This issue opens with a conversation between Harry Liebersohn and Bruno Nettl, in which they discuss the concept of cultural brokers and their place in the field of ethnomusicology. Bruno Nettl describes the historical trajectory of the field and shares from his own experience as an ethnomusicologist. Recounting the methods of his own teacher in Iran, he emphasizes the importance of cultural context for both the ideas and the sound of music.
In the articles that make up this special issue, Claudius Torp explores the musical side of the civilizing mission in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the Yoruba, Lobedu, and Nyakyusa. He looks at music education carried out by Protestant missionaries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and uncovers its influence on the emergence of distinct musical communities in the region. He draws attention to the often overlooked importance of music within colonial history as a force that contributed to both the creation of hierarchies within local societies and the generation of cultural resistance to external influences.
Next, John Troutman leads us to the Hawaiian archipelago, from where we follow the Hawaiian steel guitar, or kīkā kila, across the globe in a journey that started with resistance to the occupation of Hawai’i by the United States in the final years of the nineteenth century and resulted in the “glocalisation” of the indigenous soundscapes connected to this instrument in the early twentieth century. Another musical technology that circulated around world was the gramophone, the subject of Christina Lubinski and Andreas Steen’s contribution. Focusing on the international business side of music, they illustrate the interesting ways in which Western gramophone companies established footholds in India and China.
After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the Japanese government encouraged the systematic introduction of Western music. But rather than government efforts, Margaret Mehl is more interested in how Western music spread to different parts of Japan through unofficial channels. Following two Japanese brothers, both musicians, she traces the route that Western music took into northeastern Japan, which for a long time had the reputation of being the “traditional,” “real” Japan.
Martin Rempe follows with an account of the military band at the intersections of imperialism, professionalism, and commercialization. Several factors contributed to the dissemination of Western military music across the globe, including instrumental expansion and innovation, the professionalization of military music performance worldwide, the rise of nationalism, and commercialization. Central to these processes, military musicians spread Western musical knowledge from Turkey to Japan, and from Hawai’i to Korea. The activities of these cultural brokers, often from German lands, would, however, transcend the realm of military music and proceed into the civilian realm.
Further research articles in this issue focus on early modern Iberian Asia and the early modern Iberian Atlantic, respectively. Pedro Luengo gives an account of the spread of architectural techniques and models through seventeenth-century Iberian Southeast Asia. As he argues, a transnational lens is crucial for an understanding of these processes of exchange as a shared cultural dialogue, rather than as a colonial imposition resulting in hybridization. Finally, Miguel Dantas da Cruz moves our horizon to the west of the Iberian peninsula and addresses the relationship between the conceptualization of the Portuguese Atlantic world and transoceanic migratory patterns. The remarkable frequency of transoceanic travels of low-ranking Portuguese military personnel around the empire was related to two major conflicts, one with the Dutch in the South Atlantic, and the other with the Habsburgs in the North Atlantic. These conflicts provided military personnel with opportunities, but also revealed the conceptualization of the Atlantic as a space free from hierarchies, centres, and peripheries.
The Editors
