the Silk Road, Indian Ocean trade, Buddhism in East Asia, Islamic courts, Ming dynasty music, Joseon court music, Heian period repertories, and Tang dynasty sources, often drawing on archival materials from National Archives of India and Imperial Household Agency (Japan) collections.

Research projects address themes like reconstruction of historical repertoires using documents from Dunhuang manuscripts, Istanbul archives, Nara period documents, and Ming-Qing court records, as well as ethnographic fieldwork in communities such as the Ainu people, Hmong people, Uyghur people, Kachin people, Karen people, Sakha Republic singers, and Tibetan plateau musicians. Collaborative digitization projects partner with Google Arts & Culture-style initiatives, Digital Himalaya, ARC (Australian Research Council), and national grant agencies including JSPS, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Indian Council of Historical Research, and Korea Foundation. Cross-disciplinary work links to institutions like Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory-adjacent acoustics labs, and MIT Media Lab collaborations on computational analysis of raga and maqam.

The society confers awards recognizing lifetime achievement, early-career research, and fieldwork excellence, modeled after prizes such as the Holberg Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Asahi Prize, Order of Culture (Japan), and regional honors like the Padma Shri and Bharat Ratna-adjacent scholarly medals. Recipients have included scholars affiliated with Indiana University Bloomington, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Moscow Conservatory, SOAS University of London, and leading cultural institutions such as Teatro Alla Scala-linked researchers and curators from National Centre for Traditional Arts (Taiwan).

Category:Music organizations Category:Asian music